When I was a teenager, I was crazy for Edward Albee. And I still love his work. In fact, I understand it a lot better than I did as a teen. Albee writes a lot about the aging process and the ways that people mature. The best example of this — and I would say his best play — is Three Tall Women. The first act involves a rich old woman who is dying. There is middle-aged woman who cares for her. And finally, there is a young woman — a lawyer who has come by to get some business matters taken care of. In the second act, the three actors become instances of the dying woman at those three times in her life. It is a remarkable and compelling way to tell her story.
More important, however, we get to see how the woman changes over time. The young woman is actually quite annoying in her moral certainty that she would never do things that the other women are telling her that she will, in fact, do. There is no one so slappable as a person who thinks themselves moral when they have never been tested. I know this is a very pessimistic look at life. But I can’t say that it isn’t entirely accurate. What’s interesting is that the woman is the very worst that we see from the pampered rich. So she has no real empathy for others. But see is at least able to accept who she is as she gets older.
It was only quite recently that I realized that what Albee does in Three Tall Women, he does in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’ve never liked that play as much as some of his others. Largely, I think, it is because the people are all so horrible and yet it is realistic. But like much of his work, I think it is best after one has grown up a bit and seen what happens to people.
In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? we see two couples — both intellectual. The older man is George, a history professor; the younger man is Nick, a biology professor. George and his wife Martha have reached that sad point that I see in a lot of old relationships where they can only connect by abusing each other. Nick and his wife Honey are certainly past the infatuation phase of their relationship, but they haven’t gotten to the point of thinking abuse is a substitute for affection. But what’s remarkable — and horrific — is just how easily George and Martha are able to to entangle Nick and Honey in their sick games.
What is clear is that we could visit Nick and Honey in twenty years and we would find George and Martha. The implication is that the younger couple is as infertile as the older couple. So even if they don’t make up a fake son as George and Martha did, Nick and Honey will find some other mechanism by which they can avoid dealing with the reality of living in a marriage neither of them desires. And we know that mechanism will be negative and will reach out beyond them to poison others.
Albee was already 30 years old when he wrote his first play, The Zoo Story. He was in his mid-30s when he wrote Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And he was in his sixties when he wrote Three Tall Women. I think that in itself is telling. Even at 30, one begins to get a clue of the ways our engagement with the world changes. And Albee has always understood how systemic these things are. Even in The Zoo Story, Peter and Jerry are entirely products of their environments. Peter living in a squalid tenement is Jerry; Jerry with an upper-middle class upbringing and a college degree is Peter. You could say the same thing about Seascape — although obviously we are talking about different species, which makes the point especially clear.
I think that is what Albee is most focused on when he does his best work: the way that the environment manipulates us regardless of how we try to resist. This isn’t always the case. In lesser plays like Tiny Alice and The American Dream, I’m not sure that even he knows what he is trying to say. But the more real the characters are, the more they seem trapped by the circumstances that brought them into being. In this way Albee is anti-Romantic. There is no classical tragedy because the characters aren’t in control. They are just reactions to the stimuli of their environments.
Nationwide, yesterday was a terrible election. But here in California, it wasn’t so bad. And here in Sonoma County, it was actually quite good. To give you some idea, Jerry Brown won the state with 59-41% — without campaigning. But here in Sonoma, Brown won 74-26%. But you know Sonoma county: it’s where hippies go to retire. Similarly, my man Tom Torlakson eked out a victory with 52% statewide, but won handily here with 65%.
On this day in 1931, the great musician 
Jonathan Cohn made an excellent point over at New Republic yesterday, 
Let’s talk about helicopter money. The idea here is that the Federal Reserve could print bank notes (let’s just call it money for clarity’s sake) and drop it out of helicopters where people could pick it up and spend it, thus stimulating the economy. It sounds like a crazy idea. But in our current economic environment, it would not lead to inflation. It would simply put unused workers and resources into service. On the other hand, if the economy were already working at full capacity, throwing money out of helicopters would create inflation.
The nuts and bolts of it is that he’s wrong about the issues. That’s part of the equation. But the other part is that he’s been terrible for the district. He’s been in Congress for 12-and-a-half years. He’s never passed any legislation. He’s never brought anything back to Iowa. And, if he had any standing with the House leadership, he’d be the next chairman of the [House] agriculture committee, because he’s got the most seniority. But he’s not. It’s going to be Representative [Michael] Conaway from Texas. They’re not going to give the gavel to him because the Republican leadership doesn’t like him. They think he’s dangerous. John Boehner has said that Steve King doesn’t speak for the Republican party. If he were going to be the next chair of the Agriculture committee, that would be huge for Iowa. Instead, he has a selfish, Tea Party agenda. So, instead, they’re going to give the chairmanship to a representative who’s against the renewable fuel standard. Do you think that’s good for Iowa? It’s not.
I will try not to write about the election all day long. It really isn’t all that interesting regardless. But I wrote about the 
Well kiddos, it is election day. Even if you think, as I do, that in many ways we no longer live in a democracy, you should still vote. It is the most public expression of civil pride. It takes nothing to put a bumper sticker on your car. But voting takes a bit of work. But the country deserves it. If we are ever to fulfill the promise of American democracy, we must vote. So get out there and have your say!
Jonathan Chait wrote a really good article today,