7/99
Every writer should have at least one Maggi experience.
"Maggi White" is the editor of
Our Town was born from the ashes of a paper called The Downtowner. Also edited by "Maggi White," it thrived for several years before its sale to Advance Publications, the same company that owns the city's monopolizing daily, The Oregonian (Portland is a city of monopolies, from its papers to its movie theaters). The Oregonian let the paper live for a while, but eventually closed it down. After a hiatus of a season or town, White started up Our Town (or OurTown, as its letterhead, masthead, and web site seem to print it). The new paper was and is virtually indistinguishable from The Downtowner, and readers have a hard time remembering to use its new moniker rather than the old one. Earlier this year, OT was purchased by a company that already operates several other community newspapers, which has led to more aggressive advertiser acquisitions, but not more pay for its writers, and the imposition of special supplements, including an antiabortion package that helped the paper lose both some of its recently acquired advertisers and long term clients.
Meanwhile, I was the recently liberated movie reviewer for PDXS, the once true alternative newspaper in Portland. Founder, editor, and publisher Jim Redden had decided to close it down after almost nine years. I spent a few weeks wondering what to do next. Because of PDXS's sardonic attitude toward the local media, no local papers or magazines were beating down my door to hire me. A brief effort to take my act over to the alternative monthly Anodyne ended when, after many complications and problems, that publication also closed down, solving all those problems in one swoop.
But I never thought that I would end up at OT. Certainly I had taken a few amused potshots at "Maggi" and OurTown in the pages of PDXS. Who could resist, when the editrix writes such prose as this every week in her "FromWhereIShit" column: "Tonkin has more than a casual feeling toward the project [of the Chinese Garden]. Her father, Marv Tonkin, who died April 29, spotted an advertisement for the position and encouraged her to go for it. He said to her, "It's a great project for Portland." He and Cheryl's mother, Rena Tonkin, were enthusiastic about Asian art. In fact, Marv Tonkin operated a car dealership in Taiwan." So let's see, what this means is that if you are interested in art, you open ... oh, never mind.
She has her fans. There are people in this town who avidly collect her columns, eagerly cataloging her latest solecisms. And she so got under the skin of writer Marty Smith, then of the Free Agent, that he was driven to compose a demolition job on her that was brilliant in its white hot rage.
What is it about serially-named "White" that so fascinates several generations of intelligent male readers? Is it her inability to construct even a single fully grammatical sentence? For years Iıd heard from former employees and copy editors that "White," er, prefers that her copy go unedited. Well, it shows, gloriously and disastrously.
Is the addiction to her column based on the fact that the highest praise she can bestow up on a book is that it is "easy to read"? Or is it simply that, unedited, her copy provides a ghastly glimpse into the horror that is the typical modern vacuous American female mind? Her collected columns are surely worthy of study by the nationıs top psychologists for the next two centuries.
Hereıs an example of "Maggi" at work, a column rife with all the unpredictable, unique errors that draw otherwise wise readers to her execrable prose. It is the last one she wrote for the old Downtowner
She begins by expressing some no doubt sincere grief for the "blow" the closing down of her paper caused her employees who now lack "the paycheck that pays the bills." "Maggi" can never resist that additional explanatory clause. "Maggi" also loves the passive voice, so itıs "for the 22 years the Downtowner has existed," instead of something more active and interesting.
But "Maggi" herself isnıt depressed, no sir. "As I waited in the elevator of the Oregon Health Sciences University last week, I saw a child in a wheelchair. This keeps me from feeling sorry for myself." Iım sure the kid in the chair feels the same way upon seeing "Maggi " looming in the hallway. In any case, "Maggi" does admit to enjoying the fruits of journalistic largess. "I have enjoyed knowing what is going on downtown, of being in on the beginnings of the newsı [that is, what she calls news, and what sentient people call free advertisements] of openings of new stores and shops [the paperıs raison dıetre ], of events of all kinds ["Maggi" has a habit of starting what look to be long lists and then suddenly run out of other examples]."
The columnist is philosophical, however. "The development of downtown has been exciting, like watching a child grow and develop." But I guess not like a child in a wheelchair. Then, finally, there is "Maggi," the Madame de Staël of Portland: "We love this city and have enjoyed relationships with a lot of wonderful people who are good citizens." Yeow!
Her column, called Conversationally Yours, was gone in April, but soon to reappear, with all its bad grammar, unintentional yuks, and poverty of ideas, with the newly born, or reborn, or whatever OurTown.
Somehow, she got a bunch of people to pour their excess cash into her latest venture, and, then, in mid-September, there she was again, introducing the Downtowner, ER Our Town , a weekly shopper looking very much like its predecessor, only much, much thinner. A starvation diet does that to you.
Had "Maggi" learnt anything whilst she was away? Did she devote her off months to a study of Fowler, to dips into a dictionary, to sessions with a writing coach?
The short answer was no. The long answer requires a survey of her first columns..
18 September: With a brand spanking new photo of herself, ghastly and downright terrifying, "Maggi" says hello from her new perch atop the Downtowner, ER, Our Town. And within a few sentences she slips into her old ways: the clunky syntax that makes you think that English is "Maggi"ıs second language, the illogicality, the sentences unconnected to their predecessors, and her insistence on using the passive voice. She begins by telling us that her new paper is a response to those "many readers and retailers [surely the more important of the two] who felt a void." Well, some voids arenıt so bad. "Downtown has a voice again, albeit a different one We will do everything we can to give the city a paper that deliberately chooses not to focus on conflict, controversy or negative aspects of our city." At last she admits, possibly for the first time, that Portland has its down side. "A paper is a vehicle for intimate communication in an age when so many of us sit before computers talking through wires, not face to face." That is, intimately. But isnıt an Internet talk group more intimate than a paper, thanks to the fact that the person on the other end actually talks back? No matter. "Maggi" is on a roll. "Our touchstone will be the underlying philosophy of Our Town." What does that mean exactly#&151;a question readers of Maggi often ask, which is perhaps why she may very well be the premiere philosopher of the 20th Century: she makes us think!
25 September: Daringly, "Maggi" dumps on the Oregonian, and indirectly its owner, Advance Publications. She chastises drab then-Public Editor Bob Caldwell for defending his paperıs coverage of ArtQuake, and attacks him for denying that newspapers have influence, when contradictorily papers sell ad packages under the assumption that the organs do have influence. Though her point is correct, her real reason for bringing it up is to "choose not to focus on the negative aspects of our city." "Itıs time for journalists to get out from behind their computers [those pesky computers again!] and get real." Oh, that jive-talkinı"Maggi." But beware a "Maggi" pissed. "Listen, Caldwell," she orders, " Hey, I began my career with your outlook, Caldwell. I chose to get rid of it." Dare I add—but look where it got her!
2 October: Dipping into the O.J. Simpson frenzy, "Maggi" makes it quite clear that she thinks Mark Fuhrman is a racist. But not to worry! Portland happens to have a progressive police force, thanks to topcop Chief of Police Charles Moose, who is quoted at such tortured length that he practically writes half her column. Eventually he took a job in a different town after having had some "negative" run ins with the media
9 October: Still on the black beat, "Maggi" shares at length (half a column length, to be precise) some of the views of that deep thinker Spike Lee, who was invited to town by the Portland Creative Conference, which, Maggi subtly adds, is "already a prestigious, professionally presented annual event that is becoming well respected in the film world." Whoa, "Maggi," slow down, you already earned your free pass to the event!
16 October: When not talking about black Americans, Maggi likes to gab about gals. "I was reading Style magazine, the kind of publication you find in beauty salons, the other day. It published comments by female celebrities who were asked whether they preferred romance or sex. All answered romance. Unfortunately, many men do not realize that with a little effort their sexual lives would be more active." Before the reader can recover from that astounding insight, "Maggi" has moved on to the gals themselves, tired creatures who want a little romance in their lives. "Iıve known women who were seduced by the wrong men simply because these men knew how to romance them with emerald earrings and limousines. They had learned what women want." Thatıs what women want? Jewelry and big cars? So thatıs how men can make their "sexual lives" more "active." And whereıs the romance?
23 October: Maggi girds her loins and reveals that, darn it, "Noise. I hate it." Leaf blowers, jet boats, mowers. She canıt stand them. Especially "live music with the amplifier turn up so high you canıt hear the words of the vocalist you came to enjoy or carry on a conversation [so, "Maggi," did you come to listen, or to talk? Just asking]." Strong words for the woman whose paper "chooses not to focus on the negative aspects of our city."
30 October: Maggi, the book reviewer, likes author, math teacher, and former Portlander John Casti. "Heıs totally likable on first meeting." Her take on the Castiıs tome? "If your curiosity is provoked [sic], this book is for you." By the way, usage such as "totally," "crashed [for sleeping]," "hung out with," and "get real" pop up in her column with uncommon frequency these days. Is Maggi really writing her column, or is she letting some young offspring, in a fit of uncontrollable Bouléism, step in occasionally and write her stuff for her?
6 November: "Maggi" rather neutrally quotes (at length, natch) writer James Howard Kunstler, in town to talk about urban planing. "Life is tragic, said the opinionated Kunstler, dressed in a navy blazer, jeans and a green-and-red tie." Dressed like that, he would think so, wouldnıt he! Though the Downtowner, ER, Our Town is dedicated to the proposition of "choosing not to focus on the negative aspects of our city," that doesnıt mean she canıt take a few shots at Beaverton. "[Kunstler] warned against whatıs happening in Beaverton—mini-malls, for instance."
13 November: "Maggi," ever the publicist, yodels for Portland Art Museum executive director John Buchanan, and his booking of the bloated Imperial Tombs of China exhibition, the 90s equivalent of that popular touring Tutankhamen show of the 70s. "Maggi," who isnıt actually paid by Buchanan, may be one of the few remaining people in Portland to admit actually liking the man whose institution is leaking employees like a sieve.
It was good to have "Maggi" back. Portland hadnıt been the same without her ridiculous, yet gripping column. Of course, some people donıt read her at all. But then, maybe they choose not to focus on the negative aspects of our city.
But one cannot always simply criticize others from a distance. Occasionally, one must leap into the trenches, and find out just what makes a paper tick. And leaping into the fray and actually meeting and observing "Maggi White" in person reveals a lot about what makes that paper so bad.
One day not long after my liberation, I was reading through Our Town, and found Jim Redden's byline in the thing, beside an interview with Melissa Rossi about Courtney Love, who was about to appear in concert. I thought, Geeze, if he can get into that paper after everything we had written about it, I can, too.
I wrote to Lisa Loving, the arts editor of OurTown, and asked her if she was interested in taking on a new theater reviewer, given that the paper seemed to have none. She contacted me quickly. The good news was that Our Town was indeed interested. The bad news was that I wouldn't be paid (at least for a while) and that Lisa's decision to hire me had to be approved by Maggi. If I was soon to learn that I was not George Bernard Shaw, I was also to learn that "Maggi White" was not Frank Harris.
Thus this year for the first time in my life I could be found making the trek to the offices, currently in the Old Town section of Portland, of Our Town for an audience with White. I'd never been in the place before, in any of its incarnations in some 15 different locations scattered around Oregon. And you really have to experience the place in person in order to enjoy the full effect of the oddness of the Our Town corporate lifestyle.
Upon first experiencing the office, the first thing you notice is that everyone appears busy. Yet like the office scene in Brazil, the business seems designed to ward off White's intrusive ire. Also, no one talks above a hushed whisper, as if too much noise might start an avalanche. In fact, loud talking might indeed summon an avalanche, one called Maggi White. In my occasional visits to the office, for the short time I worked there, I often heard employees say, "I think I can talk to Maggi about that now; I think she is in a good mood."
However, when I finally met White she was pleasant enough. White is a short, plump woman with an odd, almost unidentifiable accent, and a distracted if businesslike demeanor. We went into the paper's back issue archive (she said her office was too messy) and talked for only about two minutes, and she agreed to indulge in the experiment of having me come over and review plays for the paper. I was to provide her with a written agreement outlining our talk so that there "won't be any messiness later," as she warned me. Later, I emailed White the following job description:
Thanks for your interest in my doing theater reviews for Our Town. I am both flattered and amazed.
If my contributions as a theater writer are to proceed there are things that you as a publisher / editor require ... but also things that I as a freelance writer need to have established.
For one thing, I CAN confine my reviews to 500 words. Wordage less than that, in my view, does a disservice to the local theater community, and to the readers of a paper. But I can easily avoid exceeding that word count in order to create a dependable space for regular column.
I can accept contributing without compensation for three months. In other words, if my first review were to appear in the issue dated Monday 5 April, I would look forward (if I lasted that long) to compensation beginning with the issue dated Monday, 28 June. If my first review were to appear in the following week in April, than I would ratchet up the payment start date one week in July as well.
My goal is to have:
1) a column that appears every week.
2) a column that reviews ONE play—and one play only—every week, and REVIEWS it, that is, evaluates it for public consumption, a play of my choice (though I would certainly listen to suggestions, since one can't know everything).
3) a column that allows me the elbow room to explore my personal views of the local theater scene in a personal, "first person" format.
In return, Our Town gets a column that will appear—dependably—every week, on deadline, emailed to the arts editrix, and dedicated to a play that has recently opened (and which presumably is still running).
I also need the liberty to be "negative," though I won't abuse it for the sake of pointless cruelty. In my view, readers aren't served, and the critic's reputation isn't helped, by mindless boosterism. On the other hand, I in fact view myself as a booster of theater ... but a theater that can truly compete with the myriad distractions the media offer and offer something new and original to theatergoers bored with material that they can get better and easier via other media.
I hope that this proposal is of interest to you and look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
D K Holm
I wasn't sure if White knew what she was getting. After all, when I was a movie reviewer for Willamette Week for 10 years, from 1985 to 1995, I was the most hated writer in the city. Well, my tenure at Our Town lasted all of five issues.
It was four more than I thought I'd last.
My demise came with a review of a student production from an acting school run by a local ex-actress. Because the review can't be found on the Our Town web site, I reprint it in full below.
When confronting a student production, the critic must tread warily. The performers are, for all intents and purposes, beginners, and what we are viewing is the only-recently acquired fruits of their learning. Harsh words can derail a budding and enjoyable hobby, a new career begun optimistically with a full cargo of classes, auditions, performances. On the other hand, praise uttered with qualifications can calcify a technique that may still need a great deal of work and experience to bring out the real talent within, qualifications ignored as so much irrelevant intellectual verbiage or critical preening.
But ultimately, the critic's obligation is not to the thespians. It is to the readers. It is they who are looking for an invigorating evening in the theater, they whom the theater as an institution must lure from the TV screens, the Gameboys, the videotapes and laserdiscs, the sports bars and opera houses and Internet. And it is the critic, as self-anointed mediator, who harms his own credibility by directing readers to ill-conceived productions out of a misguided loyalty to youth and enthusiasm when his real constituency is the public, and that Platonic ideal, good theater.
In Portland, the public is asked all too often to leave standards at the door, and accept the less than first class. But a production by an acting school is in the end an advertisement for that school. It's not a junior high variety night where fluctuations in acting skill are to be expected. These are people who have chosen the art form, under the guidance of gurus who lay claim to experience and insight.
The acting school in this case is the Portland Actors Conservatory, whose current production of Wendy MacLeod's The Water Children (at the Firehouse Theatre, 1436 SW Montgomery, 274-1717, through May 2) made its debut on April 16th, and criticism in its spoilsport way must assert that it is a mediocre production. Let us pass over the text of MacLeod's implausible play which, in its superficial handing of the abortion issue contrives to leave both proponents and opponents believing that their views have been reflected. Instead, let us concentrate on the jewels of the production itself, the cast members.
Some are downright bad, such as Cory Bartelle, as a violent anti-abortion fanatic, who plays the part like a cartoony hood from Grease. Others are good if uneven, such as Rafael Untalan, who must play a gay hairdresser, a Japanese monk, and a television commercial director (which is a well-observed cameo). The most relaxed and realistic actor on stage is McGeorge Robinson as a seductive antiabortion crusader, though he may be so relaxed as to forsake a fuller range of tones that the part seems to require.
In the lead, as a struggling actress of liberal inclinations lured into working for, and becoming impregnated by, the crusader, Jenni Miller battles gamely. Primarily she is at war with her shoes. They are nice shoes, and she looks sexy in them, but they are noisy. In fact at times they are louder than her own voice. Upstage her voice is lost in scenery; downstage her voice seems compromised by some vocal distress, making her come across like a Meg Ryan with a cleft palate. As an actress playing an actress in a play about an actress, she is trebly pressured to achieve authenticity. It's sad then that she comes across most often like a Nordstrom acquisitions agent. Yet in a flashback mother and daughter scene, Miller is quite affecting, and makes you believe that her character just dropped 20 years off her age.
In productions such as this one the public is in essence invited to help a group of aspiring actors graduate from school. Obviously they are having fun, multitasking behind the scenes and realizing their dream on stage. But responsible theater must declare that such events are better off as limited weekend events designed for friends and family of the students, not full length runs purporting to be authentic theater.
Not long after this review ran I resigned. I quit because I called the office one day and Lisa Loving told me that she had been fired that very morning. I then knew that my days there were numbered, as Lisa was my guardian angel. I expressed sympathy and asked her why she had been trashed. She said that wasnıt sure why, no real reason had been given. But at least I now knew the irrationality with which she had been dealing, for only a few minutes before, and the reason for my immediate call to Loving in the first place, I had just had a telephone conversation that revealed the "real" Maggi, if there is such a thing.
I had been talking to White about an assignment, and then she changed the subject. She said she had a problem. Beth Harper, the former actress in charge of the Portland Actors Conservatory, had called, furious about the way I had "treated" one of her "kids" in print. She said I had been unduly mean. What are "we" going to do about it?, Maggi wanted to know. I told White that I thought Harper was crazy. Here's Harper running a drama school, and thrusting those "kids" at us, and the public paying for it, and the show isn't very good. If Harper then thinks that she should be able to control the critics in order to disguise the fact that she's not a very good teacher, she's nuts.
Maggi said she would have to "rethink" my writing any further reviews of student productions. But later, as soon as I was off the phone with Lisa Loving, I composed the following letter.
Wednesday, 28 April, 1999
Dear Maggi White:
I just learned that Lisa Loving was fired today.
As she was the person who hired me onto Our Town, I feel that any continued contributions by me to the newspaper are inappropriate.
In light of the telephone conversation that you and I had today just before I learned of Lisa's firing, I also believe that, without the presence of Lisa on the staff, Our Town wasn't in a position to hold up its end of our agreement, that is, and I quote, my need for the liberty to be negative. I went to great lengths in the review of the Beth Harper student production to explain why I was being negative. Perhaps you didn't read the review. I reiterate my point:
But ultimately, the critic's obligation is not to the thespians. It is to the readers. It is they who are looking for an invigorating evening in the theater, they whom the theater as an institution must lure from the TV screens, the Gameboys, the videotapes and laserdiscs, the sports bars and opera houses and Internet. And it is the critic, as self-anointed mediator, who harms his own credibility by directing readers to ill-conceived productions out of a misguided loyalty to youth and enthusiasm when his real constituency is the public, and that Platonic ideal, good theater.
In Portland, the public is asked all too often to leave standards at the door, and accept the less than first class. But a production by an acting school is in the end an advertisement for that school. It's not a junior high variety night where fluctuations in acting skill are to be expected. These are people who have chosen the art form, under the guidance of gurus who lay claim to experience and insight.
Responsible criticism cannot thrive in this town without editors with the guts to stand up for the readers, and now kowtow to ill-trained actors and egoistic directors with hurt feelings. I enjoyed writing the four reviews that appeared under my name but feel that the experiment has now reached its conclusion.
Sincerely,
D K Holm
If Maggi even read this letter, it was probably the first time that she read any of my prose. I got the distinct feeling that Maggi didn't actually read her own paper (and who can blame her?).
Now, I have gotten in trouble even with friends over the "cleft palate" remark. All I can say is, I was there. Though the play appeared before only some 500 or so Portland citizens, several thousand read Our Town and the other papers that ran reviews of it, equally negative. I viewed my job as warning those citizens interested in the theater what they were getting in to if they went to the Firehouse.
My role is to describe and report. The cleft palate remark expressed in the briefest of terms exactly what it was like to experience that actress. And if she can't take the heat, well, then maybe she doesn't have the heart to be in theater, because there are reviewers out there in other cities who are a lot "meaner" than I am.
In the end, I no longer had the wherewithal to appear in Our Town. I resigned—and then Lisa got her job back (she went over Maggi's head to the people who really run the paper, its new owners). Well, journalism in Portland is made up of such beaus gestes, and at least I had finally had my own, real Maggi experience, and now knew intimately why that newspaper, at least as long as she runs it, will never be any good.
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