GLR May June

May–June 2015

Bloomsbury

(the catalog for a 1999-2000 Tate exhibit), was an

acclaimed art critic, writer, and artist.

At one of the Bell’s innumerable house parties, E. M. (“Mor-

gan” to his friends) Forster, just a couple of novels into his writ-

ing career, makes an appearance. “Morgan goes about his

writing with such an unfussy, self-effacing grace that he is one

of the few people for whom Lytton feels no real jealousy, only

admiration.” Virginia Woolf, a regular contributor to

The Times

Literary Supplement

, “is bitingly jealous of Morgan and usu-

ally avoids discussing his novels.” It bears mentioning that the

artists and critics of Bloomsbury started to make their mark be-

fore Woolf’s first novel

, The Voyage Out

, was published in

1915. Between 1911 and ’12, Vanessa had made four portraits

of Virginia, who felt overshadowed by the artists’ success and

was annoyed that art talk took precedence over literary talk.

Interspersed among the diary entries are imagined postcards

that Lytton Strachey sent to his friend Leonard Woolf, who in

real life, and in Parmar’s creation, was employed by the Ceylon

Civil Service. Many of the postcards urge Woolf to come back

to England and to marry Virginia Stephen.

An occasional 21st-century anachronism does creep in, and

Vanessa has the rather annoying habit of ending some of her

diary entries with a cliff-hanging paragraph beginning with the

word “And.” One such entry is about “Maynard Keynes, Lyt-

ton’s young economist friend from Cambridge—with whom I

understand him to be occasionally involved? But then, I may

be wrong. I often am.” Parmar provides a helpful “What be-

came of them” section that can lead readers to the original

works by the authors, to their biographies and memoirs, and to

the art museums that hold their works.

Framed Butterflies

by Raad Rahman

Bard College Press. 247 pages, $7.99

This novel is about two young Bangladeshi

women, Nisaa and Maryam, who come

from families with close ties, have grown

up with each other, and begin an illicit rela-

tionship. The affair is discovered by their

parents, who are shocked and disgusted.

Nisaa, the narrator of the story, is sent away

to India to continue her education far from

her family’s gaze. Maryam is forced to

marry a man she cannot love and later bears

his children. The story follows the narra-

tor’s life as she drifts from place to place,

not knowing what she wants or who she

wants it with. She rejects her American

boyfriend and then lets him back into her

life only to dump him again after seeing

Maryam once more. This confusion is mir-

rored in the book’s structure, which takes us

backwards in time to the moment the pair

discovered their mutual passion and from

there meanders through to its conclusion,

mixing thematic strands and taking detours

that threaten to derail both Nisaa’s life and

the plot of the novel. Maryam is more con-

sistent but also more delusional. Outwardly,

she’s the conventional good Muslim wife

and mother, but secretly she’s having an af-

fair with the maid and still desires Nisaa. In

short, she’s trapped by her inability to

change and by the rigidity of society. It is

Nisaa who’s the ticking time bomb to the

Bangladeshi status quo: she’s a chameleon

and a survivor with ties to the West—a for-

eigner, a lesbian, an independent woman—

whose main limitation is her state of

confusion as she negotiates her various

roles in life.

OWELL

Farewell Motel

Album by Matthew Connor

Once the lead singer of an electro-pop band

called Provocateur and now a crooner with

an Elvis-like baritone, Matthew Connor is a

performer of considerable range and

panache. A native of Birmingham, Ala-

bama, Connor spent his youth in the South

but, as a self-described “queer kid,” always

felt like an outsider. So he bade Dixie

adieu, moved to Boston, and released his

debut album

Farewell Motel

. The video for

“How is July Already Over” (a nominee for

B R I

E F S

Music Video of the Year at the Boston

Music Awards and available on YouTube)

features Connor in a white tuxedo, in-

volved in a

pas de deux

with actor Hunter

Canning. In an interview, Connor told me

that he enjoys the autonomy of being a solo

artist: “

I’m very much a control freak, so

being able to write, produce, record, per-

form, and oversee every element of how I

present myself from start to finish is a huge

thing for me.” His powers of self-fashion-

ing could be the most compelling thing

about Connor, who felt that

Farewell Motel

needed to be sung in an old-fashioned style.

“Smoke Signals” is the paradigmatic track,

since Connor’s vocals don’t so much re-

sound but waft, like a smoke ring, evoking

the great k.d. lang and her cigarette-in-

spired

Drag

of 1997. “After the Show”

picks up the pace with a more contempo-

rary tempo, and it’s one that should carry

Connor into new musical vistas. He assured

me that there is nothing “retro” about his

forthcoming music. “Farewell Motel” may

feel old-timey, but taut and elegant, it’s

channeling somebody or some thing.

OLIN

ARMAN