Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy

Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn't Easy (the third Sondheim book to fit "Art Isn't Easy" into the title) has received raves from the New York Times and James Lapine and many other publications and artists. It has been called intricate, elegant, densely pleasurable, accessible and engaging, crisp and refreshing, superb, and, oh yeah, perfect.

My considerably less enthusiastic response to the book feels churlish in comparison. And yet. 

I'll keep it simple and only address what I consider to be the book's greatest weakness: author Daniel Okrent's determination to make Sondheim's songs reflect Okrent's interpretation of Sondheim's psyche, no matter how irrelevant or inaccurate. 

The most vivid example is Okrent's treatment of Sondheim's brilliant "Someone in a Tree" from Pacific Overtures. Okrent writes, 

What was ostensibly a song about Japanese history was also a song about an outsider--and about a young boy trying to connect to something larger than himself.

Well, that's simply not true. The boy isn't trying to connect to something larger than himself He sees himself as a necessary facet of history--in fact, as central to what is occurring. As Sondheim's lyrics explain, 

BOY: 

And there's someone in a tree— 

OLD MAN (that is, the boy many years later): 

—Or the day is incomplete 

BOY AND OLD MAN: 

Without someone in a tree
Nothing happened here 

OLD MAN:
I am hiding in a tree 

BOY:
I'm a fragment of the day 

BOY AND OLD MAN: 
If I weren't, who's to say
Things would happen here the way
That they happened here? 

OLD MAN:
I was there then
It's the pebble, not the stream 

BOY (simultaneously):
It's the fragment, not the day
I am here still 

BOY AND OLD MAN: 
It's the ripple, not the sea
Not the building but the beam
Not the garden but the stone
Not the treaty house
Someone in a tree

Again, not only is the boy not looking for connection with others, but he feels that history is all about him! Rarely has a song announced so exactly what it is about.

Assuming that this is the amazing original
Broadway production of Pacific Overtures,
  which I believe it is, this shows
 Gedde Watanabe as the boy
and James Dybas as the old man
 singing "Someone in a Tree."

One of Okrent's main themes of the book, if not the main theme, is that Sondheim spent his life trying "to connect to something larger than himself" and to be "part of" a family, groups, etc. I don't buy this interpretation for many reasons, one of which is that he bases it on such weak and inaccurate analyses of lyrics.

Okay, while I'm here, I might as well point out another weakness of the book: Okrent's odd and often inaccurate use of editorial adjectives. He calls Anyone Can Whistle's nine performances "flaccid." Sondheim's interest in games and puzzles is a "curious obsession." The clothing that Annie Leibovitz had Sondheim wear for her photo portrait of him is "risible finery." Okrent refers to a speaking tour that Sondheim took with Frank Rich as "unlikely," without explaining why he thought it was so.

In discussing Sondheim's demo version of "Anyone Can Whistle," Okrent describes Sondhem's voice as "almost imperceptibly cracking" on a particular word, which he reads as revealing Sondheim's poignant view of himself at thirty-three. However, Sondheim's voice is unsteady at best and cracks all over the place. In this case, I'd say the cracking was full-out "imperceptible," not "almost imperceptible." And trying to define Sondheim's personality and emotions from an "almost imperceptible cracking" is really pushing it.

And I guess I will address one more complaint: Okrent shares incredibly intimate moments in Sondheim's life that did not need to be shared. I know it is a biographer's job to invade a subject's privacy, but a little discretion wouldn't hurt.

Luckily, there are about a million books about Sondheim, and no doubt there will be a million more. This one is not in the top one-hundred-thousand.

Wendy Caster