As both an amateur writer and an amateur critic, I have a weird relationship to art. I want to immerse myself completely in a story. The narrative and the emotional arc should knock me over if they’re doing their job right. But I can’t stop looking for the moving pieces. Give me a thousand dollar watch and I’ll take it apart.
You build up a tolerance for aesthetic devices, the same way you do for pseudoephedrine or heroin. When things start going too well for our heroes, you know a plot twist is about to upset everything. You know the murderer is someone introduced in the first act. The heroine will choose love over money. The hero can’t kill the villain until the villain pulls a gun. Critics get snotty when we see these devices too often, but we get vicious when we see they’re absent. Watch a movie that completely botches the third act climax (like Streets of Fire) and see just how far an artist is allowed to stray.
This continually critical eye has added an odd trope to my library: the Respected/Abhorred Device. The Respected/Abhorred Device is a story element that I admire the craftsmanship behind, even if I still find it completely dumb.
Take Stephen King’s The Stand (SPOILERS). The climax of The Stand comes when the literal Hand of God descends from heaven and detonates a nuclear warhead in Las Vegas, blowing up all the villains in one stroke. I read that with no small amount of disgust the first time I came across it. Ending a thousand page novel with a deus ex machina is bad enough; ending with a literal God out of a literal Machine just seemed lazy.
Then I read King’s On Writing and saw his process behind it. The Stand is about moving on from the civilization that built a superflu virus, not about rebuilding it. The heroes can only triumph over evil by abandoning their plans, placing their faith in God and setting out west for Las Vegas. Mother Abigail spells it out for them in those precise terms: after the committee meeting in Boulder is sabotaged by a dynamite bomb, the heroes have to leave for Vegas that same day. The novel’s about the triumph of faith over humanity’s conquest of nature. So it’s only fitting that faith – the literal Hand of God – have the last word.
I find that sort of moral abhorrent. But I respect the craft that it took to put all the pieces in place.
I had a similar reaction to fellow Overthinker Matthew Belinkie’s reconstruction of the Saw film series. In the series, master psychopath Jigsaw constructs sadistic traps that give their victims a choice: mangle themselves or die. As the series has progressed, minor elements from earlier films have been reintroduced, and heightened, in later films. There’s a large, overarching narrative being told by the movies. It darts backward and forward in time.
From the article:
In Saw III, we see a character read a letter and burst into tears, shortly before flying into a homicidal rage. We don’t learn who wrote this letter until Saw IV. We don’t learn what it said until Saw VI.
Saw III shows us the five minutes immediately after the end of Saw II. Saw IV shows us what happens immediately after THAT.
Saw IV actually takes place during the events of Saw III, which is only revealed when a character from Saw IV literally walks into the final scene of Saw III, about two seconds after the previous film cut to black.
This is impressive stuff, even though it was clearly worked in after the fact. That doesn’t change the fact that the apparent moral of the series – torturing people makes them really appreciate life – is repulsive. But I respect the craftsmanship.
And those are just two examples. Consider also Infinite Jest, or A Canticle for Leibowitz or The Man Who Was Thursday. All examples of novels whose conclusions I find regrettable, but which are so well-assembled I can’t help but respect them. Stories like those present a problem for me. They push buttons on two opposite sides of my brain. I have to recommend them with a caveat.
I don’t know what it means. But since I’m not giving up on either creating, criticizing or reading fiction any time soon, I suppose I’ll just have to deal with it.
Today is my last day at Internet Inc. Tomorrow I start work at Micro Machines., a start-up in Boston that manages display advertising through data-intensive platforms.
A few notes:
This is the first job I’ve taken that belonged to the same industry as the job previous. I guess I’m building a career now.
Once again, as with every employer I’ve had since college, I am taking zero time off between jobs. I walk out of one office on Wednesday and into a new one on Thursday.
This is the first job I’m leaving that I’ll really miss. I liked all the people I dealt with. The workload wasn’t that bad. The address and the view were nice. I felt like I was playing at the top of the field.
The money’s good.
So long, Copley Square. Good to know you.
I spent the better part of yesterday listening to classic hip-hop while I worked. I was a latecomer to the genre and my exposure was limited to the commercially successful stuff of my adolescent years – Nas, Biggie, Tupac, Jay-Z and the gangsta tip. Only very recently have I opened my mind to the true classics: that brief era between 1988 and 1992, where samples came from the best, the lyrics flowed and the message was uplifting. I’m paging through this catalog with the eyes of a child, wondering that such music was ever possible. Digable Planets. Tribe Called Quest. De La Soul. Pharcyde.
When I was in high school, just a few years after this golden age, I competed for the debate team. We would travel with the kids who did speech events to local tournaments, riding in our school’s battered yellow vans until we were old enough to drive. One of the speech kids, Rahman, was a hard kid to get a read on. His excitement seemed to live on a different frequency than the practiced cynicism of smart prep school kids. And yet he could transform himself from a boisterous five-foot-three to a poised, commanding presence during speech competitions. Declamation, Original Oratory, Dramatic Interpretation – he killed them. Even on the national level. He forced the debate kids to raise their game.
Our junior year, national finals for the National Catholic Forensics League were held in Detroit. We stayed in a high-rise hotel complex in a section of Detroit that was already decaying, forbidden by our coaches from leaving the building. The entire hotel was serviced by two elevators, which took hours (we felt) to ferry all the competing students between floors on the morning of the tournament.
Friday night, as we caught the elevator back to our rooms, Rahman dashed through the lobby to get in before the doors closed. We groaned inwardly – some of us out loud. We had cases to review for tomorrow’s marathon of debates. We already had those world-weary shells that all high schoolers wear. The last thing we wanted to deal with was Rahman’s enthusiasm.
And he was practically glowing. “You guys,” he said.
“What?”
“One of the kids from Bronx …” – Bronx High School of Science – “… said one of the greatest rappers of all time is here! In the hotel!”
“Who?”
“I’ve got to find him,” Rahman said. “I’ve got his tape in my bag. Gotta get his autograph.”
“Rahman,” we asked. “Who is it?”
He said a name. All of us laughed. “Who the hell is that?” we said.
I don’t have many regrets from high school. I wouldn’t turn back the clock to take more AP classes, talk to more girls or stay out later. I’ve come to terms with the child I was back then, and I’m happy with the man I am now. But not a month has gone by in the last five years when I haven’t wished I took better note of that name. Q-Tip? Chuck D? Rakim? I know Rahman was a big De La Soul fan; could it have been them? It’s lost. I was lost in my own thoughts. It wasn’t one of the three rappers I’d heard of at that time; it might as well have been gibberish.
I wish I’d paid more attention. Think of the world that would be open to me today.
Karzai Says His Office Gets Cash From Iran, U.S. (AP)
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday that once or twice a year Iran gives his office $700,000 to $975,000 for official presidential expenses – and that Washington also provides “bags of money” because his office lacks funds.
Karzai’s comments come a day after The New York Times reported that Iran was giving bags of cash to the Afghan president’s chief of staff, Umar Daudzai, to buy his loyalty and promote Iranian interests in Afghanistan.
The Times quoted unnamed sources as saying that the cash amounted to a slush fund that Karzai and Daudzai had used to pay Afghan lawmakers, tribal elders – and even Taliban commanders – to secure their loyalty.
Karzai told reporters Monday that he had instructed Daudzai, a former Afghan ambassador to Iran, to accept the money from Tehran.
“If some Pashtun motherfucker comes walking through the door, I say, hey, it’s all in the game,” Karzai said. “But the New York Times? Hell naw! Because I know I done played ball for the U.S. too many times! Hell naw, ain’t no soul in the world that fuckin’ ungrateful!”
He said several nations have given money to his office – the first being the United Arab Emirates, which provided $1.5 million nine years ago when Afghanistan’s interim government was formed.
“Corruption?” Karzai said. “They gonna come talk to me about corruption? In Afghanistan? Sheeeeee-it. Where do you think I’m gonna raise the money to govern the whole damn country? From goat-herders and shit, from some tiny-ass dirt farmers? You think I got time to ask a man why he’s giving me money or where he gets his money from? I’ll take any motherfucker’s money if he’s giving it away.”
Karzai did not offer details about how the money was spent, saying only that it was used to “help the presidential office” and to “dispense assistance” to certain individuals.
“I know you don’t want to know, but I’m scratching and clawing to get it done for you, Obama,” Karzai said. “For you and me and for the rest of the team. And who comes through that door but the New York Times, looking to get up in my shit about everything.”
A U.S. embassy official told the Associated Press that nobody knew about this, and that President Obama would put the Times straight about getting out of pocket.
Personally, I don’t see what the problem is. The State Department wanted a President who would take foreign money. Isn’t this good news?
A few weeks ago, I got a mailer offering me a nice discount on any purchases from the New Hampshire Liquor and Wine Outlet. For those of you not from New England: the Outlet is the only chain of stores where hard liquor or wine may be sold in New Hampshire. Since New Hampshire has no sales tax, the discount on the final price, compounded with the savings on this coupon, more than paid for the trip. So Sylvia and I drove up to Derry on Saturday afternoon, taking in the gorgeous fall foliage on the way. I loaded up my cart with several massive bottles of mid-tier liquor – Tanqueray, Canadian Club, Smirnoff – and paid a mere pittance. A trifle, for the joy they’ll bring.
Jaunts like this remind me of why I’m not comfortable identifying with either of the major political mindsets in America – either conservative or liberal.
Conservatives tend to champion the “rule of law” as if it’s a value in and of itself. “Sure, the illegal immigrants in the Midwest aren’t committing crimes in record numbers,” they say, “but their very existence in the States is a crime.” Or consider Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” crackdown in New York City in the 90s. The idea seems to be that an environment of widespread lawlessness encourages greater crime. The problem – outside from a lack of empirical evidence in either Arizona or Manhattan – is that we’re all lawbreakers. We all scoff at the laws we find inconvenient and adhere to the laws we like, or the laws we can’t get away with breaking.
The relationship between New Hampshire and Massachusetts is a perfect example. There’s a long-established trend of Massachusetts residents motoring up north to buy wholesale clothing, cartons of cigarettes and liquor in New Hampshire. This trend is so well-known that massive corporations cater to this sort of thing, as American Express did when they sent me that discount mailer. The coupon rang up on the register as “AMEX MASS.” Now, there’s nothing illegal about a Massachusetts resident buying liquor in New Hampshire – provided he reports it at the end of the year and pays his use tax. Which I promise you, I am definitely going to pay come April 2011. You just see if I don’t.
But I know not everyone else abides the law as closely. So you’ve got an endemic, multi-generational culture of tax frauds in eastern Massachusetts. Has this driven up the crime rate in Boston? Does this make the North Shore a greater source of other forms of tax evasion than typical for the country? Because, if not, I think we need to reconsider the “culture of scofflaws” idea.
On the left side of the aisle comes the notion of the tax burden in the first place. Whenever I get into an argument over the justification of taxes, I’m told that they’re a “payment for services rendered” by the state and federal government. The same way I might pay two dollars for a gallon of milk, or a thousand for a computer, I pay the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the U.S. Treasury several thousand dollars a year in exchange for bank bailouts, secret prisons in Afghanistan and ConAgra subsidies. Which I suppose makes sense.
I can understand the reasoning that taxes are money that I owe to the government (even if I’m not sure I buy it). But I can’t understand the reasoning that taxes are money of mine that the government already owns. And if you think I’m exaggerating, consider this Huffington Post article, about a series of tax loopholes that “cost the U.S. $60 billion a year” (the headline’s words, not mine).
The author’s mindset seems to be that Google doesn’t owe the U.S. money – rather, that Google was holding money that already belonged to the U.S. and hasn’t returned it fast enough. It’s the distinction between “I promised to buy you a six-pack” and “you put your six-pack in my fridge; let me get it for you.” I understand the former, but not the latter, especially if I bought the bespoke six-pack.
Google, Microsoft and the other companies who employ the “Double Irish” strategy aren’t breaking the law. They are taking advantage of loopholes in corporate tax law. You might consider that sort of behavior uncivic, if you think that people have an obligation to maximize their tax burden. But no actual human thinks that way. In fact, 100 out of 100 people I talk to think the opposite – that if you find a way to lower your tax burden, whether it’s through charitable donations or investment strategies or setting up a trust for your child’s education, you go for it. And you can see that sort of mindset in the New Hampshire Liquor and Wine Outlet, which advertises to Massachusetts residents to come thumb their nose at the law.
If you think I’m misunderstanding or caricaturing your view, let me know. I’d be happy to discuss it with you over a glass of illegal booze.
(Part seven of my series on dating. My last entry, on how to deal with the Friend Zone, was last week)
Quick one in the dating series this week:
I’ve been leafing through The Personal Credibility Factor over the past week. It’s one of those self-help / life-coach books that’s big on assertion and short on footnotes. But then, so are most of the books in this genre (Men Are From Mars, etc. doesn’t source every single one of its statements). And I got it for $0.00 on Kindle, so I can’t complain.
One of the biggest aids to credibility, the author asserts, is being genuine. People who conceal or compartmentalize their feelings put up walls around themselves – what the author calls an “invisible fence.” Other people notice these fences subconsciously and withdraw as a result. They don’t trust someone who doesn’t appear genuine.
The book is targeted at business people who want their suggestions implemented. But I immediately recognized its impact on dating.
Lots of people (too many) think the reason that “jerks” get all the girls is because they’re jerks. They’re cocky, loud and blunt about what they want. “Nice Guys,” on the other hand, have to suffer in silence. The moral of the story: women want aggressive “alphas” who use them, disrespect them and then abandon them. Start insulting her hair and you’ll make progress.
Some of that may be true, but there’s a simpler explanation. Jerks get all the girls* because they’re genuine.
When you have a guy who flirts openly, says what he thinks, and makes aggressive moves, there’s no mistaking what he wants. No girl ever goes to a concert with that guy and wonders, “Was that a date?” This doesn’t guarantee she’ll hook up with the guy. Maybe she’ll just make out with him (remember, just because a girl makes out with a guy doesn’t mean she’ll sleep with him). But she’ll feel more comfortable around this guy, at least in a romantic context. Because he’s not being creepy.
If you don’t understand how unsettling romantic indirection is – how weird it is for a girl to be hovered over by a guy who’s clearly interested in her but won’t make a move – consider the following. Say you’re at a party with your friends. You’re standing in a circle in the living room. You’re holding court on some topic you’re an expert on: football, music, movies, whatever. You make some clever remark and everyone in the circle laughs. Then this one guy, a friend of a friend of a friend, jumps in with some comment. He talks a little too loud, a little too fast, and a little too vaguely. He punctuates his sentences with a nervous laugh. He tries to steer the conversation to his own (limited) areas of expertise. It’s clear to everyone that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But he wants to participate in the conversation anyway.
Hey, did you see that hit that guy unloaded on the Patriots in their last game? Man, that was ... heh heh ... you know.
What’s your reaction to that? Are you flattered that he’s showing an interest?
No. You’re either going to be politely embarrassed and say nothing, or you’re going to talk over him to expose his lack of knowledge. Or you’ll make fun of him behind his back. Or you’ll just ignore him. Or, if you’re a real saint, you’ll slow the conversation down to his level to try and include him. But you’re not going to make friends with him – not based on that display.
Why? Because he’s pretending at knowledge in order to weasel his way into your friends. And insincerity is creepy.
Insincerity is a question of degrees, not an on/off switch. There are people who seem open, friendly and genuine all day long, except when you bring up their job or their family or one sensitive subject. Then their answers get evasive, their eyes dart around the room and they change the subject. Then there are people who routinely waffle on everything – the real creepshows. But once in a rare while, you get someone who’s genuine in everything they say and do. These people are bright lights in a sea of fog.
Of course, when it comes to dating, sincerity isn’t everything. If you fall in love with a stranger, confessing your crush on her may be genuine but it won’t do much for your dating life. Then again, confessing your crush on her will get it out of your system, which is a better cure than nursing it.
Sincerity isn’t sufficient. But it is necessary.
(Part eight, on how to ask a girl out)
_______________________
* I still question if this is true, but it’s passed into conventional wisdom at this point and I can’t fight it.
New post up on Overthinking It this morning, taking a look at Kanye West’s single “Power” and his live performance of it on SNL.
The second verse of “Power” started off as a personal reflection on the travails of becoming a world-famous MC. When you become successful, you make a lot of enemies. You also goad a lot of people into making fun of you, like SNL. So Kanye fired a shot off against SNL for having dissed him in the past. SNL responded by inviting him to perform. If we view this as a power play between two forces in popular culture — Kanye vs. Lorne Michaels — that was a cunning riposte on SNL’s part. By having him on their show, SNL could co-opt his language. They would own it, at least in part, by having given him a venue from which to rap.
Kanye’s response was to change up that second verse into something completely different. As a power play, that’s a frankly astonishing response. It’d be equivalent to Campbell’s asking Andy Warhol to exhibit Campbell’s Soup Cans at their headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, and Warhol showing up with a robot made out of a microwave oven. SNL thought they were showing how cool they were with being told to kiss Kanye’s ass(hole). Kanye played it off like he had something else entirely to say.
Man, that Internet sure seems divided on the season finale of Mad Men, eh? First, let’s talk about the season as a whole.
Doesn't that sound like fun?
If the last few seasons have been about shedding the trappings of the past, S4 is about considering who you really are. S3 ended with our heroes taking a stand – breaking out of the old ways of doing business and forming a risky new concern. S4 is about looking around as the dust settles and asking, “Okay. What now?”
With Peggy and Pete, this questioning makes sense. They’re both young; they’re at the stage in their lives when they should be asking these questions. Pete has lost his father (S2) and he still wants to take advantage of the ties that wealth and connection allow him (S3, S4). But he’s defining himself through his work. And not just by having a lucrative job that will provide for his family – note how he turns down that offer from Chaough. He likes being a partner. He takes enough pride in it to call Roger out on being lazy. He also takes enough pride in it to gloat when Ken shows up. So it’s not all admirable, but it’s character.
And to think I wanted to be you ... oh, crap, I still do.
Peggy is already defining herself as a “career woman” as S4 kicks off. Now it’s just a question of living with the consequences of that choice. She’s forced to confront that choice directly, and memorably, in “The Suitcase” – choosing between a birthday dinner with her boyfriend and staying in the office. She also has to choose between a conventional romantic life (courtship, engagement, marriage, kids) and the bohemian life of 60s Greenwich Village hipsters. The process of discovery has been rocky for her, but she’s stayed true to what she wants throughout.
(It’s also a little sad that Peggy Olsen is a more sex-positive female character than most female characters on primetime dramas set in the modern day. She wants sex, she has some, it’s great, la-di-da. Sometimes it’s with the wrong guy, like Duck. Sometimes it doesn’t end well, like with her last boyfriend. But she marches on, unscarred)
The process of uncovering “what now?” has been the most dramatic for Don because Don’s already an adult. At least notionally. And yet he never really had a childhood, not a pleasant one anyway, and what little he had he wants to repress. Free of Betty and his children, he has the opportunity to date around. Women present themselves to him: his secretary Allison, his fetching neighbor, the actress Bethany van Nuys, Dr. Faye, his new secretary Megan. It’s an adolescent fantasy: rich, single, living on your own in the big city. And yet we see how hollow it is. The dingy apartment, the drunken one-night stands, the lost contact with his children.
Don gets a clean break with his past when Anna dies. With her gone, he’s free to be whoever he says he is. And, as the final episode showed us, Don is happy being the man he was before. Don Draper is the type of man (as predicted by Dr. Faye) who marries his secretary. Or the model on his photoshoot. And yet he hasn’t remained completely inert. He’s drinking less. He respects Peggy and Pete more. He’s growing a little more wary of Roger – the man’s a friend, but he’s also a mirror that shows the future. And he’s come to terms (for now) with Betty.
S4 presented Don with an opportunity to change. And, with a few small exceptions, he said, “You know what? I’m good. Thanks, though.”
Retching in terror once every five years is a small price to pay.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, S4 presented Don with a choice between Faye, Bethany and Betty. Faye is smart, warm, supportive and mature. She pushes Don to confront his past. Bethany was young, gorgeous and good at presenting herself. She wanted everything Don had to offer. When Don seemed torn between those two, Megan split the difference. She’s young, gorgeous, warm and supportive. She’s clever but not smart enough to challenge Don. She’s a way for Don to hedge his bets. And that’s something Don’s always excelled at – holding off on signing a contract for as long as possible; bargaining with Pete to keep the DoD off his back. When given a choice between three blondes, Don goes with the brunette and thinks he’s making progress.
More importantly, Megan doesn’t know who Don was before. And that’s crucial. If Don is going to change himself in S4 – or do what he thinks is changing himself – he needs someone who doesn’t know his past. As soon as Don let Faye in on his secret, a world of trouble fell from his shoulders. But she was disqualified from becoming Mrs. Donald Draper.
(That being said, I’m not in love with this development. What sort of plots will it lead to in Seasons 5 and 6? “A visitor from the past forces Megan to confront Don’s true identity”, etc? Shocking)
Of course she's surprised. But she still has the speech rehearsed.
When I recapped the first four episodes of S4, I said that this season would be about dismantling the myth of Don Draper. The season finale puts a capstone on that. Don Draper will not get out of the Sixties intact. When he gets out of one scrape, his first instinct is to retreat to the behavior that got him in trouble in the first place. He’s saved from an FBI background check, and the first thing he does is ogle his secretary (literally, right after she drops the Beatles tickets on his desk). He loses Lucky Strike and he publishes a full-page ad in the Times. We may deplore one and admire the other, but they come from the same place.
“I’m living like there’s no tomorrow,” Draper tells Rachel Mencken in the pilot, “because there isn’t one.” That hasn’t changed in five years. Dick Whitman has been living a borrowed life since his near-death experience in Korea. He doesn’t think about building a future. He thinks about what will get him through today. Just to tide them over; just a little more time; just a little more room. Draper’s idea of planning for the future is to propose to a woman he barely knows with a ring he got three days ago.
Has there been any change? Yes, but not in him.
Note what happens when Draper announces his engagement to the partners. There’s a room of blank faces. The first person to congratulate him is the person in the room who knows him the least: Lane Pryce. And when Megan is invited in and Lane congratulates her too, Pete corrects him. “You don’t say ‘congratulations’ to the bride,” he says, adding an unspoken of Don Draper to the end. “You say ‘best wishes’.” And really, that’s all we can offer this poor girl. Our best wishes in dealing with this mess.
Who the hell's that?
Enron: a colorful, passionate and clever retelling of the rise and fall of the energy company of the same name. Recently wrapped at the BCA Plaza Theater. Produced by Zeitgeist Stage Company (The Kentucky Cycle, etc).
Enron takes plenty of liberties with the source material: condensing several years of conflict into single meetings; imagining an affair between Jeff Skilling and a (fictional) female vice president, Claudia Roe; playing up the importance of certain future developments, like the deregulation of the electricity market, to introduce foreshadowing. The play goes even further, especially in Zeitgeist’s hands, by turning several abstruse financial developments into colorful setpieces. Enron’s traders jack up the price of California’s electricity by dueling with lightsabers. When Andy Fastow explains the scheme by which Enron’s debt can be hidden, he does so by opening a nesting series of boxes with one flourish after another. And when Fastow unveils the Raptors, special-purpose entities designed to buy up Enron’s debt and make it appear profitable, three raptors with glowing eyes stalk onstage, cocking their heads and snarling.
The play hinges on the character of Jeff Skilling, and Victor Shopov plays him to the hilt. He is that perfect villain, just recognizable enough for us to hate him. We enjoy watching him succeed, conducting his minions like Leonard Bernstein as they trade energy to a pulsing techno beat. We cringe at the pathos of his suffering: a whispered phone call to his wife to sell her Enron shares. He’s bold, audacious, disrespectful and unethical. He’s admirably supported by the nebbishy Fastow (Greg Ferrisi), so eager to please his mentor that he’s seduced into creating fraudulent companies to show off his genius. And paired against them is Claudia Roe (Erin Cole). She’s a rarity among female characters: someone strong enough to stand on her own merits. She’s not a hero – early exchanges make it clear she’s as greedy as any of the other Enron executives. She champions Enron’s power plant in Dabhol, India, not out of some desire to bring electricity to the poor but because she wants a monopoly on Third World power. She sleeps with Skilling because it’s fun, and because they’re kindred spirits in ambition, but drops him when it becomes inconvenient. She’s calculating, but not an ice queen; she’s passionate, but not a whimperer.
The play – and this production – aren’t perfect. Bill Salem as Ken Lay struggles to find a Texan accent and peppers his dialogue with odd pauses. The first act dumps the concept of “mark-to-market” on the audience in awkward cocktail party exposition; compared to the lightsaber duels and techno parties of the rest of the play, it’s a drag. And Skilling’s final monologue, delivered in an orange jumpsuit, offers neither a defiant fist against the heavens or any new insight into his mind. These criticisms aside, Enron does something rare in a production inspired by history. It’s entertaining and informative at the same time, and with equal effectiveness. And it gives the appearance of justice having been served.