MARY ELLEN MATTHEWS / CORBIS OUTLINE

Next Chapter
	A musical that makes fun of the French, Beck hits the studio again and Walt Whitman in the 22nd century
	By LEV GROSSMAN, JOSH TYRANGIEL AND RICHARD ZOGLIN

Posted Sunday, October 3, 2004
books
THIS CLEVER NOVEL STARS WALT WHITMAN
Michael Cunningham's last book wasn't supposed to be the next big thing. The Hours was an audacious, challenging, bittersweet literary novel arranged as an elegant theme-and-variations on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Cunningham expected it to end up in the dustbin of quiet critical acclaim, just as his first three books had. Instead, The Hours won a Pulitzer Prize, and Nicole Kidman, playing Woolf, won an Oscar for the movie version.

Cunningham's new novel promises to do for the poet Walt Whitman what The Hours did for Woolf. Specimen Days is due out in June, and if anything, Cunningham has only got more audacious and more, well, cunning in the past six years. Like The Hours, Specimen Days is a fugue in three parts: it consists of three stories, each set in a different historical period—the Industrial Revolution, the 1920s and the far future. And each is told in a different style: ghost story, hard-boiled mystery and science fiction. You read that right. The third section will be set in New York City in the 22nd century, by which time the Big Apple will be dealing with a massive influx of refugees from another planet. What binds the three stories together is that they all, somehow, revolve around the same trio: a little boy, an old man and a young woman.

If anybody can keep all these balls in the air, it's Cunningham, and fortunately he will have some help. The ringmaster of this cosmic, triply three-ringed circus is Whitman himself (Specimen Days & Collect was the title Whitman gave to a collection of his journal entries). Tom Cruise, call your agent.
—By Lev Grossman

music
YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HE'S UP TO THIS TIME
The problem with being famous for defying expectations is that eventually you can defy expectations only by not defying expectations. Which may explain why after nine albums and at least four career incarnations—presumptive one-hit wonder, exuberant hip-hop star, inscrutable avant-gardist and heartbroken folkie—Beck has decided it's time to give up the shape shifting. "In the past I spent a lot of time rejecting sounds that were similar to what I'd come up with before just to purposefully try to get away from anything familiar," says Beck, phoning from a Los Angeles recording studio. "But I guess at a certain point you just decide not to second-guess it."

If this sounds remotely defeatist, it must be said that for his as-yet-untitled album, due out in February 2005, Beck is going back not to any single previous sound but to all of them. Assisting him are John King and Mike Simpson, the production duo known as the Dust Brothers, who oversaw Odelay, Beck's 1996 masterpiece (as well as the Beastie Boys' masterpiece Paul's Boutique and Hanson's admittedly less masterly masterpiece MMMBop). "All producers have their own proclivities or different tastes," says Beck. "I've worked with certain people who hate rock music, so anything that's rockish, you don't even bother going there. But the Dust Brothers encourage experimentation, and they definitely encourage a sense of humor."

Laughs were notably absent from Beck's last album, Sea Change, which was full of the kind of beautiful breakup melodies and brutal words normally associated with Gordon Lightfoot and Sylvia Plath. Beck promises a touch of sincerity but adds, "There's definitely a lot more jokes and kicking cardboard boxes and rattling chains and playing slide guitar. This album is full of raggediness." Contributing to the raggediness are song titles like Guero, E-Pro and Brazilica, as well as a guest appearance by Jack White of the White Stripes. Beck appeared in a White Stripes video last year, and White asked if he could return the favor by playing bass on Beck's record—odd considering that the White Stripes are the world's most famous bass-averse band. But then, everyone defies expectations in his own way.
—By Josh Tyrangiel

theater
THE KNIGHTS WHO SING "NI!"
Practically every successful Broadway musical these days seems to look backward in one way or another. There are musicals inspired by old rock groups (Mamma Mia), old movies (Hairspray) and old husbands of Liza Minnelli's (The Boy from Oz). So it may be no surprise that somebody decided to make a musical based on the 1975 film comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But Spamalot—scheduled to open on Broadway in March—could give the tired old genre a happy jolt. The movie, after all, seems a challenge from the get-go: an unwieldy hodgepodge of slapstick, splatter film, absurdism and animation, not to mention a grubby, mud-caked re-creation of medieval England. This is material for a Broadway musical?

"Luckily we don't have to use horses," says Eric Idle, the former Python stalwart who penned the book and co-wrote new songs with John Du Prez. As Python fans will recall, Holy Grail begins with the clip-clop sound of knights approaching on horseback—only to be revealed traveling on foot, knocking coconut shells together for the sound effect. Other memorable scenes from the film may be a little tougher to pull off, like the belligerent knight who keeps fighting and taunting even as his limbs are hacked off one by one. "We've had long and anxious talks about it," admits Idle. "We're not going to spill blood all over the stage; the dancers might slip and break their legs. But there are a lot of things we're going to try."

Holy Grail has long been the most popular of the films made by the six comics who formed the Monty Python troupe. In a February 2004 online poll, it was even named (no joke) the No. 1 British film of all time. That cult reputation—along with a cast that includes David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria and Tim Curry—has already made Spamalot a hot ticket in Chicago, where it will begin a pre-Broadway run in late December. But the show's key to success may be its unlikely director, Mike Nichols. His understated, very American comic sensibility might seem an odd fit with the Pythons' quirky, lowbrow-meets-highbrow satire. Yet the comic alchemy could bring Broadway something it hasn't experienced since The Producers: real belly laughs. "There are not enough silly shows," says Idle. "You can't rely on Washington for all your laughs."
—By Richard Zoglin

	Premium Content

	The Appeal By: John Grisham A Thousand Splendid Suns By: Khaled Hosseini 7th Heaven (Women's Murder Club) By: James Patterson