Backtalk: Jay Parini on Ecocriticism, 135 Pearl, David Archer, Toast-Flynn Feud

GREEN BLUES: Foreign languages and cheap skiing once lured students north to Middlebury College. But now there’s another reason to head for the hills, according to a recent article in The New York Times Magazine. “I knew something was up…when two of my best students. . .told me sheepishly that they were abandoning English for environmental studies,” Jay Parini wrote in a story last month about growing academic interest in the natural world and its literary spinoff, ecocriticism. “Ecocritics are rediscovering early writers, re-reading the classics from a “green” perspective,” the novelist writes. “Perhaps there is something new under the sun, and it is the sun itself” Like hell, Jonathan Yardley countered last week in The Washington Post, trashing Parini, his touchy-feely theory and “the yuppie-infested countryside of Vermont.” He adds, “We’ve barely gotten over the feminizing and Marxizing and Afro-centering of literature and other humanities, and now we have to face up to the ecocentering of it.” Calling it “another exercise in self-infatuation,” he jabs, “soon the Modern Language Association will be hearing papers on ‘The Leafy Bough: Images of Attenuated Deciduousness in the Early Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston’ and A Thirst for Sap: Silver Maple Imagery in the New England Poems of Robert Frost.'” Obviously not a Bread Loaf boy.

PEARL SLAM: There are plenty of bars in Burlington. But stage space is scarce — any heated, rent-free room with electrical outlets ranks as a “venue.” Robert Toms is solving that problem by giving his downstairs bar over to the occasional theater production. “You really feel like you are in a little shoebox theater in Manhattan,” he says of 135 Pearl, which has hosted some of the gutsiest theater in Burlington this year: The Dutchman, Tongues and Answers. Mamet-made Speed the Plow moves in the first week of December. Nothing compares, of course, with Toms’ real-life drama. The local gay press is calling him a traitor for transforming the only gay bar in Vermont into what he describes as an “incredibly progressive” club for “heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, Asians, Latinos, Afro-Americans, Jews. . . ” And actors. “This segregated attitude is getting us nowhere,” Toms says, noting older people seem to be taking it the hardest. “Amnesty International tied a red ribbon around the place and declared it a safe place in Burlington.” It never figured on a civil war.

IN BRIEF: No mention of David Archer in new monthly newsletter from Burlington City Arts. No sign of him in Vermont District Court earlier this week, either. The scheduled hearing was delayed, to allow for more investigation of the grand larceny charge brought against the former manager of Memorial Auditorium. Stage tech Alan Campbell has been hired by City Arts to pick up the slack… Things have cooled off between the Flynn Theatre and Club Toast. “They had a musical all week long and we didn’t have any problems,” says Toast master Dennis Wygmans. After much discussion about sound leakage between buildings, the problem appears to be resolved — thanks to a freshly-insulated roof, a new exterior wall and a so-called “vibration-isolating device.” Intriguing. “I sleep a lot better now,” Wygmans says of the six-month stress test. “Even Club Fantasy’s ordeal was shorter than that” …The living section of The Burlington Free Press is still down an arts writer. Melissa Garrido came and went without filing a single story. Called back to Florida for a family emergency, her starting date has been pushed back to post-First Night. Perhaps it’s time to consider a local hire for the dreaded art beat?…Phish is still reeling in phabulous press coverage. The latest spread — in Spin — pegs the band from crunchy Burlington, Vermont, as “the most visible and exciting example of ’90s improvised rock.” Better yet, it compares the live concert experience to great sex. Something about “periods of nearly unbearable tension followed by ecstatic release.” Geez.