Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
▪ Marilynne Robinson wanted to know who Ethan Hawke really was when she learned he was working on an audio edition of her acclaimed novel “Gilead.” “I can’t say I was familiar with his voice,” Robinson said of the four-time Oscar nominee whose films include “Before Sunrise,” “Reality Bites” and “Boyhood.” But when she watched Hawke star as a troubled priest in Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed,” she felt confident he could inhabit the life of an aging Iowa minister in the 1950s, whom she describes as “a man deep in conversation with himself.” “He [Hawke] speaks in a sort of American way that is well within the range of what I understand my character to be speaking,” she said. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, “Gilead” is the first of four novels set in a rural Iowa community. It’s narrated by the dying Rev. John Ames, a Congregationalist pastor who reflects on his family history and the suffering and transcendence he’s known in this “poor perishable world.” Hawke recorded an abridged narrative of “Gilead” commissioned by Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y that can he heard today through Oct. 29 via www.92y.org/gilead. Bernard Schwartz, who directs the Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center, said he thought Hawke was an ideal narrator. “In ‘Gilead,’ the Reverend John Ames contemplates ‘grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials,’” he said. “I read that and think of Ethan Hawke’s voice. ‘Gilead’ is a great American novel, and Ethan Hawke is a great American actor.” Hawke remembered his first encounter with Robinson, when she read from “Gilead” at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, as a “near holy experience.” “Her humility as a person, and the depth of her writing, was inspiring — so I started reading,” he said. Hawke’s roles have ranged from the born skeptics of “Reality Bites” and “Before Sunrise” to the violently committed John Brown, the 19th-century abolitionist he plays in the new Showtime adaptation of James McBride’s prize-winning novel “The Good Lord Bird.” Ames, as much a seeker in his own way as some of Hawke’s more secular characters, is in his “wheelhouse,” the actor said.
▪ Zachery Ty Bryan, the actor who played the oldest son on the long-running 1990s sitcom “Home Improvement,” was arrested in Oregon and faces charges of strangulation and assault. The Eugene Police Department said officers were dispatched to an apartment Friday night on a report of a physical dispute. They found Bryan, 39, sitting outside, and his girlfriend, 27, at a neighboring apartment. Bryan reportedly assaulted the woman, impeded her breathing, and took her phone away when she tried to call 911, police said. She declined medical assistance. Bryan was booked into the Lane County jail after 1 a.m. Saturday. A message left with his possible agent was not returned, and it wasn’t known if he had a lawyer.