ARTICLE TIP

Burying Indiana Jones

Christopher Heaney

The New Yorker, June 18

So here we have one of those scholarly dudes writing a think piece about whether the character Indiana Jones — and the film franchise in which his adventures takes place —comprise a “legacy worth celebrating” or are more worthy of “good riddance.” Me being a stooge, and The New Yorker being The New Yorker, and Heaney being an assistant professor at Penn State and author of the book “Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones and the Search for Machu Picchu,” I sorta expected a bit of snide “wokery.” More fool me. Instead, Heaney has written an essay that serves as a touching Father’s Day remembrance, a thoughtful perspective on how we as a society and culture have grown through the prism of the Indy films, and an honest and personal perspective on the middle ground between entertainment for the sake of it and what we as people might call Life Itself.

— Rick Koster

BOOK TIP

The Trackers

Charles Frazier

The “Cold Mountain” author is back with a new epic tale of characters set in a rough-hewn American past. In “The Trackers,” an artist named Val is sent to a relatively untamed Wyoming in 1937, one of those painters who created murals inside post offices as part of the federal government’s WPA program. (That, of course, might remind local readers of the murals inside the New London post office.) Val is staying with an incredibly wealthy couple who run their own ranch — the man dreams of becoming a U.S. senator, the wife has a questionable past. When the wife goes missing, the husband sends Val out in search of his wife, and Val crisscrosses the country in his quest. Frazier is wonderfully adept at writing descriptions, creating a vivid sense of place, and he does that here. He paints an evocative portrait of America in that almost-post-Depression era.

— Kristina Dorsey

CD TIP

Everybody Loves a Happy Ending

Tears For Fears

The very great Tears For Fears graces us Saturday with a concert in Mohegan Sun Arena, touring behind 2022’s “The Tipping Point” — a wonderful recording that served as a reunion of sorts between the band’s founding members Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith. But the long dormant duo briefly resurfaced in 2004 with “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending,” an album easily competitive with their esteemed “Songs From the Big Chair” and “The Hurting,” not to mention “The Tipping Point.” But “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending” was completely ignored; who knows why? Weird, because EVERY song on it is very, very good. Now’s an appropriate time to discover this “missing piece” in your TFF collection. They might even play a song or two from it Saturday.

— Rick Koster