monday, april 6 , 2020. the washington post eZ re c3
ble. And yet one has to ask: If a
novel’s subject is potential global
suffering, is distraction really a
good idea? Bohjalian’s focus on
current problems in his novels is
admirable, and in this case feels
prescient; but the villains in “The
red Lotus” are such sociopaths,
and some of the plot twists so far-
fetched, that the specter of biologi-
cal warfare begins to feel improba-
ble instead of truly threatening.
Which may seem like a book critic’s
quibble, until you consider that
opting for diversion and reassur-
ance — rather than paying atten-
tion to clear warnings — got us to
where we are now.
[email protected]suzanne Berne is a novelist whose
books include “a crime in the
neighborhood” and “the Ghost at the
table.”and Vietnam, joined by more char-
acters and more unsettling facts
about rats. Especially rats as labo-
ratory subjects infected with
pathogens. Alexis’s unhappy child-
hood and her history with self-
harm are added to the mix, which
tangles the story further, though
readers who crave suspense will
get it, along with a grim chill from
reading about a plague while
covid-19, the disease caused by the
coronavirus, menaces the world.
They will get, as well, a resolution
that swiftly unsnarls the many nar-
rative threads, metes out punish-
ments to the evil and (mostly)
spares the good.
Suspense novels are valuable in
terrible times — they offer distrac-
tion from the news and from our
own fears. They also answer our
desire for quick resolution, even if
we can hardly believe one is possi-hospital’s chief fundraiser. Sally’s
office happens to be near a labora-
tory that conducts research on
rats; she’s a lso having an affair with
Douglas, Austin’s dart-playing
friend from the bar, an inexplicably
wealthy travel writer and obvious
bad guy. meanwhile in Vietnam,
Quang, a police captain, deduces
that Austin’s d eath might be linked
to the death of a Vietnamese food
chemist and a fire at h er lab, which
happened around the same time.
To further complicate matters, we
keep receiving detailed dispatches
about rats as disease carriers from
a mysterious first-person source,
speaking in italics. We are also
reminded, periodically, that Alexis
still has those Psych gels.
I’m not giving away as much of
the story as it seems: The plot
becomes labyrinthine as we move
back and forth between New Yorking on the mountain road where
Austin had been biking. After Aus-
tin’s b ody is recovered the next day
by the Vietnamese police, who de-
termine that he was the victim of a
hit-and-run, Alexis takes those gels
home to New York, along with Aus-
tin’s other effects, and tries to re-
turn to work. Ye t she is hounded by
doubts. It’s now clear that Austin
lied to her about his father’s mili-
tary service, but why? Then she
discovers his laptop has been
“wiped clean.” Also, what to make
of the strange skewer-like punc-
ture wound on the back of his
hand, which she noticed while
identifying his body at the
morgue? And were those really cat
bites on his fingertips?
Growing increasingly suspi-
cious, she enlists the aid of a pri-
vate investigator recommended b y
his former boss, Sally Douglas, theTelevision
BROADCAST CHANNELS
4/6/20
7: 00 7: 30 8:0 08 :30 9: 00 9:30 10 :0 01 0: 30 11: 00 11:30
4.1 WRC (NBC) u News u Hollywood u The Voice (10:01) u Manifest News u J. Fallon
4.2 WRC (IND) The MunstersThe MunstersFrasier Fr asier Roseanne Roseanne Roseanne Roseanne The NannyThe Nanny
5.1 WTTG (Fox) Fox 5 u TMZ u 9-1-1 u iHeart Living Room Fox 5 News at 10News The Final
7.1 WJLA (ABC) u Wheel u J’pardy! u Celebrity Family Feud u Celebrity Family Feud u Who Wants to BeNews u J. Kimmel
9.1 WUSA (CBS) Q&A u ET u Neighbor u Bob Heart u All Rise u Bull 9 News u Late-Colbert
14 .1 WFDC (UNI) La Rosa de Guadalupe Ringo Amor eterno Noticias u Noticiero- 1 WDCA (MNTV)u Family Feudu Family FeudFox 5 News^ u Family FeudFox 5 News^ u Extra Big BangBig Bang u Law & Order: SVU
22 .1 WMPT (PBS)Connect. Collectibles u Antiques Roadshow Movie: After Auschwitz u Broken Places u Amanpour-Co
26.4 WETA (PBS) PBS NewsHour Antiques Roadshow Antiques Roadshow Broken PlacesAmanpour-Co
32.1 WHUT (PBS) DW News u MotorWk Durrells in Corfu Durrells in Corfu Democracy Now! World News Healthy - 1 WDCW (CW) u black-ish u black-ish u Whose? u Whose Line u Roswell, New Mexico Fr iends u Seinfeld Mike & Molly Two Men
- 1 WPXW (ION) Criminal Minds Criminal Minds Criminal Minds Criminal Minds Criminal Minds
CABLE CHANNELS
A&E Jeff Dunham: Talking Heads Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On
AMC Movie: Caddyshack HH (1980) Better Call Saul Dispatches From (11:15) Better Call Saul
Animal Planet Alaskan Bush People- Grit Alaska- Last Frontier Alaska- Last Frontier Bush People Bush People
BET (7:12) College Hill College Hill (8:25) College Hill College Hill College Hill College Hill College Hill College Hill
Bravo Below Deck Sailing Yacht Below Deck Sailing Yacht Below Deck Watch Below Deck Sailing Yacht Cash Cab
Cartoon NetworkApple Gumball Home MoviesAmer. Dad Rick, Morty Rick, Morty Rick, Morty Rick, Morty Rick, Morty Rick, Morty
CNN Erin Burnett OutFront Anderson Cooper 360 Cuomo Prime Time CNN Tonight CNN Tonight
Comedy Central Daily Show The Office The Office The Office The Office The Office The Office The Office Daily Show The Office
Discovery Street-Memphis Street-Memphis Driven (10:01) Fast N’ Loud Fastest Cars-Dirty South
Disney Raven (7:35) Bunk’dShook Fam Jam Descendants Coop & Cami Sydney-MaxBunk’dGabby Duran
E! Botched (7:25) Botched Botched (9:15) Botched (10:10) Botched (11:05) Botched
ESPN Peyton’s Peyton’s NFL Football SportsCenter
ESPN2 (6:00) MLS Soccer MLS Soccer MLS Soccer
Food Network Guy’s Grocery Games Guy’s Grocery Games Spring BakingChopped Sweets Chopped Sweets
Fox News The Story With Martha Tucker Carlson Tonight HannityThe Ingraham Angle Fox News at Night
Freeform (6:00) Charlie and the Chocolate FactoryMovie: Grown Ups H (2010) The 700 Club
FX (5:00) Movie: GhostbustersMovie: Pitch Perfect 3 HH (2017) Breeders (10:32) Better Things Breeders
Hallmark (6:00) Flip That Romance Movie: Royal Matchmaker (2018) Golden Girls Golden Girls Golden Girls Golden Girls
Hallmark M&M Gourmet Detective Mysteries Aurora Teagarden Mysteries Murder, She Wrote
HBO (6:40) Movie: A Star Is Born HHH (2018) Plot Against America My Brilliant Friend The Plot Against America
HGTV Home Town Home TownHome TownHuntersHunters (11:01) Home Town
History American PickersAmerican Pickers American Pickers (10:03) American Pickers(11:05) American Pickers
Lifetime The First 48 The First 48 (9:03) The First 48 (10:03) The First 48 (11:03) The First 48
MASN (6:30) Nationals Classics Bensinger Sports Stars
MSNBC Decision 2020 All In With Chris HayesRachel Maddow ShowThe Last WordThe 11th Hour
MTV Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous.
Nat’l GeographicDrain the Oceans Cosmos: Possible Cosmos: Possible (10:03) Drain the Ocean Drain the Great Lakes
NBC SportsNet WACapitals Parade NHL Hockey Mock Draft DC Sports Redskins
Nickelodeon Loud House Danger ForceYoung Dylan SpongeBob Fr iends Fr iends Fr iends Fr iends Fr iends Fr iends
PARMT Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops Cops
Syfy (6:30) Movie: Mad Max: Fury Road HHH (2015) Movie: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters HH (2013) Futurama Futurama
TBS Family Guy Family Guy Family Guy Family Guy Family Guy Family Guy Amer. Dad Amer. Dad Conan Seinfeld
TCM (6:00) Movie: Hills of Home Movie: The Outlaw HH (1943) (10:15) Movie: The Paleface HHH (1948)
TLC 90 Day Fiancé 90 Day Fiancé 90 Day Fiancé sMothered sMothered
TNT Godzilla HH (7:45) Movie: Black Panther HHH (2018) Movie: Godzilla HH (2014)
Travel Beyond the Unknown Beyond the Unknown Beyond the Unknown Beyond the Unknown
TruTV Imp. JokersImp. JokersMovie: The 40-Year-Old Virgin HHH (2005) Hot Ones Hot Ones Hot Ones
TV Land Andy Griffith Andy Griffith Raymond Raymond Raymond Raymond Two Men Two Men King King
TV One Fam. MattersFam. MattersFatal Attraction Fatal Attraction Fatal Attraction Fatal Attraction
USA Network Chicago P.D. WWE Monday Night RAW (Live) Briarpatch
VH1 Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta Love, Hip Hop Love & Hip Hop Miami Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta Love & Hip Hop Miami
WNC 8 Voice Your Future Town Hall Govt. MattersAgency Sports ABC News WJLA 24/7 News at 1^0 Govt. MattersAgency
WGN Last-StandingLast-StandingLast-StandingLast-StandingLast-StandingLast-StandingAlmost Paradise Last-StandingLast-Standing
LEGEND: Bold indicates new or live programs u High Definition Movie Ratings (from TMS) HHHH Excellent HHH Good HH Fair H Poor No stars: not rated
love & hip hop: atlanta
(VH1 at 8) shooter tries to sort out
his love life, and bambi and
scrappy try to make peace with
their families.
the Voice (nbc at 8) the battle
rounds conclude and each coach
has one steal and one save before
the knockout rounds.
Better call saul (aMc at 9)
Jimmy is at his wits’ end when a
simple errand for a client goes
sideways.
roswell, new mexico (cW at 9)
liz turns to Kyle for one last favor
that could potentially land him in
hot water.
Bull ( cbs at 10) bull defends an
anthrax expert who has been
accused of orchestrating attacks.
premieres
the Big show show (netflix)
When the teenage daughter of a
7 -foot, 400-pound retired WWe
superstar comes to live with him
and his wife and two other
daughters, he’s quickly
outnumbered and outsmarted.
miniseries
Deadwater Fell (acorn tV) When
a family is murdered by someone
they know and trust, the small
scottish community they call
home is ravaged by suspicion and
mistrust.special
Who Wants to Be a millionaire?
secrets & surprises (abc at 10 )
taking fans behind the scenes of
the game show, featuring
interviews with former hosts and
producers.late night
conan (tbs at 11 ) Kevin bacon.Daily show/noah (comedy
central at 11) the daily social
distancing show.tonight show/Fallon (nbc at
11:34) Justin timberlake, lady
Gaga, billie Joe armstrong.Jimmy Kimmel live (abc at
11:35) Kaley cuoco, the Marsh
Family.late night/meyers (nbc at
12: 37 ) tr acy Morgan.a little late/lilly singh (nbc at
1:40) adam rippon, anna camp.— Nina ZafarMore at washingtonpost.com/
entertainment/tvtV highlights
Public Policy Productions
Broken places (Pbs at 10) a documentary explores why some children are
severely damaged by early adversity while others can thrive, and revisits
previous subjects to see how early trauma shaped their lives as adults.
BY TRAVIS M. ANDREWSAround and around they go.
Jockeying for position. Hugging
the curves of the Savage Speed-
way. Heading t oward the f inish.
Coming into the race, Clemen-
tin, racing for team o’rangers,
stood tall as first seed. Now, he’s
nowhere to be found, and Snowy
of team Snowballs and Speedy of
the Savage Speeders have rolled
ahead t o take the lead.
But in the end, Starry from
Te am Galactic p roves victorious.
Starry proudly stands atop the
gold m edal p latform.
Starry is a marble.
This is marbula one, in which
spherical glass balls line up be-
hind starting blocks before they
drop away and, whoosh!, gravity
pulls them out of the gate and
through several laps around a
twisty t rack b efore a conveyor b elt
brings them back to the top again
to keep t he r ace going. Announcer
Greg Woods soundtracks the feb.
16 event with sharp commentary.
Professional camerawork and top-
notch editing g ive t he w hole t hing
a prime-time, ESPN-esque sheen
— even though i t all takes place on
YouTube.
This particular race, which has
racked up more than a million
views, represents just one of the
many offerings of Jelle’s marble
runs, t he online organization t hat
created marble racing — which, in
the absence of sports because of
the coronavirus outbreak, has
come to give fans an outlet to sate
their thirst f or competition.
The sport — and, please, don’t
disrespect it by calling it anything
but — recently got a boost thanks
to a single tweet by a user named
Christmas, showing a clip from a
sand race from a f ew y ears a go.
Attention from celebrities such
as fall out Boy bassist Pete Wentz
and English soccer legend Gary
Lineker helped boost the Twitter
video well beyond viral status. It’s
been viewed more than 35 million
times. The Jelle’s marble runs
YouTube channel added more
than 150,0 00 of its 759,000 sub-
scribers in march. marble races
were even a ired on E SPN 2.
“It’s kind of tough to wrap your
mind around the growth that has
come in the last couple of weeks,”
Woods said. “This vacuum where
sports existed has really affected
people. It’s t he perfect storm to get
people into this, because y ou can’t
watch in person. You have to
watch it online, at h ome.”
Jelle’s marble runs has three
primary categories: The marble
rally, which is the most basic —
marbles r olling down a hill; first to
the bottom wins. Then there’s the
marble League, an “olympic-
style” extravaganza with more
than 15 team and individual
events, including sprints, rafting
and balance beam. finally, there’s
marbula one — short-track,
multi-lap race mirroring the real-world Grand Prix.
“What really draws you in and
keeps you there, even though it’s
just marbles rolling with gravity:
It still has the central tenets of
sports,” Woods said. “Underdog
stories. Come-from-behind victo-
ries. Upsets. The home team pre-
vailing or not prevailing.”
Though marble racing only re-
cently vroom vroomed into the
public consciousness, it’s been
around for decades. Jelle Bakker,
co-founder of Jelle’s marble runs,
began constructing tracks as a
young child in the Netherlands,
digging them out of the dirt in his
grandfather’s garden. originally,
they were for h is own a musement.
Then came the Internet — a place
to upload such oddities and, in
time, f ind a rabid f an base.
Despite his brother and co-
founder Dion’s initial skepticism,
Jelle created his first YouTube
channel i n 2006.
“I thought, why would anyone
look at your marble runs? It’s ri-
diculous,” D ion said.
At first, they filled the channel
with cool runs. About a decade
later, they added a competition
element. originally, Dion said, the
enterprise was c alled the “marble-
lympics” but the International
olympic Committee wouldn’t
have it. The fédération Interna-
tionale de l’Automobile, though,
welcomed “marbula one” with
open a rms.
The sport grew steadily,branching into different leagues
and receiving support from the
official subreddit, where f ans ana-
lyze stats, offer suggestions for
future tracks, share marble rac-
ing-themed memes and create
elaborate backstories for the vari-
ous r acers.
After a recent win, for example,
they gossiped about female fans
crowding outside of S nowy’s h otel
room. one user commented,
“Snowy has had trouble with the
ladies in the past. Let’s hope his
fortunes turn around!” one in-
stance included a story line of
security guards having to calm
down some rambunctious Limers
fans who were throwing things on
the track. That hubbub took a
violent t urn i nto a s tands-clearing
fight that found Te am Primary
fans banned from the stadium. (In
reality, no one w atches the r aces —
the f ans’ c heers a re added i n.)
“We like to be interactive with
the f an base and let them come up
with ideas and names,” Dion said.
“Jelle found it important to hear
the f ans’ o pinions.”
Woods became a central part of
the appeal, giving voice to the
voiceless. He’s even sometimes
represented in t he v ideos by a little
marble in the announcer’s booth.
“Greg Woods’ voice gives me life,”
reads o ne reddit post.
The Iowa-based auto racing en-
thusiast discovered marble racing
through its subreddit back in
2016, when he stumbled upon aSports amid covid-19? This one’s for all the marbles.
where is Austin? This is the last
day of their bike tour (his idea), a
kind of pilgrimage to honor his
father and uncle’s service in Viet-
nam. That morning he rode alone
to the Hai Van Pass, to be near
“where his father had been
wounded and his uncle had died.”
But n ow he’s l ate.
A promising beginning, with a
cold splash of dread, although we
discover almost immediately what
happens to Austin. Not so Alexis,
who sets out on a panicked search
for him with the tour leaders. They
find nothing but several innocu-
ous-looking Psych energy gels ly-from Danang for her boyfriend,
Austin, to return from a bike trip
into the mountains. Their ro-
mance began six months earlier
when Austin, a fundraiser at her
hospital, appeared in the Er with
a bullet wound. He’d been at a
manhattan dive bar playing darts
with a friend w hen a “ crazy j unkie”
shot him by accident. She also
treated what Austin claimed were
cat bites on his fingertips. Not
exactly a “meet cute,” Alexis re-
flects by the pool, but a good story
to tell their children someday. Yet
book world from C1
Plague thriller provides
a grim, real-world chill
short race down a track carved
into a sand hill.
He was amused by the marble
names i n the starting l ineup.
“I thought it would be kind of
funny if I called it like it was a
motor race, a formula 1 Grand
Prix,” he said.
So he posted a short recording
to reddit. The fans loved it, and
soon the brothers called from the
Netherlands asking if he would
record commentary for all their
videos.
Nowadays, Jelle creates a new
track — which can take several
days, depending on its complexity
— and the brothers then film the
race a nd e dit it. A composer d rafts
music, and for special races, an a
cappella group records team
chants to come from the crowd.
Eventually, the whole t hing is s ent
to Woods, who records his com-mentary in a single take “to pre-
serve the r ealism,” he said.
Sometimes precision matters
more than speed. In the marble
League, c ompetitors m ust face the
balance beam — a long, thin track
— where four marbles on the same
team attempt to see how far they
roll before falling off. And in the
Hubelino maze, marbles do their
best not to get stuck in a winding
course.
Woods, who has a background
in public health, said he hopes the
races might be enticing enough to
help people stay inside and prac-
tice social distancing.
“I hope that we are, as a result,
trying to make the best out of a
less-than-ideal situation,” he said.
“Sports are cathartic. You’re get-
ting emotions out, and this still
gives you the o utlet to do t hat.”
[email protected]anton Weber/Jelle's Marble runs
Jelle bakker sets up the starting gate for a marble race.The Movie Directory has gone dark.We will raise the curtain again
as soon as events warrant.