An uprooted tree in Brooklyn, Oct. 30. E.B. Gilliland   Artists
of all kinds have a weakness for Big Statements. But few are
equal to a challenge the size of Sandy, which laid waste to much
of the eastern seaboard. Consider the art created in response to
9/11. Was any of it good? Truth to tell, just about all of it is
already forgotten, and rightly so. Novelist Jonathan Safran
Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," classical composer
John Adams's "On the Transmigration of Souls," singer-songwriter
Neil Young's "Let's Roll," sculptor Eric Fischl's "Tumbling
Woman": All now seem hopelessly inadequate to the task of
embodying such an event, much less clarifying its human impact.
That fact says something important about what art is and what it
does. Unless you're content to make poster art, it's risky in
the extreme to let a great occasion muscle its way to the center
of your stage. Far better to use it as a backdrop for personal
drama, as Kenneth Lonergan did in "Margaret," a powerful coming-
of-age film