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November 15, 2004
TT: All things to some people
A reader writes:I have read "About Last Night" and followed your articles elsewhere for at least a year, and over that time you have introduced me to: Pelléas et Mélisande, Benjamin Britten, Flannery O'Connor, Stephen Sondheim, Willa Cather, The Rules of the Game, film noir, Alex Ross, Philip Larkin, Looney Toons, Chinatown, Patrick O'Brian, anchovies (really!), Shostakovich, jazz, Fauré, Evelyn Waugh, Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker and the 1812 Overture excepted), W.H. Auden, Four Last Songs, twentieth-century classical music generally, Barbara Pym and a host of other things I can't recall right now. I love George Balanchine already, even though I haven't seen a ballet other than The Nutcracker in my life, and intend to rent the choreography DVDs you recommended as soon as they arrive at my university library. At your recommendation, I've gone to see Assassins and The Threepenny Opera and The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (I'm a political philosophy student at the University of Chicago, but my family lives in New York).
I've often been tempted to write to you, although I've never had even the slightest inclination to write to anyone I don't know. I think that this is because of the nature of weblogs: I feel as if I do know you, and that I'm obliged to thank you for all the wonderful things you've shown me.
I'd also like to ask a favor. I saw Kevin Costner's Open Range at your recommendation, and quite enjoyed it (although it was indeed too long). Besides that, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, I have never seen any westerns. Your description of Randolph Scott's movies in A Terry Teachout Reader was tantalizing, but they are unavailable. I'm somewhat embarrassed to have to ask, but could you recommend some good, old-fashioned westerns?
What I like best about this e-mail is that it sums up exactly what Our Girl and I have tried to do with "About Last Night" from the very beginning. As our mission statement says:
Clement Greenberg, the great art critic, believed that "in the long run there are only two kinds of art: the good and the bad. This difference cuts across all other differences in art. At the same time, it makes all art one....the experience of art is the same in kind or order despite all differences in works of art themselves." We feel the same way, which is why we write about so many different things. We think many people--maybe most--approach art with a similarly wide-ranging appreciation. By writing each day about our own experiences as consumers and critics, we hope to create a meeting place in cyberspace for arts lovers who are curious, adventurous, and unafraid of the unfamiliar.
Letters like this suggest that we're succeeding. That's a good feeling.
As for Westerns, I posted a list of my eleven favorites a year or so. Go here to read it. Except for Ride Lonesome, all of these films have been officially released on videocassette, and five are also available on DVD. (Some of the former are currently out of print but can be rented at well-stocked stores.) A good-quality off-the-air videocassette dub of Ride Lonesome, along with the rest of the Westerns Randolph Scott made in collaboration with Budd Boetticher, can be purchased from Comet Video.
Incidentally, I gave a talk about Westerns to a group of teenagers just the other day, and showed them Ride Lonesome as an example of the Western at its purest and most classical. (It's only 73 minutes long, making it ideal for lecture purposes.) I'm pleased to say that they all paid close attention and showed no visible signs of boredom.
Posted November 15, 2004 12:03 PM
