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About Last Night
TERRY TEACHOUT on the arts
in New York City
(with additional dialogue by OUR GIRL IN CHICAGO)
Friday, January 27, 2006
TT: Rolling over
I just spent a pleasant hour doing some long-overdue maintenance on "Sites to See," our blogroll. Here's what I did:
• I added a number of interesting-looking new blogs and sites (new to us, anyway) on various subjects, all of which are marked with asterisks. We'll leave them on the roll for a month or so to see whether they're full-fledged keepers or mere flashes in the pan.
• I revisited and reconsidered the last batch of starred blogs and sites. Some made the cut, and are no longer starred. Some didn't, and are no longer there.
• I knocked off a half-dozen other blogs that had become inactive, insufficiently active, or irrelevant to the interests of our regular readers.
• I moved a couple of blogs to more suitable categories.
Take a look at the new starred blogs in the right-hand column and see what you think. As always, please let us know about any other high-quality art-related blogs that you'd like us to add to "Sites to See."
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TT: Two women on Mozart...
“We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy."
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
“The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.”
Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will
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TT: ...and one more for good measure
"There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper."
Camille Paglia, interview, International Herald Tribune (April 26, 1991)
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TT: Birthday boy
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 250 years ago today, and everybody’s writing about him. Arts & Letters Daily has a roundup of links at the top of today’s page (including a link to my own essay in last month’s issue of Commentary, which will be available for free on line through the end of January). I especially like Tim Page, who quotes the ever-quotable Ferruccio Busoni:
He disposes of light and shadow, but his light does not pain and his darkness still shows clear outlines. Even in the most tragic situations he still has a witticism ready; in the most cheerful, he is able to draw a thoughtful furrow in his brow. He is young as a boy and wise as an old man—never old-fashioned and never modern, carried to the grave and always alive.
If you’re in the mood to listen to something beautiful, my Commentary essay ends with a list of ten of my favorite recordings of works by Mozart in minor keys. This is the one to buy if you’re only buying one.
UPDATE: Thanks to Modern Kicks, I found this link to a wonderful W.H. Auden poem about The Magic Flute that (horrors!) I didn’t know. It’s on PostClassic, Kyle Gann’s artsjournal.com music blog. (In addition to the complete text, Gann's posting also contains a link to an audio file of Auden reading the poem.)
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TT: Minority report
Just to keep you on your toes amid all the Mozart-related hoopla, here's the first paragraph of an essay on Haydn I wrote for Commentary:
In 1945, Arturo Toscanini told the music critic B.H. Haggin that he preferred Haydn to Mozart. “I will tell you frankly: sometimes I find Mozart boring,” he said to his astonished interviewer. “Not G-minor [the G Minor Symphony, K. 550]: that is great tragedy; and not concerti; but other music. Is always beautiful—but is always the same.”
I don't agree, but I do know what he meant.
(If you’re curious, this CD contains Toscanini’s recordings of the Mozart G Minor and Haydn “Surprise” symphonies.)
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TT: Mixed doubles
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on my recent playgoing in New Haven, Connecticut, where I saw the Long Wharf Theatre’s production of Private Lives and the Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of The People Next Door:
Is there a more perfect comedy than “Private Lives”? It’s not my favorite Noël Coward play (I prefer “Present Laughter”), but for sheer elegance of craft it can’t be beat, and it’s madly funny to boot. Written in a mere four days, it contains more of Coward’s best-known lines than any other play, from “Very flat, Norfolk” to “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs,” and it never fails to make its effect, even when performed by amateurs. I have yet to see a hopelessly bad “Private Lives,” and Long Wharf Theatre’s new production is splendid….
Of the making of tendentious plays about 9/11 and its aftermath there is, apparently, no end. I have yet to see a watchable one, and Henry Adam’s “The People Next Door,” now playing at the Yale Repertory Theatre, is no exception. Mr. Adam is a Brit, and like virtually all British playwrights a Man of the Left, which tells you most of what you need to know about this ostensibly black comedy about Nigel (Manu Narayan, lately of “Bombay Dreams”), a wimpy, heroin-sniffing slacker of “mixed, indeterminate race” (so says the script) who falls afoul of Phil (Christopher Innvar), a fascist-type Scotland Yard detective in search of a likely-looking pigeon to spy on the neighborhood mosque. What ensues is utterly, agonizingly predictable…
No link, and that’s only a sample of this morning’s column. To read the rest, go to the nearest newsstand and plunk down a dollar for a copy of the Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with instant access to the full text of my review, together with many other worthy art-related stories.
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TT: Words to the wise
This just in from the Duplex Cabaret Theatre:
We're continuing our CINEMA DUPLEX series this Monday, January 30th at 8 p.m. with a free screening of Broadway: The Golden Age. I'm thrilled to say that the film's director, Rick McKay, will drop by before we see the film to chat and answer questions.
If you haven't seen this acclaimed and enormously important documentary, or even if you have, I urge you to come. It's an essential recollection of the history of the Great White Way, told by the people who were there. There are dozens of interviews from the likes of Stephen Sondheim, Barbara Cook, Bea Arthur, Elaine Stritch, Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury and the list goes on and on...
So come—Monday, the 30th, 8 p.m. Free with a two-drink minimum. These intimate screenings in our 70-seat theatre have been such fun, and the 30th will be no exception, seeing this film with a room full of theatre fans. I can't wait to chat with Mr. McKay about putting this enormous undertaking together.
I couldn’t agree more. Not only have I raved
about the film, both here and in The Wall Street Journal, but I met Rick McKay
for the first time in December and can personally vouch for his capacities as a raconteur.
To make reservations, call 212-255-5438.
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TT: Almanac
“Contentment is the drug of fools. I prefer truth. And the truth is that we are animals scratching and rutting under an empty sky. Here in this theatre we can pretend that our lives have meaning. But the pretence only holds if we are given the truth. That is why I wish to see you shine on this stage, that is why, selfishly, I wish to train you. The theatre is my soothing drug, and my cynic's illness is so far advanced that my physic must be of the highest quality.”
Stephen Jeffreys, The Libertine (courtesy of twang twang twang)
| Thursday, January 26, 2006
TT: Call me Bartleby
Three weeks ago I resumed a more temperate version of my regular schedule. Since then I’ve seen plays in Washington, D.C., New Haven, and Chicago, from the last of which I returned two days ago. My trusty old iBook blew up and I bought a replacement. It wasn’t ready for me until yesterday afternoon, so I went downtown yesterday morning to write my Friday drama column for The Wall Street Journal on an unoccupied terminal, then picked up my new computer on the way back home and spent the afternoon breaking it in. Last night I went to a Broadway show, my first since the night before I went into the hospital. I had dinner with a friend after the show, then came home, answered my e-mail, and read a few pages of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop before falling asleep.
I woke up this morning at nine-thirty, an hour later than my normal get-up-and-go time. As I descended from the loft in which I spend my nights, it struck me that I had nothing whatsoever to do today: no deadlines, no shows to see, no meals with friends, no plans of any kind. For a moment I felt myself revving up, trying to think of culture-related activities with which to fill all those empty hours. Then a new, unfamiliar reflex kicked in. Why not do nothing? I asked myself, and a smile flickered across my face.
The New Me has one important thing in common with the Old Me, which is that we’re both having trouble getting used to the Concept of the Weekend. The problem is that while most people take Saturday and Sunday off, I don’t: I usually go to the theater, and for me that’s work, not pleasure (not necessarily pleasure, to be exact). I write my Journal columns every Tuesday and every other Wednesday, which means that my “weekends” fall some time between Tuesday afternoon and Friday evening. The habits of a lifetime tell me I ought to be working during that time, but the realities of my new life as a middle-aged drama critic with acute workaholic tendencies and a recent history of congestive heart failure demand a change of schedule. This morning—for the first time—I got the message, loud and clear.
So what am I going to do with myself today? Well, I think I’ll start by popping a Bocaburger
in the microwave and a whole-grain English muffin in the toaster and taking a Fuji apple out of the crisper. After lunch I’ll put my clothes on (yes, I'm writing these words in the unclothed state) and stroll over to the Central Park reservoir for a nice long walk. When I’m done with that, I might go to the Metropolitan Museum, which I haven’t visited since well before my illness. Or not: I might come straight home. Either way I’ll pick up my laundry on the way back to the apartment, then take a nap, followed by an early, solitary dinner at Good Enough to Eat. I might spend part of the evening pruning my CD collection or cleaning out the living-room closet. Or not: I might watch a movie on TV instead. Whatever I end up doing, though, I’ll definitely round out the evening by calling up my mother in Smalltown, U.S.A., and finding out what she did all day. Then I’ll put on the new Chris Thile-Mike Marshall album,
post Friday’s blog entries, check my e-mail, spend a few minutes gazing happily at the Teachout Museum, and climb back into the loft to read a bit more of Scoop before falling asleep.
Not very exciting, is it? I mean, here I am, a compulsive aesthete in Manhattan, swimming in a sea of cultural possibilities. How dare I fritter away a whole day and night when I could be hitting the boulevards in search of illumination? But I prefer not to. Instead, I'm going to spend Thursday doing what I want to do when I want to do it, not including anything remotely resembling work. What’s more, I expect to have a perfectly lovely time. How about that?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for lunch. See you tomorrow.
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TT: So you want to see a show?
Here's my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.
Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.
BROADWAY:
• Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter, strong language, one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter, sexual content, fairly strong language)
• Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, implicit sexual content, reviewed here)
• The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)
• Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult situations, strong language, reviewed here)
• The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)
• The Woman in White (musical, PG, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
OFF BROADWAY:
• Abigail’s Party (drama, R, adult subject matter, strong language, reviewed here, closes Apr. 8)
• Mrs. Warren's Profession (drama, PG, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 19, reviewed here)
• Slava's Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)
• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, reviewed here, extended through Mar. 11)
CLOSING THIS WEEKEND:
• In the Continuum (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Saturday)
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TT: Almanac
"The truth is that we mediocre men cannot even imagine what it is to be a great man like Mozart and Shakespeare and thus to be free from the domination of the contemporary prejudices, beliefs, morals, artistic rules, scruples (call them what you will) with which even the most enlightened of us are—often unconsciously—obsessed."
W.J. Turner, Mozart: The Man and His Works (courtesy of Bill Kristol)
| Wednesday, January 25, 2006
OGIC: Fortune cookie
"Ask him to make a film about happiness and he'd have gone fishing, or got drunk. But give him a story about more murders than anyone can keep up with, or explain, and somehow he made a paradise. Maybe he needed a cover, some way of seeming tough, cool and superior, if he was ever going to do happiness."
David Thomson on Howard Hawks, The Big Sleep
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, January 25, 2006 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"I am constitutionally a martyr to boredom, but never in Europe have I been so desperately and degradingly bored as I was during the next four days; they were as black and timeless as Damnation; a handful of fine ashes thrown into the eyes, a blanket over the face, a mass of soft clay knee deep. My diary reminds me of my suffering in those very words, but the emotion which prompted them seems remote. I know a woman who is always having babies; every time she resolves that that one shall be the last. But, every time, she forgets her resolution, and it is only when her labour begins that she cries to midwife and husband, 'Stop, stop; I've just remembered what it is like. I refuse to have another.' But it is then too late. So the human race goes on. Just in this way, it seems to me, the activity of our ant-hill is preserved by a merciful process of oblivion. 'Never again,' I say on the steps of the house, 'never again will I lunch with that woman.' 'Never again,' I say in the railway carriage, 'will I go and stay with those people.' And yet a week or two later the next invitation finds me eagerly accepting. 'Stop,' I cry inwardly, as I take my hostess's claw-like hand. 'Stop, stop,' I cry in my tepid bath; 'I have just remembered what it is like. I refuse to have another.' But it is too late."
Evelyn Waugh, Remote People
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, January 25, 2006 | Permanent
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OGIC: Man minus machine
Cheerio, cheerios! (This is a pretty considerable term of endearment in my book, but you'll know you're really in good when I call you my little rice chex.) Terry wanted me to tell you he's back in New York but without benefit of a working computer, which, logistically speaking, is making meeting his deadlines highly challenging and blogging highly improbable. He hopes to be back later this week, the less late the better.
A wonderful time was had by all during Terry's visit to Chicago. We spent Saturday and Sunday running around and taking things in before kicking back Monday and doing whatever we felt like. This amounted to very little. We ran some of my errands, watched a video, planted ourselves in the living room to read our books, went out to dinner, and read some more. This to me is the lap of luxury: sitting around with a friend reading books, making as much or as little conversation as you like because you've been friends long enough and well enough to enjoy shared silence as much as chatter. I once planned an entire vacation in Maine around this very activity, with another friend, and ended up discovering the glorious Dalziel and Pascoe in the process. This weekend was, of course, the first time I'd seen Terry since before he was sick, and it seemed especially right to spend some time simply sitting in a room together, laughing at the cat's delicate snoring and reading each other the occasional highlight from our books. Normally during these trips, we barely pause to tie our shoes.
But the high-gear part of the weekend was excellent too. It began with a blistering, Bach-graced double-mandolin concert at Chicago's comfy, intimate Old Town School of Folk Music—where I'd see damn near anything—and included as well two utterly absorbing plays at two favorite Chicago theaters. First it was Much Ado About Nothing at Chicago Shakespeare, airy and wry with an endearingly clownish Benedick and an imperturbable Beatrice. We then traveled south to the Court Theatre, in my own backyard, for a production of August Wilson's "Fences" that served as my introduction to the play. And an auspicious meeting it was—a meticulously crafted yet rawly powerful production that's especially distinguished by electrifying performances from each and every cast member. I can't speak for Terry (he'll say his piece on both plays in an upcoming WSJ column), but here's a great American play I took my sweet time getting around to seeing, and this was a production to make me glad I waited.
Thanks for being patient with us earlier this week. One or both of us will be back soon with more blogging. And I still owe a bunch of you email, which I promise soon.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, January 25, 2006 | Permanent
link | Tuesday, January 24, 2006
TT: Almanac
"I don't really like Shakespeare on the screen at all—the shot is too big for the cannon. The later plays, like Lear, are too big even for the theatre."
Laurence Olivier, interview, London Observer (1937)
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Tuesday, January 24, 2006 | Permanent
link | Monday, January 23, 2006
TT: Almanac
"'I know most men go in for love affairs,' he said. 'Some of them can't help it. They can't get on at all without women, but there are plenty of others—I daresay you haven't come across them much—who don't really care about that sort of thing, but they don't know any reason why they shouldn't, so they spend half their lives going after women they don't really want. I can tell you something you probably don't know. There are men who have been great womanizers in their time and when they get to my age and don't want it any more and in fact can't do it, instead of being glad of a rest, what do they do but take all kinds of medicines to make them want to go on? I've heard fellows in my club talking about it.'"
Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Monday, January 23, 2006 | Permanent
link | Friday, January 21, 2005
TT: Youth will be (dis)served
It’s Friday, and I’m in The Wall Street Journal with a review of Harold and Maude: The Musical, plus a report on Harvey Fierstein’s debut as Tevye in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof.
The former was, eh, not so hot:
For years now, Tom Jones, whose list of credits includes the book and lyrics for “The Fantasticks,” has had his eye on “Harold and Maude,” the 1971 cult movie about a 20-year-old suicidal misfit who falls hard for a fey 80-year-old widow. When Harvey Schmidt, his longtime collaborator, declined the challenge of writing music for so quirky a project, the undaunted Mr. Jones teamed up with a younger composer, Joseph Thalken. They brought the finished product to New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, where “Harold and Maude: The Musical” is running through Feb. 6, with Estelle Parsons playing the part created in the film by Ruth Gordon.
Would that the fruits of Mr. Jones’ protracted labors were more satisfying. Alas, “Harold and Maude” doesn’t fly, in part because the redeeming peculiarities of the film, an all-you-need-is-love-love-love period piece, have been carefully watered down by Mr. Jones to accommodate easily ruffled suburban sensibilities. What’s left is a decorously brief fling between Harold and Maude that still fails to pass the eeuuww test, portrayed with a starry-eyed tweeness that made my teeth itch….
The latter was, somewhat to my surprise, really fine, if a bit odd in spots:
Mr. Fierstein, last seen on Broadway in “Hairspray,” isn’t an obvious candidate for the part of Tevye. Aside from not getting to wear a dress, he has to sing several demanding songs, and his voice, which sounds like a bullfrog stuck in a double bass, makes a decidedly odd impression in “Sunrise, Sunset” and “Sabbath Prayer.” (Believe it or not, he croaks some of his numbers in keys so low that the orchestra has to transpose them up to meet him in the middle.) Still, he more than makes up in comic prowess for what he lacks in vocal luster, and though he hasn’t combed all the “Hairspray” out of his intermittently flouncy mugging, Mr. Fierstein rises effortlessly—as well as believably—to “Fiddler”’s not-infrequent moments of high drama….
No link, and there’s much, much more, including a review of a third show, Washington’s Arena Stage revival of Hallelujah, Baby! To see what you’re missing, buy a copy of today’s Journal (duh), or click here and get with the program.
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TT: Almanac
"Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be that moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx—my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me—we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!)."
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
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TT: AWOL
Pardon me for not having done the usual this morning. I was prepping last night in order to conduct the very first interview for my Louis Armstrong biography, and today I spent six amazingly absorbing hours talking to George Avakian, who knew Armstrong from 1940 on and was his record producer in the mid-Fifties. Avakian, who was born in 1919, appears to remember everything that ever happened to him, and revels in sharing his memories with serious-minded interviewers who've done their homework. I had, and I filled up four cassettes with his detailed recollections of Armstrong, on and off the job. We're not quite done yet, but I covered a lot of ground, and I expect to start writing the first draft of the prologue some time next week.
It isn't easy to write a biography of a man you never met, even someone like Armstrong who left behind a substantial body of correspondence and reminiscence. By the time I started writing about H.L. Mencken, who died in 1956, everyone who had known him at all well was long gone, and I had to work from written source material alone. Though Armstrong died in 1971, there aren't many people left who knew him well enough to speak with confidence about his character and personality, much less who collaborated with him closely enough to describe his working methods. Oral-history transcripts are precious, sometimes priceless, but the one thing you can't do with them is ask the interviewees your own questions. When I turned on my tape recorder this morning, I felt as if magic casements were about to open, and when I turned it off late in the afternoon, I knew they had.
Anyway, my apologies for not posting my weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser, which will go up shortly, along with today's almanac entry. Now you know why, and I bet you don't blame me one bit....
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OGIC: Thingamajigs we love
Last night the ipod played Lucinda Williams's "Jackson" and the Breeders' "Drivin' on 9" practically back-to-back, which I thought was awfully clever of it. These are my two favorite songs about driving—songs while driving, really—dating back to well before I was a driver myself. Driving can be an opiate, and the narrators of both songs seem under its influence. They treat the names of their destinations like talismans, hopefully investing them with emotional significance the places haven't actually yet taken on. Musically, both songs have simple, even naïve structures, though I hasten to add that I don't really know what I'm talking about.
But speaking of ipods, mine slips smoothly into the dock of this sleek little donut, otherwise known as the Harman JBL On Stage speaker system. It's fabulous. I found mine under a tree but you can locate one at Amazon or here, where I imagine they will let you listen to or fondle it before you plunk down your hard-earned cash. The speaker is highly portable, holds its own against the pod in terms of style, and sounds great, both to mine and more exacting ears. Doing dishes? Newly tolerable this year.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Friday, January 21, 2005 | Permanent
link | Thursday, January 20, 2005
OGIC: In which WebCrimson defeats me
I accidentally (or, more accurately, in wretched impatience) posted my last item twice. As soon as I saw that this had happened, our blog service provider slowed down to more or less a full stop (please note that I am the last known blogger still using a dial-up connection, although these medieval days are numbered).
Fifteen minutes of tearing my hair out ensued, but I was at last able to delete one of the doubles. An hour later, they were both still appearing here. Now I've gone in and deleted the second copy, with no apparent effect on the appearance of this page. Presumably at some point they will both vanish; as soon as possible after that, I'll marshal as much forbearance as I can and post the errant post—precisely once.
Long story short: I do know I appear to be repeating myself, thanks. Thanks.
UPDATE: All fixed!
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, January 20, 2005 | Permanent
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OGIC: In which WebCrimson defeats me
I accidentally (or, more accurately, in wretched impatience) posted my last item twice. As soon as I saw that this had happened, our blog service provider slowed down to more or less a full stop (please note that I am the last known blogger still using a dial-up connection, although these medieval days are numbered).
Fifteen minutes of tearing my hair out ensued, but I was at last able to delete one of the doubles. An hour later, they were both still appearing here. Now I've gone in and deleted the second copy, with no apparent effect on the appearance of this page. Presumably at some point they will both vanish; as soon as possible after that, I'll marshal as much forbearance as I can and post the errant post—precisely once.
Long story short: I do know I appear to be repeating myself, thanks. Thanks.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, January 20, 2005 | Permanent
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OGIC: Fortune cookie
"One needs only to be old enough in order to be as young as one will."
Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, January 20, 2005 | Permanent
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OGIC: Reading around
• Erin O'Connor has discovered the wonder that is Shirley Hazzard's Transit of Venus. She gets further than I ever did in explaining what makes the novel so palpably different from other books one reads, what gives it its unmistakable aura:
The novel cannot be read quickly and still be read well. Its nuance demands a dipping method of reading, in which the reader stops reading frequently to consider what she has just read, and in which the reader routinely disrupts her forward progress to reread a passage whose precision cannot fully be grasped at once. It's a rare and exquisite pleasure to read this way and to be rewarded for it, a reminder that nothing is ever bland, and that the closer one attends to the details of life, the more there is to see, to know, and to feel.
I received for Christmas the Hazzard novel you never hear about, The Bay of Noon. I've read just a few pages and won't be able to return to it anytime very soon. My brief initial foray revealed the fine writing and keen eye I would have expected—but not that, you know, that thing (snaps fingers). That thing is a rare thing. Truth be told, it would be a little disappointing to find out it's replicable.
• Mr. Elegant Variation is multi-talented. I very much enjoyed his super-short story at Pindeldyboz. "The Everhappy Eterna Comfort Band™" may be a diminutive thing, but it has some teeth on it.
• Finally, Colby Cosh writes fascinatingly here on the relative homogeneity of journalists' class backgrounds and the difference of his own from the norm. Here's a swatch:
If you compared the average working physicist to the average working journalist, I believe you'd find that the latter had parents whose income was much higher. And I believe this is so even though it's the physicist who is ostensibly in greater need of early-life educational advantages, an encouraging household milieu, and (to stick one toe into Larry Summers territory) inheritable cognitive endowments. This happens not because journalism is a cliquish, incestuous business, or just because it is; it's also because a child of intellectuals or businessmen just has a much easier time imagining getting paid for doing mental work and nothing else.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, January 20, 2005 | Permanent
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OGIC: It came from Outer space
After careful consideration, and having duly consulted with my co-blogger, I've come to the conclusion that the mysterious proprietor of Outer Life is the Charles Lamb of our time, or the Charles Lamb of our medium—I'm not sure which, but he's the Charles Lamb of something. His recent posting "Birthday at Buddy's"—as observant, dry, and economical as his usual fare but somehow even more hilarious—is what pushed me over the fence from simply enjoying his essays to reaching for superlatives. If you aren't already reading him, what are you doing with your life?
"Brithday at Buddy's" begins:
The invitation arrived on Tuesday for a birthday party on Sunday. At 10:00 am. Bowling at Buddy's Bowl-O-Rama. For a four year old. Bouncy and lunch to follow at the house.
Late invitation -- strike one. Bowling for four year olds -- strike two. 10:00 am on a Sunday morning -- strike three. So I threw the invitation out.
You'll want to read the rest.
Outer Life appears to have been around for about ten months. I've been reading it regularly for about two, which means there's a nice plump archive for me to plunder greedily over the next little while. Some posts I've especially liked so far (both culled from a greatest hits list in OL's right-hand column called "Some Old Posts"—what, did he pick them by throwing darts?): "Mr. Tiki and the Boogie Boys" and "A Farewell to Golf," which will no doubt strike some as an inconceivable sentiment (hi Dad!).
Good deed for the day: check.
UPDATE: Outer Life promises he'll "keep a sharp eye on my sister."
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, January 20, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Absence makes the heart grow fonder
I'm staying out of sight until Friday: deadlines, appointments, interviews, paperwork, performances. Our Girl will keep you fed until I return.
Have fun, and don't make a mess while I'm gone.
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TT: Almanac
The sleepless nights,
The daily fights,
The quick toboggan when you reach the heights—
I miss the kisses and I miss the bites.
I wish I were in love again!
The broken dates,
The endless waits,
The lovely loving and the hateful hates.
The conversation with the flying plates—
I wish I were in love again!
Lorenz Hart, “I Wish I Were in Love Again” (music by Richard Rodgers)
| Wednesday, January 19, 2005
OGIC: Truer confessions
Responses to last week's post on demonstrative reading have been all over the map. Most people I heard from seemed to take for granted the attention-seeking dimension of reading in public and wondered what all my fuss was about. I suppose it's become a banal observation what with the boom in Starbuck's-sitting and, of course, the invasion of the bookstore-cafes. More to the point, though, I shied away in my post from admitting just how painfully self-conscious this variety of reading could be when I was younger. Sometimes there was very little turning of pages at all but very much furtive looking up to see whether I'd been noticed. I must have looked ridiculous. Also, on rare occasions I managed to stick myself with a book I really, really didn't want to read. I drew the line at books in other languages, but New Directions translations could be irresistible. These days I'm unlikely to be seen reading anything very impressive at all, since it's the Westlakes (but not the Starks, mind you, which are trade paperbacks), John D. MacDonalds, and Reginald Hills that fit best in my purse.
Over at Tingle Alley, Carrie has come up with a few delicious anecdotes about demonstrative reading gone wrong. Herein you'll find the memorable lament "Oh no, you’re one of those girls who walk around reading Cortázar."
Meanwhile, one correspondent prefers to keep his reading choices to himself, thank you very much:
I've never been comfortable reading in public. This is probably a relic of growing up around kids who'd beat up any poindexter seen with a book. It probably also has something to do with my insecurity, worrying that some hoity-toity type will spy my reading material and reveal my inferior taste for everyone to see.
Another reader brings up a point that never occurred to me: perhaps that weathered Celine edition I thought so becoming at 17 was actually screaming "Unapproachable!" and even looked, to some blinkered eyes, downright unfeminine:
I used to engage in much demonstrative reading in Ann Arbor coffee shops, though often because I was actually reading what I wanted (not because I picked up The American Scholar or Far Eastern Economic Review just to seem cool). Finally (though this didn't stop me) a female classmate told me that I'd never get a date because I looked too smart and scared guys away. Well, I didn't get many dates then with or without the books so I just kept on reading and married an equally nerdy reader.
This all sounds so healthy and reasonable, I'm starting to think the category of demonstrative reading needs to be subdivided into the innocent and the guilty. A friend here in Chicago is sharp and shameless in dissecting the latter:
I'm a total repeat offender. I think it's one of those fantasies that is kind of irresistible to the bookish— so seductive because we can fool ourselves into thinking that our act of preening is instead the result of a kind of self-absorption that we (and, I think we imagine, the person who discovers or recognizes or understands us) would see as noble, as opposed to all the vulgar acts of self-absorptive display that the intellectually unwashed engage in at the gym, the lake front, or some wretched nightclub. I remember during my second year of grad school looking for a book at Barnes & Noble, and they had set up this mini Starbuxian coffee-shop next to the philosophy section, and I remember being genuinely offended (!) when seeing this yuppie guy sitting at a table in horn-rims and a black turtleneck (heh—this was still the early 90s) thumbing through some Barthes while sipping his latte-cappuccino. The nerve! Co-opting the pose I was suffering through graduate school to earn. Of course I was feeling these things totally unironically and with an embarrassing lack of self awareness.
Read three John Grishams and a Da Vinci Code on the steps of the AIC and your sins will be forgiven, darling.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, January 19, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Unseparated at birth
When you have an unusual last name—in my case, extremely unusual—it's always startling to stumble across it in print and realize that the party in question isn't you. This has been happening quite a bit in recent days, so I thought perhaps I should explain that I am not Zephyr Teachout, nor have I had anything to say, in print or out, regarding Daily Kos’ relationship with the Howard Dean campaign, in which Zephyr played a prominent and widely reported role. Nor will I. Ever. You can count on it. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, visit Zephyr’s blog for details.)
To be sure, I’ve always wanted to meet Zephyr, with whom I exchanged friendly e-mails around the time that her name first started popping up in news reports about the Dean campaign. She's obviously very smart and very nice, and we concluded that we must be related—I mean, how could two Teachouts not be related? I hope our paths cross someday.
Nevertheless, she’s not me, nor am I her.
posted by terryteachout @ Wednesday, January 19, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"Magic is directed almost entirely to men, you know. And it's a return for them to boyhood, childhood. It has nothing to do with women, who hate it—it irritates them. They don't like to be fooled. And men do."
Orson Welles (quoted in David Thomson, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles)
posted by terryteachout @ Wednesday, January 19, 2005 | Permanent
link | Tuesday, January 18, 2005
TT: New face of 2005
I just got back from the Algonquin Hotel, where Jessica Molaskey
made her Oak Room debut earlier this evening. She tore the joint up. It was the best debut I’ve seen there since Diana Krall first played the Algonquin eight years ago, and one of the strongest and most polished cabaret sets I’ve ever seen.
Molaskey is a Broadway baby (Crazy for You, Dream) who read the writing on the wall when good parts for old-fashioned musical-comedy actors started drying up in the late Nineties. Instead of cursing the looming darkness, she retrofitted herself as a cabaret singer with the help of her husband, the jazz singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli. She started off by making guest appearances on his New York gigs, and they began to collaborate in the recording studio (they were already writing excellent songs together—she has an enviable knack for witty wordplay). At first she had trouble accustoming herself to the intimate scale of cabaret, a problem she shared with most Broadway performers who’ve tried to make the switch. My guess is that she found it intimidating. But somewhere along the line she figured out how to play to a small, attentive crowd, and the payoff came tonight.
Molaskey's soft-edged bass-flute voice would be easy on the ears even if she didn’t have such a deft way with words. In fact, she sings like the smart actor she is, making the most of a lyric without ever succumbing to the temptation to make a meal of it. Instead, all is subtlety: a wry smile here, an arched eyebrow there, just enough between-song patter to grease the audience’s wheels, and everywhere an enveloping, inviting warmth that lights up her fetching jolie-laide features and makes them shimmer. As of now, I’d say she’s got the sexy-girl-next-door market sewed up tight. Being the fine songwriter she is, it stands to reason that she really knows how to pick songs, and tonight’s set was a savvy blend of the time-tested (“Make Believe”) and the unexpected (“Stepsisters’ Lament”). Not surprisingly, she likes a good medley: I loved the way she dropped a pinch of “Big Spender” into “Hey, Look Me Over." As for the duet version of Stephen Sondheim’s “Getting Married Today” and Jon Hendricks’ “Cloudburst” that she sang with husband John, all I can say is…wow. Octuple wow.
For the most part, Pizzarelli stuck to the role of loyal sideman, teaming up with his brother Martin on bass and the superlative Larry Goldings on piano to provide the kind of smooth, swinging, utterly assured support of which most cabaret singers can only dream in vain. A show-stopping entertainer in his own right, he scrupulously refrained from scene-stealing, and it was wonderful to see the pride on his face as he watched his wife sashay through the show without dropping a stitch.
If I sound excited, it’s because the buzz of Molaskey’s debut hasn’t yet worn off. I'm still flying. The good news is that you don’t have to take my word for it, since most of the songs she sang are on her latest CD, Make Believe. Give it a spin. If listening to Make Believe doesn’t make you want to come down to the Oak Room and behold the birth of a new cabaret star, maybe you need to get your batteries charged. Or changed.
* * *
Jessica Molaskey is at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel through Saturday, Jan. 29. The music starts at nine o’clock, with an 11:30 show added on Fridays and Saturdays.
For more information, go here.
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TT: Inquiring minds
I recently noticed in our referral log that somebody had been sent to “About Last Night” as a result of searching Google for “terry + teachout + gay.” Curious as to what else this anonymous investigator succeeded in turning up, I clicked through to the search results and saw…well, not much. Outside of my review of Mystic River (in which I mentioned Marcia Gay Harden) and a passing reference to Cole Porter’s The Gay Divorce, I found only coincidental juxtapositions of those three words that happened to pop up on the same URL. If someone out there in cyberspace was longing for the lowdown on my private life, I fear the party in question came up empty-handed.
I can’t help but wonder what prompted this mysterious electronic inquiry. Might it have been an uncomfortable reader who, puzzled by my consistent failure to conform to his firmly settled politico-aesthetic preconceptions, longed to stuff me into a more reassuring pigeonhole? Or was he merely looking to add an item or two to a file somewhere or other? In either case, my suggestion is simple: ask Our Girl. She knows all my secrets. (So do the FBI and the White House, but they're not telling.)
Alas, anyone who knows me more than casually would be likely to dissolve into helpless giggles if asked such a question. My sexual preferences are laughably self-evident, not to mention single-minded, though I doubt you could figure them out by administering a cultural questionnaire via e-mail. I mean, what kind of weirdo likes Rio Bravo and Pacific Overtures? Or Mark Morris and the Louvin Brothers? (Well, Mark does, but then he's really weird.)
The point being, of course, that it simply doesn’t matter, nor should it (unless you’re going out on a date with me, in which case it’s highly relevant). I don’t put all of myself on this blog, or into my published writings, but the part I exhibit in public is absolutely, unequivocally the real right thing. I am, in short, what I seem to be, and if you don’t think it adds up, let that be a lesson to you: the only way to stuff a human being into a pigeonhole is to cut off pieces until he fits.
UPDATE: I came back from lunch to find a new search in the referral log: "terry + teachout + claims + he + isn't + gay." Oh, puh-leeze.
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TT: Snapshot
Overheard:
HE: I want somebody to love me.
SHE: I want somebody to pay me.
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TT: Did you ever have one of these days?
On Saturday morning I sat down at my desk and started writing my Louis Armstrong biography. By mid-afternoon I'd finished drafting the 850-word preface. I think it’s good, and so did several friends to whom I sent the paragraph I liked best. Then I broke down the main events and transition points of Armstrong’s life story into an eight-chapter outline, using fragments from Armstrong’s own writings for chapter titles (just as I did with The Skeptic).
Feeling that I’d done enough for one day, I shut up my iBook and took a cab to the opening of the Jane Freilicher retrospective currently on view at Tibor de Nagy Gallery. I was joined by a friend who knows his way around the art world, and when we arrived he said to me, “Would you like to meet Jane?” She's one of my favorite painters—one of her prints is in the Teachout Museum—so naturally I said yes. My friend took me up to Freilicher and made the introduction, and she shook my hand and said, “Oh, yes, I know who you are—I really liked your Balanchine book.” Had there been an open window handy, I would have jumped out of it and floated all the way down to Park Avenue.
Instead, I descended to the street via conventional means, had fondue with friends at La Bonne Soupe, then strolled over to Zankel Hall, the small auditorium beneath Carnegie Hall, where Chris Thile, the stupefyingly virtuosic mandolin player of Nickel Creek, was giving a duet recital in the company of Edgar Meyer, the best bass player of any kind in the known universe. The music
they played together was by turns complex, direct, funky, pensive, and ecstatic, and the two of them were in such touchingly high spirits that I was forcibly reminded of why it is that we speak of playing music.
After the second number, Chris looked at the audience, his mouth a perfect O of bliss, and shouted, “Carnegie…freaking…Hall!” The crowd exploded in laughter and cheers.
I went straight home from there but couldn’t sleep for sheer happiness, so I stayed up and wrote until two in the morning. It was an amazing day, but in a way the most amazing thing about it was that it wasn’t an especially unusual day. I have days like that all the time—maybe not quite that showstoppingly fine, but often pretty damn close.
How lucky am I? You don’t have to tell me. I soooo know.
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TT: Elsewhere
• Mr. Alicublog goes to the movies:
Also revisited Kubrick's Lolita. Like Wilder in Kiss Me, Stupid, Kubrick was doggedly exploring the terrain of 60s sex comedy; unlike Wilder, he has no skill at sex comedy of any sort -- the best male sex-comedians dance at the edge of misogyny, whereas Kubrick had long since progressed from misogyny to misanthropy. I can see why he was attracted to Humbert's obsession, but having to deal with the female half of the equation appears to have baffled him: The moments of sympathy for Charlotte Haze seem tacked on like guilty afterthoughts and Sue Lyon is practically exterminated as Lolita -- only her body and brash tone survive….
Yes, totally. (I don’t like Stanley Kubrick at all, by the way. I, too, watched Lolita on cable the other night, but only to wallow in James Mason's dark-brown, Yorkshire-tinged accent. I can't think of a Hollywood voice I like better, male or female.)
• The ever-satisfying Ms. Household Opera goes to the annual Modern Language Association convention and breathes a sigh of relief at having resumed her civilian status:
But well before the end of it, I was thanking multiple deities that I will never again have to write in the machete mode of criticism. By this I mean the kind of literature scholarship that frames all its main points as a demolition of everyone else's main points, like mowing down those around you by swinging a machete around. In graduate school it didn't take me long to tire of academic writing in which the argument was preceded by hatchet-jobs on the prior work of Professors X, Y, and Z; I hated writing like that even more. Hearing it again from the lips of senior scholars, some of whom posed their entire talks as point-by-point refutations of someone else's article, reminded me of everything that put me off the idea of writing the sorts of things one gets tenure for. At one point, I had the odd feeling that I was watching a large group of people standing on a tiny patch of ground, elbowing and jostling each other for more space, all trying to outshout each other.
No wonder I so often used to feel like no matter how hard I worked, I could never be good enough. Blargh. I don't miss it one little bit….
Blargh. Is that better or worse than arrgh?
• Comes now The Little Professor, that mysterious but nonetheless self-evidently cool non-civilian Victorianist, with a link to an almanac-worthy remark by Colin Burrow, followed by reflections thereon. The quote:
“Shakespeare may or may not have been Catholic, but generally if a document that sounds too good to be true is found exactly where you’d hope to find it and then goes missing in mysterious circumstances it is indeed too good to be true.”
Sad but true, as any halfway decent biographer (or journalist! or journalist!) can tell you.
• An unknown visitor to the new MoMA recently damaged Anne Truitt’s “Catawba,” which is no longer on display. Tyler has the scoop, plus links. (Scroll up and down for more.)
• Mr. Decline and Fall, an American living in Iraq, keeps his ears open:
What do they listen to? Let's just say that there's very little sense of "cool" or "trendy" in their listening habits. One can't expect people who have spent their lives living under Saddam's thumb to have any real sense of hipster do's and don't's, but even those who have lived in America for a while and have come back here to work as linguists can almost be relied upon to be fans of Celine Dion. It's actually gotten to the point where as soon as a discussion of music begins, I say to the nearest Arab, "You like Celine Dion, don't you?" They always reply in the affirmative.
On some level this completely un-self-conscious appreciation of melody and the human voice is refreshing in a world where you are sometimes identified by your music preference. When someone says they like Billy Ray Cyrus or DMX or Franz Ferdinand or Marilyn Manson, we assume that tells us something about them. Unaware of the pitfalls of music-as-identity, these folks just listen to what they enjoy. On the other hand, I can't shake the thought that Western Music consists in their eyes of nothing but insipid crap….
Yesterday I was getting an Arabic lesson from a local national friend when he looked across my desk and saw the new Nirvana box set. I explained, through words and gestures, about Nirvana's music and Kurt Cobain's untimely demise and concluded very quickly that he would not be able to appreciate what an earth-shattering event "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was, so I showed him my iPod. I dialed up Ella Fitgerald singing "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," but he didn't like the fact that he couldn't understand the words. So I let him listed to Edith Piaf singing "La Vie en Rose" with the thought that if neither of us knew what was going on lyrically we'd be on the same page. No dice: "Too old," he said.
Then I decided to try an instrumental selection: one of J.S. Bach's Violin Concertos, played by Hilary Hahn. He had never heard anything like it before. For a moment I pondered the stark implications of a culture that had heard Yanni but not Mozart, Celine Dion but not Ella Fitgerald, Country but not Blues. "This is a much bigger clash of cultures than I had ever imagined," I heard myself say. But the look on his face as he struggled to turn the volume up on that exquisite music made it all better….
I sure hope somebody out there tells Hilary Hahn about this posting. (You may need to scroll down a bit to find it, by the way.)
• Speaking of great moments in Western culture, Mr. From the Floor recently paid a visit to the “Mona Lisa”:
The point of seeing the piece, for almost all visitors, is to say that they have seen it. Tourists don’t really go to the Louvre to look at the Mona Lisa. They go so that when they return home they can tell friends that they saw the painting.
Those of us who spend time looking at and writing about art tend to be condescending toward the masses that gather in front of da Vinci’s painting—looking, as they do, to the work to provide validation for their trip to Paris.
Unfortunately, though, many of us do the same. Reading through top ten list after top ten list this month in both the print media and around the blogosphere has made me realize that too many art writers neglect seeing exhibitions in their haste to prepare for saying that they have seen them….
Oh, yes. Yes-and-a-half.
• Lastly, Lileks reflects on some non-political aspects of the great red-blue divide:
I love some bustle. I prefer to commute to the bustle, however, not be embustled 24-7. Myriad options are nice, but I suspect that 84% of these options consist of “ethnic food, readily available,” and the other 12% are made up of museums and concerts most urban dwellers rarely have time to attend.
But at least they’re there if you want them! In any case, it’s somehow flattering to know you live in a place where someone, right now, is setting up an art installation that forces us to rethink the way we think about something. Anything. Except the historical failure of art installations to make anyone rethink about anything, ever….
Or you get exhilarated, depending on your mood and temperament, or depending on something as simple and unique as turning a corner in Manhattan during the blue hour, looking through a store window into a salon, heading up the sidewalk with the traffic streaming the other way, forty stories of lights rising up on either side, and thinking: nowhere else but here, and here I am. Having lived on the East Coast, I can see why some people love it. And I understand why I didn’t, in the end. At some point in your life you may think I'd prefer a little less public urination, if I might. The fact that some prefer the Big City strikes me as utterly unremarkable, and I’d bet that most people in Red states don’t think much about why Blue staters like to live in concentrated urban centers. Why? Because they don’t care. They know that the big cities have advantages the rural areas lack, but they’re not that important to them, and they don’t worry about what they’re missing. If they do, then they move….
Speaking as one who did—but continues to retain his home ties—I’d say this is exactly right.
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TT: Almanac
"'The so-called conscientiousness of the great majority of painters is nothing but perfection in the art of boring. If it were possible, these fellows would labor with equal care over the backs of their pictures."
Eugène Delacroix, journal entry (July 18, 1850)
| Monday, January 17, 2005
TT: A voice from the past
I don’t mind admitting that it shook me to receive an e-mail the other day whose return address was NancyLaMott@aol.com. Even though it didn't really come from beyond the grave, it had something of the same disorienting impact, if only for a moment.
Here’s what it said:
Midder Music Records is thrilled to announce the release of a brand-new Nancy LaMott CD, “Nancy LaMott: Live at Tavern on the Green,” the first new Nancy LaMott release in eight years.
Recorded live at Nancy’s last engagement at Tavern on the Green, just seven weeks before her untimely death, this CD is filled with radiant, joyful, gorgeously sung performances, as well as charming, funny, often touching patter.
Featuring some of your favorite Nancy LaMott standards plus many songs you’ve never heard her sing on CD before, this CD captures, for all time, the magic that was Nancy live.
SPECIAL OFFER!
CD’s don’t hit the stores until February 1, but you can order them online
right now at a special price, by going to nancylamott.com.
Order "Nancy LaMott: Live at Tavern on the Green,” or any of Nancy’s other six CD’s (they’re all being re-released) before February 1, and pay only $13.98 plus shipping and handling (a $3.00 discount).
Offer good until February 1 only.
Nancy’s back at last! SPREAD THE WORD!
Midder Music sent me an advance copy of Live at Tavern on the Green last week. At first I was reluctant to listen to it—afraid, really. I was in the audience when it was taped, in October of 1995, shortly after Nancy told me that the cancer for which she was being treated had spread to her liver. I knew as I watched her perform that she might not live much longer, though I was doing my best not to think about it any more than I could help. She knew, too, and the songs she chose to sing that night would have given her secret away to anyone who was paying attention: “The People That You Never Get to Love.” “Sailin’ On.” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.” “The Promise (I’ll Never Say Goodbye).” Not that you would have guessed it from the open-hearted, uninhibited way she sang them, the same way she sang everything, as if there wouldn’t be any more tomorrows. Only this time there really weren't: I had Thanksgiving dinner with Nancy and her fiancé three weeks later, and the next time I saw her was on her deathbed.
Six years went by before I could bear to listen to any of her records again. (How she would have hated that!) Even now I couldn’t begin to imagine what it would feel like to hear how her singing voice sounded on the last night I heard it in person. But I finally got up the nerve to put on Live at Tavern on the Green, and like so many of the things we dread most, it turned out to be not nearly so hurtful as I’d feared.
Of course I cried—a lot—but I smiled, too, both at the songs and at her unpretentious between-song patter. She told jokes. She talked about having finally met "the someone" (it was Pete Zapp, the man she married on the night she died). She behaved as though everyone in the Chestnut Room were an intimate friend. That was her way: it was part of her charm, on stage and off. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten how sweet and funny she was, but so many years had slipped away that I’d forgotten exactly how it felt to sit across a restaurant table from her after the ballet, chattering happily about nothing in particular, or to pick up the phone and hear her say “Hi, it’s LaMottski!” Those memories had faded, as all memories must, yet all at once they became shiny new.
She sang beautifully on that crisp October night—you would have had to know her very, very well to realize that her strength was fading fast, or that she was wearing a wig to hide her baldness—and every song she sang brings back a separate memory. I listened to “Waters of March” and remembered what fits the complicated lyrics used to give her. (I’d seen her drop the ball completely at the Algonquin a few months earlier, not long before she went into the hospital for chemotherapy. Our Girl was there, too, and I'm sure she remembers how I all but fell on the floor laughing as poor Nancy fumbled helplessly, and hopelessly, for the right words.) I listened to “I Got the Sun in the Morning” and remembered the long, blissful day we spent together in a recording studio in Astoria as she laid down the vocal tracks for her final album. I listened to her introduce the encore, James Taylor’s “Secret O’ Life,” with the same line she always used, always to the same infallible effect: “Relax, this is cabaret—there’s always an encore!” As that last song spun to a close, I thought, Oh, God, I guess I’ll always miss her, each and every day, all the days of my life.
I’m not very objective when it comes to Nancy—I loved her too much for that—but I can tell you that Live at Tavern on the Green is a good and representative example of her live shows. If you were lucky enough to hear her in a club, it’ll remind you of what she sounded like, and if you weren't, it’ll show you what you missed. And if you’ve never heard her at all, you’ll hear what I had in mind when I wrote these words about her, nine long years ago:
What I heard…was a warm, husky mezzo-soprano voice that seemed twice as big as the woman in whom it was housed; a vivid yet unaffected way with lyrics; and a quality at once sensuous and achingly idealistic. Later, after I had met Nancy, I would write that her singing sounded "as if the girl next door had snuck out at two a.m. to make a little whoopee with her steady boyfriend," a description that delighted her no end.
How glad I am to hear my friend's voice once more.
* * *
To place an advance order for Live at Tavern on the Green, or any of Nancy LaMott’s other CDs, go here.
Tell your friends—all of them. Spread the word.
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TT: Almanac
"Hence the despotic and all-absorbing power of art, as also its astonishing power of soothing: it frees from every human care, it establishes the artifex, artist or artisan, in a world apart, cloistered, defined and absolute, in which to devote all the strength and intelligence of his manhood to the service of the thing which he is making. This is true of every art; the ennui of living and willing ceases on the threshold of every studio or workshop."
Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism
| Saturday, January 24, 2004
TT: Off duty
A reader writes:
You have indicated that you delight in the works of Patrick O'Brian. Are you also a fan of P.G. Wodehouse? E.F. Benson? Saki? R. F.
Delderfield?
When the world is getting you down, and you want total comfort reading, who or what do you turn to?
I asked this question at a gathering of friends this weekend and half the people there said "Winnie The Pooh". For me, it's either Arthur Ransome (of "Swallows & Amazons" fame - a must read, must must read! "Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might have been!") or children's books I remember fondly.
This is a wonderful question, one nobody has ever asked me, so I’m answering it fresh, straight off the top of my head. I like Saki well enough but have never been able to connect with Benson, and I’ve never read anything by Delderfield. When I feel the need for "total comfort reading" (a nice phrase), I typically turn to
(1) O’Brian, whose Aubrey/Maturin novels I just finished rereading in their entirety
(2) Wodehouse, usually the Jeeves novels (I don’t like the short stories nearly as much)
(3) Anthony Trollope
(4) Raymond Chandler
(5) Rex Stout
(6) Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder and Parker crime novels (the latter are written under the pseudonym "Richard Stark")
(7) William Haggard’s Colonel Russell political thrillers—virtually unknown in this country, alas, but I own them all
(8) Barbara Pym
(9) Jon Hassler
(10) Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time
In addition, I find it relaxing to revisit familiar books about music—preferably biographies. I’ve no idea why.
This is not to say, by the way, that I necessarily view these writers as somehow unserious. Stout and Westlake, yes—they’re pure entertainers, albeit of a high class—but Haggard’s cold-eyed view of the world is anything but frivolous, while the others (including Chandler and Wodehouse) can certainly stand up to close critical scrutiny.
What about you, OGIC? Which books reset your overheated brain to a nice mild simmer?
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TT: Almanac
"Never have men had so many reasons to cease killing one another. Never have they had so many reasons to feel they are joined together in one great enterprise. I do not conclude that the age of universal history will be peaceful. We know that man is a reasonable being. But men?"
Raymond Aron, "The Dawn of Universal History"
| Friday, January 23, 2004
TT: Waltzing in the Windy City
In this morning’s Wall Street Journal I write about Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music:
In Gary Griffin’s production, "A Little Night Music" is sung by actors, played on an all-but-bare thrust stage in a smallish house, and accompanied by a 14-piece orchestra. Lush it isn’t, but the gain in intimacy almost completely offsets the musical losses. Though some of the cast members have unappealing voices, they can all act, and Kevin Gudahl, who plays Fredrik Egerman (the role created on Broadway by Len Cariou), wears both hats with apparently effortless flair. Jenny Powers is every bit as good as Petra, the sexy maid—I loved the way she sang "The Miller’s Son," the best song in the show—and Michael Cerveris struts about quite nicely as Count Carl-Magnus, who expects absolute fidelity from his long-suffering wife Charlotte (Samantha Spiro) despite his absolute unwillingness to reciprocate….
I wrote enthusastically in this space two weeks ago about Chicago Shakespeare’s recent production of "Rose Rage," Edward Hall’s single-evening version of Shakespeare’s "Henry VI." That one company should have been simultaneously presenting so fine a staging of "A Little Night Music" seems to me just about miraculous. I’d always heard that the Windy City was a class-A theater town, but I didn’t know it was home to so versatile a resident troupe. I hope Stephen Sondheim makes a point of coming to see this "Night Music," which runs through February 15. I moved to Manhattan a decade after the original Broadway production, but I can’t imagine it having been more effective than this one. Like "Rose Rage," it’s good enough to play New York without a tweak.
I have equally enthusiastic things to say about the songs and singing of Amanda Green:
Amanda Green has yet to bring a show to Broadway, but it isn’t for lack of trying—or talent. She sang a batch of her songs last Friday at the Ars Nova Theater, assisted by a flying squadron of musical-comedy and cabaret colleagues, and I laughed so hard I thought I’d split a rib.
Ms. Green, who wrote the lyrics for "For the Love of Tiffany," one of the high points of last summer’s New York International Fringe Festival, specializes in murderously witty songs that crackle with Sondheim-style wordplay, transposed into a postmodern key. (Can you imagine the composer of "Passion" turning out a Bruce Springsteen parody?) Nor is she afraid to stick a red-hot poker into her own heart: "If You Leave Me, Can I Come, Too?" is "funny" like a Dorothy Parker suicide note….
No link, so run—don’t walk—to the nearest newsstand, pony up $1 for a copy of this morning’s Journal, turn to the "Weekend Journal" section, and read the rest of what I wrote, plus other good things written by my fellow Journal-ists.
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TT: Centennial
Last night I went to the New York State Theater to watch New York City Ballet dance Apollo, Prodigal Son, and Serenade on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Balanchine. It was bitterly cold in Manhattan, but the house was still full of familiar faces: balletomanes and critics, aging ballerinas and budding bunheads, old friends of Balanchine and young choreographers looking for inspiration. Though I’d seen all three ballets danced the week before, I couldn’t imagine staying home. I've witnessed most of the great occasions of state since Balanchine’s death—the company’s 50th-anniversary celebration, Suzanne Farrell’s last Vienna Waltzes and Jerome Robbins’ last bow, the memorial services for Robbins and Tanaquil Le Clercq, Balanchine's fourth wife—and so I thought it right to be on hand to celebrate the birthday of the man who opened my eyes to ballet 17 years ago.
On paper, it was just another repertory program, the kind that rarely inspires anything remotely approaching a sense of occasion nowadays, but no sooner did the lights go down than I knew something was different. The orchestra launched into the fanfare-like introduction to Apollo, the curtain flew up to reveal Nikolaj Hübbe standing at center stage in front of a Balanchine-blue cyclorama, and all at once I felt my skin prickle. As Hübbe strummed the fake lyre he held in his hands, I thought of all the times Balanchine told his dancers that he’d been talking to Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky the night before. Such fanciful tales had always made me smile, but for the first time I had an inkling of what he meant. The evening was full of uncanny encounters and events: the unseen message that Calliope scribbles in her hand and shows to Apollo, the ominous flapping of the Dark Angel’s wings at the end of Serenade, the terrible moment when a mob of bald-headed goons strips the Prodigal Son naked, their hands skittering over his limp body like the paws of greedy mice. All had sprung from the mind of the genius we were there to honor.
It was one of those nights when past and present are hooked together like the cars of a speeding train. The company Balanchine had founded was performing his three oldest surviving ballets in the house he built. Apollo was danced in the cruelly abridged revised version of 1980, shorn of its prelude, décor, birth scene, and secondary characters, but Prodigal Son looked much the same way it did on the stage of the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in 1929, right down to Georges Rouault’s thickly brushed backdrops. The dancers on stage included Darci Kistler, Balanchine’s last protégée, now married to Peter Martins, NYCB's ballet master in chief, and Kyra Nichols, who in the hard years since Balanchine’s death has come to embody the poised, transparent purity of which he dreamed his whole life long. An old man sitting next to me reminisced out loud about seeing Edward Villella dance the Prodigal Son, and I in turn remembered my first Serenade, performed by Dance Theatre of Harlem at City Center, where I sat in the cheapest seats in the highest balcony, wondering if there could possibly be anything in the world half so beautiful.
Miniature bottles of Russian vodka were handed out in the second intermission, and after the final bow was taken, Martins and Barbara Horgan, the head of the Balanchine Trust, came on stage to lead us in a birthday toast to the man of the hour. "What he gave us," Martins said, "is all about love. There are young dancers on this stage who were not born when Mr. B died, and they love him." We raised our plastic glasses, the orchestra thundered out a fanfare, and balloons dropped from the fifth ring. As we filed out, the old man who remembered Villella shook a finger in my face. "Your grandchildren will see these ballets," he said.
And will they? If precedent is any indication, the odds are discouraging. Only a handful of pre-modern ballets continue to be danced in their original form, and fewer still can be taken seriously as major works of art. By and large, 19th-century ballet is remembered more for its music than its steps, just as one inevitably wonders about the extent to which choreography per se was responsible for Serge Diaghilev’s triumphs. Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, Nijinska: all made dances for Diaghilev that set the tongues of the world to wagging, most of which are now half remembered or wholly forgotten. We know more about the Ballets Russes’ costumes than its choreography.
Why, then, should Balanchine be different? He himself affected to believe that his ballets would not long outlive him, at least not in any recognizable form. "When I die," he told Rudolf Nureyev at the end of his life, "everything should vanish. A new person should come and impose his own things." But he also founded New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet, which exist to preserve authentic versions of his ballets and teach the techniques necessary to dance them idiomatically. And though Balanchine was not the first choreographer to start a company or a school, what sets him apart is the existence of a worldwide network of other institutions and individuals whose purpose is to disseminate his ballets as widely as possible, and to give them a permanent life in repertory. No other choreographer has attracted so many followers, and no other choreographic oeuvre has been the subject of so thoroughgoing and committed an attempt at long-term preservation.
The many "Balanchine companies" led by alumni of New York City Ballet are not the only important dance companies in America, but their common emphasis on Balanchine, and the consistently high quality with which they stage his ballets, is a development of near-unprecedented significance, a sign that the Balanchine style may be evolving into a lingua franca for ballet in the 21st century, just as the Franco-Russian style of classic ballet provided a firm foundation on which the tradition-steeped Balanchine was able to build his neoclassical idiom. It helps, of course, that most of his dances are well suited to the restrictive circumstances under which repertory ballet is presented in this country. A piece like Concerto Barocco, for example, has no set and no costumes—it is danced in simple practice clothes—making it relatively cheap to produce. Nor does the plotless Barocco require elaborate direction to make its effect: it contains no significant glances, no labyrinthine subtexts, just music and steps. And unlike the myriad dialects of modern dance, the steps of classical ballet are for all intents a universal language. Thus Balanchine’s ballets, radically innovative though they are, can be executed by any reasonably proficient classical company. "You know, these are my ballets," he told Rosemary Dunleavy, New York City Ballet’s ballet mistress. "In the years to come they will be rehearsed by other people. They will be danced by other people. But no matter what, they are still my ballets."
I wish I could speak with absolute certainty about the future of his ballets, but the jury of posterity is still out. That they ought to live and flourish, however, seems to me beyond question. After spending countless hours looking at dozens of them, I have come to believe that George Balanchine was not merely the greatest ballet choreographer of the 20th century, but the only one to have created a body of work that deserves to be remembered in the same way we remember the work of Stravinsky or Matisse. And while I’m sure the balletomanes of 1929 felt the same way about the repertory of the Ballets Russes, Balanchine’s lean, stripped-down dances, unlike Diaghilev’s evanescent spectacles, were built to last. This is not to say they can thrive in a vacuum, but the world of ballet is full of talented men and women determined to make sure that Apollo, Serenade, and Prodigal Son last at least as long as The Rite of Spring or The Red Studio. Which is why I wouldn’t be at all surprised if my grandchildren see them—and their grandchildren, too.
| Thursday, January 22, 2004
OGIC: Fortune cookie
"It is still expected, though perhaps people are ashamed to say it, that a production which is after all only a 'make-believe' (for what else is a 'story'?) shall be in some degree apologetic—shall renounce the pretension of attempting really to represent life. This, of course, any sensible, wide-awake story declines to do, for it quickly perceives that the tolerance granted to it on such a condition is only an attempt to stifle it disguised in the form of generosity."
Henry James, "The Art of Fiction"
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, January 22, 2004 | Permanent
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OGIC: Unfit to print
Now that I have a bit of a breather, a few more words on the Poynter piece I linked to in haste this morning. To be truthful, while I didn't like the news that the NYTBR will be moving away from fiction, I couldn't muster a lot of outrage about it either. For a while now, I've found myself more interested in noting which books they assign than in reading the reviews themselves. The reviews are sometimes as dull as reputed (with notable exceptions, of course). In addition to all the usual suspects listed to the right, I've been gravitating toward the Washington Post and Atlantic Monthly for reviews that I actually read. (Check out Michael Dirda's fun, hyper take on the new Elmore Leonard this week.)
So it's not as though my reading habits are going to take a big hit even if the NYTBR banishes fiction reviews from their pages altogether. Yet the blinkered reasoning proffered by Bill Keller rankles. First there's his general blithe condescension toward novels, apparently based on an assumption that while nonfiction is serious, fiction is just playing around. Even if Bill Keller really thinks this, it astonishes me that he'd say it, let alone that the Times would base editorial policy on it. Keller may not get it, but a man in his position should be smart enough to at least suspect that his disinterest in a particular form for expressing ideas is a personal blind spot.
Here are the statements that really give Keller away: "The most compelling ideas tend to be in the non-fiction world," and "Because we are a newspaper, we should be more skewed toward non-fiction." If Keller wants to make the Book Review simply an arm of the newsroom, then I suppose that's his perogative. But he doesn't say that. He speaks on two assumptions that are far from universally accepted: 1) that fiction is never a serious representation of the world, and 2) that only "hard" news is news. If all news is hard news, though, why maintain the separate sphere of a book review at all? Or an arts section? If the NYT's television ads are any indication, the paper's "soft" content is integral to attracting its national readership.
It's ironic that these statements would emerge from the paper of record only a few days after Terry made this observation:
I was watching an old episode of What’s My Line?, my all-time favorite game show, earlier this evening.…This particular program must have originally aired in 1961 or 1962, because in introducing panelist Bennett Cerf, the president of Random House, Arlene Francis mentioned in passing that two of Cerf’s authors, William Faulkner and John O’Hara, had gotten good reviews in that morning’s papers.
On Tuesday it seemed quaint that a television talk show would acknowledge newspaper reviews of novels. By Friday it starts to seem quaint that newspapers would review them. You are excused for feeling a little bit dizzy.
When Keller assures readers that the Times will still cover major novelists like Updike and Roth, he leaves open the question of who will determine who is major. Of course this will happen elsewhere, and there's a case to be made that it's not happening at the Times now, but for a Times editor to wholly beg off of the mission of even participating in the public discussion that will adjudicate who is considered tomorrow's major talents—well, that's breathtaking.
A couple of weeks ago I discussed a mission statement of sorts that appears in the Atlantic's back of the book this month. This is part of that statement:
Although in some ways constraining, discrimination also liberates us. We assume that our readers look to this section as a critical organ rather than a news source—which means that unlike, say, The New York Times Book Review, we don't have to cover the waterfront.
Suddenly everyone in the print media seems to be running headlong from what you might think would be the enviable task of shaping cultural taste. Lit bloggers, carry on.
UPDATE: Nathalie at Cup of Chicha is excellent on this story:
Good thinking. Also: stop covering narrative films. Only review documentaries. And dance or theatre? Why discuss performances when you could devote more space to politics?
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, January 22, 2004 | Permanent
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TT: Enough already
I just finished writing my second book review of the day. Time for a nap, or maybe two naps.
See you tomorrow, unless something staggering happens tonight at the New York State Theatre. You're in good hands with Our Girl.
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TT: Guest shot
I just finished writing my first book review of the day, and decided to take a few minutes off and pay you a visit, if only to make note of this posting from Return of the Reluctant, who’s covering a film noir festival in San Francisco:
I am now madly in love with Liz Scott.
Whatever her thespic limitations, whatever the silly motivations of her character, I don't care. Liz Scott now haunts my dreams and distracts me from my writing. All Liz Scott need do is turn her head and I will happily swoon. If God does not exist, it would be necessary to invent Liz Scott. Liz Scott is still alive. I will happily give blood for her. I will take a bullet for her. It is time for a cold shower. Film noir is dangerous.
I’m with you, buddy. For those who’ve never seen a Lizabeth Scott movie, take a look at Pitfall
and you’ll see what we mean. Was there anyone who summed up the film-noir nightmare vision of women-as-predators more completely and alluringly? I mean, I really like women—nearly all my friends are women—but if Liz Scott ever crooked a finger my way, I’d be one dead blogger before the sun came up. (Not that she ever would have, thank God—she worked the other side of the street.)
Don’t ask me what that says about my subconscious. I could tell you, but then I’d have to rat you out.
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TT: That's all, folks (for the m-m-moment)
Absolutely no more stuff from me today. I've got to write, dawn to dusk (a review of Thomas Mallon's Bandbox and another chunk of my George Balanchine book), then it's off to Lincoln Center to watch New York City Ballet dance an all-Balanchine program on the 100th anniversary of the birth of the master.
For now, I leave you in the tender hands of Our Girl in Chicago, who may or may not have something on her mind. And even if she doesn't, there's plenty of stuff to read. I'll be back tomorrow with my weekly Wall Street Journal theater teaser, plus whatever else the spirit moves me to post.
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TT: Almanac
"That's all any of us are—amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else."
Charlie Chaplin, screenplay for Limelight
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