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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, October 27, 2006
TT: Don't go once, it's all bad
I review three shows in this morning’s Wall Street Journal drama column. Two are on Broadway—The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Butley—while the third, No Exit, is currently playing at Hartford Stage in Connecticut:
The buzz on “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” the new Twyla Tharp-Bob Dylan jukebox musical, was devastatingly negative. Such omens of impending doom are usually right, but I hoped for the best anyway. Mr. Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters of the postwar era and Ms. Tharp one of its most admired choreographers, so how bad could it be? Now I know: “The Times They Are A-Changin’” is so bad that it makes you forget how good the songs are....
Alan Bates won a Tony for his performance in the original production of “Butley,” which was by all accounts spectacularly memorable. Now Nathan Lane is starring in the first Broadway revival of Simon Gray’s harrowing 1971 play about a seedy, self-loathing professor of a certain age whose life is falling apart. I never saw Mr. Bates in “Butley,” whether on stage or in Harold Pinter’s 1974 film version, thus making it possible for me to view Mr. Lane with an innocent eye. It’s a show he’s wanted to do for years, so I’m sorry to say that his interpretation of the title role is an honorable failure….
Have you heard the one about three unhappy people locked in a small room for all eternity? Most theatergoers know the premise of “No Exit,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1940 play about life in hell, and can probably even quote its best-remembered line, “Hell is other people.” But “No Exit” is more talked about than performed—it hasn’t been seen on Broadway since 1946, when John Huston directed the American premiere—so it’s worth paying a visit to Hartford to see Jerry Mouawad’s wonderfully imaginative production….
No free link. To read the whole thing, go out and buy a copy of today’s morning's Journal, then turn to the “Weekend Journal” section. Better yet, go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you on-the-spot access to the complete text of my review, plus a plethora of other good pieces.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Friday, October 27, 2006 | Permanent
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TT: A challenge to Martin Scorsese
In my next “Sightings” column, to be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I take a look at Martin Scorsese’s recent announcement that he wants to devote himself to directing small-scale, low-budget films: “I think I am finding that when there are very big budgets there is less risk that can be taken.” Is there any possibility that he means what he says—and if so, is there any chance that he’ll be any good at it?
To find out, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal, where you’ll find my column in the “Pursuits” section.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Friday, October 27, 2006 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something."
George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Friday, October 27, 2006 | Permanent
link | Thursday, October 26, 2006
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 gave these shows favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal or on “About Last Night” when they opened. For more information, click on the title.
Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.
BROADWAY:
• A Chorus Line* (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)
• Heartbreak House* (drama, G/PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, extended through Dec. 17)
• Jay Johnson: The Two and Only (one-ventriloquist show, G/PG-13, a bit of strong language but otherwise family-friendly, 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 Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)
OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)
• Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (drama, R, adult subject matter and nudity, reviewed here, closes Dec. 9)
• Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)
CLOSING THIS WEEKEND:
• In Public (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Saturday)
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TT: Almanac
"Literature should never be at war."
George Bernard Shaw, letter to Henry Newbolt (July 25, 1920)
| Wednesday, October 25, 2006
TT: Elsewhere
Tomorrow I fly to the West Coast to see plays in Portland and Seattle, and I'm frighteningly busy preparing for the trip. (If you've trying to get in touch with me, please don't be surprised by unexpected delays—it's been a long time since I was this swamped.)
In lieu of original thought, here are some fugitive gleanings from the blogosphere:
• Ms. twang twang twang summarizes the ups and downs of her life as a professional harpist:
I have asked a tramp to hold my harp at 2am outside a casino while I clamber into my car boot to unjam it from the inside. I have been dressed as a fairy, a mermaid, a 1920s burlesque dancing girl complete with red sequinned cigarette holder, been asked to play topless (no, I didn't), been asked to wear a sailor's outfit (no, I didn't—although that was more because the orchestra requesting it wasn't supplying the gear, and I don't have a sailor's outfit hanging next to my long black), and played behind a screen in case I gave the 100 dining Arab men wrongful thoughts. I have done countless youth concerts in a variety of silly hats, although fortunately not a WW2 gasmask, which was once given to the principal double bass. I've done pubs, clubs, casinos, cruises, discos, orgies, supermarkets and public lavatories. I've also played in private lavatories, when no ground floor warm-up rooms have been arranged. I have performed My Heart Will Go On 75 times accompanied by bagpipes, kit and a Wurlitzer Organ—together.
Jeepers, how come that kind of stuff never happened to me when I played music?
• Ms. pretty dumb things has a bone to pick—but not her usual one:
In general, things don’t happen in real life as they do in movies. That palpable difference is, after all, one of the reasons why we love cinema. Our lives do not finish in a neat narrative moment that resolves as it fades to black. We do not, in general, experience our lives as a grand unfolding of plot points that crescendo-culminate in some grandiose happening, whether dramatic or comedic or both.
Rarely do we have that succinct pointed epiphany. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a love story, a war story, a family story or a personal story; the real defies any narrative framework, perhaps because rarely is anything in real life just one story.
Which is why cinematic reproductions of therapeutic moments give me a huge pain in the ass….
You’ll never guess where she goes from here.
• Mr. Anecdotal Evidence enunciates a credo:
In art, fortunately, one is not compelled to choose sides, one poet at the expense of another. Milosz and Larkin are not mutually exclusive loves. Aesthetic love is promiscuous without being unfaithful. I feel no compulsion to be rigorously consistent in matters of artistic taste. I can love Proust and Raymond Chandler, Schoenberg and Johnny Cash. Only in that sense, I think, is art democratic….
What he said (except for the part about Schoenberg).
• If you didn’t see this story in Publishers Weekly, read it right now. The subject is the decline of newspaper book reviewing:
With newspapers under increasing financial pressure, however, is it reasonable to expect them to give extensive coverage to an industry where they get relatively little support? Among the remaining Sunday review sections, only the New York Times Book Review receives a significant number of ads. The Washington Post Book World has seen very little publisher support throughout its history. "It's been a real problem," said Book World editor Marie Arana. The situation is much the same at the San Francisco Chronicle, where, said editor Phil Bronstein, the section gets few ads. "It gets harder and harder to justify something that has no ad support," said Bronstein….
That’s laying it on the line. Yikes.
• Meanwhile, Mr. Parabasis is concerned about the constricting cultural effects of copyright law:
I don't think an artist should have ownership of their work in the conventional sense of the term. I believe that art is a gift we give the world. Cheesy, I know, but think through the implications of the metaphor. When you give a gift, you don't own it anymore. The receiver of the gift owns it. So if art is a gift we give the world, the world owns that gift, not us.
Now I'm not saying people shouldn't be paid for their work. They should. They just perhaps shouldn't have as much control over what happens to it once it's out there in the world. Because as artists, the giving activity is the useful, helpful, growthful one. Having control over that gift once it's out there is selfish….
I know just what he’s talking about, and if I had time to weave it together with my recently published thoughts about YouTube, I would. Instead, I’ll let you connect the dots yourself.
• Mr. Lileks goes to a suburban party in Minneapolis and finds it reassuringly tame:
If this had been a Peter DeVries novel or Cheever story, someone—usually a failed but charming intellectual becalmed in the suburbs—would be canoodling with someone else’s wife in the kitchen, who responded to the classical allusions floating on the seducers winey breath with a sharp mocking retort that would end in a brisk cynical coupling seventy pages later. Sitting around the living room tonight I realized that the middle-aged overeducated vaguely alcoholic East-coast suburban adulterer is no longer the cultural archetype he used to be. Pour some Cutty on the curb for the dead homey. Or the dead homey-wrecker….
• Speaking of life in New Yorkerland, Ms. Emdashes has posted the latest edition of “Ask the Librarians,” her monthly Q-&-A with that magazine’s head librarians. As always, it’s a must.
• Finally, Ms. Tinkerty Tonk points to a site called How Many of Me that allows you to search the U.S. Census Bureau's database to find out how many people share your first and last names. It seems there are 586,439 Americans named Terry, 1,560 Teachouts, and three Terry Teachouts.
Where do my two namesakes live? Are we related? What do they do for a living? I wonder....
posted by terryteachout @ Wednesday, October 25, 2006 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"Without music we shall surely perish of drink, morphia, and all sorts of artificial exaggerations of the cruder delights of the senses."
George Bernard Shaw, "The Religion of the Pianoforte"
posted by terryteachout @ Wednesday, October 25, 2006 | Permanent
link | Tuesday, October 24, 2006
TT: The enemy of the good
Last Monday I paid a visit to the press view of Americans in Paris, 1860-1900, which opens today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a comfy, crowd-pleasing blockbuster exhibition that contains such familiar show-stoppers as Sargent’s Madame X and The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, Whistler’s Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, Eakins’ The Cello Player, and Cassatt’s The Tea, surrounded by a sea of competent canvases by turn-of-the-century American painters who went to Paris in their youth and learned their lessons well, sometimes quite wonderfully so.
Were “Americans in Paris” the only large-scale show currently on view at the Met, I have no doubt that it would be jammed with delighted viewers. But it happens that the museum is also playing host to From Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, a resplendent compendium of nearly two hundred paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir, Vlaminck, and Vuillard that passed at one time or another through the hands of the legendary French art dealer. After strolling through “Americans in Paris,” I slipped down the hall to take a peek at “From Cézanne to Picasso.” The Met is closed to the public on Mondays, so I had the show pretty much to myself. I found it absurdly excessive—no one can possibly take in that much great art—but staggering all the same.
Returning to “Americans in Paris” after spending a half-hour wandering through “From Cézanne to Picasso” is a sobering experience. I yield to no one in my admiration for American art, and the best paintings on display in “Americans in Paris” really are exceptional. Yet how many of the thirty-seven American artists represented in the show managed to say something truly individual? Sargent and Eakins, yes—they were definitely their own men—but Whistler now seems etiolated and Cassatt sentimental when compared to the Frenchmen from whom they drew their inspiration.
Look at “Back in the United States,” the last gallery in “Americans in Paris,” in which we see how some of the American painters who visited Paris dealt with native subjects after they returned to the United States. Three of their paintings, John Twachtman’s Brook in Winter, Childe Hassam’s Allies Day, May 1917, and Maurice Prendergast’s Central Park, seem to me to pass the test of individuality. The rest reminded me of a story that Oscar Levant, the pianist and raconteur, used to tell on himself. It seems that Levant spent a lot of time traveling with George Gershwin on passenger trains. One evening he griped to Gershwin that he always got stuck with the upper berth. According to Levant, who wasn’t above embroidering an anecdote, Gershwin supposedly replied, “Upper berth and lower berth—that’s the difference between talent and genius.”
* * *
Visitors to “From Cézanne to Picasso” can view a two-minute clip from a silent French newsreel that shows Ambroise Vollard chatting with his friend and client Auguste Renoir, after which Renoir is briefly seen at work on an unidentified painting. This was in 1919, by which time arthritis had turned Renoir’s hands into shrunken, twisted claws. It’s jolting to watch him slash his brush against the canvas brusquely, almost angrily, then glare at the camera with the fiery eyes of an exhausted master determined to work to the very end.
Why the Met hasn’t posted this astonishing peep into the past on its Web site is beyond me, but should it ever be made available in streaming video, I’ll hasten to add it to the blogroll.
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TT: Almanac
"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; thats the essence of inhumanity."
George Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple
| Monday, October 23, 2006
TT: Living-room theater
A whole year has gone by since I last saw a film in a theater, and I can’t say I feel any great urge to break my fast—I’m simply too busy. But I do watch old movies on TV, and in the past week and a half I saw two that disappointed me, albeit for very different reasons.
I wouldn’t have bothered with The Seventh Seal had it not been for a houseguest who, like me, had never seen Bergman’s 1956 “breakthrough” film and longed to get her cultural card punched. I took a shot at Wild Strawberries three years ago and found it underwhelming for reasons that I set forth in this space:
When I was young, Wild Strawberries struck me as exactly what old age must be like. (Had it been a novel, I would have scribbled neatly in the margin of the last page, "This is true.") Now that I’m middle-aged—and eight years older than Bergman was when he made it—I know better. It’s far too benign, albeit gorgeously so. It reminds me of what an old music critic once said to me about Der Rosenkavalier: "It’s by a young man pretending to be an old man remembering his youth."
The Seventh Seal, by contrast, is utterly preposterous, an atheist parable stuffed full of symbols so transparent that the densest of viewers can see them coming a mile down the track. I found it so boring that I was forced to resort to amusing myself by trying to imagine how Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca might have spoofed it on Your Show of Shows back in the days when TV comedians were smart enough to do such things. I suppose it’s a matter of clashing sensibilities—or maybe not. Sibelius’ music, for instance, doesn’t make me giggle, but Bergman’s ever-so-Scandinavian films remind me of what Guy Davenport is supposed to have said about Goethe: "Sometimes, on reading Goethe, one has the paralyzing suspicion that he thinks he's being funny."
Richard Brooks’ 1967 film of In Cold Blood has an eerie verisimilitude arising from the fact that Brooks shot it on many of the actual locations where the horrific events described in Truman Capote’s book took place: the Clutter farmhouse, the courtroom where Perry Smith and Dick Hickock were tried, even the gallows on which they were hanged. The casting of Robert Blake as Smith gives the film an extra dollop of retrospective reality. Alas, Brooks’ painfully literal-minded script consists of half-digested, barely dramatized chunks of the book disgorged at enervating length by the actors, most of whom, Blake excepted, are no better than competent (though it's nice to see Charles McGraw, the tough guy with the buzzsaw voice, in a brief but memorable cameo).
As I've said before, the only way to successfully translate a first-class work of art from one medium to another is to subject it to a complete imaginative transformation. Otherwise the new version will be (A) tautological and (B) superfluous. (That's a joke, son.) Good example: George Balanchine's masterly ballet version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bad example: André Previn's pointless operatic version of A Streetcar Named Desire. Bennett Miller's Capote covers much of the same ground as In Cold Blood, but it approaches the material from a different point of view—it's about Capote, not the Clutters—and so escapes the trap of tautology. Not so the film of In Cold Blood, an attempt to pictorialize the book as faithfully as possible, which foredooms it to artistic failure.
It doesn’t help, of course, that Quincy Jones’ score is trite, or that Brooks has turned the famously fey Capote into a dour, middle-aged reporter (played by Paul Stewart, the sinister butler of Citizen Kane) who beats you over the head with platitudes every time he opens his mouth. But it's the script that kills In Cold Blood stone dead. If I taught film, I’d use it as an example of how not to adapt a book for the screen—and The Seventh Seal as an example of how you can fool most of the critics most of the time.
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TT: Sunday-morning workout tape
• Andy Laverne, “Maximum Density” (from True Colors)
• Buck Owens and His Buckaroos, “Memphis”
• The Police, “Miss Gradenko” (from Synchronicity)
• Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson, “Miss Brown to You”
• Steely Dan, “Monkey in Your Soul” (from Pretzel Logic)
• Fats Waller, “Moppin’ and Boppin’”
• Donald Fagen, “Morph the Cat”
• Red Norvo Trio, “Move”
• Hank Williams, “Move It on Over”
• Bud Freeman and His Famous Chicagoans, “Muskrat Ramble”
• Woody Herman and the First Herd, “Non-Alcoholic”
• Del McCoury Band, “Nashville Cats” (from The Family)
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TT: Almanac
“The 18th century had more ideas about the past than it had facts: archeology and philology were infant sciences. (The 21st century has more facts than ideas.)”
James Buchan, Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment (courtesy of Joseph Epstein)
| Friday, October 21, 2005
TT: Shirley Horn, R.I.P.
Shirley Horn, the great jazz singer-pianist, died last night after a long illness. Here’s the first obit to hit the blogosphere—there’ll be more soon. In the meantime, celebrate her life by listening to the album that first brought her to the attention of the general public.
This is what I wrote for the Washington Post the last time I saw Horn live, at New York’s Iridium in 2003:
To Washingtonians, Horn is an old friend, but up here in Second City, she’s an Event. None of my friends can remember the last time she sang in a Manhattan nightclub. Her engagement was all the more eventful in light of the fact that it was something of a comeback. Insiders knew that chronic illness had put her in a wheelchair and stopped her from playing piano. It was impossible to imagine anyone else playing for the best self-accompanist in jazz, so when the word got out that she was coming to town, fans marked their calendars, not sure whether to be excited or nervous.
I felt both ways as I waited and waited for Horn to show up. She was a half-hour late, and I was close enough to the bandstand to overhear the members of her trio (including George Mesterhazy on piano, who carried out his unenviable task with skill and discretion) wondering out loud whether she’d go through with it. Finally, she materialized in the wings, and you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief as she was wheeled into place, followed in half a heartbeat by a standing ovation. It was quite an opening—and quite a show. Horn sang in a near-whisper, the whole room leaning on every syllable. “I Got Lost in His Arms” was sly and lustful, “Here’s to Life” almost hurtfully poignant. As for “Yesterdays,” I can’t even begin to tell you what it was like to hear her utter the line “I’m not half the girl I used to be.” All I can say is that you could have heard a tear drop—and plenty did, mine included. I dined with three jazz singers a couple of weeks later, and it turned out that they’d all been to see Shirley Horn, and couldn’t talk about anything else. I don’t know when I’ve heard anything scarier or braver, or more beautiful….
I miss her already.
UPDATE: Go here for more from NPR, including sound bites and links.
Here's the bio posted by the National Endowment for the Arts after Horn won one of the 2005 Jazz Masters Fellowships.
The Washington Post beat the New York Times to the Web by a day with its staff-written obit. (Ben Ratliff's Times obit is here.) Also of interest is this appreciation by the Post's Richard Harrington.
Here's a tribute from the Bad Plus.
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TT: Laugh till it hurts
Friday again, and even though I’m not here (I’m off at one of my celebrated undisclosed locations, soaking up silence), Our Girl has been good enough to post the weekly drama-column teaser, in which I gallop wildly from the sublime to the ridiculous.
The trip begins with the Manhattan Theatre Club’s revival of Absurd Person Singular:
Alan Ayckbourn is far from unknown in this country—he’s had one solid Broadway hit and a couple of respectable runs—but the best of his 60-odd plays aren’t nearly as familiar to American audiences as they ought to be. Might that be about to change? Earlier this year, his own production of “Private Fears in Public Places” came to town as part of the “Brits Off Broadway” series at 59E59 and caused a stir, and now the Manhattan Theatre Club, which has long been enthusiastic about his work, has brought “Absurd Person Singular” back to Broadway three decades after its New York premiere, which ran for 591 performances. This revival, directed by John Tillinger, isn’t perfect, but it’s way more than good enough, and if Mr. Ayckbourn’s brand of darkly bittersweet comedy is new to you, it’ll make you wonder where he’s been all your life….
The next and last stop is In My Life:
About a half-hour into “In My Life,” the retchingly whimsical story of J.T. (Christopher J. Hanke), a cute young singer-songwriter who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome and a brain tumor, I turned to my seatmate and whispered, “‘Springtime for Hitler.’” If you’re not a musical-comedy buff or a Mel Brooks fan, that’s the horrible show-within-a-show in “The Producers” which turns out to be so unintentionally funny that it becomes a smash hit. If Joe Brooks, the author-lyricist-composer-director-producer of “In My Life,” had cut 15 minutes’ worth of balladry and told his excellent cast to play the rest for laughs, he, too, might have had a hit on his hands. Instead, he’s getting laughed out of town—on a rail….
No link. Do the usual: (A) Buy the damn paper, O.K.? (B) Go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, a totally great deal.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Friday, October 21, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Number, please
• Fee paid in 1924 by Warner Bros. to Alfred A. Knopf for film rights to Willa Cather's A Lost Lady: $12,000
• The same amount in today's dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $130,224.65
(Source: Cather: Later Novels)
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Friday, October 21, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"Pointing to the briefcase I said: 'How do you know you are going to reject them?'
"'If they were any good, they wouldn't be dropped at my hotel by the writers in person. Some New York agent would have them.'
"'Then why take them at all?'
"'Partly not to hurt feelings. Partly the thousand-to-one chance all publishers live for. But mostly you're at a cocktail party and get introduced to all sorts of people, and some of them have novels written and you are just liquored up enough to be benevolent and full of love for the human race, so you say you'd love to see the script. It is then dropped at your hotel with such sickening speed that you are forced to go through the motions of reading it.'"
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Friday, October 21, 2005 | Permanent
link | Thursday, October 20, 2005
TT: So you want to see a show?
Here's my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated each Thursday. 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)
• Dirty Rotten Scoundrels* (musical, R, extremely vulgar, reviewed here)
• Doubt* (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, implicit sexual content, reviewed here)
• Fiddler on the Roof (musical, G, one scene of mild violence but otherwise family-friendly, reviewed here)
• The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, reviewed here)
• Sweet Charity (musical, PG-13, lots of cutesy-pie sexual content, 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)
OFF BROADWAY:
• Orson's Shadow (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, very strong language, reviewed here)
• Slava's Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)
CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• The Caterers (drama, R, violence, strong language, and explicit sexual situations, reviewed here, closes Oct. 30)
• Sides: The Fear Is Real… (sketch comedy, PG, some strong language, reviewed here, closes Oct. 30)
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, October 20, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Number, please
• Amount paid in 1945 by Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner for a farmhouse, a barn, and five acres of land on Long Island: $5,000
• The same amount in today's dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $52,524.10
(Source: Jed Perl, New Art City)
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, October 20, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"'There's so much that I want to tell you,' she said at last, 'and it's hard to explain. My life is full of jealousies and disappointments, you know. You get to hating people who do contemptible work and who get on just as well as you do. There are many disappointments in my profession, and bitter, bitter contempts!' Her face hardened, and looked much older. 'If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be.'"
Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, October 20, 2005 | Permanent
link | Wednesday, October 19, 2005
TT: Number, please
• Royalties earned by Willa Cather's My Ántonia in 1918, its first year of publication: $1,300
• The same amount in today's dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $18,771.15
(Source: Cather: Early Novels & Stories)
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, October 19, 2005 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"It's funny to have a priest with a high salary. An artist with a large income is in the same position."
Ad Reinhardt (interview in Artforum, October 1970)
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, October 19, 2005 | Permanent
link | Tuesday, October 18, 2005
TT: Number, please
• Raymond Chandler's fee in 1943 for thirteen weeks of work on the screenplay of Double Indemnity: $9,750
• The same amount in today's dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $110,517.13
(Source: Chandler: Stories & Early Novels)
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TT: Almanac
At the Museum of Modern Art you can sit in the lobby
on the foam-rubber couch; you can rest and smoke,
and view whatever the revolving doors express.
You don’t have to go into the galleries at all.
In this arena the exhibits are free and have all
the surprises of art—besides something extra:
sensory restlessness, the play of alternation,
expectation in an incessant spray
thrown from heads, hands, the tendons of ankles.
The shifts and strollings of feet
engender compositions on the shining tiles,
and glide together and pose gambits,
gestures of design, that scatter, rearrange,
trickle into lines, and turn clicking through a wicket
into rooms where caged colors blotch the walls.
You don’t have to go to the movie downstairs
to sit on red plush in the snow and fog
of old-fashioned silence. You can see contemporary
Garbos and Chaplins go by right here.
And there’s a mesmeric experimental film
constantly reflected on the flat side of the wide
steel-plate pillar opposite the crenellated window.
Non-objective taxis surging west, on Fifty-third,
liquefy in slippery yellows, dusky crimsons,
pearly mauves—and accelerated sunset, a roiled
surf, or cloud-curls undulating—their tubular ribbons
elongations of the coils of light itself
(engine of color) and motion (motor of form).
May Swenson, "At the Museum of Modern Art"
| Monday, October 17, 2005
TT: Slight hiatus
I'm badly bent from recent excesses of work, so I'll be taking the rest of the week off from blogging (except for the usual daily items, which Our Girl has obligingly agreed to post for me). My plan is to retreat to one of my top-secret undisclosed locations sans iBook and watch the river flow.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it:
• Be sure to visit several of the other fine blogs listed in the right-hand column.
• Have a nice week.
P.S. Check out all the new Top Fives!
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TT: Behind the curve we're ahead of
I’ve been inexplicably slow to note the recent publication of Blog!: How the Newest Media Revolution Is Changing Politics, Business, and Culture (CDS, $24.95), a collection of essays and interviews by and with various prominent bloggers. Like most such efforts, it has next to nothing to say about artblogging, but what it does say is said by me: David Kline and Dan Burstein, who put the book together, interviewed me via e-mail last year and have included the results as a four-page Q-&-A.
Here’s a brief excerpt:
Are blogs empowering new voices? If so, who? Will they actually change power relationships in society?
They’re empowering amateur writers—thousands of them. And it’s already clear that blogging offers a platform to gifted amateur writers—and, just as important, it allows these budding young writers to sidestep the traditional media and win recognition on their own. This can’t help but change power relationships in the world of journalism. Specifically, it’s diminishing the power of traditional-media “gatekeepers” to shape the cultural conversation, which I think is mostly—but not entirely—a good thing….
For more of the same, plus contributions by (among others) Joe Trippi, Markos “Daily Kos” Zuniga, Roger L. Simon, Wonkette, Nick Denton, Adam Curry, Jay Rosen, Andrew Sullivan, and a whole lot of other relevant people, go here to buy the book.
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TT: Thanks for the memories
Here are two pieces of e-mail I received apropos of my article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal about spending the night in two Frank Lloyd Wright houses:
• “For the past sixteen years, my wife and I (together with our five children) have resided in a 1901 Wright-designed house in Oak Park, Illinois. During this time, we have come to know quite a few Wright homeowners and many other fans of his. While we have known some to 'suffer in silence' (and some not so silently) when sitting through a long dinner on reproductions of his famous straight-backed chairs, I have never heard any of the homeowners express anything but praise and joy concerning the pleasure of living in their homes and the magic interplay of space and light that Wright managed to create in them. Many consider our home to be one of the early ‘masterpieces,’ but it is certainly no museum piece. Like your description of the Schwartz House, it has been occupied by children for much of its 104 years, and our own five have certainly ridden it hard. The spaces absorb and welcome them. As young parents in 1989, we purchased the house as much for its livability as for its beauty. The value of Wright's design is fundamentally in the spaces themselves, not in the famous art glass or other details that adorn them. Even our youngest children unconsciously appreciate that and have told us that we are not allowed to move to any other house!”
• “My grandparents bought a house outside of Milwaukee in the 1920s from a young architect they had met named Frank Wright and lived the rest of their lives in that home. The house was terrific, the furniture and sconces all designed by Mr. Wright (not the dishes). Several small fruit-bearing trees were in the front yard right next to the porch and the way the leaves hung down in the summer always reminded me of the roof of the house. There was a wonderful laundry chute we used to play with when we visited. When I was about eight (1960) we were having a wild pillow fight under the sleepy eye of a babysitter. I threw a triangular-shaped pillow at my sister and clipped one of the sconces right off the wall. When my grandmother died we had no relatives in Milwaukee and so my parents sold it. Unfortunately, when my grandparents bought the home they did not know how important the architect would become and so no official documentation was kept proving who had designed it. The house was sold for a song.
“Some time in the late 1980s I traveled to Milwaukee for my oral medical boards and took a cab out to the house. No one was home. I sat on the porch and ate some of the berries from the trees for ten minutes, keeping the cab waiting.
“Thanks for bringing back some memories.”
And thanks to you both for writing.
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TT: Rerun
August 2003:
I told a friend of mine at lunch the other day that I thought the day would come when the producers of smart movies aimed at older viewers (i.e., anyone over 21) would bypass theatrical release altogether and market such films in more or less the same way novels are sold in bookstores. If that happens, I’ll be sorry to spend less time in theaters. The enveloping experience of watching a good film in a big, dark room—and in the company of a rapt audience—is unique and irreplaceable. Alas, it’s already been replaced, at least for most of us who love classic films. How many of the great movies of the past have you seen in a theater? Not many, I suspect, especially if you’re under 40 and don’t live in a film-friendly city like New York or Chicago...
(If it’s new to you, read the whole thing here.)
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TT: Number, please
• Clark Terry's weekly salary in 1951 as a trumpeter in Count Basie's orchestra: $125
• The same amount in today's dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $959.38
(Source: Dempsey Travis, An Autobiography of Black Jazz)
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TT: Almanac
"Already in 1958, Nell Blaine was worrying in a journal entry about the rise of 'the idea of novelty above all' as well as 'the love of cruelty and art brut of the Post-Atom 2nd string Dadaists.' All this, she wrote, 'has stuck in the craw of many serious artists who may go their own way quietly.' At least until the end of the 1950s, though, Duchamp's and [Ad] Reinhardt's dark, contrarian views were held in check by a gloriously optimistic sense, the sense that [Hans] Hofmann epitomized, that art was organically, dialectically related to the hurly-burly of life—and that art could transcend life. 'Those with a capacity for life, joie de vivre,' Blaine observed, 'will go on in the face of annihilation.'"
Jed Perl, New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century
| Friday, October 22, 2004
TT: Brideshead Revisited revisited
Here’s something you probably don’t know: Evelyn Waugh revised several of his novels, some quite extensively, when preparing the uniform edition of his books that was published in England in the early Sixties. Don’t be embarrassed—many of Waugh’s most ardent American fans are unaware of these revisions. The reason for their ignorance is that the editions of Waugh’s novels that have circulated most widely in this country, the Little, Brown trade paperbacks, are straight reprints of the first American editions.
I mention this because I only just discovered that the Everyman’s Library edition of
Brideshead Revisited, the novel Waugh edited most ruthlessly, not only reprints the revised version but includes an introductory essay by Frank Kermode in which Waugh’s changes are discussed at length and in detail.
Also included is the preface in which Waugh explained why he trimmed Brideshead:
In December 1943 I had the good fortune when parachuting to incur a minor injury which afforded me a rest from military service. This was extended by a sympathetic commanding officer, who let me remain unemployed until June 1944 when the book was finished. I wrote with a zest that was quite strange to me and also with impatience to get back to the war. It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster—the period of soya beans and Basic English—and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language, which now with a full stomach I find distasteful. I have modified the grosser passages but have not obliterated them because they are an essential part of the book….
I knew about these changes but had never actually seen the revised version of Brideshead, so I picked up a copy of the Everyman’s Library edition and read it day before yesterday en route to Minnesota. As I read, I found myself agreeing with Kermode: “On the whole most readers, I think, would agree that the purgation of the first version—not over-rigorous, for reasons Waugh suggests in his Preface—makes for improvement: the final version of the novel is preferable.” My guess is that those who dislike the book intensely (as many readers do) won’t find the revised version all that much more persuasive, but swing voters might well be nudged into the pro-Brideshead column by Waugh’s shrewd pruning, while admirers will find it fascinating to see what he chose to cut.
On the other hand, I do admit to regretting the loss of certain delightfully ornate touches, especially in Waugh’s description of Anthony Blanche, the character based on Harold Acton. Here is Blanche in the original version of Brideshead:
This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the “aesthete” par excellence, a byword of iniquity from Cherwell Edge to Somerville, a young man who seemed to me, then, fresh from the sombre company of the College Essay Society, ageless as a lizard, as foreign as a Martian. He had been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he moved with his own peculiar stateliness, as though he had not fully accustomed himself to coat and trousers and was more at his ease in heavy, embroidered robes; I had heard his voice in the George challenging the conventions; and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian, I found myself enjoying him voraciously, like the fine piece of cookery he was.
And here he is in the revised version:
This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the “aesthete” par excellence, a byword of iniquity from Cherwell Edge to Somerville. He had been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he pranced along with his high peacock tread; I had heard his voice in the George challenging the conventions; and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian, I found myself enjoying him voraciously.
I do think the second version is an improvement, but I miss those last eight words! It’s as though Henry James had started with the New York Edition of The Portrait of a Lady, then edited it down to the original version. Remember his celebrated description of Caspar Goodwood's kiss? In the original, it was just one crisp sentence: “His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark again she was free.” By the time of the New York Edition, it had mushroomed into a full paragraph:
His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned she was free.
I’d say James got it right the second time, wouldn’t you? Sometimes less is just…less. But not when it comes to the revised version of Brideshead Revisited, which I commend to your attention not only as a generally superior literary experience but also as a little-known chapter in the history of aesthetic second thoughts.
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TT: Your questions answered
• A music critic writes:
I was wondering if you could recommend a single Balanchine DVD to this scandalously ill-informed balletomoron.
You have two choices:
(1) Balanchine, on Kultur, is a first-rate, smartly written PBS documentary from the Eighties containing excerpts, some of them extended, from most of the major Balanchine ballets. Watching it on TV was what inspired me to go see New York City Ballet for the very first time.
(2) Nonesuch has just put out two DVDs called Choreography by Balanchine containing performances by New York City Ballet, overseen in the studio by Balanchine himself. Start with the one that contains The Four Temperaments and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. These performances, originally shown on PBS's Dance in America in the Seventies, introduced untold numbers of viewers to Balanchine. The visceral impact of theatrical dance can only be suggested on the small screen, but the Choreography by Balanchine telecasts were extremely well-directed and give a surprisingly good sense of what the ballets look like on stage. (The Balanchine documentary on Kultur contains snippets from most of these performances.)
Ideally, you should watch both DVDs, but my guess is that either one will at least pique your interest.
• A reader writes:
In thinking about your new book on George Balanchine, and your coverage of dance generally: could you display on the Web site, or provide a link to, a dance score? I'm sure most people have seen a music score, and know what music looks like written down. But I think few of us, me included, know what choreography looks like written down (at least I assume it's written down!). What does a dance look like on paper? I'm sure many of us would like to see what this looks like.
Gladly. To see an introductory example of dance notation, go to the Dance Notation Bureau’s Web site, then click on the "Notation Basics" button in the left-hand column. You'll see a brief explanation of Labanotation, the most widely used form of dance notation. You can find out more about dance notation by exploring the rest of the site.
I should add, however, that choreographers themselves rarely if ever use dance notation. Most of them don't even know how to read Labanotation, much less write it. Instead, they demonstrate the successive moves of a dance to the dancers in the studio, and the finished product is documented by videotaping a complete performance. Notation comes later, if at all. Similarly, older dances are usually revived not by way of notated scores but through a show-and-tell process, with archival videotape available as a backup in case of memory lapses. This is why so many ballets of the past are now "lost": they were neither videotaped nor notated, and once they ceased to be performed on a regular basis, the steps were gradually forgotten.
Unlikely as it may sound, certain dancers are capable of carrying all the steps of a ballet in their heads, Fahrenheit 451-style, and teaching them to the members of a company that has never before performed it. Sometimes they may remember a dance better than the choreographer himself: Balanchine, for example, forgot the steps to Le Tombeau de Couperin after he made it, and it was only because Rosemary Dunleavy remembered them that the ballet was later revived and documented for posterity. (In return for this feat, Balanchine left Dunleavy the rights to Tombeau in his will.)
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TT: Unsolicited blurbs
From a jazz singer:
I am on the final pages...and in love with Balanchine...and though I have seen so little of his work, I know so much more.
From a modern-dance choreographer:
Your masterful way of clarifying the slippery matter of imagery in dances—ones with or without a plot—is particularly impressive, and learning more about Mr. B’s life was fascinating.
From Library Journal:
A volume as sleek and elegant as the dancers in a Balanchine ballet. Intended as an introduction rather than a full-scale biography, this book goes right to the essence of the Balanchine aesthetic, offering artful observations and insightful commentaries on several of the master's pivotal works…
All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, now available in bookstores and on line.
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TT: Down for the count
I'm back from Minnesota, and I even made it home in time to see Mary Foster Conklin's show. I have tales to tell, but I'm worn out from parachuting into the Twin Cities, giving two speeches, then turning right around and coming back, and I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night. (Besides, I have to go to the ballet tonight!)
If you'll give me a chance to unpack my bag, open my mail, regroup, and take an extended nap, I'll be back later this afternoon with additional postings, and still more to come on Monday.
Thanks. See you soon.
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TT: Low Rent district
Time once again for my Wall Street Journal drama column. Today I reviewed Brooklyn,
a new Broadway musical, and Trying, a new off-Broadway play.
Brooklyn was horrible:
Broadway has a new musical with that rarity of rarities, an original score. That’s cause for rejoicing, right? Er…no. The fact that its songs were custom-written by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson is the only “original” thing about “Brooklyn: The Musical,” which opened last night at the Plymouth Theatre. Otherwise, it’s 100% recycled—from pure garbage.
“Brooklyn” is one of those shows that is better summarized than reviewed. Ray Klausen’s set, a graffiti-encrusted street scene, contrives to be both rundown and adorably picturesque. The cast consists of five golden-voiced street singers similarly clad in ever-so-stylish rags and tatters. The leader of the pack (Cleavant Derricks) invites passers-by to pause for a moment and listen to the “sidewalk fairy tale” of Brooklyn (Eden Espinosa), a budding young pop singer from Paris who comes to America to search for her long-lost father (Kevin Anderson), a songwriter turned Vietnam vet turned smack-shooting vagrant. All she knows of him is an unfinished lullaby he wrote for his baby daughter, whose mother (Karen Olivo) taught it to her before committing suicide. This touching story sends her skyrocketing to the top of the charts, from which she dislodges Paradice (Ramona Keller), a you-go-girl ghetto diva who thereupon challenges Brooklyn to a winner-take-all singoff at Madison Square Garden, where—
Is that the sound of gagging I hear? Well, at least let me share with you some of “Brooklyn”’s lyrics, set to the kind of music I think of as Disney Soul: “There’s a story behind these empty eyes/That no one wants to know…I used to sing at Christmas/Now Christmas makes me cry…Now once upon a time/Has never felt more right…Life is like a shooting star/And here is where it’s falling.” The book is of identical quality: “Oh, no, no, don’tchu worry ’bout me none, noooo, I’m just like these here weeds, sprouting right up through this concrete. Yeah, that’s me alright…strong as a city weed.” (That comes straight from the script, in case you were wondering.)
In short, we’re talking “Rent” for the pre-school set, a molasses-coated piece of boob bait whose presence on Broadway, however temporary, is proof that musical-comedy standards never seem to hit rock-bottom—they just sink lower and lower….
(By the way, Ben Brantley of the New York Times is totally on the same page with me about Brooklyn. We even used a couple of closely similar metaphors! Take a look—it’s interesting to contrast our approaches.)
Trying wasn’t horrible, just trite, and was largely redeemed by a remarkable performance:
If you prefer your clichés spoken instead of sung, you can always go to the Promenade Theatre, where Fritz Weaver is starring in “Trying,” a two-person play about the extreme old age of Francis Biddle, an upper-crust WASP from Philadelphia who switched parties and became Franklin Roosevelt’s attorney general, thereby earning the perpetual loathing of his fellow Main Liners, for whom rock-ribbed Republicanism was a religion. (Nowadays, they’d have nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.)
Playwright Joanna McClelland Glass has worked long, hard and successfully to leach all traces of freshness out of “Trying,” which is the octillionth retread of The One About the Grumpy Old Geezer and His Spunky Young Secretary. Fortunately, Mr. Weaver, who made his Broadway debut before I was born, is in infallibly fine form, and his performance as Judge Biddle should be videotaped and played for acting students as a priceless example of how to make a whole lot out of not much.
He gently caresses each line with an old-gold baritone voice unscarred by years of hard use; he underlines each ominous sign of oncoming senility with the lightest of touches. Above all, he suggests with uncanny specificity what it must feel like to stand at the threshold of eternity. Peering through his glasses at his address book, he says, “All the Bs are dead” (a great line, by the way—I wonder if Biddle really said it), then lifts his head to gaze at the fast-receding horizon of his youth. If that moment doesn’t make you catch your breath, you must be watching some other show….
No link, and there’s plenty more where that came from. To read the whole thing, buy a copy of this morning’s Journal, or subscribe to the online edition (an even better idea) by going here.
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TT: Almanac
"While I still stood on the boat deck we ran into another belt of mist. The engines changed to slow and then to dead slow, and the fog-horn began dolefully sounding the half-minutes.
"In twenty minutes we were clear again, and running under the stars at full speed.
"I woke up several times in the night to hear the horn again sounding through the wet night air. It was a very dismal sound, premonitory, perhaps, of coming trouble, for Fortune is the least capricious of deities, and arranges things on the just and rigid system that no one shall be very happy for very long."
Evelyn Waugh, Labels: A Mediterranean Journal
| Thursday, October 21, 2004
OGIC: Catching my eye
Around the blogosphere:
• In The Common Review, the magazine of the Great Books Foundation, editor Daniel Born makes a case for reading and teaching the not-quite-great books:
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, the story of a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients, receives less attention than it should because The Great Gatsby shines so brightly in the firmament. Tender Is the Night does not have the hypnotic symbolic power or poetically distilled form of Gatsby. It is not quite so well made. It is an example of that kind of novel that Henry James characterized as a "loose and baggy monster." All the same, it conveys emotions of loss and the breakdown of relationships that make it in some ways more of a human chronicle than is the perfect aesthetic artifact that is Gatsby.
I always felt that Tender Is the Night made more trouble for me as a reader than the more or less perfect Gatsby, and that trouble—at least at a certain time in my reading life—made it more interesting. I wish Born had said a bit more, both on this and some of his other points, but despite feeling truncated the piece is well worth reading. Thanks to Dust from a Distant Sun for the link.
• Ms. Tingle Alley unearths Mark Twain's incensed reaction to a Victorian biography of Percy Shelley, Edward Dowden's 1886 Life of Shelley. Dowden was much in Shelley's thrall and seems to have raised more eyebrows than just Twain's in brazenly defending the poet's monstrous behavior toward his first wife Harriet, who ended a suicide. Interestingly, Matthew Arnold registered the same objection to Dowden's exculpatory treatment of Shelley, though not nearly so acidly or entertainingly as Twain:
On the 9th of November 1816 Harriet Shelley left the house in Brompton where she was living, and did not return. On the 10th of December her body was found in the Serpentine; she had drowned herself. In one respect Professor Dowden resembles Providence: his ways are inscrutable. His comment on Harriet’s death is: "There is no doubt, she wandered from the ways of upright living." But, he adds: "That no act of Shelley’s during the two years which immediately preceded her death, tended to cause the rash act which brought her life to its close, seems certain." Shelley had been living with Mary [Wollstonecraft Shelley] all the time; only that!
I can't go into detail about it just now, but I have a pet theory that the narrator of Henry James's 1888 novella The Aspern Papers was partly modeled on Dowden. I'm hoping Carrie's find may give me more ammo. Whether it does or no, it's still Twain, and fine reading.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, October 21, 2004 | Permanent
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OGIC: Fits of giggles
Law prof blogger Ann Althouse has a keen eye for the absurd. She writes here about discovering that the DVD of the flesh-eating-zombie flick 28 Days Later (a movie I rather liked) includes:
Alternative theatrical ending with optional commentary
Alternative ending with optional commentary
Radical alternative ending with optional commentary
I don't think I liked it quite that much.
Previously, Ms. Althouse delighted me with her inspired time-saving dinner idea.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Thursday, October 21, 2004 | Permanent
link | Wednesday, October 20, 2004
OGIC: Paperback crush
Go you now and feast your eyes on one of the most well-realized and gorgeous web sites I've seen in a long time, The Paperback Revolution. Why should you care? As the site says:
It is difficult to overestimate the influence of the paperback upon the twentieth century. While paper-bound books have numerous historical antecedents — from chapbooks, penny dreadfuls and dime novels to pulp magazines to European paper-bound books such as the Everyman series, Tauchnitz Editions and Albatross — it was the twenty-five cent paperback and the hundreds of millions of books produced during the Paperback Revolution which transformed the reading of all kinds of literature into an undeniably mass phenomenon in the twentieth century.
From a purely aesthetic point of view, I've long been enamored of mass-market paperbacks from a certain vintage. Of course the Anchor editions with the Edward Gorey drawings, which I hoard like rubies, are special. But even items like my rather hideously illustrated 1950s paperback Liberal Imagination somehow touch me. Perhaps this paperback love is more than just the unbridled nostalgia I've always taken it for. Maybe it has to do too with the assumptions inherent in the very physical form these books take: that Trilling, Cleanth Brooks, Joseph Conrad, and Herman Melville were in mass demand by people of ordinary means and could be thought of as everyday reading. Today's Oxford and Penguin Classics, while offering writers like Conrad and Melville, don't convey quite the same invitation to reading, or the same faith in an enthusiastic reading public of some size. With their wearisome uniform designs and batteries of prefaces and documentation, they seem resigned to lives of course adoption and captive audiences. Not so much as picking up a little finger to sell themselves, they tend to limit their own audiences to the initiated and the coerced. To me this makes them, compared with their snazzier counterparts from the Revolutionary era, vaguely depressing.
In any case, the thing I love best about the amazing Paperback Revolution website is its loving attention to the look and feel of paperbacks produced from 1935 to 1960. Do not miss the Virtual Paperback Rack. That's the catnip for the sensualists among us, while you more analytical and historical types will be equally diverted by the Animated Paperback Timeline, launchable here.
This site is so cool, I feel like I've done my good deed for the day just linking to it. Enjoy, and don't thank me—thank the ever-indispensble Coudal Partners, who posted the link a whole week ago.
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, October 20, 2004 | Permanent
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OGIC: Fortune cookie
"I dutifully read The Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, with no sense whatsoever of the irony involved in dutifully reading a novel about the dangers of being thoughtlessly dutiful."
Erin O'Connor, today at Critical Mass
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Wednesday, October 20, 2004 | Permanent
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TT: Points west
No more blogging from me today or tomorrow. I'm flying to Minneapolis at lunchtime to speak about the future of classical radio at a workshop for radio producers that's being hosted by Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Initiative. It should be fun, and I expect I'll post some of the speech on my return.
On Thursday night I'll be heading straight from the airport to Mama Rose's to hear Mary Foster Conklin sing "Under the Covers: A Tribute to Peggy Lee's Mirrors." That's something I don't normally do (to put it mildly!), but I'm a big fan of Conklin's and don't want to miss the gig, so I figure I can hump my garment bag for an extra hour or two before staggering home. You come, too.
(For more information, go here.)
See you bright and early Friday morning, unless I sleep late.
posted by terryteachout @ Wednesday, October 20, 2004 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"Sol Hurok, who had assembled the Kabuki company, was the most exuberant and confident impresario of any I ever met. I hardly knew him then, but later, in New York, I met him with David [Webster] and found that his stories of the past—'Once, when I was in Paris with Ysaye, Busoni was going after dinner to accompany Melba and Chaliapin in some songs..."—however unlikely, were all true. Hurok had known everybody, and had represented half of them. He had become an institution in New York, and David told me he was once there when Hurok said, 'Can't you stay on a day? On Thursday I have my annual party for the critics—champagne and caviar and all that.' David asked him why he bothered; he could hardly expect them to give him a good notice rather than a bad one merely because he gave a party for them. 'Of course not,' said Hurok. 'But there are two ways of writing a bad notice.'"
The Tongs and the Bones: The Memoirs of Lord Harewood
posted by terryteachout @ Wednesday, October 20, 2004 | Permanent
link | Tuesday, October 19, 2004
OGIC: Flu's my daddy*
It smacked me down Saturday night, and I've been walking a monotonous circuit from bed to couch ever since. Thank goodness for OFOB, who has been on 24-hour call; Ned, who brought juice and The Hockey News (with Yzerman on the cover, no less!); and sweet, sweet television,* because I haven't even been up to reading a good thriller (though Terry has, from the looks of his latest Almanac).
Tomorrow morning I'll make every effort to get my achy, emptied self to work. Second thing on the agenda is blogging; I do have several posts in mind, but at the moment my head just feels too stuffed with buckshot to make much of them: I'm for bed. Look for me back around these parts in the late afternoon or evening, barring a total relapse.
*And you can guess what I've mostly been watching. Hey, these half-day-long baseball games are a real boon to the couch-bound and hockey-deprived. (A wee demographic, I grant you.)
posted by ourgirlinchicago @ Tuesday, October 19, 2004 | Permanent
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TT: Almanac
"Depression was a sickness, they told him. The previous year he had been worried enough by symptoms of physical illness to visit his doctor and had come away with a series of warnings and prohibitions concerning diet, alcohol, tobacco—the usual nonsense. But paradoxically his efforts to comply had led him inexorably to ask himself why he was bothering; what was so bloody marvellous about this life he was trying to preserve. Such metaphysical speculations were entirely foreign to his make-up and their formulation now was light years from being precise and intellectual. It was just a feeling of hollowness at the centre, a reluctance to awaken from the safe blackness of sleep, a sense of life like a hair floating on dirty bath water, sinking imperceptibly, moment by moment, till a final, spinning gurgling rush carried it away."
Reginald Hill, An April Shroud
| Monday, October 18, 2004
TT: Now playing
Bedtime impends. I just listened via iTunes to “Gotta Dance,” a nifty little swing tune from The Jimmy Giuffre 3, and now I’m going to wind down with Couperin’s “Mysterious Barricades,” played by Göran Söllscher on his eleven-string guitar.
I have a lot of writing to do today and Tuesday, and Our Girl reports that she’s been knocked flat by the flu, so blogging may be spotty for a bit. In any case, I’m headed for Minneapolis on Wednesday to give a couple of speeches, so I can guarantee that you won’t hear from me on Wednesday and Thursday.
Later.
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TT: Risky business
A reader writes:
I'm halfway through your book. It's fabulous. Yes, why is dance considered the black sheep of the arts? Too feminine? Too sensitive? Too demanding? Or too impossibly brilliant to absorb?
He’s referring to this passage from the first chapter of All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine:
Within the tight little world of dance, of course, he is a titan….But what of the larger world of art and culture? New York City Ballet no longer gets written about much in the national press, nor does it appear on television. I know few art-conscious Manhattanites who go to its performances more than sporadically—or to any other dance performances, for that matter. Nowadays, there are no “hot tickets” in dance, no events that attract the attention of a truly general audience, and few at which artists from other fields are likely to be seen. For the most part, ballet and modern dance have retreated to the periphery of American cultural consciousness, just as dance criticism has all but vanished from the pages of American magazines; you don’t have to know who Balanchine was, or what he did, in order to be deemed culturally literate. Most of my acquaintances regard my love of dance as a harmless idiosyncrasy, and when I assure them that Balanchine was every bit as important as, say, Matisse, they look at me as though I’d tried to tell them that Raymond Chandler was as important as Proust….
Why is that? My correspondent offers several possible answers:
• Too feminine? Of course dance is widely perceived as feminine—not to mention effeminate. But nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to George Balanchine, whose ballets are mostly about women as seen from a man’s decidedly partial point of view. (Nor, I might add, is there anything effeminate about the work of such modern-dance choreographers as Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham.)
I always tell straight men puzzled by my interest in ballet that it was made for them, consisting as it does of large numbers of gorgeous women dressed in skimpy outfits. So far, though, I have yet to make any converts….
• Too sensitive? Maybe. Dance is, after all, a form of lyric theater, one in which emotions are portrayed on stage with a subtle blend of directness and ambiguity. This makes some people squirm—the same ones, I suspect, who are thrown by the fact that in opera, the characters sing instead of talking. Alas, I doubt there’s anything to be done for such hopelessly hard-headed folk, but I also doubt that most potential dancegoers feel that way.
• Too demanding? Now we’re getting somewhere. Any number of the friends I now take to the ballet used to be afraid that even if they did get up the nerve to go, they wouldn’t understand what they were seeing. This is nonsense on stilts. You don’t have to know what a gargouillade is in order to enjoy Square Dance. You don’t have to know anything at all. The pleasure—at first glance, anyway—is entirely sensuous. You let the music and movement wash over you, and the more you look, the more you see. Of course experience deepens the pleasure. (In the words of R.P. Blackmur, “All knowledge is a descent from the paradise of undifferentiated sensation.”) But I took most of the dedicatees of All in the Dances to their first Balanchine ballets, and watched them “get it” right on the spot.
Intellectuals typically feel more comfortable about experiencing a new art form if they know a little something about it going in. One of the reasons why I wrote All in the Dances was to give them enough information to orient themselves—but it's strictly optional. As I’ve told a thousand nervous novices, “Point your head toward the stage and keep your eyes open. That’s all you need to know.”
• Too impossibly brilliant to absorb? Well, sometimes. Such Balanchine ballets as The Four Temperaments or Stravinsky Violin Concerto are so eventful, so tightly packed with complex movement, that they can overwhelm the first-time viewer. And you know what? They're supposed to. Nobody in the world could possibly see all there is to see in The Four Ts on a first viewing, any more than he could hear all there is to hear in The Rite of Spring on a first listening. You see it, you’re blown away, your head is so full of dazzling images that you can’t remember any of them clearly...and there’s something wrong with this?
Remember that dance, like music and painting, is not an essentially intellectual art form. Of course it can exert an intellectual appeal (especially on intellectuals), and the more you know about it, the more you’ll appreciate it, but enjoyment of the immediate experience doesn’t require the participation of the higher brain centers. As the saying goes, dance hits you where you live—and some people, oddly enough, don’t like to be hit there. Perhaps the prospect of surrendering control of their feelings makes them anxious. Me, I eat it up and yell for more. As Arlene Croce once said, “I never saw a good ballet that made me think.” Afterwards, yes: I do plenty of thinking, not infrequently followed by writing. But not in the theater, not in the moment, not when the lights go down and the curtain goes up. That’s when I want to be blown away—and that’s what a good dance does.
P.S. Our Girl in Chicago is one of the dedicatees of All in the Dances, as well as a full-fledged intellectual. What do you think of all this, OGIC? How does it tally with your own experience of dance?
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TT: Words to the wise
I was going to write about New York City Opera’s new production of Dialogues of the Carmelites, Francis Poulenc’s masterpiece, but it seems that Bernard Holland, writing in the New York Times, already said much of what I wanted to say:
”Dialogues of the Carmelites" is a meditation on death by men on the far side of middle age, contemplating their own mortality. The story of 16 nuns guillotined by French revolutionaries in 1794 is true. Georges Bernanos, in his play 150 years later, used history to confront his own terminal cancer. Francis Poulenc, six years from his own death in 1963 and witness to the slow dying of his closest friend, took up the thread in this chaste and touching opera....
The paradox of composer and theme hardly needs to be restated: Poulenc, the dashing boulevardier and tasteful sentimentalist; these 18th-century women of the church confronting the fear and exultation of martyrdom. Poulenc succeeds by being himself. There are the floating, open textures of his lighthearted period, the same gentle mockery devoid of cynicism, the melodies colored by popular culture and the harmonic gestures closer to Nelson Riddle than to tragic Verdi.
Indeed, in its pursuit of disagreeable profundities, Poulenc's music resists heaviness. As it examines the dying and their various executioners, a certain innocence—a naïveté born of great sophistication—remains. Poulenc reminds us a little of the juggler of Christian lore plying his carnival skills as an offering at the altar.
On Tuesday Donald Eastman's set came as a welcome relief from the overstuffed beauties of the Metropolitan Opera's new "Magic Flute" a few days before. The quarters of the old Marquis (Jake Gardner) are draped in blood red. Elsewhere, there are a masonry wall, two long tables and a chair. There are no tricks. Virtually nothing moves.
"Dialogues" is an opera for women; men's voices are almost intrusions. Mr. Thompson must deal with a female ensemble trained first as singers, then as actors. Some are more convincing than others, but a lot of the visceral terrors and happinesses come through….George Manahan's pit orchestra had a particularly good night.
To which I would add only that the score of Poulenc’s harrowing parable of faith, fear, and grace is more than merely pretty. He also mixed in a gritty scoopful of Stravinsky (including a startling near-verbatim quotation from Symphonies of Wind Instruments), thereby sharpening the contrast between the world and the cloister and underlining the opera’s already fascinating duality of tone.
Those who recall the iconic monumentality of John Dexter’s 1977 Metropolitan Opera production (or its two subsequent revivals) will naturally wonder how New York City Opera’s version stands up to comparison. The answer is that it holds its own quite well. To be sure, Dexter’s Dialogues was one of the great theatrical experiences of my lifetime, while Tazewell Thompson’s straightforward, uncluttered staging is merely very effective. Still, it works, and the opera itself comes through with complete clarity—which is, after all, the point.
Dialogues plays in repertory at the New York State Theater through October 29. For more information, go here.
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TT: Adventures in blurbland
The Chicago Sun-Times ran a story about blurbs last month (the free link has gone dead, but Galley Cat posted the gist of the piece here) in which Scott Turow, who has long been known in the book business as something of a blurb whore, was quoted to devastating effect:
"Once you blurb one book," he says, "it's like giving to charity. No good deed goes unpunished. That is the first law of blurbing. As soon as you're kind enough to do this for somebody, then everybody in the world is there with their hand out or a manuscript."…
"You have to understand, this is an avalanche," Turow says of his onslaught, which he smilingly agrees is indeed "part of my junk mail." "It is no exaggeration," he adds, "to say that there are several requests every day."…
"There are certain relationships where, whether I like it or not, I feel like I've gotta say something," he admits. "Now, I think you can put Turow blurbs side by side and the discriminating reader can detect the enthusiasm level."
Turow’s confession slipped past me when it first rippled through the blogosphere, but now that I’ve seen it, I admit to feeling a certain amount of sympathy with his plight. Not that multiple requests for blurbs clutter my mailbox each morning, but I am asked to supply quotes fairly frequently, occasionally from friends and colleagues, more often from publicists and authors I don't know. Every time I open such a letter, I remember the wise words of an editor of mine who once assured me in a moment of candor that blurbs don’t sell books. “You know who they’re really for?” she added. “Our own salespeople. We use blurbs to convince them that our books are worth selling.”
A sobering thought, that.
I have, thank God, reached the point in my writing career when I’m no longer obliged to go snuffling for blurbs. (It’s almost as embarrassing as asking a friend to loan you money.) My publishers now solicit them without consulting me, and Ken Auletta was kind enough to supply a nice one for The Skeptic that Harcourt recycled for All in the Dances: “Terry Teachout is the kind of tour guide a first-rate biography requires—vivid storytelling by a guide who is both appreciative and independent.” I’m not aware that it’s sold a single copy to date of either book, but nobody ever said that publishing was a business—it’s more like a game of blindfold darts—so I expect that Ken’s blurb will follow me from dustjacket to dustjacket as long as we both shall live.
My own blurbing policies are straightforward:
• I don’t read manuscripts—they’re too bulky and clumsy to handle. Unsolicited ones I throw away automatically. It’s rude to send an unsolicited manuscript to an author you don’t know, and rudeness should never be rewarded.
• When strangers send me a set of bound galleys and ask for a quote, I almost always say no, explaining that I’m simply too busy. If the subject matter is of special relevance to me, though, I’ll take a furtive peek at the first few pages, after which I usually lose interest.
• With colleagues and acquaintances I open the bidding by raising my all-purpose deflector shield: “Remember that if I blurb your book now, there’s no possibility that I can review it later on.” Since I do a fair amount of book reviewing, this usually stops them cold, and also has the advantage of being true. If, on the other hand, I’m interested in the book but know I won’t be able to review it—usually because of a conflict of interest—I agree to look at the galleys.
• I always agree to blurb the books of friends, so long as they’re professional writers. Unlike Scott Turow, I’ve yet to be cornered into praising a bad book. (Sooner or later, every published author lets his guard down and agrees to read a manuscript by a friend who isn’t a professional. Hard experience has taught me that such manuscripts are never, ever any good.)
Bill Buckley used to have a wonderfully evasive form letter that I liked:
Mr. Buckley has asked me to interdict all requests for interviews, articles, reviews, etc., for the next period—probably about six months, as he is drastically in arrears on commitments he has already made. I hope you will understand that to take on any further commitments at this point simply means failing to keep those he has already made. Thank you for writing.
Edmund Wilson, who was one of God’s grumpier souls, opted instead for a postcard that read as follows:
Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to:
Read manuscripts,
Write articles or books to order,
Write forewords or introductions,
Make statements for publicity purposes,
Do any kind of editorial work,
Judge literary contests,
Give interviews,
Conduct educational courses,
Deliver lectures,
Give talks or make speeches,
Broadcast or appear on television,
Take part in writers' congresses,
Answer questionnaires,
Contribute to or take part in symposiums or “panels” of any kind,
Contribute manuscripts for sales,
Donate copies of his books to libraries,
Autograph works for strangers,
Allow his name to be used on letterheads,
Supply personal information about himself,
Supply opinions on literary or other subjects.
Evelyn Waugh had a Wilsonesque postcard of his own (“Mr. Evelyn Waugh deeply regrets that he is unable to do what is so kindly proposed”), but he could occasionally be persuaded to supply blurbs, usually for friends and/or fellow Catholics. Strangers rarely fared as well.
In 1961, for instance, Waugh sent this characteristic letter to a Simon & Schuster publicist who was looking for blurbs in all the wrong places:
Thank you for sending me Catch-22. I am sorry that the book fascinates you so much. It has many passages quite unsuitable to a lady’s reading. It suffers not only from indelicacy but from prolixity. It should be cut by about a half. In particular the activities of “Milo” should be eliminated or greatly reduced.
You are mistaken in calling it a novel. It is a collection of sketches—often repetitious—totally without structure.
Much of the dialogue is funny.
You may quote me as saying: “This exposure of corruption, cowardice and incivility of American officers will outrage all friends of your country (such as myself) and greatly comfort your enemies.”
Me, I’d have printed it, but Simon & Schuster thought otherwise.
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TT: Local color
Said at dinner the other night by a friend who recently moved to New York:
”The trouble with living here is that whenever you feel lonely, the very next thing you run into is a cellist in the subway station.”
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TT: You don't know all, sir, you don't know all
My old friend Joan McCaffrey (whose e-mail address recently vanished from my address book, in case anybody who knows it wants to help me out) was cleaning out a closet the other day and came across an H.L. Mencken piece hitherto unknown to me. Vanity Fair (the old Vanity Fair, that is) asked Mencken to contribute to a 1923 symposium called “The Ten Dullest Authors.” I regret to say that I overlooked it when researching The Skeptic, so I’ve decided to post Mencken's contribution on “About Last Night” for the retrospective delectation of my readers.
* * *
It is hard for me to make up a list of books or authors that bore me insufferably, for the simple truth is that I can read almost anything. My trade requires me to read annually all the worst garbage that is issued in belles lettres; for recreation and instruction I read such things as the Congressional Record, religious tracts, Mr. Walter Lippmann’s endless discussions of the Simon-Binet tests, works on molecular physics and military strategy, and the monthly circulars of the great bond houses. It seems to me that nothing that gets into print can be wholly uninteresting; whatever its difficulties to the reader, it at least represents some earnest man’s efforts to express himself. But there are some authors, of course, who try me more than most, and if I must name ten of them then I name:
1. Dostoevski
2. George Eliot
3. D.H. Lawrence
4. James Fenimore Cooper
5. Eden Phillpotts
6. Robert Browning
7. Selma Lagerlöf
8. Gertrude Stein
9. Björnstjerne Björnson
10. Goethe
As a good German, I should, I suppose, wallow happily in Faust; I can only report that, when I read it, it is patriotically, not voluptuously. Dostoevski, for some reason that I don’t know, simply stumps me; I have never been able to get through any of his novels. George Eliot I started to read too young, and got thereby a taste against her that is unsound but incurable. Against Cooper and Browning I was prejudiced by school-masters who admired them. Phillpotts seems to me the worst novelist now in practice in England. As for Lawrence and Miss Stein, what makes them hard reading for me is simply the ineradicable conviction that beneath all their pompous manner there is nothing but tosh. The two Scandinavians I need not explain.
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TT: Almanac
“Small inward treasure does he possess who, to feel alive, needs every hour the tumult of the street, the emotion of the theatre, and the small talk of society.”
Santiago Ramon y Cajál (epigraph to the Jerome Robbins-Leonard Bernstein ballet Facsimile)
| Saturday, October 25, 2003
TT: What they used to be
I’m reading Wil Haygood’s In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr., and finding it engrossing. Perhaps you have to be older than 30—if not 40—to expect to find Davis interesting, but Haygood’s anecdotage is quite arrestingly good. Here’s an amazing story that comes from Keely Smith:
Sammy and Sinatra and singer Keely Smith were sitting around one evening. Just three singers, awash in the joy they were all having, talking about singing, songs, life. Sammy told Sinatra he’d have to leave early, couldn’t hang around. Sinatra couldn’t understand what might be more important than hanging around with him. So he wanted to know why Sammy had to leave, and those blue eyes pressed for an answer. It was Kim Novak; they had a date. A little smirk crawled across the Sinatra face. He told Sammy he could get Kim to break the date. Sammy thought Sinatra was kidding, but he wasn’t, the blue eyes steady and hard. Keely Smith sat listening, looking between both men. Sammy against Frank. She knew who would win. "I said, ‘Frank, don’t do that.’ He went into the room, called Kim [said he wanted to see her], and she broke the date with Sammy to go with Frank. It broke Sammy’s heart. And Frank never went to meet her."
That’s a story any biographer would have killed to unearth, and Haygood’s book is full of similar tales.
I have to add, though, that In Black and White is also full of similar journalistic clichés ("A little smirk crawled across the Sinatra face"), and more than a few passages are so throbbingly florid as to read almost like a parody of Tom Wolfe. O.K., it’s a celebrity biography, not the life of Samuel Johnson, but In Black and White is also riddled with errors of fact, chronology, and spelling (Jimmie Lunceford’s first name is spelled two different ways on the same page) that will be immediately obvious to anybody who knows a reasonable amount about American pop culture in the 20th century. I’m not talking anything so awful as to call into question the fundamental reliability of the book (as a friend of mine cracked, why would you expect an author who can't spell his own first name to be able to spell anything else?), but I just finished proofreading A Terry Teachout Reader, a job I took very seriously, and it’s plain to see, at least to me, that nobody went over this book with anything remotely approaching the same kind of care.
Again, I know times have changed…except that In Black and White was published by Alfred A. Knopf, which still has a reputation as a publisher of books that not only look good but read well. There was a not-so-distant time when any Knopf editor who allowed a book as sloppily edited as In Black and White to go into print would have committed ritual suicide in expiation of his sins.
I know this at first hand, incidentally, because Knopf was H.L. Mencken’s house, and in 1995 I published a Mencken anthology, | | |
