Archives for 2003

“Men who are accustomed over a long series of years to supposing that whatever can somehow be squared with the law is right–or if not right then allowable–are not useful members of society; and when they reach positions of power in the state they are noxious. They are people for whom ethics can be summed up by the collected statutes.”

Patrick O’Brian, The Reverse of the Medal

I haven’t mentioned this for ages, so I will: please tell your friends about “About Last Night.” We don’t advertise. We don’t send out mass e-mailings. We rely on links, and on you. Each and every time you send our URL to a potential reader, the law of unforeseen consequences has a fresh chance to kick in.

If you read this site, tell somebody about it. If you have a blog of your own, mention us. The easy-to-remember address is www.terryteachout.com. Spread the word…often.

Take a look at the story in this morning New York Times about who–if anybody–will replace Lorin Maazel as music director of the New York Philharmonic:

When he was selected in 2001, Mr. Maazel was assumed to be a one-term appointment. He was 70, and concerns about an aging audience prompted calls for a less traditional leader. But his appointment also represented the new power of the orchestra’s musicians, who had pushed for Mr. Maazel, having played under him as a visiting conductor. Many orchestra members continue to say they are content under his baton.

The quotes are revealing. The orchestra’s board invited several Philharmonic players to give their opinions of Maazel. One compared him to Kurt Masur, the orchestra’s previous music director:

“He’s such a welcome relief after the tremendous abuse we took before,” said Eric Bartlett, a cellist. He said Mr. Masur had operated on “the assumption that every musician was trying not to play well and had to be terrorized into doing their best.” He added, “That assumption wore everybody down.”

Another, concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, said, “If we have no one to replace Maazel, we just can’t let him go. I just don’t think we’re in a rush to replace someone as brilliant as Mr. Maazel….He’s respectful and thorough, and he doesn’t waste time.” And to critics in the media who claim that Maazel’s programming is “too conservative,” Dicterow replies, “New York audiences like to hear their Beethoven. If we played only contemporary music, we’d only have a quarter of an audience, and pretty soon we wouldn’t have an orchestra.”

This story virtually speaks for itself, but I should add one footnote for readers with short memories: Kurt Masur took a demoralized, undisciplined orchestra and turned it into the virtuoso ensemble it had been in years past. He didn’t do that by being respectful and efficient–he did it by tyrannizing a bunch of temperamental players notorious for their bad behavior. (It’s no accident that the Philharmonic long ago acquired the nickname “Murder, Inc.” for its treatment of weak and incompetent conductors.)

As for the rest, I’ll simply direct you to my earlier post on the future of the classical concert (see below). For my part, I don’t think Lorin Maazel is a very interesting or significant conductor, but in a way that’s the least important thing about him. What really matters is that the Philharmonic itself clearly believes it can continue to do business as usual, indefinitely. Perhaps it can. The Philharmonic is, after all, America’s flagship orchestra, located in a city big and rich enough to keep it afloat no matter what it does or doesn’t do. But how many other American orchestras can say the same thing? Damned few–which is why so many are either floundering or folding.

If The Wall Street Journal posted free links to its arts coverage (hint, hint), I’d tell you to take a look at “Suzanne Farrell Gets Her Revenge,” Robert Greskovic’s review of Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s recent week-long run in Washington. Since it doesn’t, I’ll tell you instead to go out and buy a copy of this morning’s paper. Greskovic’s review is the most important piece about ballet you’ll read this month, including anything I might happen to write. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Since 1999, as part of a project of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Ms. Farrell has been selecting and preparing dancers, and staging ballets, primarily those of Balanchine. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, a season-to-season group of dancers that currently numbers 34, has just completed an amibitous nine-week U.S. tour with a weeklong, two-program all-Balanchine season at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Ehater….When the leader starting from scratch is as up to trailblazing as Ms. Farrell has proven herself to be, empires can be built. SFB is on the move, and the Balanchine centenary is happily just the time to keep the momentum building.

Don’t miss this one.

“If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.”

Flannery O’Connor, letter to an unnamed teacher (1961)

Here’s a sign of the times: JenniCam, the site on which you can view real-time video of life inside Jenni Ringley’s bedroom, is shutting down on December 31 after more than seven years “on the air” (or whatever the properly postmodern term for Webcasting is).

I hadn’t heard anything about Jenni and her so-called life for ages, but there was a time when her Web site was all the rage, so much so that she attracted quite a few subscribers willing to pay for premium content, not to mention half-witted academic theory-spinners like the professor of psychology who penned the following paragraph, for which he doubtless received tenure:

The JenniCam phenomenon is a unique example of how cyberspace addresses such needs for belonging and the social affirmation of self. There was an overwhelming response to Jennifer Ringley when she set up a live, continuous video broadcast of her dorm room, and then later her apartment. People who idealized, even worshipped, Jenni banded together in groups to talk about her, speculate about her, share screen captured pictures of her. She became the focal point of their camaraderie. Their collective admiration of her–a kind of idealizing transference–served to bolster their sense of self.

Jenni herself was a bit of a theory-spinner, in her fashion. Asked by an interviewer to explain the appeal of her site, she replied:

I think people are getting tired of seeing airbrushed models in magazines and unrealistic actors and actresses living unrealistic lives. The real lives of real people are even more special and interesting and “perfect” than what you find on TV. I try to impress the idea that I do the JenniCam with the belief that EVERYONE is so special, and I hope that’s what people come away with.

JenniCam was, of course, nothing more than a hula-hoop-type fad, but seven years ago the Web itself was still something of a giant-sized hula hoop, in much the same way as was television circa 1948. Back then, pretty much anything could draw a crowd–championship wrestling, roller derbies, B-movie matinees–simply because TV itself was so new that people would watch whatever was on, fascinated not by the message but by the medium. The Internet was like that in 1996. Now it’s part of the air we breathe, so much so that I rarely stop to reflect on what life was like before e-mail, amazon.com, Google, and blogs.

To be sure, most blogs are the verbal equivalent of JenniCam, but the silly ones neither get nor deserve much attention. Instead, the blog has evolved with astonishing speed into something far removed from mere faddishness. It is now a full-fledged journalistic medium, the first truly new one since the dawn of network TV. JenniCam was a curiosity, but blogs–or something like them–are here to stay.

Nevertheless, Jenni Ringley has earned herself a footnote in the history of the information age: she will be remembered as the Milton Berle of the Web. She was present at the creation of a radically innovative form of interpersonal communication, and used it to show the world her underwear. What’s more, the world turned out to be interested in her underwear–briefly. Then something more interesting came along, and Jenni’s underwear turned out not to be soooooo special after all.

In case you’re wondering, I’m still sneezing. One of my editors read of my plight on the blog (my voice is out of order, so I’m not returning calls) and e-mailed me the following piece of advice: “Drink heavily. It’s your only hope.”

I’ll try that tomorrow. Tonight, I think I’ll stick to TheraFlu. See you Tuesday.

The King-Hazzard debates that began at the National Book Awards dinner and rippled through blogland a couple of weeks ago are anticipated in this 1999 piece by Ray Sawhill on what publishing professionals wish they had time to read–and what they would like to never have to read again.

It was when I asked my interviewees to specify what they’d be happiest not reading that the surprises began. (The wittiest answers: Publishers Weekly and the New York Times Book Review.) John Grisham, perhaps predictably, topped the list. But after him came writers from among today’s most respected literary figures. Salman Rushdie (“boring and pretentious”) and Toni Morrison shared top honors. Don DeLillo (“he’s homework”), Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, Tom Wolfe and Martin Amis trailed close behind. (To be fair, each of these writers also had a fan or two.) In fact, of the dozen publishing people I polled, only three would still be devotees of what passes today for literary writing if it weren’t part of their jobs.

The list of living writers my subjects would willingly continue to read was much more varied…

Click through to find out who. Sawhill’s essay originally appeared in Salon. His reflections on the results of his informal poll cut to the heart of the discussion about the relative merits of popular and “literary” fiction (a distinction that has proven hard to hold in place) that followed the awards dinner:

What would our reading lives be like if they weren’t preoccupied with, or nagged at by, the dream of literature? My poll suggests that in such a world the reader who finds Toni Morrison a hectoring drag and Salman Rushdie a radical-chic blowhard wouldn’t hesitate to say so. We would give serious thought to the argument that, for example, Elmore Leonard is more likely to be read 50 years from now than Martin Amis. Preferring Rikki Ducornet and Dennis Cooper would be fine, too. In any case, it turns out that, even if your reading stash looks like a disorderly heap of magazines, mysteries, celebrity bios, a classic or two, fiction by a couple of literary figures you’ve grown attached to and books about your personal interests–whether it’s birdbaths or the nature of consciousness–there’s no reason to feel shame or guilt. Nobody can read everything. And, besides, you’re already reading like the pros wish they could, if only they had the chance.

Very nicely said.