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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 14, 2004

OGIC: Steal this title

March 14, 2004 by Terry Teachout

I was just on Amazon looking up books by the novelist Wayne Johnson. The first listing was his new book, which I’m currently reading (and enjoying), The Devil You Know. The second listing was something called Helicopter Theory. I clicked through, thinking, “ooh, that’s a good name for a novel.” Not yet, it’s not. It was actually a book on, um, helicopter theory, by another Wayne Johnson altogether. Needless to say.


Now the Amazon recommendation mill, which never, ever rests, is just positive I’ll find much to divert me in Principles of Helicopter Aerodynamics and Rotary-Wing Aerodynamics, and will doubtless be hawking such wares to me till kingdom come…

TT: Almanac

March 14, 2004 by Terry Teachout

“As for the Quarterly Review, I have not read it, nor shall I, nor ought I–where abuse is intended not for my correction but my pain. I am however very fair game. If the oxen catch a butcher, they have a right to toss and gore him.”


Sydney Smith, letter to Francis Jeffrey, c. July 3, 1809

TT: Radio silence

March 14, 2004 by Terry Teachout

As you may have surmised from yesterday’s almanac, I’m deep in the throes of composition (though I am taking time today to brunch with Chicha and show her the Teachout Museum).


See you Monday, unless my resolve slackens and I blog inadvertently.

OGIC: Fortune muffin

March 14, 2004 by Terry Teachout

“There was a small inner room like a cupboard where, morning and afternoon, these girls took turns to make the tea. A list was tacked to the wall, of all the men and their requirements: Mr. Bostock weak with sugar, Mr. Miles strong and plain. Valda’s Leadbetter had an infusion of camomile flowers, which he bought at Jackson’s in Piccadilly; these were prepared in a separate pot and required straining. Another notice cautioned against tea-leaves in the sink. The room was close and shabby. There were stains on the lino and a smell of stale biscuits. On one spattered wall the paint was peeling, from exhalations of an electric kettle.


“Sometimes when Valda made tea Caro would set out cups for her on a scratched brown tray.


“It was something to see the queenly and long-limbed Valda measure, with disdainful scruple, the flowers for Mr. Leadbetter’s special pot (which carried, tied to its handle, a little tag: ‘Let stand five minutes.’). To hear her reel off the directions: ‘Mr. Hoskins, saccharin. Mr. Farquhar, squeeze of lemon.’ She filled the indeterminate little room with scorn and decision, and caused a thrill of wonderful fear among the other women for the conviction that, had one of these men entered, she would not have faltered a moment in her performance.


“When Valda spoke of men more generally, it was in an assumption of shared and calamitous experience. None of the other women entered on such discussions–which were not only indelicate but would have mocked their deferential dealings with Mr. This or That. Furthermore, they feared that Valda, if encouraged, might say something physical.


“Watching the office women file towards the exit at evening, Valda observed to Caro: ‘The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea.’


“There was another male faction in the office, of ageing young men who spoke bitterly of class divisions and of the right, or absence, of opportunity. For these, equally, Valda had no patience. ‘They don’t quite believe they exist, and are waiting for someone to complete the job, gratis.’ She would set down the biscuit tin, switch off the electric kettle. ‘Oh Caro, it is true that the common man is everlastingly embattled, but he has a lot of people on his side. It’s the uncommon man who gets everyone’s goat.’


“Valda would tell Caro, ‘You feel downright disloyal to your experience, when you do come across a man you could like. By then you scarcely see how you can decently make terms, it’s like going over to the enemy. And then there’s the waiting. Women have got to fight their way out of that dumb waiting at the end of the never-ringing telephone. The receiver, as our portion of it is called.’ Or, slowly revolving the steeping teapot in her right hand, like an athlete warming up to cast a disc: ‘There is the dressing up, the hair, the fingernails. The toes. And, after all that, you are a meal they eat while reading the newspaper. I tell you that ever one of those fingers we paint is another nail in their eventual coffins.’


“All this was indisputable, even brave. But was a map, from which rooms, hours, and human faces did not rise; on which there was no bloom of generosity or discovery. The omissions might constitute life itself; unless the map was intended as a substitute for the journey.


“Those at least were the objections raised by Caroline Bell.”


Shirley Hazzard, Transit of Venus


(Note: In my first job out of college, Editorial Assistant at a publishing house, I had to make tea most days for a [female] boss. Sometimes, too, go fetch raspberry muffins at the Mrs. Field’s in the subway station. In the latter case, I was always provided money for my own muffin into the bargain, because “I’m affluent and you’re not.” Which was very, very true.)

OGIC: People people who died

March 14, 2004 by Terry Teachout

At Memefirst, Felix Salmon detects a pattern in the all-time best-selling issues of People magazine:

In reverse order, they are: (5) Grace Kelly, dead. (4) John Lennon, dead. (3) John F Kennedy, Jr, dead. (2) Princess Diana, dead. (1) 9/11. Could it be that the best celebrity is a dead celebrity?

Hardly surprising, but still a little bit jarring to see them listed so starkly.

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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