Archives for March 2004

Guess who? Don’t peek:

“Just as we were all, potentially, in Adam when he fell, so we were all, potentially, in Jerusalem on that first Good Friday before there was an Easter, a Pentecost, a Christian, or a Church. It seems to me worthwhile asking ourselves who we should have been and what we should have been doing. None of us, I’m certain, will imagine himself as one of the Disciples, cowering in agony of spiritual despair and physical terror. Very few of us are big wheels enough to see ourselves as Pilate, or good churchmen enough to see ourselves as a member of the Sanhedrin. In my most optimistic mood I see myself as a Hellenized Jew from Alexandria visiting an intellectual friend. We are walking along, engaged in philosophical argument. Our path takes us past the base of Golgotha. Looking up, we see an all too familiar sight–three crosses surrounded by a jeering crowd. Frowning with prim distaste, I say, ‘It’s disgusting the way the mob enjoy such things. Why can’t the authorities execute criminals humanely and in private by giving them hemlock to drink, as they did with Socrates?’ Then, averting my eyes from the disagreeable spectacle, I resume our fascinating discussion about the nature of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.”

W.H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book

“It is said that the London police can always distinguish among the corpses fished out of the Thames, between those who have drowned themselves because of unhappy love affairs and those drowned for debt. The fingers of the lovers are almost invariably lacerated by their attempts to save themselves by clinging to the piers of the bridges. In contrast, the debtors apparently go down like slabs of concrete, without struggle and without afterthought.”

A. Alvarez, The Savage God

The Baltimore Sun‘s books page recently featured a symposium
whose participants were asked what book they wished had never been written. Some of the answers were deadly serious (I picked Das Kapital, while several others opted for Mein Kampf), some funny (one person sent A Year in Provence to oblivion), but Joan Mellen covered herself in honor with this response:

A book that never should have been written is my own Kay Boyle: Author of Herself (1994). At 552 pages in minuscule publisher’s revenge type, it is a loose and baggy monster of a biography. Kay Boyle’s modest if decisive contribution to the modernist short story and to expatriate Twenties Paris could easily have been covered with force and simplicity in a neat biographical study of two hundred pages in length.

Give that woman a grant!

Check out the right-hand column, where you’ll find some new Top Five items and some new blogs listed in “Sites to See.” I’ve also updated the “Teachout in Commentary” module with a new essay called “Kandinsky’s Mistake.”

I may not be blogging much this week, but I never stop thinking of you.

Paul Taylor and Helen Frankenthaler open tonight in Manhattan (not together, alas). Go here to read last week’s posting with details and links.

Our new slogan:

“Three percent more evil than Old Hag (but slightly nicer than Cinetrix).”

(Needless to say, it’s all Our Girl’s fault.)

My editor at Harcourt sent me an e-mail this morning asking (v. politely) when the hell the Balanchine book would be finished. “Soon,” I said.

As I continue to work on making that promise come true, amuse yourself here:

– Sarah‘s back from vacation.

– Franklin has posted some new watercolors. (One of these days I’m going to go to his studio and see his stuff in person, even if it is way the hell down in Maudland.)

– So far, Jennifer has mentioned one (1) blogger by First Name Only. I think she’s getting the hang of this….

– Return of the Reluctant is boycotting M&Ms. I don’t think I can go there–a life without M&Ms is unimaginable–but I approve.

– Finally, those of you who read artsjournal.com every morning already know about this:

ArtsJournal Live and In Person: Wonder what those ArtsJournal bloggers look like on the other side of that computer screen? Well, we wonder what you look like too. So Wednesday, March 3 at 6:30 pm, AJ editor Doug McLennan and seven of our AJ bloggers are getting together in New York City at the Landmark Tavern (11th and 46th), and you’re invited. Greg Sandow, Terry Teachout, Jan Herman, Kyle Gann, Tobi Tobias, James Russell and John Perreault will all be there from about 6:30 on into the evening. Very informal – come talk ideas, arts and culture with us.

And for those of you who don’t read artsjournal.com every day:

(1) Why not?

(2) Go here and do so.

The Brazilian-American jazz singer Luciana Souza, in whom “About Last Night” has taken a great interest from its first day onward, has a new CD coming out on April 6 called Neruda. It’s a song cycle based on the poetry of Pablo Neruda and featuring Edward Simon on piano.

I wrote the liner notes:

If Luciana did nothing more than sing, she’d still be a miracle. But she also writes music, sometimes to her own graceful words, sometimes to those of poets who catch her curious ear. Neruda is an hour-long song cycle based on the poetry of Pablo Neruda and the piano pieces of Federico Mompou, sung in her Brazil-perfumed English (a language she speaks with the freshness and surprise of an explorer charting a new world) and as uncategorizably protean as everything else she does. “House” dances down the street in a sinuous 7/4, spurred on by her own deft percussion playing. “Poetry” has the concentration of an art song by Faur