Archives for April 23, 2004

I see in this morning’s Wall Street Journal that I made a small but exasperating mistake in my review of Assassins, in which I refer to “sketches of eight successful and would-be presidential assassins.” As the photograph accompanying the review makes embarrassingly clear, there are nine assassins in Assassins. In fact, I meant “eight sketches,” not “sketches of eight”: Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who both tried to kill Gerald Ford, are portrayed in the same sketch.

So far, I haven’t gotten any calls or e-mail pointing out this slip, but I’m sure they’re coming. Arrgh. Gnashing of teeth.

“Capri is as charming as ever it was, the people as odd: everybody is very immoral, but fortunately not so dull as those who kick over the traces often are.”

W. Somerset Maugham, letter to Violet Hunt (c. 1905)

Much to my surprise, I took Thursday off. I’m not good at that–I usually find a way to sneak back into harness–but outside of e-mail and a bit of blogging, I didn’t write a word all day, nor did I read a book, watch a DVD, or listen to a CD for purposes of review. Instead, I surfed the Web idly, observed the effects of April sunshine on the Teachout Museum, thought some pleasingly inappropriate thoughts about a couple of interesting people, took a nap, ate two good meals, and made a few schedule-related phone calls.

– Somewhere in there I reread Jeffrey Meyers’ Somerset Maugham: A Life preparatory to disposing of it permanently. Meyers is the very model of a professional biographer, alas: earnest, industrious, pedestrian, with a prose style that runs to the slapdash. I actually giggled to see that in the third sentence of the preface, he rendered his subject’s middle name as “Somersault,” though I simultaneously shuddered to think that so horrendous a mistake should have found its way into a book published by Knopf. If I’d made a mistake like that…but, then, Our Girl gently informed me yesterday that she’d found a teeny-tiny typo in A Terry Teachout Reader. These things happen!

– In addition, I tasted Jack Teagarden: Father of Jazz Trombone, an exemplary three-CD anthology of Teagarden’s 78 recordings which has just been released. Said Louis Armstrong: “I think Jack Teagarden moves me more than any musician I know of.” Not only that, he sang as well as he played, as you can hear for yourself by going here, scrolling down to “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues,” and clicking on the link.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get some work done.

I’m in The Wall Street Journal today, reviewing two Roundabout Theatre Company shows, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel.

About Assassins, which tries to make sense of the lives of eight people who killed or tried to kill American presidents, I had mixed feelings. The production is all but perfect, but the show itself, despite marvelous moments, simply doesn’t add up. Assassins, I wrote,

takes the form of a carnival sideshow whose brass-voiced barker (Marc Kudisch) invites unhappy passers-by to forget their troubles by stepping right up and taking a potshot at the man in the Oval Office: “No job? Cupboard bare?/One room, no one there?/Hey, pal, don’t despair–/You wanna shoot a president?” That’s the message of “Assassins,” such as it is: if only there were ice cream for everyone, Camelot would still be with us! Instead, we preach the American dream, and some of those born losers who find it hollow seek to even the score with a gun: “And all you have to do/Is/Squeeze your little finger./Ease your little finger back–/You can change the world.”

Aside from being sophomoric, this rigidly reductive thesis clashes with the core of “Assassins,” a series of sharply drawn sketches of eight successful and would-be presidential assassins. Not surprisingly, this is the part of the show where Mr. Sondheim finds his footing, since his other musicals are exclusively concerned not with ideas but feelings (or the inability to feel). Not even in “Sweeney Todd,” which purports to locate its antihero’s murderous rage in the dehumanizing context of 19th-century British industrialism, does he betray any real interest in or understanding of politics. For Mr. Sondheim, the political is personal, and no matter how hard he and Mr. Weidman try to persuade us that their desperate characters are meaningful symbols of mass alienation, we persist in seeing them as individual objects of pity united only in their varied forms of despair…

Intimate Apparel, on the other hand, couldn’t be better:

It’s an old-fashioned domestic tragedy, as simple and true as a silent movie, about an illiterate turn-of-the-century seamstress who falls hard for the wrong man. Uncomplicatedly staged by Daniel Sullivan on a beautifully spare set designed by Derek McLane, “Intimate Apparel” is devoid of surprise save for the fact that it’s so good. As for Viola Davis, who leads the superlative cast, she’s not just good–she’s perfect. Rarely have I seen innocence and yearning blended to such precisely balanced effect. The only thing wrong with Ms. Davis is that the script says she’s supposed to be homely, which she isn’t (though she acts homely)….

No link, so step right up, hand over one silver dollar, turn to the “Weekend Journal” section, and read the whole thing there.

The UPS man brought me a couple of boxes’ worth of hardcover copies of The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, and I knew that the inevitable moment had come at last: my book has been remaindered. I can’t complain, really, since The Skeptic stayed in print for a year and a half, got terrific reviews, and is now available in a handsome-looking trade paperback. Still, you can’t help but feel a twinge of dismay when you open the form letter from your publisher advising you that your beloved baby will soon be piled high on the discount tables, there to be sold for humiliatingly low prices. No matter how good a run you had–and I had a better one than I ever dared to hope–the party always ends.

Fortunately, I have A Terry Teachout Reader to distract me, and I also plan to find solace in schadenfreude. I linked a few months ago to a cruelly funny poem
by Clive James called “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered.” Now that I have been delivered into the company of mine enemies, I shall take comfort in the concluding stanza:

Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,

Though not to the monumental extent

In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out

To the book of my enemy,

Since in the case of my own book it will be due

To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error–

Nothing to do with merit.

But just supposing that such an event should hold

Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset

By the memory of this sweet moment.

Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!

The book of my enemy has been remaindered

And I am glad.

So there. And should you drop by my place to see the Teachout Museum, be sure to ask for an inscribed copy. I’ve got plenty.

I’m taking Saturday off, unless my resolve wavers. I have a piece to write and a play to see (A Raisin in the Sun, natch), and I think I’ve written enough for one week.

Our Girl may have something up her sleeve, but if not, I’ll see you Sunday.