Archives for September 2004

Three more readers chime in on “About Last Night”‘s topic du jour:

– “Reading your post on the effect of technology on the written word, I
noted your statement that no one in his right mind would write a 5,000-word essay with a fountain pen. My personal preferences aside, I feel
obliged to point out that Neal Stephenson, an author known for his
cutting-edge science fiction, wrote all three of his most recent books
(totalling nearly 3,000 pages) by hand, with a fountain pen. Whether
Mr. Stephenson is in his right mind or not is up for debate, I
suppose, but he is, at least, proof that the fountain pen can keep up
with the modern age.”

– “I fall heavily in favour of using the library. I survive on a single
income, so hard cover books fall on the wrong side of the budget for
me. The library comes through for me every time. In fact, I found 4
out 5 of your suggestions for new jazz listeners at my library and I
currently have ‘The Skeptic’ signed out. (And no, I can’t find ‘The
Terry Teachout Reader’ at the library either.) The other thing my
library has is movies – including DVD’s.

“One thing that has made my library experience even more enjoyable is
the online catalogue. If I discover a book, CD or movie I want to
explore while surfing the web, it’s a quick click and search to see if
my library has a copy. Then I simply reserve it and when it is
available they notify me. I think they are even going to e-mail
notifications. Between my computer and my library card I can continue
to learn and be entertained without a large bill at the other end.”

– “A friend just pointed out something else about ebooks. You can’t get an author’s written signature on it!”

I promise to let you all know at once if anybody ever asks me to inscribe an e-book….

Harcourt just messengered over the first finished copy of All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I can’t even begin to tell you how this feels….

I note wistfully that Chicago Shakespeare’s production of Rose Rage officially opens in New York tonight. Terry and I saw the play last January here in Chicago, where it held us rapt for its whole five hours plus. Jay Whittaker’s Richard, especially, is a performance not to be missed; I still get a little chill up my spine.

I just got back from hearing the Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, and I’m still flying. It’s been some time since Schneider’s big band last appeared in a New York nightclub, and there’s no better place to hear it than the Standard, where the barbecue is tasty, the vibe is comfy, and the sound system is in the hands of experts. Schneider is, of course, the jazz composer of her generation, and as for the band, I hope I don’t need to tell you how remarkable it is.

Schneider continues at the Standard through Sunday. For more information, go here. Be sure to make a reservation, by the way–the club was packed for the first set on Thursday, and my guess is that most of this weekend’s performances will sell out in advance.

On Monday I went to hear Madeleine Peyroux‘s opening night at Le Jazz Au Bar. I profiled her in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, and the effects of that piece were still being felt four days later. Monday’s performance was sold out to the walls (which astonished the manager–jazz clubs are never full early in the week), and several out-of-towners told me they’d come to New York to see the show after reading what I wrote. How about that?

Peyroux continues at Le Jazz Au Bar through Saturday, with sets at eight and ten p.m. Once again, I strongly suggest you make a reservation–the joint, it seems, is still jumping. For more information, go here.

As so often happens after Thursday, today is Friday, meaning that I’m in The Wall Street Journal with a review of two terrific off-Broadway revivals, Eug

“Our songs may not smell of sweat and the earth, but our rhymes, not just ‘time’ and ‘mine,’ not just ‘wrong’ and ‘alone’ or ‘home,’ are pure. Sure, when a line is great, you can skip the rhyme. But how many lines are that great?”

Johnny Mercer (quoted in Gene Lees, Portrait of Johnny)

Here’s a snippet of conversation I had with my trainer (who is studying to be an actor) during my workout earlier today:

HIM: Did you see Mean Girls?

ME (suspiciously): Er, no. Is it good–I mean, of its kind?

HIM (enthusiastically): It’s really good. It’s even got a good plot. I cried at the end. Of course, I cry at everything now–it’s because I’m getting so open. “Oh, [sniffle] if only I could use that in a scene.” Know what I mean?

Incidentally, I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised if he pops up in an action movie one of these days….

Regular readers know that when I post excerpts from my Wall Street Journal drama columns each Friday morning, I always mention that the Journal provides no free link to my pieces and suggest two alternative options, buying a paper copy of the Journal or subscribing to the online edition.

Apropos of this, a reader writes:

Cause I don’t read your blog every day & cause I don’t stay home in front of a computer all day, I always find a third option to be most effective: going to the library.

But hey, they don’t still have those things, do they? Not since everyone went online, right?

This posting made me laugh out loud, but it also reminded me of something I never think about anymore, which is that I stopped using public libraries a number of years ago. Don’t get me wrong: I love libraries. I worked in my high-school library (it was my first job, in fact), and I can’t count the hours I spent haunting big-city libraries as a young man. During the decade I spent working on The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken I had access to the closed stacks of the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, and I checked out books by the bagful.

Alas, I no longer go to Baltimore each week, nor do I have access to the stacks of a university library, and the branch of the New York Public Library located in my neighborhood is roughly the size of the one in Smalltown, U.S.A., on which I cut my teeth forty years ago. When I need information, I now look first to the Web, then to my personal library, which is small but choice. Should those alternatives fail to satisfy me, I walk two blocks to a very large Barnes & Noble and explore its shelves. If that doesn’t do it, I do without, or order a used copy of the book in question from amazon.com.

I wonder how common my experience is. It may well have less to do with the current state of library-going than with the fact that I live in New York City. Would I go to the library if there were a good one in my neighborhood? Probably–but I’m not so sure. When I was young I read in great shelf-emptying gulps, thereby accumulating the intellectual capital off which I’ve been living for the past quarter-century. Now I read far more selectively, concentrating on new titles, though I also re-read books habitually. I operate on the principle that any book worth reading more than twice is a book worth owning, and my shelves reflect that belief. I’m sure that the Web has cut down considerably on my library-related needs, but it may also be that libraries simply don’t have as much to offer me as they used to.

Speaking of the Web, I mentioned yesterday that my anxiety-fraught upgrade to OS X made it possible for me to use iMusic, Apple’s Web-based “record store.” Since then, I’ve bought a couple of dozen songs at ninety-nine cents a pop. Most of the ones I downloaded were singles from the Sixties and Seventies that I still remembered with great fondness (Little Feat’s “Strawberry Flats,” Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up”), together with a sprinkling of newer tunes that I’d heard in passing and wanted to own (Suzanne Vega’s “Caramel”). I also spent quite a bit of time looking through iMusic’s jazz section, which is surprisingly well-stocked, but at first glance I didn’t see anything I wanted that I didn’t already have. Frank Sinatra’s version of “Witchcraft,” the one pre-rock standard that I bought, is only available on Sinatra’s greatest-hits compilations, none of which I care to own.

In short, iMusic has yet to work a revolution in my record-buying habits, no doubt because I’m too firmly entrenched in them to make any sudden changes at this point in my life. Anyone who owns 3,000 painstakingly shelved CDs is unlikely to throw them all away overnight. I expect that for the present, I’ll mostly keep on using iMusic the way I used it last night, buying old songs that I liked a long time ago and new songs by artists to whom my younger friends have drawn my attention. Still, it’ll be interesting to see whether my own attachment to the Album as Art Object now starts to diminish. I thought, for instance, of downloading Jonatha Brooke’s live album, but I decided to wait and buy the CD version instead. I’ll let you know as soon as I loosen up enough to buy a complete album from iMusic. That’ll be the day.

P.S. Dear iTunes, would you please get with the program and make the Amazing Rhythm Aces’ “Third-Rate Romance” available for downloading?