Archives for November 1, 2004

OGIC and I spent a few idle hours tweaking the right-hand column this past weekend. Not only are the Top Fives updated, but we undertook a radical reorganization of “Sites to See,” our blogroll, in the course of which we added some new blogs and dropped some old ones. Scroll down and take a peek.

You’ll also find something fresh in the “Teachout Elsewhere” module, a link to an essay about Anthony Powell that I wrote for Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. If you haven’t read it yet, click here to do so.

Today, by the way, is the official publication date of All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, which is already humming along very nicely, thank you, though I did take a hit the other day in the Los Angeles Times (no free link, heh heh heh). The reviewer actually accused me of political correctness, which has to be a lifetime first….

More interesting, and far more readily available: Maud Newton
interviewed me for her blog! We “talked” at length via e-mail about all sorts of things having to do with my work as a critic and biographer.

Here’s a taste:

How often do you find yourself modifying your initial critical perspective on a work of art?

Not infrequently, at least over the course of the life cycle, and sometimes with breathtaking speed. I occasionally quote on my blog a great line by the music critic Hans Keller: “As soon as I detest something I ask myself why I like it.” But you’re talking about something else, something different, and I think it has a lot to do with growing older. If you’re paying any attention at all, increasing age brings with it the shedding of youthful illusions, along with a detachment that also affects your aesthetic requirements. It’s harder to be romantic in middle age–you’ve seen too much death, too much failure, too much injustice–and you also lose your taste for a certain kind of effusiveness. At 48, for instance, I now find that my favorite opera is Verdi’s Falstaff. I would never have said that at 28. By the same token, I think I also appreciate certain authors more, in some cases much more. I liked Conrad when young; I love him now. I would never have appreciated a novel like Death Comes for the Archbishop when I was in my twenties. And I didn’t get Mauriac at all back then, whereas I’m now quite passionate about him….

Read the whole thing here.

I’ll try to post more today, but this is a three-deadline, three-show week, so if I should fail to deliver the goods, please be kind.

UPDATE: Go to the “Teachout in Commentary” module of the right-hand column to read my newly posted essay for Commentary, in which I talk about the life and lyrics of Johnny Mercer.

My posting on schadenfreude pulled a lot of e-mail.

A Los Angeles cabaret singer wrote:

Just a theory: you are, of course, aware that there
is a song in the Sesame Street parody musical Avenue Q
called “Schadenfreude.” Perhaps our friends at the
Times think that is reason enough to suspect it is now
part of the popular lexicon. (They did the same thing
a couple of years back with “tsunami,” if you recall.)

She was the first to remind me of what I should have known, seeing as how I gushed all over Avenue Q in The Wall Street Journal last year. Several others wrote immediately thereafter to point out the same thing, including a New York actress:

Last October, I came across the word for the first time in my “Word Of The Day” calendar (it was a gift!) and took special notice of it because this calendar had, up until then, had the habit of introducing me to such exotic and challenging terms as “espresso” and “pseudonym.” Here, at last, was a word I hadn’t seen before.

Two nights later, I went to see “Avenue Q” on Broadway and Voila! there was the word as the title of a song!

Since then, I can’t stop seeing the thing and I’ve never quite decided if it was always used so much or if I just noticed it more because of my handy calendar. Maybe I missed out on not having one for 2004. Probably not.

Oh, so the theory is, maybe the show affected a bunch of people or maybe a lot of those calendars were on sale.

Minutes later, I heard from the polyglot critic Bruce Bawer, an old friend who follows this blog from his home in Norway:

Interestingly, of the other Germanic languages I’m
familiar with, Norwegian and Danish also have a word for this concept
(“skadefryd”), as does Swedish (“skadegl

Here’s something you shouldn’t miss:

Ben Katchor and Mark Mulcahy will present “The Rosenbach Company,”
their new music-theater production, Tuesday, November 9th at 7:30 p.m. at the Harry De Jur Playhouse
in The Abrons Arts Center of The Henry Street Settlement,
466 Grand Street, Manhattan.
One performance only.
Running time: 2 hours, 15 min.

Katchor and Mulcahy’s new sung-through pop-musical chronicles the life
and times of Abe Rosenbach, the world’s preeminent rare-book dealer in
the first half of the last century, and his brother Philip, a savvy
dealer of decorative arts. Their collection ranges from James Joyce’s
manuscript of “Ulysses” to John Tenniel’s original illustrations for
“Alice in Wonderland.”

Mixing projected animated images with live actors, singers and
musicians, the show explores such issues as the obsessive nature of
collecting, the relationship between cultural and commercial pursuits
and the men’s historical significance as the owners of some of the
world’s greatest literary treasures.

“…a sung-through biodrama? a chamber rock opera? a meeting of the
museum establishment with the music underground?–it is thrilling,
charming, and altogether a knockout.”

“What a bore it is, waking up in the morning always the same
person. I wish I were unflinching and emphatic, and had big,
bushy eyebrows and a Message for the Age. I wish I were a deep Thinker, or a great Ventriloquist.

“I should like to be refined and melancholy, the victim of a
hopeless passion; to love in the old, stilted way, with
impossible Adoration and Despair under the pale-faced Moon.

“I wish I could get up; I wish I were the world’s greatest
Violinist. I wish I had lots of silver, and first Editions, and
green ivory.”

Logan Pearsall Smith, Trivia (courtesy of James T. Keating)

I have a cold. The worst cold in history. If I can’t rent an iron lung before bedtime, I’ll just have to shoot myself. Otherwise, I’ll try to blog in the morning. If you wrote me today and haven’t heard back, that’s why.

Later.

Old Hag’s redesign is, like, wow. Hop over and say hello! (Bundt cake optional.)

I saw Sideways this weekend, a perfectly marvelous movie. I’ll write about it in detail later, but for the moment lazily point you to my capsule notice in the TT-OGIC TOP FIVE.

Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. Grab ten bucks and sprint to your friendly neighborhood cinema.

That is all.