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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

OGIC: Critics’ corner

March 30, 2005 by Terry Teachout

– In Slate, Stephen Metcalf argues that Ian McEwan’s Saturday, which I hope to find the time to read one day in 2007, isn’t about what other critics think it’s about. This being 2005, I can’t tell you whether he’s right. For what it’s worth, however, his is the first review of the book I’ve felt like reading all the way through and, even so, one of the few that didn’t tell me more than I wanted to know about the novel’s plot.


– Christopher Orr tries to watch Closer with a straight face, an experiment that fails but amuses. (Link via The American Scene, whose Ross Douthat will “rush out to buy a ticket” for any movie panned by David Denby.)


– Don’t rush out for this one, Ross. Said Denby likes the awful Upside of Anger and thinks Mike Binder “may be one of the few male directors around who take an active interest in what women are feeling.” Sure, if you mean the beautiful, lecherous women with inexplicably low standards who populate Mike Binder’s ludicrous fantasies.


– Detractors of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? (I think that covers everyone except Meghan O’Rourke.) B. R. Myers was already sick up to here of Jonathan Safran Foer when all of you were cuckoo for him. So there.

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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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