Archives for May 9, 2005

I’m back, sort of, almost.

I spent Friday and Saturday at a rustic resort in the Catskills, totally out of touch with the world (no cell phone, no computer). On Saturday I read a Shakespeare sonnet at a wedding that took place in a green meadow by a running brook, then partied the night away with a queen-sized gaggle of musicians led by the Lascivious Biddies (one of whom was the bride in question, the other three serving as her bridesmaids). I’m not sure refreshed is the exact word for the way I felt come Sunday morning, but I sure was happy.

As always, life intrudes on such finite interludes of bliss, so I arose, breakfasted with a bunch of equally happy, equally bleary-eyed people, hopped in my rented car, drove back to Manhattan, and went straight to a revival of She Stoops to Conquer, about which more Friday. Then I had dinner, returned home, unpacked my bag, chatted on the phone with Our Girl in Chicago, and realized that I was still suffering from the aftereffects of recently having written close to 20,000 words. I prescribed for myself a good night’s sleep, followed by a day of very moderate literary endeavor, i.e., none. I might even take a walk!

Full-scale activities resume on Tuesday and continue through the week: deadlines (one compulsory, one self-imposed), performances (four plays, one night at the ballet), appointments of various kinds, yet another trip to Washington, and, as always, blogging. Even when I’m gone, you’re not forgotten.

See you Tuesday.

Laurette Taylor’s performance as Amanda Wingfield in the original 1945 production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is the most vividly remembered piece of acting ever to have taken place on an American stage. Yet nothing remains of it but memories and a few still photographs–some of which can be seen here–since Taylor made no sound films save for the brief screen test included in Broadway: The Golden Age (a documentary you’ve absolutely got to see, assuming you haven’t already). The greatness of her acting is thus like the greatness of Nijinsky’s dancing: all who saw her agree on it, but the rest of us must take it on faith.

Or…must we?

After reading that Times story, I did a bit of fugitive Googling, and found something that sent my jaw dropping floorward. It’s from the Web site of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which is where Taylor’s private papers ended up. I was looking at the HRCRC’s description of its Taylor collection when I stumbled onto this statement:

A number of published works and recordings were transferred to the HRHRC book collection….Taylor’s recordings, mostly 78 RPM, include The Glass Menagerie (1945); a 1939 WJZ radio broadcast of Peg O’ My Heart; Among My Souvenirs (1943); a segment of We The People (1945); a Rudy Vallee radio program (1939); and a very early 1913 voice recording trial done of Laurette Taylor in New York.

Excuse me? Am I the last to learn that that there is a sound recording of some portion of Taylor’s legendary performance in The Glass Menagerie? Or is its existence not widely known to scholars of American theater in general and Tennessee Williams’ work in particular?

If anybody out there in the blogosphere knows anything at all about this recording, starting with whether or not it really exists, I’d like to hear from you. And if you happen to live in Austin and have access to it (assuming it does in fact exist), I’d really like to hear from you.

“Many false conceptions are held concerning the nature of tedium. In general it is thought that the interestingness and novelty of the time-content are what ‘make the time pass’; that is to say, shorten it; whereas monotony and emptiness check and restrain its flow. That is only true with reservations. Vacuity, monotony, have, indeed, the property of lingering out the moment and the hour and of making them tiresome. But they are capable of contracting and dissipating the larger, the very large time-units, to the point of reducing them to nothing at all. And conversely, a full and interesting content can put wings to the hour and the day; yet it will lend to the general passage of time a weightiness, a breadth and solidity which cause the eventful years to flow more slowly than those poor, bare, empty ones over which the wind passes and they are gone. Thus what we call tedium is rather an abnormal shortening of the time consequent upon monotony. Great spaces of time passed in unbroken uniformity tend to shrink together in a way to make the heart stop beating for fear; when one day is like all the others, then they are all like one; complete uniformity would make the longest life seem short, and as though it had stolen away from us unawares. Habituation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time; which explains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course. We are aware that the intercalation of periods of change and novelty is the only means by which we can refresh our sense of time, strengthen, retard, and rejuvenate it, and therewith renew our perception of life itself.”

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (courtesy of Paul Moravec)

I’ve made a pretty good start at answering all my accumulated blogmail. Thanks for your patience!

The unceasing task of keeping my in-basket empty has been complicated of late by the fact that the “About Last Night” e-mailbox is growing increasingly full of spam and press releases (same difference, mostly), not to mention the usual solicitations for stamina-enhancing products, poorly spelled fundraising appeals from somewhere in Africa, and messages written in Oriental characters of one kind or another, all of which are, er, Greek to me. As a result, the personal e-mail I want to read is getting harder and harder to pluck from the commercial foliage.

If you’re a real live human being who reads this blog, please keep on writing. Your mail will be found, opened, read, and answered sooner or later, unless it’s in Korean or has a subject header hinting at a breakthrough in the problem of, shall we say, puissance.

If, on the other hand, you’re a publicist, I should warn you that I delete press releases sent to “About Last Night” without reading them. Publicists should write to me at my personal e-mail address. (Those publicists who don’t know what it is probably shouldn’t be writing to me at all, but that’s another story.)

P.S. Our Girl has her own mailbox, to which you should write directly if you want to comment on a posting whose title begins with “OGIC.” The e-mail buttons for both boxes can be found in the top module of the right-hand column.