Archives for 2005

In a pugnacious essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Harvard University Press editor Lindsay Waters calls for literary critics in the academy to back out of the blind alley of interpretation and return to an emphasis on aesthetics:

[Stanley] Fish’s subsequent writings have gone in many directions, but he has never wavered in his inclination to resist the physical and aesthetic pleasures of the text and to prefer its doctrine. And he has never ceased to practice a method of allegorical interpretation that makes the text conform to interpreters’ ideas. The interpreters who have followed in his wake continue to shuck text of its form, reducing it to a proposition to be either affirmed or denied, the way a farmer shucks an ear of corn. When they’re done interpreting a poem, what is left of the poetry?

This kind of literary criticism has nothing to do with aesthetic responses to art, only with conscious acts of will. Nothing is to be left up to the senses, to the emotions. We have only to make a decision about the goodness or badness of the actions revealed in the work. Interpretation is the revenge of moralism upon art, and that is what makes it so politically dangerous: It narrows what literary critics do

The outpouring of well wishes for Terry from readers of this site has been wonderful to witness and facilitate. Thanks to everyone who has written for making Terry feel loved and making me feel useful! Once in a while, it’s good to be messenger. Terry’s doing well, misses the blog, and expects to be able to go home soon, though we don’t yet know when. He answers the phone in his hospital room as businesslike as ever–“Terry Teachout”–and approves of the art on the walls (a Milton Avery print in particular). In other words, he sounds very much like himself. He’s been so glad to hear from you all. I’ll tell you more as I know more.

– Fee paid to Elvis Presley by Ed Sullivan in 1956 for three TV appearances: $50,000

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $344,900.36

(Source: Bob Spitz, The Beatles)

“Going home must be like going to render an account.”

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Promises, promises. I had every intention of posting tonight, but answering accumulated blogmail was my first priority and took longer than anticipated. Bear with me and I’ll get some fresh material up Monday evening, and maybe a fortune cookie or quick links in the meantime. Thanks for your patience.

Recently Terry posted about some vexing health problems he has been contending with. As you know, he recused himself from blogging for much of the last week in order to get some vital rest. For a few days this seemed to be working. Yesterday, however, he had a setback and is spending the weekend, or perhaps a bit longer, in the hospital. He assures me that he is in superb hands, is well on the road to a full recovery, and does not wish for anyone to worry. But he will be away from this space again for a while. He’s computer-free, in fact, and not receiving email–so if you’re thinking of sending any, why not wait until he’s back in action, just so his unmonitored inbox doesn’t explode? If it’s really pressing, you are welcome to email me. I’ll be in frequent touch with Terry.

While we all await Terry’s return, I’ll keep the posts coming. I’ll also respond to all of the great and greatly appreciated email I received this week and, most important, pass along further word on Terry’s recovery.

From both of us, have a safe and wonderful weekend.

As promised, here I am again, just in time for the weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser. Today I review Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful and Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet, one of which I liked much more than the other:

Mr. Foote’s play is an American classic, albeit one not generally recognized as such (it hasn’t been performed in New York in 45 years). Yet “The Trip to Bountiful” is fully as worthy of regular revival as “Our Town” or “The Glass Menagerie,” and this Off Broadway production, directed by Harris Yulin and acted with quiet skill by the best ensemble cast in town, leaves no doubt of its special quality….

The Peter Norton Space is small enough that the rest of the run, which ends Feb. 19, is likely to sell out very quickly, and while I have yet to hear any buzz about a transfer, this production clearly belongs on Broadway. My guess is that it has the potential to become a sleeper hit, just like “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and “Doubt.”…

Eugene O’Neill is one of those Great American Authors whose work leaves me cold. It doesn’t help that the difference in quality between his best and worst plays is vast, but even at his occasional best, I usually find him exhaustingly long-winded. As for his worst, well, there’s “A Touch of the Poet,” a 19th-century costume piece written between 1935 and 1942 as part of an unfinished 11-play cycle and newly revived by the Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54 as a vehicle for Gabriel Byrne…

Mr. Byrne plays Con Melody, a Byron-spouting soldier turned drunken innkeeper who has squandered the whole of his life pretending to a gentility he doesn’t possess by birth, sacrificing the happiness of his stage-Irish wife (Dearbhla Molloy) and hatchet-tongued daughter (Emily Bergl) to his pitiable pretensions. It’s a promising situation, but O’Neill smothers it in superfluous exposition–you could cut the whole first act and scarcely notice it was gone…

Two footnotes on The Trip to Bountiful:

(1) Here’s how moved I was by the play and production: Horton Foote was sitting three rows behind me. I wanted to say something to him after the show, but was so choked up that I didn’t trust myself to speak.

(2) This is the Signature Theatre Company’s fifteenth-anniversary season, and thanks to a generous subsidy from Time Warner, all tickets for all performances of all anniversary-season productions cost just $15 each. In this case, that’s an amazing deal.

No link, so if you want to read the whole thing, pick up a copy of today’s Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you instant access to the complete text of my review (along with lots of other art-related stories).

Regarding the Great Bloggers’ Convocation that had Our Girl in a tizzy, all I can tell you is that we talked a lot, enjoyed ourselves, and saw many familiar faces in the audience, one of whom posted briefly about the event after the fact. I don’t have a lot more to tell you, truthfully: I didn’t say anything there I haven’t already said here. The audience seemed interested, though, and asked lots of good questions. I was too tired to linger and went straight home when it was over, so if you want to know more, go here. (I’m still giggling at the thought of being compared to Jon Landau!)

Now, here’s a sneak preview of my next “Sightings” column, “Making Ideas Beautiful,” which will be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal:

Sometimes a heartfelt compliment can blow up in the recipient’s face, as when T.S. Eliot said of Henry James that he had “a mind so fine that no idea could violate it,” thus making him sound like a plot-spinning idiot savant. What Eliot really meant was that James understood how an artist who dabbles in ideas can lose sight of the true purpose of art, which is (as Renoir said) to “make everything more beautiful.” You can’t paint a picture of E = mc2, or compose a symphony about the law of supply and demand. Nevertheless, art is so effective at swaying men’s minds that there have always been cultural commissars prepared to enlist it in the service of ideas by any means necessary–including brute force….

Needless to say, there’s plenty more where that came from. See for yourself–buy a copy of tomorrow’s Journal and look me up.