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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Don’t send me stuff

January 6, 2006 by Terry Teachout

No matter who you are. No matter what it is.


If you’ve never lived in New York City, you probably don’t realize how small most apartments here are. I dearly love my little home, but it’s very cozy, and I share it with two dozen works of art, several hundred books, and three thousand CDs. As of this week, I’ve also been sharing it with a month’s worth of accumulated snail mail. I took out ten garbage bags of trash yesterday, and I’m about to haul another four bags downstairs (I live on the third floor, which is quite a trip for a heart patient). My shelves are full. My drawers are full. My closets are full. Hence this desperate plea. From here on out it’s a zero-sum game: I can’t keep anything new without throwing away something old.


To be more specific:


– If you send me a CD without asking first, I won’t listen to it.


– If you send me a book without asking first, I won’t read it.


– If you send me unsolicited press releases, I’ll toss them in the nearest wastebasket.


Forgive me for being so blunt, but I simply can’t cope anymore. I know you’ll understand.

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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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