Archives for February 2006

“A watery sunlight breaks through the smoke of the Chef and turns the sky yellow. Elysian Fields glistens like a vat of sulfur; the playground looks as if it alone had survived the end of the world. At last I spy Kate; her stiff little Plymouth comes nosing into my bus stop. There she sits like a bomber pilot, resting on her wheel and looking sideways at the children and not seeing, and she could be I myself, sooty eyed and nowhere.

“Is it possible that– For a long time I have secretly hoped for the end of the world and believed with Kate and my aunt and Sam Yerger and many other people that only after the end could the few who survive creep out of their holes and discover themselves to be themselves and live as merrily as children among the viny ruins. Is it possible that–it is not too late?

“Iii-oorrr goes the ocean wave, its struts twinkling in the golden light, its skirt swaying to and fro like a young dancing girl.”

Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Do you find “Sites to See,” our blogroll, too long to be manageable? Or is it useful to you at its present length? We’ve been contemplating a drastic pruning, but before we do anything so dire, we’d like to know what you think.

Write to either one of us at the mailboxes in the top module of the right-hand column. Thanks in advance.

It’s Friday, and I’m in The Wall Street Journal. (What else is new?) This week I report on a new Broadway play, Rabbit Hole, and one of the plays I saw two weekends ago in Chicago, the Court Theatre’s revival of August Wilson’s Fences:

What makes a play great? Sometimes the difference between high art and earnest mediocrity is less than obvious at first glance. Consider David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole,” which opened last night on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Biltmore Theatre, and August Wilson’s “Fences,” now playing at the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre. Both plays are homely kitchen-sink dramas about families in crisis. Both pivot on the death of an offstage character. Both productions are well cast and well designed–yet “Rabbit Hole” is dullish and “Fences” a masterpiece.

On closer consideration, though, it isn’t so hard to see why “Rabbit Hole” fails to measure up: It’s a family drama with punch lines, a genre that at best runs to glibness, and Mr. Lindsay-Abaire sweetens the loaf of his characters’ suffering with a double spoonful of sugar…

The Court Theatre’s revival of “Fences” is a theatrical experience of a wholly different order. Yes, August Wilson tucked a lot of laughs into his Pulitzer-winning 1985 play about the splendors and miseries of a working-class Pittsburgh family, but he didn’t pull any punches in portraying the kind of inter-generational agony Philip Larkin had in mind when he wrote his most famous poem: “Man hands on misery to man/It deepens like a coastal shelf.”…

As usual, no link. To read the full review (which contains much more about Rabbit Hole and Fences, plus a brief but laudatory mention of Sarah Jones’ Bridge & Tunnel), pick up a copy of this morning’s Journal and turn to the “Weekend Journal” section, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with instant access to the complete text of my review, along with lots of other worthy art-related coverage.

Here’s a little taste of my next “Sightings” column, which appears biweekly in the “Pursuits” section of the Saturday Wall Street Journal:

“Welcome to the best-kept secret in Newark!” So said the smiling woman who took my $7 and admitted me last Saturday to the Newark Museum, whose superlative collection includes such marvels as a flawlessly installed Alexander Calder mobile, one of Arthur Dove’s pioneering abstract paintings of 1919, and “Laburnum II,” a small Hans Hofmann canvas so outrageously vital that I longed to tuck it under my arm and cart it back to my Manhattan apartment. What’s more, you can admire these masterpieces in blessed silence when you go there–because there’s a good chance you’ll be all alone. I spent an hour touring the two floors of “Picturing America,” the museum’s installation of its permanent collection of American art. During that time the only other people I saw were seven kids who breezed through the second-floor gallery….

As always, there’s lots more where that came from. See for yourself–buy a copy of tomorrow’s Journal and look me up.

I’ve been listening to Erroll Garner for some inexplicable reason (not that the desire to listen to him needs explaining!). Younger readers may not recognize Garner’s name, or know him solely as the composer of “Misty,” but people of a certain age (i.e., mine) will at the very least remember his many TV appearances, if only because he was so short that he had to sit on a Manhattan phone book placed atop his piano bench in order to bear down on the keyboard with sufficient comfort.

Garner was hugely popular in the second half of his life, and because of that, many critics failed to take him seriously. I once wrote a piece for the New York Times that was intended to squelch this foolish notion:

In jazz as in the other arts, worldly success can be a decidedly mixed blessing. As the critic Max Harrison has pointed out, “People do not object to artists deserving success–only to their getting it.” The bigger the triumph, the snarkier the reaction, at least among those who mistakenly believe there is an inverse relationship between accessibility and quality. From Louis Armstrong to Diana Krall, talented musicians lucky enough to crack the code of popular taste without compromising their art in the process have invariably found themselves fending off flying brickbats. Some are flung by prissy colleagues who think jazz should be packaged in plain brown wrappers, others by critics who review reputations instead of music….

Garner was a self-taught musician who could not read music. (Asked why he never bothered to learn, he famously retorted, “Hell, man, nobody can hear you read.”) Though he worked almost exclusively with trios, his irresistibly buoyant playing had a near-orchestral feel. At medium and fast tempos, he brusquely “strummed” close-clipped chords with his left hand–four to a bar, just like the rhythm guitarist in a swing band–while his right hand, which often lagged tantalizingly behind the beat, alternated between bustling single-note lines and delectably squashy chordal riffs….

One of Garner’s albums was called The Most Happy Piano, and that sums him up very nicely. As Joseph Epstein wrote of H.L. Mencken, “He achieves his effect through the magical transfer of joie de vivre.” You simply cannot listen to his best recordings without breaking out in an ear-to-ear grin. What’s more, Garner was by all accounts as likable as the music he made. As George Avakian, his producer at Columbia, recalled, “He was really like a pixie or an elf. When you split with Erroll at the end of an evening you left with a happy smile and a good feeling. No worries at all. Off to bed feeling great. That’s what Erroll did for people.”

The trouble is that Garner recorded extensively and indiscriminately throughout much of his long career (he died in 1977). Many of his early records, which are now out of copyright and are constantly being reissued on fly-by-night European labels, fail to do him justice, and at least as many of the later ones are of lesser interest than the performances he recorded between 1950, when he signed with Columbia Records, and the mid-Sixties, when his distinctive style started to harden into mannerism. Alas, a comprehensive Garner-on-CD series on Columbia (now Sony) was aborted fifteen years ago after just two volumes, and the bulk of his recorded legacy has yet to be reissued systematically.

Someday–I hope–Sony will put out a carefully chosen two- or three-disc collection of Garner’s best Columbia recordings. (It damn well better include his stupendous eight-minute-long 1956 version of “The Man I Love,” which at present is available only as part of an obscure multiple-artist anthology called Gershwin Jazz that I only found out about last week.) Until then, I suggest you give a listen to Erroll Garner’s Finest Hour, a single-disc greatest-hits compilation from Verve (it contains “Misty”), and This Is Jazz: Erroll Garner, a fifteen-track Columbia sampler.

On second thought, just start with This Is Jazz, which contains the first two Garner recordings I ever heard, “It’s the Talk of the Town” and the 1951 remake of “Laura,” his first hit single. If it doesn’t ring your bell, I suggest you enter psychotherapy at once–you’re seriously depressed.

“Artists are by nature versatile and precise; they only repine when involved with the monotonous and the makeshift.”

Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One

…which is just about all I do anymore, New York Review of Books has just this morning published an essay by John Banville called “Homage to Philip Larkin.” Can’t wait to read this. Thanks to the Literary Saloon for the tip.

I know I said I was starting my weekend from blogging about 43 posts ago, but Lifson has issued the bloggy equivalent of a call for papers that you all should attend to. He also says nice stuff about us, making it impossible for me to link to his request without appearing self-serving. Oh well.