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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 8, 2006

TT: Almanac

March 8, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“I suppose there is a lot of fun to be had from reading the quotations on any dust-jacket more than five years old, simply because of reviewers’ besetting vice, that of taking, or appearing to take, their contemporaries too seriously.”


Philip Larkin, “Lies, Fleas, and Gullible Mayflies”

OGIC: Meet the scenery

March 8, 2006 by Terry Teachout

It’s a far cry from the Teachout Museum, let me tell you, but a picture of this Constable picture, safekept from an otherwise discarded 2002 wall calendar, is what I look at when I’m at my desk. An oil sketch that I saw in person when I was in London more years ago now than I care to believe, “A Lane in Flatford” mesmerizes me even in this humble form. I’m not sure how well you can make it out in the web reproduction, but the detail I’m obsessed with is the leftmost cloud, which meets the tree to its left oddly flush. The paint seems most heavily applied here, and the cloud’s white, thick brightness arrests my eye–every day–like a tear in the canvas. This bold cloud is the most aggressive, crispest detail in the picture, but it stops short of the rather fuzzy, sweet tree, meeting it halfway. The question of which is background and which foreground seems strangely, disarmingly unresolved. The picture’s verisimilitude breaks down a little.


Honestly, I stare at this picture intermittently for hours most days, but before tonight I couldn’t have told you what was in it besides that cloud and treetop. There are figures? A lane? A fence? Huh. So that must be where the painting gets its title. Still, to me, it’s a picture of a cloud, and of painting.

OGIC: Sweeter sixteen

March 8, 2006 by Terry Teachout

The Morning News has kicked off their second annual Tournament of Books, with guest judges including Maud, Mark, Dale Peck, and Brigid Hughes, and entrants ranging from Mary Gaitskill to Kazuo Ishiguro to Zadie Smith. Should be fun, especially for those of us who are immune to the charms of March madness. A tournament for the rest of us, with brackets and everything.


And yet, until this year, some essential element seemed to be missing from the basketball tourney’s bookish equivalent…I could never quite put my finger on just what it was…. Oh yeah. Betting.


Well, it’s a pale imitation no more–the ever resourceful and creative (not to mention hometown) Coudal Partners have handicapped the books and are taking your bets now at $10 a pop, with all proceeds destined for a worthwhile charity that helps public schools. The prizes, natch, are books. Come to think of it, my forgoing a Janet Gretzky joke here is kind of a prize in its own right….

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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