• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2006 / May / Archives for 7th

Archives for May 7, 2006

TT: Disproportion

May 7, 2006 by Terry Teachout

I just read James Wood’s review of Frederick Brown’s Flaubert: A Biography, which appeared in this week’s New York Times Book Review. It is 3,250 words long, of which only three hundred make any mention of the book Wood is allegedly reviewing, from which he quotes only a half-sentence, though he finds room to refer to Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and hip-hop. Am I the only person out here in the ‘sphere who considers this the wrong way to go about reviewing an important new biography of a major author in a widely read publication?


I’m not saying I haven’t committed the same critical crime on occasion–I’m sure I have, and I’m sure somebody will be pointing that fact out to me in fairly short order–but this piece strikes me as an especially egregious case in point. Brown’s Flaubert is a remarkable biography, maybe even a great one. It doesn’t deserve to get lost in the shuffle of its own reviews.

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, ran earlier this season at New Orleans’ Le Petit Theatre. It previously closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, … [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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

May 2006
M T W T F S S
« Apr   Jun »
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Strindberg—sort of
  • Replay: Scott Bradley’s Tom and Jerry music
  • Almanac: G.K. Chesterton on atheism
  • The last of the big-time donors?
  • So you want to see a show?

Copyright © 2019 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in