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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for October 11, 2006

TT: Elsewhere

October 11, 2006 by Terry Teachout

Here are some gems gleaned from my recent voyages into cyberspace:


– Mr. Modern Art Notes holds forth on the genius of Richard Diebenkorn, making an important point in passing:

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a chief curator about a Richard Diebenkorn painting in one of his galleries. “You know,” I said. “It’s remarkable that there’s never been a full, comprehensive Ocean Park survey exhibit.”


The curator paused. “Are you sure about that?” he said, less asking than implying I should double-check Diebenkorn’s exhibition history.


“Completely sure,” I said. “There’s never been a Berkeley show either. It’s bizarre. It’s probably the contemporary art show most in need of being done.”


The curator was still disbelieving, but allowed me my fervor. It’s true. There’s never been a museum (or gallery, for that matter) exhibit surveying the paintings, the drawings, the paintings-on-paper, or the three together….

Or, I might add, the related prints. You won’t find one in the Teachout Museum, alas–I haven’t got that kind of money to throw around–but I am the proud owner of an etching by Diebenkorn, who would be universally acknowledged as one of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century had he not made the fatal mistake of living and working in California. Even now, far too many New Yorkers suffer from the wildly mistaken notion that the West Coast is an aesthetic desert. I don’t know where they picked it up–probably from Woody Allen.


– Speaking of the West Coast, Mr. Anecdotal Evidence serves up the best capsule description of Raymond Chandler’s special gifts I’ve read, my own feeble attempts included. Here’s part of it:

Chandler’s literary conscience was bothered by the genre in which he had chosen to work. Part of him wished to write “heavy novels.” We can be grateful he never did, because the hard-boiled detective story enabled him to indulge his strengths, minimize or ignore his weaknesses and create great books that continue to give dependable pleasure to readers. “All of which is to say that gusto thrives on freedom, and freedom in art, as in life, is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves,” as Marianne Moore once wrote in a very different context….

Read the whole thing. It won’t take long.


– The Little Professor has sailed off the deep end:

It’s official: I share the house with six thousand books…


Alas, I have also exhausted my supply of downstairs walls. (As I live in a Cape Cod, upstairs walls are in somewhat short supply. Or, rather, the upstairs walls are both short and in short supply.) My parents have already suggested building stacks–not to mention another room–but I think that there may be other, more creative, alternatives….

I especially like her idea for “floating, inflatable bookcases,” which reminds me of my favorite line from Mark Helprin’s Memoir from Antproof Case: “I had had wonderful ideas all my life–the antigravity box, the camel ranch in Idaho, artillery mail–but I had never been able to translate them into reality.”


– Why aren’t blogbooks selling? Brenda Coulter, a romance novelist who blogs on the side, offers some sensible observations, accompanied by this amusing aside:

Publishers haven’t been offering big-name bloggers contracts for novels. And rightly so, because wit and erudition on a blog aren’t reliable indicators of talent for fiction-writing….I’m an effusive admirer of Terry Teachout’s writing. But even this fangirl doesn’t assume he’d make a brilliant novelist. For all I know, he’d stink at fiction.

Alas, I would and do, as I confessed in this space two years ago.


– Ms. Light Reading draws a distinction:

In English English clever seems to be a clearer term of praise, for something like what Americans would just call “smart,” but often when I use “clever” it is not a compliment….

Ditto.


– Mr. Jerry Jazz Musician asked a cast of very interesting characters, including Ahmad Jamal, Roger Kellaway, John Pizzarelli, and Nancy Wilson, to name “the five greatest albums (LP or CD) of all time.” The answers he got are–to put it mildly–illuminating.


– By way of Ms. Althouse, here’s Alice Cooper on politics:

“You won’t find any political songs, excepted for

TT: Almanac

October 11, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“I was just thinking the other day that I was born in 1939 and so, all my life, people I don’t know have been trying to kill me. The Germans dropped bombs on my house in London and I remember my mother saying: better sleep under the stairs. Then it was the Russians, then the Irish, now another lot of terrorists. I’m starting to accept that I’m a marked man.”


Alan Ayckbourn, interview, The Guardian (Oct. 4, 2006)

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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