Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
“I am drawn to stories about people who really, really want something. That helps you to sing in ways that really matter to an audience. If your desire is big enough, then singing seems natural.”
Adam Guettel, interview, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Jan. 28, 2006)
Experience isn
A reader wrote, apropos of this posting about an alleged quote of mine, to reassure me that I really did say what the Web says I said. The quote, he gleefully informed me, came from a review of The Cat Who Went to Paris and Particularly Cats…and Rufus published in the Washington Post in 1991. It appeared in the first paragraph:
“This broadcast,” Harry Reasoner once said at the beginning of a television show called “Essay on Women,” “was prepared by men, and makes no claim to being fair. Prejudice has saved us a great deal of time in preparation.” Perhaps I should start with a similar disclaimer: This review was written by the owner of an 11-year-old cat named Blossom. Not surprisingly, I have strong opinions about cats. Some are favorable, others merely resigned. I love Blossom, but I also know the limits of our relationship. He does what he wants, and I do what he wants. Most cat owners are like that. They understand that life with a cat is in certain ways a one-sided proposition. Cats are not educable; humans are. Moreover, cats know this. If you’re not willing to humor them, you might as well stick to dogs.
Blossom died in my arms several years ago, but I still remember him (yes, he was a him) with slightly exasperated affection. A framed picture of him shares one of my bookshelves with the selected works of Willa Cather, Raymond Chandler, John P. Marquand, and Tom Wolfe—a place of honor, in other words. He was a good cat except when he wasn’t, I loved him very much, and I’m glad to have occasion to mention him in this space.
A friend writes:
I bought a cat calendar that featured a quote from you, so I had to write. You said: “Life with a cat is in certain ways a one-sided proposition. Cats are not educable; humans are. Moreover, cats know this.”
This e-mail amazed me. It sounds very much like something I might have said—I lived with cats for two decades, after all—but I have no memory whatsoever of writing any such thing.
I Googled my alleged quote and found it in several places on the Web, unsourced in all cases, though one person tacked on an additional, equally plausible-sounding sentence: “If you’re not willing to humor them, you might as well stick to dogs.” That one doesn’t ring any bells, either. Is it the fate of overly prolific authors to forget their past utterances as they lurch into middle age? Have I said other, comparably pithy things that have vanished no less irretrievably into the ether?
Would that I had time to get to the bottom of this puzzle, but I don’t, for I’ve got to spend the next couple of hours prepping for today’s interview with Ennio Morricone. If anyone out there can tell me where and when I paid this backhanded tribute to the ineducability of Felis domesticus, I’d appreciate hearing from you….
“A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 am and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 pm to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.”
Fred Allen, Treadmill to Oblivion
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Stevie Smith, “Not Waving but Drowning”
Last week was a good week for this blog. Our Girl and I had more visitors than usual, partly because we put up a lot of stuff and partly because we popped up on the Guardian
Today
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