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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 25, 2008

CAAF: Lookie loo

January 25, 2008 by cfrye

A review in the TLS of a new edition of Aldous Huxley’s letters devotes special attention to the author’s complicated relationship with Mary Hutchinson, noting:
MrsStJohnHutchinson.jpg

What was kept a close secret was that the [Huxley] marriage went through a long period during which both Maria and Aldous were sexually involved with Mary Hutchinson – a writer, married to a barrister. She was also, but less discreetly, a mistress of Clive Bell’s. (An unflattering portrait of her by Bell’s wife, Vanessa, is now in the Tate.)

Emphasis is mine; the “unflattering portrait” is the sour, lemony one shown here. The Tate’s display caption for the painting reads in part, “This portrait shows the short-story writer Mary Hutchinson. She was the mistress of Bell’s husband Clive, a fact of which Bell was aware. This may account for the unflattering nature of the portrait. When it was exhibited, to the sitter’s consternation, Vanessa Bell wrote ‘It’s perfectly hideous… and yet quite recognisable.'”
Image taken from the Tate’s website. © Estate of Vanessa Bell.

CAAF: Morning coffee

January 25, 2008 by cfrye

• “Fumes made me go lowbrow, said writer.” (Via.)
• It’s already been widely linked to but as an Amazon review obsessive I’m obliged to point you toward Garth Risk Hallberg’s intelligent essay on the phenomenon. His thesis: that the top reviewers aren’t so much disinterested amateurs as they are “a curious hybrid: part customer, part employee.” (My favorite Amazon reviewer is G. Gibson of Rome, Italy. Misunderstood, maligned: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about G. Gibson and eagerly await his definitive translation of The Aeneid, which will show all others as the grievous abominations they are.)
• A gallery of photos related to D.H. Lawrence and the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial.

TT: Who was that masked man?

January 25, 2008 by Terry Teachout

Yesterday I wrote the first 4,600 words of Chapter 10 of Rhythm Man: A Life of Louis Armstrong from a standing start, beginning at eight in the morning and ending at four-thirty in the afternoon. I still don’t know what hit me, or what I hit.
More as it happens. In the meantime, forgive me if I don’t call you back, no matter who you are. In the immortal words of Crash Davis, a player on a streak has to respect the streak….
UPDATE: I finished Chapter 10 five minutes ago. I am the king of the cats!

TT: Return of a master

January 25, 2008 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two plays, Come Back, Little Sheba and Almost an Evening. Here’s a sample.
* * *
1-sheba-gallery.jpgWhat happened to William Inge? Between 1950 and 1957 he racked up a stunning track record on Broadway–four plays, four hits–and all of his theatrical successes were turned into big-budget Hollywood movies with blue-chip casts. (“Bus Stop” starred Marilyn Monroe, while the Pulitzer-winning “Picnic” featured William Holden and Kim Novak.) For a time critics ranked him right behind Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. But Inge lost his sureness of touch as the buttoned-down ’50s gave way to the unsettled ’60s, and after a string of flops, he fled to California to teach and drink, dying by his own hand in 1973. Unlike his more celebrated colleagues, he then vanished down the memory hole, and except for a pair of failed revivals of “Bus Stop” and “Picnic” in the mid-’90s, none of his plays has been seen on Broadway since 1975. Thus it is very big news indeed that “Come Back, Little Sheba” has just been revived on Broadway for the first time since the original production opened there 57 years ago–and that this deeply moving revival, which stars S. Epatha Merkerson of “Law & Order,” is pitch-perfect from curtain to curtain.
hopper-edward-room-in-new-york.jpgA good staging can’t save a bad play, but it can paper over the cracks in a creaky one, so I want to start off by saying that “Come Back, Little Sheba” is close to flawless. I’d never seen it on stage prior to this revival, and I had no idea what a wallop it packed. It is, like all of Inge’s major plays, a tale of disappointment and frustration set against a shabby, penny-plain backdrop of ordinary middle-class life–you might be watching an Edward Hopper painting come to life–and much of its impact arises from the patience with which the author deals his thematic cards, waiting until just the right moment to throw down his hand and fill the stage with pain and sorrow….
I’m no fan of the Coen brothers, whose smirking nihilism has always left a nasty taste in my mouth. Still, you can’t help but respect the sheer professionalism of films like “Fargo,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “No Country for Old Men,” and so I was eager to see what “Almost an Evening,” Ethan Coen’s playwriting debut, might have to offer. The answer, as befits a nihilist, is nothing whatsoever….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

January 25, 2008 by Terry Teachout

“Great simplicity is only won by an intense moment or by years of intelligent effort, or by both. It represents one of the most arduous conquests of the human spirit: the triumph of feeling and thought over the natural sin of language.”
T.S. Eliot (The Athenaeum, Apr. 11, 1919)

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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