Archives for January 2009

A reader writes, apropos of my tribute to Donald Westlake:

I, too, sometimes wonder why I like the Parker books so much. I’ve been reading them for years–since the early ones first came out. Yet I almost never like books where the hero is a criminal, an assassin, etc. (One exception, besides the Parker books, is Brian Garfield’s Hopscotch.) A couple of points, though: I don’t think of the Parker books as “noir” fiction, if for no other reason than that he almost always wins. Also, one ingratiating quality of Parker is that he has no sense of humor. I find that quality funny. It comes up most when he is in the company of
other, “normal” criminals. Westlake, as Stark, wrote a series of novels about a criminal with a sense of humor, the Grofield novels, and they didn’t come off too well, though Grofield is a good character in the Parker novels. One of my favorite fictional characters, Horatio Hornblower, is also humorless (or, rather, he feels he must hide his sense of humor), and I find the parts of those books where that quality comes out to be funny, too.

What he said.
As it happens, I’m a great fan of Hopscotch, from which I drew one of my favorite almanac entries a couple of years ago (and received an appreciative e-mail from Brian Garfield shortly thereafter, much to my surprise).

Hal Holbrook performing an excerpt from Mark Twain Tonight! on CBS in 1967:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

WYATT All right, what’s your idea of heaven?
JOSEPHINE Room service.
Wyatt laughs, almost in spite of himself. Josephine beams.
Oh, he’s laughing again! Well, that’s what I want. I want to move and go places and never look back. Just have fun, forever.
Kevin Jarre, screenplay for Tombstone

A few months ago I paid tribute in this space to Richard M. Sudhalter, the distinguished jazz musician, historian, biographer, and critic, who died last September after a long and grievous illness. Dick’s friends and fans will doubtless be pleased to know that his life and work are being celebrated at a memorial concert to be held on January 12 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City.

The list of musicians scheduled to perform includes Howard Alden, Donna Byrne, James Chirillo, Bill Crow, Armen Donelian, Bob Dorough, Paquito D’Rivera, Jim Ferguson, Carol Fredette, Marty Grosz, Sy Johnson, Dick Katz, Bill Kirchner, Steve Kuhn, Dan Levinson, Boots Maleson, Marian McPartland, Ray Moska, Joe Muranyi, Sam Parkins, Ed Polcer, Loren Schoenberg, Daryl Sherman, Nancy Stearns, Carol Sudhalter, Ronny Whyte, Jackie Williams, and Marshall Wood. That is–to put it mildly–one hell of a lineup.

In between performances, Albert Haim, Dan Morgenstern, Pat Phillips, and Daryl Sherman will talk about Dick, and I’ll play a few of his favorite records.

St. Peter’s is at 619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street. The music starts at seven p.m. The concert is open to the public. Even if you can’t come, please help spread the word in person, via e-mail, or on your blog if you have one.

Time: noon. Place: A rental car driving down Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach.

HE They call this Billionaires Row. I looked it up this morning.

SHE I can’t imagine having enough money to buy that kind of house.

HE Me, neither.

SHE And I can’t imagine living in any of these houses. Don’t you think they’re tacky?

HE Mm-hmm. I bet there’s a lot of bad art on Ocean Boulevard.

SHE (enthusiastically) You know what I think? People with bad taste should have to give part of their money to people with good taste.

HE (thinking it over) Well…you wouldn’t want it to be too obviously confiscatory. It’d have to be more like a transfer payment.

A beat.

You could call it the Teachout Taste Transfer Tax.

SHE You take the fun out of everything.

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos,

sob on the long cool winding saxophones.

Go to it, O jazzmen.

Carl Sandburg, “Jazz Fantasia”

“The local bookshop is run by an Englishman and his wife who is about 20 years older than he, very cute, really, with dyed bright pink hair. They play chess in the corner and very much dislike being interrupted by a customer. The other day a man I knew went in to buy a book and asked for it timidly. Hugh, the Englishman, said, ‘Good heavens, man! Can’t you see I’m about to make a move?’ When I first went in this year the wife asked me in her jolliest way what I was doing now? Writing or what? I said writing, and she replied ‘Ha-ha–always something!'”
Jan.1, 1948 letter from Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell, Words In Air

My friend R. recently introduced me to Tom Jobim’s “Águas de Março.” It’s a wondrous little song, and an especially nice one to listen to on a day like today, when you may find yourself back at a desk feeling simultaneously tamped down and stretched thin. Here it’s performed by Elis Regina (and provided with English subtitles). If you like it, you may want to get Elis & Tom — the album was new to me, but probably isn’t to many About Last Night Readers and, evidently, if you grew up in Brazil in the ’70s your house had a copy.*

* After seeing that last “if you grew up in Brazil in the ’70s” observation a few different places online, I’ve been amusing myself trying to think of what the album’s American equivalent would be, ubiquity-wise: Music Box Dancer? Jonathan Livingston Seagull? Aloha From Hawaii?