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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 10, 2009

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR

November 10, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“Most people who read for pleasure sooner or later find themselves in the pages of a novel. When I first read John P. Marquand’s Point of No Return, I was struck by the precision with which it conveys what it feels like to partake of an experience that was and is central to American life…”

TT: It’s out!

November 10, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong is now available for immediate online purchase and shipping from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If you haven’t bought any Christmas presents yet, you know what to do.

TT: A rave for Pops

November 10, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong is reviewed in the December issue of The Atlantic:

Teachout, an estimable critic, biographer, and former jazzbo, draws on newly available recordings and writings to limn the fullest portrait to date of the most popular and beloved figure in 20th-century music. This volume candidly explores the intersection of messy life events (drug use, marital strife, embouchure woes, and a public, segregation-prompted lambasting of President Eisenhower), personal paradoxes (a moody, profane, passive disposition at odds with the signature smile and deeply charismatic persona), and great art. It also offers shrewd analyses of many Armstrong compositions, including the chart-topping yet critically dismissed later works….

Read the whole thing here.

TT: Ready or not, here I come!

November 10, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is sending me on a coast-to-coast tour in support of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. Here are the readings that I’ll be giving in December:
• BOSTON, DECEMBER 3: Boston Athenaeum, 10½ Beacon St., 6:00 p.m.
• NEW YORK, DECEMBER 7: Barnes & Noble Lincoln Triangle, 1972 Broadway, 7:30 p.m.
• LOS ANGELES, DECEMBER 8: Los Angeles Public Library, 630 W. Fifth St., 7:00 p.m.
• BALTIMORE, DECEMBER 9: Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St., 6:30 p.m.
• PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 10: Philadelphia Free Library, 1901 Vine St., 7:30 p.m.
• CHICAGO, DECEMBER 15: Highland Park Library, 494 Laurel St., 6:00 p.m.
• ST. LOUIS, DECEMBER 16: Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid Ave., 7:00 p.m.
• NEW ORLEANS, DECEMBER 17: Garden District Bookshop, 2727 Prytania St., 5:30 p.m.
I’ll also be doing quite a bit of radio along the way. Watch this space for details.

TT: Like they used to

November 10, 2009 by Terry Teachout

DOCTORED%20Last week I posted a photograph of the Signet paperback edition of Louis Armstrong’s Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. It was published in the good old days when most mass-market paperback covers were designed in such a way as to suggest that the contents were thoroughly lurid.
In honor of the upcoming publication of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, one of my computer-savvy readers decided to do a bit of tinkering with the cover of the Signet edition of Satchmo. I was so delighted by the results that I decided to post them here as well.
I wish I could claim that Pops is that juicy! At least I can assure you that some of Armstrong’s letters are very definitely for adults only….

TT: Almanac

November 10, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

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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