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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 22, 2010

TT: Unserious money

February 22, 2010 by Terry Teachout

PORTRAIT%20OF%20EKE.jpgI wrote the first paragraph of my next book yesterday morning. The working title, subject to change without warning, is Black Beauty: A Life of Duke Ellington. I’m not going to share it with you just yet–I want to wait until I’ve got at least a couple of dozen pages under my belt and can see whether or not I’m really off to a convincing start–but the fact that I’m now officially at work on a book for which I’ll be signing the contracts later today strikes me as propitious enough to pass along.

I wanted to get started on Black Beauty right away in order to capitalize on the psychic momentum generated by the events of the past year. A colleague remarked to me at breakfast the other day that 2009 must have been the most eventful year of my professional life to date, and I couldn’t argue with him. The twin successes of Pops and The Letter have left me with an exhilarating sense of possibility, a feeling that I can do anything to which I set my mind.

When you’re feeling that way, it’s a good idea to pinch yourself blue at regular intervals, though life usually gets around to doing that for you sooner or later. I got just such a pinch in the mail the other day. A couple of years ago I blogged about an alleged cat-related quote of mine that turned out, much to my surprise, to be authentic. It first came to my attention when it popped up on a cat calendar, and not long after that I got a letter from the Borealis Press, a greeting-card company, asking if they could use it on one of their cards.

MY%20CARD.jpgThough Borealis wasn’t offering much money–I was invited to choose between a small flat fee and a royalty–I was amused by the idea of seeing my name and words on a greeting card, so I opted for a royalty, signed the contract, and sent it back. A few weeks later I received a boxful of cards, and a few months after that I got my first check. If memory serves, I think it was for eight or nine dollars. Ever since then I’ve received four embarrassingly small checks each year from Borealis. When I got back from Florida, all full of myself and ready to pass miracles, I went through my snail mail and found yet another check, this one for the grand and glorious sum of $6.45.

I was tempted to frame the check as a reminder to stay humble, but then I thought of an even more profitable spiritual exercise: I went down to the bank last week, made out a deposit slip, took the check to a teller, and deposited it in my account.

The teller, bless her, didn’t crack a smile…but I did.

TT: Almanac

February 22, 2010 by Terry Teachout

“Some critics are like chimney-sweepers: they put out the fire below, or frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Drift-Wood (courtesy of Michael Greenspan)

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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