“The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.”
Arthur Miller (quoted in Harper’s, August 1958)
Archives for February 2010
TT: Snapshot
John Betjeman interviews Philip Larkin for the BBC in 1964:
(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)
TT: Almanac
“I think that every novelist ought to entertain before he does anything else. And that’s very difficult. It’s much easier to be serious and to seem important, or to seem serious rather than to entertain.”
Kingsley Amis (quoted in Conversations With Kingsley Amis)
OGIC: The illustrious Edward
I’m about to write way too much about something whose chief virtue is its unlabored concision. Forgive me. I am really excited.
The wonderful Kate Beaton has posted a great set of comic strips suggested by some of Edward Gorey’s well-known pocket book cover illustrations. I recommend to you Beaton’s entire body of work (fully archived on her Web site), but none of it more than these inspired little vignettes.
By now some of the drawings Gorey made for Anchor and Vintage in the 1950s have achieved iconic status themselves. Beaton’s spontaneous but thoughtful spinoffs inventively pay homage while illuminating the choices Gorey made, which turn out to be so interesting. She reminds one that–far more so than almost any cover on a work of classic literature one sees today–his drawings were a pretty high form of interpretation.
TT: Something old under the sun
When Mrs. T and I visited the China Pavilion at Disney World’s Epcot Center, we were transfixed by the music of Ann Yao, who plays an ancient zither-like instrument called the zheng with supreme virtuosity. She is a truly remarkable artist, and the zheng is worthy of her sensitive musicianship.
No sooner did we get home from the park than I booted up my MacBook and embarked on a search for information about Yao and her instrument. Among other things, I found several videos of her playing on YouTube, two of which I want to share with you:
Isn’t she amazing? And isn’t the zheng a gorgeous-sounding instrument?
TT: Almanac
“As Judeo-Christians we must avow that the critic is the equal of the artist in the sight of God–as, indeed, he is–if God can’t read.”
David Mamet (quoted in Chris Jones, Theater Loop, Jan. 27, 2010)
TT: You heard it here first (or second)
For those who haven’t seen my C-SPAN interview with Brian Lamb, I announced last night that my next book will be a biography of Duke Ellington that will be published by Gotham Books.
More as it happens….
THE RHYMING RADICAL
“The main reason why Yip Harburg is not generally known by name today is that Finian’s Rainbow is the only stage musical on which he worked that continues to be performed. The others, like most of the films to which he contributed lyrics in the Thirties and Forties, are now forgotten–and their failure to hold the stage says much about the artistic limitations of the otherwise greatly gifted man who helped bring them into being…”