• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Yoicks and away

May 24, 2010 by Terry Teachout

It occurred to me earlier this year that I couldn’t remember the last time I took a full-fledged two-week vacation, by which I meant two weeks spent away from home during which I (A) saw no shows and (B) wrote no pieces. When I shared this piece of information with Mrs. T, she promptly informed me that I’d better change my ways if I wanted to remain happily married. I know marching orders when I hear them, so I planned and booked a spring holiday and gave my editors at The Wall Street Journal several months’ worth of fair warning. Given the fact that the past year has seen, among countless other things, the opening of The Letter and the publication of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, I figured I’d earned some time off.
It is, of course, proverbial that the surest way to hear God laugh is to make a plan. Three Sundays ago I took Mrs. T to an emergency room in Chicago at two in the morning. Two sets of doctors, the first in Chicago and the second in Connecticut, thereupon spent the following two weeks trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with her (gallstones) and what to do about it (nothing invasive, thank God). On Tuesday she was discharged from the University of Connecticut Health Center, and yesterday we hit the road.
cp11.jpgYou will note that I haven’t said where we went, where we are now, or where we’re going next. Nor will I. The plug is well and truly pulled. I wrote and filed this week’s Wall Street Journal columns in advance of our departure, but I’m taking next week off from the paper, the first time I’ve done so since I fell ill five years ago and the second time since I became the Journal‘s drama critic seven years ago. Like I said, this is a vacation, really and truly. We are, for all intents and purposes, incommunicado: I won’t be checking my e-mail or voicemail other than sporadically, and I’m not going to write anything at all.
I’ve uploaded the usual almanac entries, weekly videos, and theater-related postings for the next two weeks, so you’ll see my ghostly presence during our absence. It’s just possible–barely–that I might tweet once or twice about the joys of taking it easy. Otherwise, though, I will have nothing to say on any subject whatsoever, here or anywhere else, until June 7.
If you happen to see me between now and then, kindly keep it to yourself.

Filed Under: main

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

May 2010
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Apr   Jun »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in