Archives for May 2013

Gotham Books sent me the “first-pass pages” of Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington yesterday afternoon. Translated into English, that means a two-inch stack of photocopied pages containing the typeset text of Duke, fully designed and copyedited but as yet uncorrected by me. You may have heard these pages referred to as “page proofs,” a term that I’m still in the habit of using.
No matter how many books you’ve seen through the press, you always feel a surge of excitement when you get your first look at a set of your own page proofs. (I actually got weak in the knees when I opened the envelope.) Until that moment, you don’t know what the text of your book will look like to the people who read it. Then, in an instant, it becomes real–and fresh.
In my case, I spent so much time painstakingly editing and polishing the manuscript of Duke that it eventually went dead on me: I could still follow the text sentence by sentence, but I lost my ability to hear how it sounded. Now that the book is finally set in type, it’s come back to life again.
I stayed up late last night reading the page proofs of Duke, and I liked what I read. Needless to say, it helped that they look so good–Elke Sigal’s typographical design is flat-out gorgeous, and I’m no less happy with the illustrations–but I’ll admit to being equally pleased with the text, at least for now.
To be sure, I doubt that Ellington himself would have cared for the book. He was far too secretive to appreciate a biography that told the truth about his complicated life. As I wrote in the prologue to Duke:

The rage, the humiliation, the unbridled sensuality: All were kept far from prying eyes. His fans saw only what he wished them to see, and nothing more. So did his colleagues. “I think all the musicians should get together one certain day and get down on their knees and thank Duke,” said Miles Davis. Yet to Ellington’s own musicians, he was a riddle without an answer, an unknowable man who hid behind a high wall of ornate utterances and flowery compliments that grew higher as he grew older.

Still, I like to think that Ellington might at least have appreciated the fact that I took his life and work with the utmost seriousness, and tried to write about them in a way that mirrors, however dimly, the beauty of his music.
Can I make Duke even better? Maybe–but not for long. I have two weeks to make my final corrections to the text. After that, I’m done. It’s time.
UPDATE: I started correcting the page proofs this afternoon, and the first thing I saw was a mixed metaphor…on the third page. It’s going to be a long day.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Annie (musical, G, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Nance (play with music, PG-13, extended through Aug. 11, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, extended through Sept. 1, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, extended through July 28, original production reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• Women of Will (Shakespearean lecture-recital, G/PG-13, closes May 26, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• Pal Joey (musical, PG-13, closing May 26, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN CHICAGO:

• Woman in Mind (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WESTPORT, CONN.:

• The Dining Room (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• Orphans (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense.”
Samuel Johnson, The Idler (June 9, 1759)

“The Cat Concerto,” directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, released in 1947:

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

“It is meat and drink to me to see a clown.”
William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Yes, I read SkyMall whenever I fly, and on my last flight I ran across this listing for a product described as “The Wordsmith’s Manual Typewriter”:

This is the manual typewriter that recalls the thoughtful, well-written correspondence of yesteryear. Devoid of technological crutches such as spellcheck and deletion, each of its 44 keys requires a firm, purposeful stroke for a steady click-clacking cadence that encourages the patient, considered sentiment of a wordsmith who thinks before writing. It faithfully reproduces the eclectic printed impressions of its forebears–variable kerning, subtly ghosted letters, and nuanced baseline shifts–imparting unique, personal character to every letter or verse of poetry.

So you, too, can now purchase a Retro-Ironic Manual Typewriter for just $199.95!

From 2006:

I had a nightmare in Chicago last weekend, a few hours after seeing a performance of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, in which one of the characters tells an old friend that he’s dying. A couple of weeks before that, I’d seen Breaker Morant, a movie that ends with an explicitly gory firing-squad scene, and in between I had occasion to chat with a friend about Dialogues of the Carmelites, the Poulenc opera whose climax is a procession to the guillotine by a group of nuns who have been condemned to death by a revolutionary tribunal. All these experiences somehow became scrambled in my head, and I dreamed that I was watching a long line of nuns who were being led one by one into an adjacent room, where an unseen executioner shot them to death. At some point in the dream, I realized that I was standing in the same line…

Read the whole thing here.