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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 4, 2014

The night of nights

March 4, 2014 by Terry Teachout

Satchmo at the Waldorf opens tonight at New York’s Westside Theatre. Nothing remains for me to do but sit back, watch, and hope.
This one’s for my mother and father and my beloved Nancy LaMott, whom I wish had lived to see it–and for Mrs. T, who makes all things possible.
In honor of the occasion, I’m posting, as I always do on my opening nights–of which this is, incredibly, the eighth–a well-remembered and much-loved TV theme song from my childhood. May it bring us all broken legs:

Lookback: on being remaindered

March 4, 2014 by Terry Teachout

From 2004:

The UPS man brought me a couple of boxes’ worth of hardcover copies of The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, and I knew that the inevitable moment had come at last: my book has been remaindered. I can’t complain, really, since The Skeptic stayed in print for a year and a half, got terrific reviews, and is now available in a handsome-looking trade paperback. Still, you can’t help but feel a twinge of dismay when you open the form letter from your publisher advising you that your beloved baby will soon be piled high on the discount tables, there to be sold for humiliatingly low prices. No matter how good a run you had–and I had a better one than I ever dared to hope–the party always ends….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Elbert Hubbard on the optimist

March 4, 2014 by Terry Teachout

“A neurotic person with gooseflesh and teeth a-chatter, trying hard to be brave.”
Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams

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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