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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Books do furnish a (hotel) room

December 10, 2014 by Terry Teachout

I’m the kind of person who, when he enters a house for the first time, is irresistibly drawn to its bookshelves. Rightly or wrongly, I assume that their contents (or lack of same) will reveal much about the occupant. This irresistible conditioned reflex operates even when I’m in a hotel room or other public place where books are on display. Yes, I know that they were probably bought by the foot from some books-as-decoration outfit, but I still find them fascinating to peruse.

dsc07624.JPG.814x407_defaultI flew down to West Palm Beach on Monday to see a show and give a couple of talks, and I opted to stay at Casa Grandview, a B&B in Grandview Heights, a wonderfully quaint historic district that is, like so many Florida neighborhoods, a glorious mishmash of random architectural styles. The front room of my cozy, comfortable suite, an old-fashioned bachelor pad that the amiable owners have dubbed “the Man Cave,” is dominated by a massive bookcase. No sooner did I settle in than I started examining its contents. Needless to say, I didn’t expect to find anything particularly interesting therein, but along with the usual titles by the ubiquitous likes of Dick Francis and John Grisham, it turns out that a very considerable number of the books in the Man Cave are…well, not quite what you’d expect to stumble across in a B&B.

Here are some of the less likely titles:

Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Yankee from Olympus: Justice Holmes and His Family

Short Novels of Colette

Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa

The Faulkner Reader

Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock

Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way

The Short Stories of Henry James, edited by Clifton Fadiman

John Keegan’s The First World War

Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie

1101490307_400John P. Marquand’s B.F.’s Daughter, So Little Time, Women and Thomas Harrow, and Your Turn, Mr. Moto

André Maurois’ Disraeli

Dorothy Parker’s Not So Deep as a Well: Collected Poems

C. Northcote Parkinson’s Parkinson’s Law

The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection

Sam Tanenhaus’ Whittaker Chambers

Carl Van Doren’s The Great Rehearsal

Yes, I’ll be more than glad to return to New York and Mrs. T—I always am—but between the books in the Man Cave and the tasty breakfasts cooked to order each morning, I’d be perfectly happy to spend a few more days by Casa Grandview’s pool, reading at random and basking in the Florida sunshine.

UPDATE: I learned at breakfast that the owner of Casa Grandview bought all of the books himself. We chatted about Marquand, James Gould Cozzens, and Nevil Shute as I ate my eggs Benedict. I’m definitely coming back here.

To read my 1987 Commentary essay about John P. Marquand, go here.

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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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