Archives for January 2018

“We can remember minutely and precisely only the things which never really happened to us.”

Eric Hoffer, “Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: ‘Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely’” (The New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1971)

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about some of my favorite narrative biographies. Here’s an excerpt.

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Truman Capote kicked up a fuss when he proclaimed to the world that “In Cold Blood,” his book about a pair of mass murderers, was a “non-fiction novel.” I’ve never understood why so many people found his clever notion so irritating, since “In Cold Blood” was exactly that, a piece of book-length journalism that, as he explained to George Plimpton, “employed all the techniques of fictional art but was nevertheless immaculately factual.” (Actually, it wasn’t, but that’s beside the point.)

Nor do I understand why Capote’s oft-derided phrase has never quite caught on. The same phrase, after all, can be applied with equal validity to the kind of book that scholars call a “narrative biography,” one that is deliberately intended to appeal to a popular audience of educated non-specialist readers….

It happens that I’ve finally gotten around to reading Hilary Spurling’s two-volume biography of Henri Matisse, a quintessential example of narrative biography at its very best. Yes, it’s meticulously researched and carefully sourced, but Ms. Spurling has also looked for and found the “plot” of Matisse’s long, productive life, shaping its successive episodes with a novelist’s feel for characterization dramatic ebb and flow.

I recently mentioned on Twitter (where I’m @terryteachout) that “Matisse the Unknown,” Ms. Spurling’s first volume, was looking like a likely candidate for my short list of favorite biographies. One of my followers thereupon asked me to name the other books on the list, suggesting that to do so might make a good column….

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Read the whole thing here.

Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony perform Brahms’ First Symphony. This concert, directed by Kirk Browning, was originally telecast live by NBC from Carnegie Hall on November 3, 1951:

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

“When yu’ can’t have what you choose, yu’ just choose what you have.”

Owen Wister, The Virginian

From 2008:

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t see any of those shows under anything like ideal circumstances. I would have preferred to savor each one individually instead of cramming them down seriatim like a contestant in a wienie-eating contest, just as I would have preferred to clear my head between shows by partaking of other kinds of art. No such luck: I didn’t visit any galleries, didn’t watch any movies, didn’t listen to any music other than as background accompaniment to my daily labors. I did manage to read a book, but it was for professional reasons, not pleasure….

Read the whole thing here.

“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.”

Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller

Harry Christopher and the Sixteen perform Victoria’s “O magnum mysterium”:

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

“There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, till all men walk on higher ground in that lifetime.”

Maxwell Anderson, Valley Forge