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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 10, 2018

Michael Pakenham, R.I.P.

May 10, 2018 by Terry Teachout

Thirty-one years ago, I was a senior editor at a magazine in New York, stuck (if that’s the word) in a job that didn’t satisfy me and not sure what to do about it. One morning I got a call from a man I didn’t know who said he’d like to talk to me about becoming an editorial writer for the New York Daily News. I’d never considered that line of work, but experience had taught me never to turn down a job offer without meeting the person who was making it, so I agreed to have lunch with Michael Pakenham, the editorial-page editor of the Daily News. I went to work for him a few weeks later, and continued to do so for the next six years.

Michael, who died yesterday at the age of eighty-five, was the last of my journalistic mentors, the older men who went out of their way to show me the ropes. He was, as they say, a character, a newspaperman who had started out as a reporter at the Chicago Tribune and was old enough to have put in a stretch at Chicago’s City News Bureau, where The Front Page is set. Not surprisingly, he loved to tell stories about the long-lost world of scoop-snatching beat reporting, about which he knew far more than most.

From the Tribune, he moved to the New York Herald Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Daily News, switching along the way from reporting to editing and, eventually, to putting out editorial pages for major metropolitan dailies. He believed devoutly that newspaper editorials make a difference, instructing everyone who worked for him to try to write pieces that housewives from Queens would clip out of the paper and post on the doors of their refrigerators. He hired me in part because he preferred working with men and women of broad culture who weren’t set in their journalistic ways, having figured out that it was easier to teach a novice how to write effective editorials than to un-teach a tired old wheelhorse who’d written too many ineffective ones.

Michael’s own culture was unusually broad. He was widely and proudly read, and knew almost as much about classical music as he did about literature. It was at his urging and in his company that I first saw what is now my favorite painting. No sooner did I go to work for the News than we became friends, in part because we shared so many interests but mostly because I found him impossible not to like. He treated me as a trusted protégé and, like the ideal patron he was, spread the word about my talents. Among countless other beneficences, he introduced me to Rebecca Sinkler, then the editor of the New York Times Book Review, for which I started writing in 1990, a coup that did much to set me up in the world of literary journalism.

Michael’s editorial page was my finishing school. He taught me how to write short, fast, and with the kind of crisp immediacy you don’t learn from reviewing the Kansas City Philharmonic. He insisted that everyone who worked for him do everything there was to be done, from knocking out two-inch quickies about the school board to putting together the daily letters-to-the-editor column, and I learned as much from rotating through my varied tasks as I did from watching him blue-pencil my copy. On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, he actually sent me to Albany to cover the release of New York’s state budget, about which I knew only slightly more than nothing, and made damned sure I got my facts straight. Nor will I soon forget the weekend when he called me at home and said, “The Berlin Wall has fallen. Get in your car and drive into town—we’ve got to redo the editorial page right now.” So we did, with wonder and awe.

An immensely genial bon vivant, Michael was a superior cook and a comprehensively informed wine connoisseur. He claimed to have known everyone, or at least to have met them, and I was dazzled by his breadth of acquaintance. It was Bill Buckley who first told him about me, and his English relations included Lady Antonia Fraser and Lord Longford, his famously eccentric uncle. I knew him long enough to have heard the whole of his vast repertory of stories about the great and near-great, which glittered like a well-trimmed Christmas tree. On occasion I suspected him of anecdotal embroidery, especially when he had a sufficiency of Jameson under his belt: he swore, for example, that he had been in the room when Tallulah Bankhead, having just read Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, said to the rising young novelist, “So you’re the young man who doesn’t know how to spell fuck.” But he told his tales with such relish that I never had the heart to cross-examine him, and it wouldn’t have mattered in any case, for what he really did in the course of his forty-year career was so impressive that it needed no inflation.

It was dismayingly hard for Michael to find his footing when he left the Daily News. He was the first successful man I knew who had to struggle to jump-start his career in middle age, and it hurt me to watch him do it. I encouraged him to take time off and try his hand at writing a memoir, but his gifts didn’t run that way, and I wondered for a time whether he would ever right himself. Then, in 1995, he landed a new job as book-review editor of the Baltimore Sun, where I delighted in writing for him until he retired a decade later.

Michael spent his old age living in a country house in Pennsylvania that was too far from the beaten path to allow for easy commuting. My duties as a New York drama critic had become so all-consuming that it was all but impossible for me to visit him there, and our meetings, alas, became vanishingly rare, though he made the long trip into New York to give a toast at my wedding to Mrs. T. By then he had fallen in love and settled down with Rosalie, his beloved wife, who survives him. She will have no shortage of indelible memories to comfort her. Neither will I.

No one did more than Michael Pakenham to shape my career, or to make me the writer I am today. I have tried my best to do for others what he did for me. I bless his name.

* * *

UPDATE: Michael’s Philadelphia Inquirer obituary is here.

Michael talks about Frank Rizzo, the Philadelphia mayor whom he covered during his tenure at the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Boomer’s story

May 10, 2018 by Terry Teachout

I read this on Twitter:

I wonder what it’s like to be part of a generation that sees a single, fixed place as home throughout their life. There are so many stories in our culture about “returning home,” about missing “home.” And I have no concept of “home” as a specific place. Lived in five different places by 17. My university apartment lasted me longer than any place prior. The closest to “home’” for me is, I guess, my family: my mother and sister. And now my wife. But we’re all separated now, my extended family across the earth, looking for work.

My mother had that expectation, and so does my brother, a baby boomer who lives in the house where he and I grew up, and where both of our parents lived from 1961 until they died. For me, too, the idea of “home” is inextricably bound up with that modest three-bedroom ranch house, and with my warm memories of the tightly knit nuclear family into which I was born.

Even more important to me, though, is the now-remarkable fact that my mother and father got married in 1947 and stayed that way. It would be an understatement to say that they didn’t always get along—they actually separated briefly the year before I was born—but by the time my brother and I were old enough to understand the meaning of the word “divorce,” it was taken for granted that they would never get one. They were in it for better or worse, and the longer they lived, the clearer it became to all who knew them that they’d been wise beyond their years to ride out the storms in the home that they’d made for one another, and for us.

Needless to say, I know the world isn’t like that anymore, though the way it was back then lives forever in my bones. Perhaps more to the point, my own life hasn’t been like that for a long time now: I graduated from high school in 1974 and have since lived in eight apartments in five cities, not counting dorm rooms. Unlike my brother, who put down deep roots in Smalltown, U.S.A., I’ve lived the wanderer’s life, rooted only in my memories.

As I wrote in this space seven years ago:

I always figured I’d find a job in town, marry a Smalltown girl, start a family, and become a pillar of the community. My brother did those things, but I pulled up stakes and became a rambling man, moving from city to city in search of an identity that it took me the better part of a lifetime to find, insofar as I can be said to have found it. At various times in my life I expected to become a concert violinist, a lawyer, a high school teacher, and a psychotherapist, none of which I ended up doing. Instead I’ve paid the rent by working as a bank teller, a jazz bassist, a magazine editor, an editorial writer, a biographer, and a drama critic….

While I’ve never been one to repine, it’s hard not to spend a fair amount of time playing the what-if game once you get to be my age. Fortunately for me, I’m much more than happy enough with What-Is not to lose sleep over What-If, though anyone who read what I wrote about Local Hero the other day will know that there are plenty of times when I look out the windows of trains and ask myself what I missed by not getting off at Willoughby, looking around, and saying to myself, “Here I stay.”

But what if I had? Then I would have missed out on Mrs. T and Our Girl in Chicago, on The Letter and Satchmo at the Waldorf and Billy and Me, on a list of other extraordinary experiences so long and implausible-sounding that merely to read it out loud is to be dumbfounded by my good fortune.

I don’t think I have a restless nature. I remember how struck I was when I ran across the following sentence: “To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” That comes from an essay by Michael Oakeshott, and it describes me—up to a point. I’m good at appreciating things as they are, and I’m pretty sure I would have been content to be a small-town teacher or lawyer. Yet I chose a restless life, the kind Ry Cooder sings about in “Boomer’s Story”: Just dig my grave beside the railroad/So I can hear the trains go by.

I suppose, like most people, I wanted it both ways, and to a surprising extent I’ve gotten what I wanted. The catch is that while it’s sometimes possible to have it all, it’s almost always impossible to have it all at the same time. You usually have to settle for memories.

* * *

Ry Cooder sings “Boomer’s Story,” written by Carson Robison:

The opening of “A Stop at Willoughby,” a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone written by Rod Serling and directed by Robert Parrish:

The musical drought

May 10, 2018 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about the dire state of the large-scale Broadway musical. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Each May, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle votes on the best play, foreign play and musical of the season. This year it chose not to give a best-musical award. What’s more, the NYDCC (of which I am a member) made the same call in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2010. To be sure, nearly all of the 19 members loved “The Band’s Visit,” but it won last year’s best-musical award after opening off Broadway in 2016. As for this year’s shows, only two Broadway musicals got any support, “Mean Girls” (one vote) and “SpongeBob SquarePants” (two votes)….

In addition to “The Band’s Visit,” my 15-year tenure as the Journal’s drama critic has seen the arrival on Broadway of such memorable shows as “Avenue Q,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Fun Home,” “Hamilton,” “The Light in the Piazza” and “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” But all of them, even “Hamilton,” are small-to-smallish-scale musicals that either originated off Broadway or were developed at regional theaters elsewhere in America. What I’m not seeing are any considerable number of first-rate large-scale Broadway musicals, the modern-day counterparts of such beloved golden-age shows as “Oklahoma!” and “Guys and Dolls.” Instead, we’re getting more and more of what I call “commodity musicals,” unchallenging confections like “Mean Girls,” “Frozen” and “School of Rock” that are more or less slavishly adapted from Hollywood hits of the past…

When I last wrote about the decline of the Broadway musical in this space nine years ago, I cited the growing dominance of the commodity musical as the number-one problem facing the genre. I still see these shows as roadblocks that stand in the way of fresh creative thinking. But I now regard them as a symptom, not a cause. The real problem goes deeper.

Broadway musicals were central to American pop culture well into the Sixties. Their songs were played on the radio and performed on top-rated TV variety shows, and in due course the best of these shows were turned into hit movies. But their popularity was contingent on the existence of what could be broadly described as a common culture that was shared by Americans of all kinds. Back then, everybody from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley to Ray Charles sang show tunes….

Once our common culture started cracking up, it was inevitable that the Broadway musical would lose its creative footing….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

So you want to see a show?

May 10, 2018 by Terry Teachout

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:
• Angels in America (two-part drama, R, alternating in repertory, closes July 15, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Iceman Cometh (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes July 1, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Saint Joan (drama, PG-13, closes June 10, reviewed here)
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes June 24, reviewed here)
• Travesties (serious comedy, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• A Brief History of Women (serious comedy, PG-13, closes May 27, reviewed here)
• Mlima’s Tale (drama, PG-13, closes June 3, reviewed here)
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes July 15, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:
• Macbeth (Shakespeare, PG-13, remounting of Two River Theater Company production, closes June 24, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• The Seafarer (drama, PG-13, closes May 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Miss You Like Hell (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Lobby Hero (drama, PG-13, nearly all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

Almanac: John Updike on boring people

May 10, 2018 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.”

John Updike, “Confessions of a Wild Bore”

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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