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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for August 7, 2018

Lookback: what color am I?

August 7, 2018 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2008:

I tried to take Stuff White People Like’s Facebook test yesterday, but gave it up after running into three consecutive questions for which my answer was None of the above, which was not an option. My impression, however, was that I’m not very “white,” a fact which amuses me, albeit only mildly. Speaking as an arty Upper West Side drama critic who works for The Wall Street Journal, likes both sushi and hot dogs, is currently writing an opera, and can sit down at the piano and play Nat Cole’s “Easy Listening Blues” on request, I’m not at all sure what color I am.

In the interests of chromatic clarification, here is the personal information that appeared on my Facebook page last week….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Max Beerbohm on the limits of philosophy

August 7, 2018 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Come to me in some grievous difficulty: I will talk to you like a father, even like a lawyer. I’ll be hanged if I haven’t a certain mellow wisdom. But if you are by way of weaving theories on some one who will luminously confirm or powerfully rend them, I must, with a hang-dog air, warn you that I am not your man. I suffer from a strong suspicion that things in general cannot be accounted for through any formula or set of formulae, and that any one philosophy, howsoever new, is no better than any other. This is in itself a sort of philosophy, and I suspect it accordingly; but it has for me the merit of being the only one that I can make head or tail of.”

Max Beerbohm, “Laughter”

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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