• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2019 / December / Archives for 17th

Archives for December 17, 2019

Lookback: on looking out of an airplane window

December 17, 2019 by Terry Teachout

From 2003:

I try not to fly at night, but this time I decided to give it a go, and at the end of 45 anxious minutes spent pushing through a cold front, our smaller-than-usual jet popped out of the clouds and started its descent into the New York area. Suddenly the once-invisible earth below me was lit by a million glittering pinpoints of copper, gold, and chilly blue-white. Not for the first time, I wondered why no painter has ever taken for his subject what one sees from the window of an airplane. Surely Whistler would have known what to do with the lights of a city, just as Constable might have reveled in the spectacle of clouds seen from above….

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Yes, I now know about Yvonne Jacquette, whose work Mrs. T and I long to add to the Teachout Museum when we find just the right piece.

Almanac: William James on indecisiveness

December 17, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”

William James, The Principles of Psychology

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

December 2019
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Nov   Jan »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in