Archives for January 2020

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know that Mrs. T is gravely ill and has been in the intensive-care unit of New York-Presbyterian Hospital for the past three weeks—but that she recently turned a corner.

As I reported last night:

The news about Mrs. T continues to be good. Not only is she walking further each day on the ICU treadmill, but she’s eating more and resting far more comfortably. She still needs those two lungs urgently and is very sick—but much, much better than she was two weeks ago.

Mrs. T is now stable enough, in fact, that I’ve decided to give myself the much-needed caregiver’s holiday I scratched this past weekend when Ian, my nephew, came down with bronchitis and had to cancel a planned visit to New York. My new plan (laugh, God!) is to spend tonight and tomorrow at Bridgeton House on the Delaware, the beautiful riverside hideaway in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to which Mrs. T and I have escaped a couple of times each year ever since we first got together. (Ecce Bed and Breakfast, our other much-loved vacation retreat, closed its doors last month after a glorious fifteen-year run. We miss you already, Alan and Kurt!)

It will feel strange to stay at Bridgeton House by myself. I’ve only been there once without Mrs. T, back in the summer of 2005:

Before long I was snaking down the Delaware River to Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania, the home of Bridgeton House on the Delaware, an inn about which I can’t begin to say enough good things. It’s on the river, the rooms are handsomely appointed, and most even have their own private riverfront balconies. After driving across the bridge to the Milford Oyster House, there to sup on Crab Norfolk and a garlic-laden salad, I retreated to my balcony to watch the river flow and the fireflies blink. It was a hot and humid night, but before 15 minutes had passed the temperature had plunged at least as many degrees, and the fireflies flew off to make way for a thunderstorm. The lightning exploded over Upper Black Eddy as I looked on, delighting in the gaudy detonations far overhead.

As much as I’ll miss her, though, I know I need to spend a couple of quiet nights on my own, free of duties and deadlines, listening to the river and turning loose of the unforgiving moment. Naturally I’m bringing a short stack of books, and I plan to do nothing while I’m there except read, watch movies, eat well, and chat with the wonderfully nice people who run Bridgeton House and who, like me, care very much for Mrs. T. We’ll have plenty to talk about.

See you later.

From 2004:

Blogs are the 21st-century counterpart of the periodical essays of the eighteenth century, the Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers that supplied familiar essayists with what was then the ideal vehicle for their intensely personal reflections. Blogging stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the corporate journalism that exerted so powerful an effect on writing in the twentieth century. Instead of the homogenized semi-anonymity of a mass-circulation magazine, it offers writers the opportunity to practice the old-fashioned art of individual journalism, self-published, unmediated, and interactive….

Read the whole thing here.

“Leisure is a form of that stillness that is the necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear.”

Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture (trans. Gerald Malsbary)

“Behind the Tunes: A Conversation with Tex Avery,” an undated interview with the animator-director who created the prototypes for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig:

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

“Comedy is the salt of civilization, its critical voice.”

Guy Davenport, “That Faire Field of Enna” (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence)

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review Lincoln Center Theater’s off-Broadway production of Samuel D. Hunter’s Greater Clements. Here’s an excerpt.

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Now that Horton Foote has left us, who is putting small-town America onstage in a way that is both artful and comprehending—both of its myriad flaws and its equally compelling virtues? Few contemporary playwrights seem much inclined to try. Hence the importance of the off-Broadway premiere of “Greater Clements,” the latest of Samuel D. Hunter’s plays to take place in northern Idaho, the place where he grew up and which is to his oeuvre what southeast Texas was to Mr. Foote and the not-quite-fictional Irish village of Ballybeg was to Brian Friel.

Like his great predecessors, Mr. Hunter seeks and finds infinite meaning in the homely details of everyday life, and in “Greater Clements” he has given us what looks at first acquaintance like a masterpiece, one worthy of Messrs. Foote and Friel at their best. Only time will tell, of course, but it is already safe to say that “Greater Clements” is one of the finest American domestic dramas of the century to date, an intimate tragedy with wider social implications whose six principal characters come to grief when their little lives run aground on the unforgiving shoals of economic change….

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Read the whole thing here.

Samuel D. Hunter talks about Greater Clements:

Ida Lupino appears as the guest on This Is Your Life. The host is Ralph Edwards. This episode was originally telecast live by NBC on March 3, 1958:

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

“Whatever the field under discussion, those who engage in debate must not only believe in each other’s good faith, but also in their capacity to arrive at the truth.”

W.H. Auden, “The Protestant Mystics”