“In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.”

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” (courtesy of Jas Handloser)

Expect no blogging (except for a fresh almanac entry). I’ve got a deadline-packed morning and afternoon followed by an early curtain in Brooklyn, so I probably won’t have any time to write for the site. Apologies.

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s lots of fresh stuff in the right-hand column, including several new Top Fives and a link to my “Second City” column in Sunday’s Washington Post, in which I survey the arts in New York. Take a look.

See you Wednesday.

“‘And yet,’ demanded Councillor Barlow, ‘what’s he done? Has he ever done a day’s work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?’

“‘He’s identified,’ said the speaker, ‘with the great cause of cheering us all up.'”

Arnold Bennett, The Card

I posted last year apropos of the publication of Ronald Reagan’s letters:

I’ve been looking through Reagan: A Life in Letters, a book whose publication will no doubt startle a lot of people unaware that Ronald Reagan was the most prolific presidential correspondent of modern times. I’m not talking about the kind of “letter” produced in batch lots by a team of secretaries equipped with autopens, either. Of the 1,100 letters in this 934-page book, some 80% were written by hand, another 15% dictated. The editors had “over 5,000 genuine Reagan letters” to choose from, and they estimate that another 5,000 or so have yet to surface.

Put aside for a moment your opinion of Reagan (either way) and think instead about the implications of those numbers. Speaking as a biographer, I can assure you that this is an extraordinarily large number of letters to have been written by any public figure, much less one who wasn’t a professional writer–though Reagan, as it happens, spent a number of years writing his own speeches, radio commentaries, and syndicated columns, and would also have been perfectly capable of writing his own memoirs without assistance had he been so inclined. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other 20th-century president who left behind so large a body of informal writing, and few who wrote as much in any medium. Theodore Roosevelt, probably Nixon, possibly Calvin Coolidge (who was, believe it or not, the best by-his-own-hand presidential prose stylist in modern times), and…who else? Nobody comes to mind….

Read the whole thing here.

“Communism is neither an ec[onomic] or a pol[itical] system–it is a form of insanity–a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears.”

Ronald Reagan, Reagan, In His Own Hand (written 1975, collected 2001)

I was too sick to do any playgoing last week, so my drama column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal is divided between speculation on this Sunday’s Tony Awards and a brisk pan of Chinese Friends:

Overheard on the street immediately after a performance of “Chinese Friends”: “That’s the worst play I ever saw! What the hell happened to Jon Robin Baitz?” Beats me. Mr. Baitz is, or was, a talented playwright, but you wouldn’t guess it from watching this preposterous mess, which runs through June 13 at Playwrights Horizons. I’m not quite prepared to call it the worst show I’ve ever seen–I survived “The Look of Love”–but it’s worse than “Prymate,” which is saying something.

“Chinese Friends” is all the more disappointing because it’s based on an interesting premise. What might the U.S. look like after the Red America-Blue America political split finally resolves itself? In Mr. Baitz’s dystopian fantasy, set in 2030, the big bad Bushies gave way to a group of tough-minded liberal policy wonks who lost patience with the soft-headed electorate and opted for a stealthy form of fascism they called “soft power.” When that didn’t work out, Dr. Arthur Brice (Peter Strauss, made up to look like Donald Rumsfeld), the gray eminence of the Killer Humanists, withdrew to a remote New England island to hide from his enemies and await his second coming.

Enter his estranged son Ajax (Tyler Francavilla), who unexpectedly turns up on Brice’s doorstep with two hippie-type friends (Bess Wohl and Will McCormack) in tow. At first it appears that the arrival of this motley m

“It is my theory to like vulgarity–to think well of it, to champion it, to gird myself to always fight on its side. It is my theory to think nothing can come to pass without a pinch (or more than a pinch) of vulgarity.”

Percy Grainger, quoted in John Bird, Percy Grainger

I spent much of Thursday trudging from one end of Manhattan to the other, and so had little time for art other than a half-dozen Isaac Bashevis Singer stories gulped down in transit. (Singer is ideal for long subway rides.)

I do, however, want to tell you about Honeysuckle Rose (Living Era),
the terrific new CD to which I listened before bedtime. It’s a two-disc anthology of 51 Fats Waller recordings issued in honor of the centenary of his birth, and it’s extremely well-chosen–most of the big jukebox hits of the Thirties, plus lots of lesser-known gems like “S’posin’,” “I Wish I Were Twins,” and “Oh, Susannah, Dust Off That Old Pianna!” The overlap with Fats Waller: The Quintessence (Fremeaux), the other great Waller anthology, is surprisingly modest, and the two sets contain between them most of his finest 78s.

If you’re feeling blue, be it indigo or merely sky, buy ’em both and listen regularly. I guarantee results!