– Just fine, thanks. We don’t yet know when she’ll be coming home from the hospital, but everything else is going swimmingly. She ate a hearty dinner–as hearty as institutional cuisine gets, anyway–and walked fifty feet on the arm of a nurse. Tomorrow she starts physical rehabilitation.

– I’m on dialup for the duration, which makes it difficult for me to read my blogmail. Please don’t be surprised (or offended) if you don’t hear back from me until early August.

– I wore one of my Hip Black New York Outfits to the hospital this morning (all my other clothes were dirty). When I left to get some lunch, a nurse asked my mother, “How does it feel to have a priest in the family?”

– Here are the headlines on the front page of last night’s local paper: (1) “Rain Brought Much Relief for Farmers.” (2) “Life-Saver Award Goes to Officer.” (3) “Smalltown Resident Gets the Price Right” (i.e., she was picked as a contestant on The Price Is Right). (4) “Sometimes You Spell Allergy Relief, S-H-O-T.”

That’s how I know I’m back in Smalltown, U.S.A. And glad to be.

– Further proof that there’s no place like home: I can walk in total darkness from one end of my mother’s house to the other without bumping into anything. (I can’t even do that in my own apartment!)

– I brought a big stack of books with me to Smalltown, and so far I’ve been chewing them up at a rate of approximately one and a third per day. Here’s what’s on my nightstand:

The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War, by Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi (yes, I read Louis Menand’s New Yorker review).

Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, by Penny M. Von Eschen, and Bix: The Definitive Biography of a Jazz Legend, by Jean Pierre Lion (I’m yoking them together for a Commentary essay).

J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan, by Andrew Birkin (I’d been meaning for years to read this book, and when a friend asked me the other day whether there was any truth to Finding Neverland, I decided it was time to put up or shut up).

Elia Kazan: A Biography, by Richard Schickel (now in bound galleys, out in November).

A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, by Czeslaw Milosz (no special reason, except maybe that Ms. Searchblog admires him so extravagantly).

At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, by A. Roger Ekirch (sent to me by a former prot

“Strangers always love us for what we’ve accomplished, ignoring the fact that, by definition, that very accomplishment no longer touches us.”

Ned Rorem, letter to Glenway Wescott (August 31, 1967)

Yesterday morning I arose before dawn, took my mother to the hospital where I was born forty-nine years ago, and watched her vanish down a corridor, wondering if I’d see her alive again. Seven hours later I was feeding her ice chips from a plastic spoon and doing my best not to get choked up as I told her she didn’t look too bad, considering.

In fact, she came through her operation somewhat bloodied (she lost a cupful) but mostly unbowed, and when it was over the surgeon informed us–convincingly–that the prospects for her recovery were excellent. I passed the word to her a couple of hours later in her hospital room, and she smiled wanly. Then I pulled out my cell phone and started calling all the people on the list she’d handed me the night before.

I don’t know what you do on the eve of major spinal surgery, but my brother, a man of action, decided the situation called for a cookout and proceeded to barbecue a mountain of pork chops, chicken breasts, and jalape

Beloved, we are always in the wrong,

Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,

Suffering too little or too long,

Too careful even in our selfish loves;

The decorative manias we obey

Die in grimaces round us every day,

Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice

Which utters an absurd command–Rejoice.

W.H. Auden, “In Sickness and in Health”

I’m back up and running computerwise, finally, though there are a couple glitches with the email (also, I lost a bunch of July email in the crash, so feel free to write again if you didn’t get an answer). Most of the relevant glitches, though, concern my schedule, which is very, very overbooked. Would you believe me if I said I’m going to be back with a vengeance over the weekend? No, I wouldn’t believe me either. But that will make it all the more titillating when the threat/promise actually materializes….

In the meantime, though, there is one thing that has been on my mind since before the changing of the Macs, which is simply this: the new Erin McKeown totally lives up, and check out those adorable bird innards. Charming, no? The album isn’t what my previous experience of Ms. McKeown’s music had led me to expect–and I mean this in the best possible way. The capacity to surprise is an excellent thing. Listening to WWBLB (as Terry and I shorthand it), I’ve found, can be a little like reading a decompressed sestina. And haven’t you always wanted to hear a really, really good song about The Columbian Exposition? Of course you have. Case closed!

My drama column in today’s Wall Street Journal is a tripleheader. First is Primo, Sir Anthony Sher’s one-man stage version of Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir:

“Primo” is a very great piece of theater, but the tale, not the teller, is what matters most, and it is to their credit that Sir Anthony and Richard Wilson, his director, have opted for stark simplicity in presenting “If This Is a Man” (originally published in the U.S. as “Survival in Auschwitz”). The set, designed by Hildegard Bechtler, consists of a few concrete walls, a shovelful of gravel and a single wooden chair. Into this cold, bare space walks the bespectacled Sir Anthony, wearing an old cardigan. “It was my good fortune,” he says matter-of-factly, “to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944…I was 24, with little wisdom, no experience, and a tendency–encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me by the racial laws–to live in an unrealistic world of my own.” Then, without further ado, he flings you into the bowels of hell….

Next up, the Mint Theater’s wonderful revival of The Skin Game:

Despite the TV versions of “The Forsyte Saga,” John Galsworthy is no longer widely remembered in this country as a novelist, much less a playwright, though he used to be world-famous in both capacities (he actually won the 1932 Nobel Prize for literature). None of his 27 plays has been seen on Broadway since 1931. Now the Mint Theater Company, a tiny off-Broadway troupe with a justly admired knack for exhuming what it calls “buried theatrical treasures,” has revived “The Skin Game,” a 1920 melodrama about the limits of upward mobility in England, and it proves to be a rattling good show indeed….

Lastly, Shakespeare in the Park:

After a dismaying string of fair-to-middling Shakespeare in the Park offerings, the Public Theater has brought a winner to its outdoor home, Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. Mark Lamos’s production of “As You Like It” is a summery romp played out on a giant map of the cosmos, with the trees of the park (and Belvedere Castle just beyond) supplying a lovely backdrop for romantic hijinks in the Forest of Arden….

My column for this week is one of the stories in Friday’s Journal that’s being made available on line in its entirety as part of the Journal‘s “Today’s Free Features” Web page. To read the whole thing, of which there’s far more, go here. If you’re a blogger, link away!

As usual, you can also read the column on paper by shelling out a dollar for today’s Journal or (better yet) going here to subscribe to the Online Journal, Web-based journalism’s best deal ever.

UPDATE: The original London production of Primo was telecast and will be released on DVD in the U.S. next month by Kultur. To place an advance order, go here.

Bill Kirchner, editor of The Oxford Companion to Jazz, writes:

In the fall of 2000, The Oxford Companion to Jazz
was published–864 pages long, with 60 essays by 59 distinguished musicians,
scholars, and critics. In 2001, the Jazz Journalists Association voted it “Best
Jazz Book” of the year. And it received over 50 reviews worldwide, about 90
percent of them positive. My favorite “review,” though, came from composer-arranger Johnny Mandel,
who remarked: “Putting this book together must have been like being contractor
for the Ellington band.”

I’m pleased to announce that this month, the Companion has just become
available in a new paperback edition, complete with a number of small additions
and corrections. It can be purchased in bookstores internationally as well as from a variety of Internet outlets. At, I might add, an even more reasonable price than previously: $29.95 U.S. (retail).

If you haven’t yet checked out this book (which a number of schools have used as a textbook), I hope that the following list of essays and contributors will serve as encouragement.

– “African Roots of Jazz”–Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.

– “European Roots of Jazz”–William H. Youngren

– “Ragtime Then and Now”–Max Morath

– “The Early Origins of Jazz”–Jeff Taylor

– “New York Roots: Black Broadway, James Reese Europe, Early Pianists”–Thomas L. Riis

– “The Blues in Jazz”–Bob Porter

– “Bessie Smith”–Chris Albertson

– “King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and Sidney Bechet: M

“As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.”

La Rochefoucauld, Moral Maxims and Reflections