“Tony’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. There was a weight on Charles again, the same old weight, and it was heavier after that brief moment of freedom. In spite of all those years, in spite of all his striving, it was remarkable how little pleasure he took in final fulfillment. He was a vice-president of the Stuyvesant Bank. It was what he had dreamed of long ago and yet it was not the true texture of early dreams. The whole thing was contrived, as he had said to Nancy, an inevitable result, a strangely hollow climax. It had obviously been written in the stars, bound to happen, and he could not have changed a line of it, being what he was, and Nancy would be pleased, but it was not what he had dreamed.

“‘Well, Tony,’ he said, ‘I guess that means I can send Junior to Exeter,’ and Tony Burton was asking why Exeter? He would not send any boy of his to Exeter.

“They were on a different basis already, now that he was a vice-president. Automatically, his thoughts were running along new lines, well-trained, mechanically perfect thoughts, estimating a new situation. There would be no trouble with the directors. There were only five vice-presidents at the Stuyvesant, all of the others older than he, most of them close to the retirement age, like Tony Burton himself. For a moment he thought of Mr. Laurence Lovell on Johnson Street but Mr. Lovell would not have understood, or Jessica either, how far he had gone or what it meant to be a vice-president of the Stuyvesant Bank. Nancy would understand. Nancy had more ambition for him than he had for himself. Nancy would be very proud. They would sell the house at Sycamore Park and get a larger place. They would resign from the Oak Knoll Club. And then there was the sailboat. It had its compensations but it was not what he had dreamed.”

John P. Marquand, Point of No Return

A reader writes:

Your “Entries from an Unkept Diary” for today
reminds me that I
want to thank you for helping me seem somewhat cool to my 22-year-old
daughter. I have passed on my CD’s of The Lascivious Biddies and Erin
McKeown (which I discovered from ALN) to load on her ipod and she lent
me the Garden State soundtrack. Your young friends not only keep you up
to speed but through you help an even older geezer find musical
connections to his daughter. I gave up rock in the mid seventies and
listened mostly to classical music and more recently to jazz (I have
discovered some outstanding female jazz vocalists thanks to you) but
finding out about some of the recent eclectic and alternative music out
there is great fun. Thanks!

Like I always say, this is a full-service blog.

I have an interesting chore ahead of me this afternoon. I’ll be attending my first meeting as a newly elected member of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, which is not a social club: we convene each May to vote on the annual Drama Critics’ Circle awards, which will be announced May 24 at a bash to be held at the Algonquin, with Edward Albee as our special guest. Don’t expect any blogging about our double-secret conclave, though, unless a fistfight breaks out, in which case I’m on it like a bonnet.

Coincidentally, this year’s Tony nominations were announced yesterday. (For a complete list, go here.) According to Jesse McKinley of the New York Times, the big story
was who didn’t get asked to the party:

In the competition for leading actor in a play, Denzel Washington, appearing at the Belasco as Brutus in “Julius Caesar,” was left off the list, as was Jeff Goldblum, who plays a curious cop in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy “The Pillowman.” In the leading-actress category, meanwhile, Jessica Lange was passed over for her performance as the mother in a revival of “The Glass Menagerie,” and Natasha Richardson was overlooked for her work in another Tennessee Williams revival, “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

None of this, of course, was at all surprising to anyone who keeps a reasonably close eye on theater in New York. The real surprises will come when the awards are handed out on June 5. In the meantime, I thought it might be amusing to do a little preliminary handicapping, so here are my personal picks for the major prizes, accompanied by a smattering of cynical who’s-really-gonna-win commentary

At dinner last night I was served by a friendly brunette with a girl-next-door face who looked oddly familiar to me. Midway through the meal, the coin dropped, and I said to her, “Forgive me for staring, but you look just like an actress who got nominated for a Tony this morning.”

I just got back from the New York State Theater, where I saw New York City Ballet dance An American in Paris, Christopher Wheeldon’s new George Gershwin ballet. I’ll have more to say about it later on, both here and in my Washington Post column, but here’s something I want to mention right now: I must have heard An American in Paris at least a hundred times, and it still makes me smile. Premiered in 1928, it remains to this day as fresh as tomorrow morning’s dandelions.

“The critics’ circle was in session when he arrived. They met in the Asshole Room of the Hotel Asshole, as far as Max was concerned. His mind tasted quite foul now, and spewed little bits of garbage into his mouth. He had better not talk too much tonight. He had not written his review, and he felt guilty and hungover about that; not, as he had hoped, roguish and liberated. They sat at a long baize-covered table with various-colored potions in front of them, looking, to Max’s yellow eye, like wizards, alchemists, dwarfs.

Here’s the official press release:

Overheard at lunch: “When it comes to dating, we’re all Dorothy Parkers under the skin.”