Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
From 2009:
Read the whole thing here.Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence and D.G. Myers of A Commonplace Blog are jointly conducting a serial symposium called “The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time” whose participants have been invited to “speculate about the past, present, and future of this youngest of literary genres.” Even though I’m not strictly a book blogger, they asked me to join the fray anyway. Here’s my contribution….
“Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on.”
Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?
Fats Domino sings and plays “Valley of Tears,” “It’s You I Love,” and “I’m Walkin’” on The Perry Como Show. He is introduced and interviewed by Como prior to the performances. This episode was originally telecast by NBC on May 25, 1957:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“A story really isn’t any good unless it successfully resists paraphrase.”
Flannery O’Connor, “On Her Own Work”
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“Betrayal” was seen here six years ago in a revival directed by Mike Nichols and starring Daniel Craig that still failed to eke out more than an 83-performance run. Why, then, bring it back now? Because Tom Hiddleston, as the kids say. A classically trained actor with extensive stage experience who is thoroughly qualified to act in a highbrow show, Mr. Hiddleston is also Marvel’s Loki and, in that capacity, one of the stars of “Avengers: Endgame,” the highest-grossing movie in history, which explains why one of Pinter’s dullest plays is drawing sellout crowds on Broadway.
A more-than-semi-autobiographical tale of adultery (Pinter was the real-life betrayer), “Betrayal” is told in reverse chronological order. Even so, it’s far less elliptical than the pause-packed stage plays that put its author on the map of English-language theater. It’s as though he’d decided to go back and fill in all the gaps in “Old Times,” his earlier, infinitely more enigmatic study of a three-way relationship. Unfortunately, Pinter’s new-found willingness to let his characters come right out and say what they’re thinking led not to lucidity but triteness…
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Read the whole thing here.The trailer for Betrayal:
“Interior N.Y. Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street,” a rare silent film shot in 1905 and originally released by the American Mutoscope & Biograph Co.:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.”
Sydney Smith, letter to Georgiana Harcourt (1838)
Read the whole thing here.As I read “Rabbit’s Blues,” I thought: Why aren’t there lots of books like this? Biographies have been growing longer and longer for decades now, and even when they’re about deserving subjects, they’re still likely to be far too clotted with hour-by-hour detail to suit the needs of the general reader. What I’d like to see, by contrast, are brief lives of artists about whom it would be pointless to publish what we now think of as a full-length book—the supporting players of art, so to speak….
Samuel Fuller, A Third Face
Mabel Mercer and Jimmy Lyon appear on The Mark of Jazz, hosted by Sid Mark and originally telecast on WHYY-TV in 1976:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)