About Last Night

A reader inquired about “Alas, not by me,” the running head I use to link to choice snippets by other people (usually bloggers) that I wish I’d written. It’s a reference to a celebrated anecdote about Johannes Brahms. Back in the nineteenth century, autograph seekers sometimes invited their quarry to inscribe fans–the kind you hold in your hand. Brahms, the story goes, was invited by the wife (or possibly the daughter) of Johann Strauss the Younger to sign a fan, and responded by sketching a musical staff, writing out the first couple of bars of “On the Beautiful Blue Danube,” and signing it “Alas, not by–Johannes Brahms.”

This is such a wonderful story that I fear it may not be true, especially since it could have been: Brahms was a witty gent capable of just such a spontaneous gesture, and his friendship with and admiration for Strauss were anything but apocryphal. (He told Hans von Bülow, for example, that Strauss was “one of the few colleagues I can hold in limitless respect.”) I just checked, and two of the most reliable Brahms books on my shelves make no reference to the anecdote, so I plan to check no further. When the legend becomes true, print the legend (alas, not by me).

Incidentally, the word “alas” is one of my too-familiar, over-relied-upon fingerprints, along with “not surprisingly,” “needless to say,” “much less,” “least of all,” “I suspect,” and (sigh) the use of hyphenated modifiers. Not surprisingly, I suspect that most far-too-prolific writers have, alas, a whole stack of these tics. Used in the strictest moderation, they’re part of what turns a voice into a full-fledged style, but I’m not always careful about using them moderately, least of all on this blog, which is frequently written on the fly. When I was editing The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, I determined to trim away all but one or two occurrences of each of my personal clichés. Don’t hold me to it, though, and please don’t keep score when you’re reading A Terry Teachout Reader. I guarantee you’ll find them there, in profusion.

I didn’t expect my throwaway item on Woody Allen to have caused quite so much of a hullabaloo
in
cyberspace. Around this town, Allen is generally thought to be soooo over. Go figure.

In all fairness, let me add this footnote: a few days after Jack Paar’s death last week, one of our local PBS affiliates reran a Paar clip show that included what I gather was Allen’s network TV debut as a standup comedian. I can just barely remember his standup days, and since then I hadn’t seen or heard any of his work from that period. I was struck by how fresh and engaging his style was–free, fantastic, not at all punchline-oriented. Judging by that clip, one could easily imagine him having evolved into an on-stage monologist

The ‘Fesser, whose many felicitous observations and coinages are on regular offer at Pullquote*, has an expression he reserves for noting especially entertaining outbreaks of intellectual pugilism. He borrowed it from hockey. In homage to the blood-thirstiest fans in the first few rows who make it their business to egg on any actual or potential fisticuffs, he’ll e-mail me when, say, Dale Peck and [insert novelist here] exchange blows to say he’s “Pounding on the Plexiglass/Spilling My Popcorn.” Of late this has been abbreviated to a simple “PTP/SMP.”

Courtesy of The Corner, here’s the most interesting chart I’ve seen in ages, a network map that shows the near-complete lack of overlap between the book-buying patterns of people in Red and Blue America (i.e., the states that voted for Bush and Gore in 2000). No matter which side of the great divide you inhabit, you’ll find it worth a look.

When everyone’s buzzing about blogger anonymity, it becomes an anonymous blogger to weigh in (thanks for the shout-out, Old Hag). Anonymity’s detractors make their cases this week at Gothamist, which declares in an impressively thoroughgoing spirit of no-fun,

To hear the voice of G.K. Chesterton, go here. (Scroll down as necessary. The clip is available in RealAudio, WAV, and QuickTime files.)

“Anyway, I’ve never run with the pack, composing according to fashion; I’ve always been a lone wolf, composing according to need. The Red Queen said you’ve got to run fast to stay in one place. I stayed in one place. Now it’s clear I’ve run fast.”

Nothing from me today. I’ve got to write my Wall Street Journal drama column in the morning, followed by afternoon appointments and a nightclub after dinner. Maybe I’ll do a little nickle-and-diming, but nothing more. Really. No matter who posts my mugshot. Or speculates about…well, you know.