About Last Night

Various
and sundry litbloggers have taken note of “The Populist Manifesto,” yesterday’s Washington Post story about the Stephen King-Shirley Hazzard dustup at the National Book Awards ceremony. Here’s the nut graf:

On the streets of Washington and across America, a war is being waged between popular novels and literary fiction. In this increasingly aliterate nation–acrawl with people who can read but don’t–the battle for readers is a high-stakes campaign.

Since I (1) write a column for the Post, (2) was interviewed for the story and (3) am quoted extensively therein, I’ll refrain from commenting either way on its merits, but I do want to say something about The Elegant Variation’s sulfurous response:

Others have already linked to this Washington Post piece about the King/Hazzard contretemps, so I may be beating a dead horse but I have to wonder when this idiotic “literary vs. genre” nonsense will play itself out.

There’s not a single message board that I have ever visited — not one — that does not include some form of this exhausted debate, usually in terms and tones incendiary and condescending. And after perusing all the miles and KB of threads, I’m forced to ask the question: Who cares? Isn’t it enough to say that each side probably envies something the other side has, and to leave it at that? How much more really needs to be said?

Hold on there a minute, hoss. The fact that lots and lots of people (OGIC and myself included) have blogged about this “exhausted debate” is apodictic proof that lots and lots of people care, and at least hints at the further possibility that the debate might be somewhat less than exhausted.

Bookslut, on the other hand, framed the diminishing-returns debate in a slightly different way, suggesting that the Post article “may have seemed more relevant if it had been published soon after the National Book Awards ceremony. I thought this had already been talked out.” And so it has–out here in the blogosphere, where lead times are shorter and trigger fingers itchier. But as has been widely observed of late, the whole point of the blogosphere is that it appears to consist, at least at present, of a fairly small universe of early adopters and opinion-shapers whose views are initially disseminated and discussed in cyberspace, only then making their way into the slower-responding world of print media. (Or, to invert the Fox News slogan, we decide–they report.) As a result, that which strikes us as yesterday’s news may actually be tomorrow’s news, or next month’s news, in the “real” world of journalism.

For this reason, instead of grumping about how the Washington Post is beating a dead horse, I wonder if we might possibly do better to say, “Cool–they noticed. And they even remembered to mention that we got there first!” For as Exhalations pointed out,

It was interesting to note that a blog was referenced, Terry Teachout’s About Last Night. It was the first time I’ve seen such a casual reference to a blog without the reporter having to explain the term

In a posting somberly entitled “Death Knell,” acdouglas.com announces the Impending End of the West, adducing as evidence a series of statements recently culled from an assortment of culture and art blogs. These statements, he claims,

are all reflective of the current cultural Zeitgeist; a legacy of the ’60s, and one that has been sounding the death knell for all the high arts, classical music very much included, for almost three decades now. And although a death knell, it’s been heard by most who ought to have known better (viz., intelligent, educated, cultured people such as those represented above) not as a death knell, but as a clarion voluntary heralding a new, welcome, and desirable equalitarian embracement of all art — high and low, great and trashy — without distinction.

No, I’m not going to embark on a(nother) fulmination against such wrongheaded, woodenheaded, purblind idiocy. I’ve done my share of that on this weblog; some will say more than my share.

Well, maybe just a teeny bit more than his share. For one of the statements, it seems, comes from “About Last Night”:

I’m blogging from the apartment of ________, who is sitting in her Eames chair (yes, she has an Eames chair!), looking shockingly beautiful as Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two twang away on the stereo (didn’t I tell you she was cool?).

Needless to say, the lady of the blank was Our Girl in Chicago, who has an Eames chair and listens to Johnny Cash, to whose music I introduced her a number of years ago. Which means, according to Mr. Douglas, that she and I are both part of the horde of woodenheaded, idiotic cultural relativists who are gnawing away at the foundations of Western culture.

Excuse the hell out of me, pal, but you obviously haven’t read one-tenth of one percent of what I’ve been writing for the past quarter-century about cultural relativism and its discontents, and I don’t plan to sit still and let you dump all over me like that. Among many, many, many other things, I draw your attention to something I posted in this space
a couple of months ago, apropos of the Great King-Hazzard Imbroglio:

I don’t think The Long Goodbye is as good a book as The Great Gatsby, and I believe the difference between the two books is hugely important. But I also don’t think it’s absurd to compare them, and I probably re-read one as often as the other.

The point is that I accept the existence of hierarchies of quality without feeling oppressed by them. I have plenty of room in my life for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler, for Aaron Copland and Louis Armstrong, for George Balanchine and Fred Astaire, and I love them all without confusing their relative merits, much less jumping to the conclusion that all merits are relative.

In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s part of what this blog is all about–a big part.

I think perhaps Mr. Douglas didn’t notice. I think perhaps there’s a lot he doesn’t notice. And I think perhaps he should do penance by ordering a copy of A Terry Teachout Reader, in which he will find plenty of evidence of just how much he hasn’t been noticing.

Enough said. All is forgiven.

UPDATE: Mr. Douglas has responded (the link’s the same), or at least thinks he has.

I just received this e-mail from a trend-conscious Gen-Xer who works in the litbiz:

W.

(that is short for whatever, in case you didn’t know).

I didn’t. Now I do. And so do you.

See the shiny new orange button in the right-hand column, just under “Write Us,” that says “XML”? Well, here’s a bulletin from artsjournal.com, the invaluable and indispensable host of “About Last Night,” explaining what it’s all about:

This week ArtsJournal introduces a new feature: rss syndication feeds for all of our ArtsJournal bloggers. If you have a newsfeed reader, you can subscribe to any ArtsJournal blog by clicking on the orange “XML” button now found on each of the blogs.

If you know what the first part of that bulletin means, go thou and do likewise. If you don’t know, don’t worry about it. Really.

As for us, we sort of understand, kind of, but we don’t have newsfeed readers of our own (yet). All we know is that they’re supposed to be a good thing, and so we’re glad that “About Last Night” is now available via rss syndication feeds. If and when you become a subscriber to “About Last Night,” please let us know whether you experience any technical difficulties, and we’ll pass your complaint on to the proper authorities.

As for everyone else, ignore that last paragraph. You may continue visiting “About Last Night” the same way you always have, as often as you like. And we still hope you’ll tell your friends about us!

Amtrak deposited me at New York’s Penn Station exactly one hour ago. I was three hours late, having left Chicago’s Union Station three hours late, so in a sense I suppose I was on time. The good news is that the train ride back to New York was as beautiful as you’d expect. It was snowing all the way into Ohio, and there was snow on the ground all the way to Albany. Yes, Amtrak sleepers can be a nuisance (not least because the berths in the Viewliner Standard Bedroom are coffin-sized, with mattresses of a consistency closely resembling pig iron), but the food is pretty good and the views are pretty amazing.

I just this minute saw Our Girl’s report about our hectic but happy weekend doing the art thing in Chicagoland. My own personal opinions of the events in question must remain on ice for a bit longer. You can read about Rose Rage and Man from Nebraska in this Friday’s Wall Street Journal, and I’m planning to blog about “Manet and the Sea” as soon as I unpack, take a shower, get some dinner, and answer all my e-mail, which may take several weeks. For the moment, I can say the following:

(1) OGIC is soooooooo cool.

(2) I want her Eames chair.

(3) If I couldn’t live in Manhattan, I think Chicago might do quite nicely.

Now, everybody send Our Girl an e-mail ordering her to come to New York as soon as possible. Sweeney Todd opens March 9 at New York City Opera, hint hint hint….

After a day spent dashing through the snow in my two-door Chevrolet, we deposited Terry at Union Station a few hours ago and poof, he was gone. His train was following the snowstorm eastward, so it promised to be a memorable journey. God knows Chicago is beautiful tonight, heaped with the kind of snow that piles itself high on the tree branches–the twigs, even–in shapely blobs and somehow balances there, despite very much outweighing what supports it. Every tree is a wonder right now, and I’m a little reluctant to go to bed. The morning will surely look more mundane.

Tallying the weekend’s attractions, we saw 3 plays, 1 art show, and a few Frank Lloyd Wright houses, doing slow drive-bys in Oak Park (it almost felt like we were stalking the houses, and the unfortunate “No Tourists” signs that abound around the Wright Home and Studio do nothing to dispel that impression). My personal score sheet? A Little Night Music fabulous; Rose Rage riveting (I’m still under its dark spell, and won’t shake it soon); Manet and the Sea pleasing overall, with certain highlights that were extraordinary (one Courbet, several Morisots, and a couple of smaller Manets that hailed from private collections). The play at Steppenwolf today, Man from Nebraska? Glossy, polished, and false. But I had to be happy with my batting average, especially considering that Rose Rage amounted to almost three plays. Newest New Year’s resolution: see more Chicago theater. And more Terry. Not necessarily in that order.

Happy trails, Terr…and tell us all about it tomorrow.

OGIC and I just got back from seeing Rose Rage, Chicago Shakespeare’s five-and-a-half-hour marathon performance of all three parts of Henry VI (abridged, and complete with an hour-long dinner break). Still on the menu are one more play, Steppenwolf’s Man from Nebraska, plus a visit to “Manet and the Sea” at the Art Institute of Chicago. We’re really hitting the culture hard, thank you very much. And yes, we’re having fun yet, not least because we haven’t seen each other face to face for a year, which was way too long. Now I have to get her to come to New York to see Sweeney Todd!

I’ll be boarding a train for New York Sunday night, and the weatherman says I’ll be plowing through several inches of snow en route. I’ll be home when I’m home. Should I get stuck along the way, Our Girl will tell you all about it. Otherwise, expect extensive postings tomorrow.

OGIC went nuts over A Little Night Music, which was, believe it or not, her very first Sondheim show. Looks like another buff is in the making.

More tomorrow….