Archives for September 8, 2003

Get this: I took most of the weekend off! Instead of writing, which is what I usually do all weekend, I slept late, dropped into a half-dozen art galleries, went to hear Bill Charlap at the Jazz Standard, and–yes–got a little work done on Sunday. Nothing too serious, though: I spent the morning and afternoon indexing and proofreading the introduction and first 58 pages of A Terry Teachout Reader. (I’m doing my own index to save money so that I can buy another lithograph.) Did I mention that I didn’t write anything?

For those of you wondering when I’m finally going to get around to answering my mail again, here’s my reply: I want to thank you all for contributing to my improved mental health by giving me the weekend off. (Pretty clever, huh?) But I didn’t forget about you, and here’s the proof, from ridiculous to sublime: (1) What I didn’t read on my summer vacation. (2) “In the Bag.” (3) An insufficiently celebrated jazz trumpeter brings an all-star group to town. (4) The latest almanac entry–with a twist.

“About Last Night” expects that each man will do his duty, and women, too. Tell everyone you know about www.terryteachout.com this week. Fill the air of cyberspace with tidings of aesthetic comfort and joy.

As some of you will recall, I’m judging a literary award this year, and as a result, I’ve had to spend much of my spare time reading books chosen for me by other people (which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy them). This weekend, though, I took a busman’s holiday and treated myself to a pair of books that I read solely and only because I wanted to read them.

The first, George Jacobs’ Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (HarperCollins), the ghostwritten autobiography of Frank Sinatra’s valet, is a piece of lowbrow trash, though I will freely admit that I gulped it down in a single sitting, pausing only to perform necessary bodily functions, and not always even then. I read it partly for the dish value (which is considerable), but mostly because it sheds a strange half-light on Sinatra’s artistry. He was and is one of the unsolved mysteries of American culture, a man of limitless vulgarity who made art of the utmost sensitivity, and the more I learn about his life, the more puzzled I am by the fissure in his soul that made it possible for him to record albums like Only the Lonely, then go out and do the things Jacobs describes with seemingly unselfconscious relish in Mr. S.

Because Jacobs had no understanding of Sinatra the artist, his book supplies a shockingly lucid portrait of the dark side of a double man. Perhaps not surprisingly, it barely hints at the existence of the other Sinatra, the self-conscious introvert whose record collection consisted mostly of classical music and who sang the great American popular songs as tenderly as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang Schubert. I hope somebody will get around to writing a book about that Frank Sinatra, and I’ll read it with equal attention, but I’d never make the mistake of supposing that the sensitive Sinatra was the “real” Sinatra. Both Sinatras were real, which is why the man they comprised was so endlessly interesting–and, I suspect, ultimately unknowable.

The second book, John Updike’s Just Looking: Essays on Art, is a paperback reissue by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts of a 1986 collection of fugitive essays about the visual arts by a famous novelist for whose books I’ve never much cared. Still, it’s always interesting to see what a distinguished artist (and Updike is nothing if not distinguished) has to say about a medium not his own. I wish more such folk would write this kind of “amateur” criticism, which more often than not turns out to be surprisingly good. Philip Larkin, for example, was both a very great poet and an eccentric but hugely entertaining jazz critic.

While Updike isn’t that good, his occasional ventures into art criticism are both readable and not infrequently illuminating. By coincidence, he writes in Just Looking about a painting by Fairfield Porter that I just saw for the first time, Cliffs of Isle au Haut. If you’ve been keeping up with the blog lately, you’ll remember that I went to Maine last month in search of the actual cove portrayed in that painting. (Porter used it as the basis for a 1975 lithograph of which I own a copy.) Here’s what Updike had to say about it:

From the Abstract Expressionists Porter learned boldness, the boldness of broad monochrome expanses and of loaded brushstrokes. Often he defines a tree’s structure by slashing into its mass with daubs of the background color. Sunlight explodes with terrific violence at the windows of his hushed interiors. In Cliffs of Isle au Haut (a canvas that seems to borrow some of the color-by-number texture of Welliver’s landscapes), a spiky blob as opaquely black as anything in Kline or Motherwell overspreads the foreground without “reading” as the natural phenomenon it undoubtedly was. The two children’s heads peeping over the lichenous rocks restore us, however, to Porter’s domestic world.

Not too shabby for a novelist, I’d say.

Time again for “In the Bag,” the game that challenges you to admit what art you really like. The rules: you can put any five works of art into your bag before departing for a desert island, but you have to decide right this second. No dithering–the death squad is pounding on your front door. No posturing–you have to say the first five things that pop into your head, no matter how silly they may sound. What do you stuff in the bag?

As of this moment, here are my picks:

PAINTING: Edouard Manet, Roses, Oeillets, Pensees (Flowers in a Crystal Vase)

CD: Bill Evans and Eddie Gomez, Intuition

NOVEL: Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now

FILM: John Ford, The Searchers (yes, I’m on a Western kick)

DANCE: Merce Cunningham, Beach Birds

Your turn.

I received the following e-mail last week from jazz trumpeter Marvin Stamm:

I just wanted to let you know that my group, the Marvin Stamm Quartet, will be performing for four evenings, Sept. 10-13, at Birdland. The group will include Bill Mays, piano; Rufus Reid, bass; Ed Soph, drums; and special guest John Abercrombie on guitar. Sets will be at 9:00 and 11:00 p.m.

In all my years of playing, this is the most exciting and musical group I have ever been a part of. Though I am always right in the middle of things when we play, the creativity of these gentlemen never fails to astound me. It is really something to hear. While we tour quite a bit, this is the first time we have had the opportunity to appear in a major New York City jazz club as a group. I hope all of you will come hear this group play. I guarantee a great evening of music for us all!

I concur, and then some. Stamm is a musician’s musician, one of those brilliant players who are universally admired by their colleagues but unknown to the public at large. I haven’t heard his quartet in person, but I did hear a live CD privately recorded at a recent gig, and it blew me out of my shoes. I was so impressed that I wanted to do a print-media profile of Stamm and the group to promote this gig. Alas, it fell through, so the least I can do is let all of you know that starting on Wednesday, Birdland is the place to be.

Courtesy of The View from the Foothills, for which much thanks:

“For I am convinced that good adverse criticism is the most difficult thing we have to do. I would advise everyone to begin it under the most favourable conditions: this is, where you thoroughly know and heartily like the thing the author is trying to do, and have enjoyed many books where it was done well. Then you will have some chance of really showing that he has failed and perhaps even of showing why. But if our real reaction to a book is