Archives for October 5, 2003

I’m pleased to announce that the trade paperback edition of my most recent book, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, can now be ordered in advance at amazon.com. To buy it, click here, and it’ll be sent to you on publication in November. It’ll make a great stocking stuffer (if your sock is big enough).

For those who’ve been asking, the unofficial publication date of A Terry Teachout Reader, Yale University Press’ forthcoming collection of my greatest hits, is April. This could change, depending on whether or not I get the book proofread and indexed on time! I haven’t seen it yet, but my editor tells me that the dust jacket (which makes use of the Fairfield Porter lithograph chosen by you, the readers of “About Last Night”) looks terrific.

Now all I have to do is get my George Balanchine biography written, and 2004 should be a very good year….

“By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic one’s self.”

Gustave Flaubert, quoted in Irving Babbitt,
Rousseau and Romanticism

(P.S. Can anybody out there supply an exact citation for the original source of this quote?)

Feeling low down and dirty? Here’s a little Monday-morning musical festivity to float your boat. Go here, then click on “Maple Leaf Rag,” and if your computer is equipped to run RealAudio files, you will be treated to three minutes of red-hot jazz, courtesy of www.redhotjazz.com.

(This happens to be one of my half-dozen all-time favorite jazz records of the Thirties, by the way.)

If you’re a regular visitor, check out the right-hand column, which has been extensively updated with fresh top-five items, links to recently published pieces, and other stuff.

If you’re new here, do the same thing.

The MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grants” have been known to go to some pretty awful people, but on balance the fine-arts grants have tended to be…well, not altogether bad. Stephen Hough, my favorite classical pianist, got one a couple of years ago, and now Osvaldo Golijov, one of the most interesting and provocative classical composers around, is part of the latest roster of recipients.

If you’re curious about what manner of composer is thought worthy of a MacArthur these days, I can recommend two CDs. This one contains a representative and well-played sample of his chamber music. Also of interest is his extraordinary Pasion Segun San Marcos, about whose New York premiere I had this to say in the Washington Post:

Golijov’s St. Mark Passion is a rich musico-dramatic stew in which seemingly incompatible styles are jammed together like the sounds you might hear through the open window of a fast-moving car on a hot summer night. Classical strings, chattering brass, Afro-Cuban percussion, flamenco guitar, a Venezuelan chorus that struts and hollers like a black gospel choir–you name it, Golijov has stirred it in, not merely for effect but with the shrewd self-assurance of a composer who knows exactly what he’s about.

The recording, incidentally, features Luciana Souza, about whom I need only remind you that her appearance with the New York Philharmonic in Central Park this summer was the subject of “About Last Night”‘s first posting. Enough said?

(Nobody asked me, by the way, but I’d sure like to see Maria Schneider get a genius grant.)