Archives for March 29, 2004

“‘Would you like a sandwich?’ she asked, offering a dejected-looking plate.”

Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence

I just finished the first draft of the Balanchine book. “First draft” is something of a misnomer, actually, since this draft is substantially polished. I’ll need another six or eight hours’ worth of close line-editing and sprinkling on a few pinches of magic dust, and then it’ll be ready to ship off to the publisher.

More as it happens, but now I need to get some sleep and start writing those other pieces, yikes!

In the meantime…yes, I’m happy. And relieved.

See you later today or, more likely, tomorrow.

Still crazy-busy over here, but I wanted to throw out this tidbit from James Wood’s latest New Republic review, a polite but firm taking-apart of John Le Carr

Over at Slate, one of last night’s three notable guest stars, Leon Wieseltier, is dishing but good on the cast members of “The Sopranos”:

My fleeting impressions, from a humble place at the table: Michael Imperioli is a talented sweetheart. Lorraine Bracco is a genuinely intelligent woman with the rare gift (these days, the almost unimaginable gift) of holding her eros in reserve. James Gandolfini is a completely authoritative actor whom I would not care to know. Even when he read his lines lightly in the run-through, he gave the lie to the maxim that nobody is indispensable. Peter Bogdanovich is risibly self-important. Steve Buscemi is unexpectedly comfortable in his febrile body and an extremely nice guy. (We went upstairs to wardrobe together, he for his shorts and me for my tux, except that I inadvertently wandered into the wardrobe room of Sex and the City, which made me think affectionately of Robespierre.)

In case you missed it, the other cameo guys included an actor, David Straitharn (as A.J.’s college counselor), and David Lee Roth (at the poker table).