Archives for May 2, 2004

Many tales to tell, but no time to tell them just yet (except to say that Sarah is way more than merely cool), since I have a jampacked day ahead of me. Fortunately, I have the night off, so I’ll fire up the links and write a nice long “Consumables” after I return from my post-matinee dinner.

In the nonce, the latest edition of “Second City,” my monthly Washington Post column about goings on in New York, is now available on line. Go to the right-hand column, scroll down to the “Second City” module, click on the May link, and you’re there.

“Some people have an unconquerable love of riddles. They may have the chance of listening to plain sense, or to such wisdom as explains life; but no, they must go and work their brains over a riddle, just because they do not understand what it means.”

Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

Barbara Fisher reviewed A Terry Teachout Reader in today’s Boston Globe:

Teachout — music, dance, drama, and literary critic — is a commentator of rare daring. He is funny, astute, straight-talking, strong-minded. He is eager to tackle hard issues, unafraid to identify himself as a highbrow, willing to make value judgments. Beauty is real and worth fighting for, and he is ready to accept the challenge of the ”pesto-and-phallocentrism crowd” and others.

The best pieces in this collection of illuminating and often electrifying short essays — originally published in the New York Times Book Review, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Crisis, New Dance Review, and the National Review — focus on modern dance and jazz. The essays on Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Jerome Robbins, Merce Cunningham, and Leonard Bernstein are sensational. Isadora Duncan is a ”top-seeded contender for the title of least intentionally amusing person ever.” But Teachout is outspoken about writers and critics as well. He forcefully defends Willa Cather against ”the mills of trendiness [which] grind ceaselessly . . . in the age of feminist criticism.” He is unafraid to attack the practitioners of black studies and what he calls their ”fellow literary-theory racketeers.” Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman are ”the Nick and Nora of the limousine left.” Dance critic Arlene Croce ”made the mistake of being right at the wrong time.” Just when you feel at ease with his sharp criticism, he goes soft in the last essay, on singer Nancy LaMott, and breaks your heart.

How about that?

I’ve been busy, but I’ve also had three very good days of what a friend of mine calls “arting,” so I’m not complaining:

– On Friday night I saw a press preview of Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, which opens Tuesday at Circle in the Square after a successful off-Broadway run. I’ll be reviewing it in next Friday’s Journal. After the show, I went to ChikaLicious, an East Village dessert bar, accompanied by a friend whose first name happens to be (no fooling) Chika. Only in New York….

– The weather on Saturday afternoon was golden, so I strolled across Central Park to an East Side auction house, where I took a peek at a Hans Hofmann lithograph on which I’ve placed an absentee bid (the hammer falls on Tuesday). Cross your fingers–I covet this one desperately.

– From there I returned home to meet Sarah, who was in Manhattan all week to cover the Edgar Awards for “Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind,” her must-read crime-fiction-and-more blog. I gave her a tour of the Teachout Museum and persuaded her to help me do a bit of manual labor (one of my prints had come unmounted, so we carried it to the neighborhood framer). We dined in the immediate vicinity, then taxied down to the Village Vanguard to hear the Jim Hall Trio. It was Sarah’s first time hearing Hall, and she gave every sign of bedazzlement. As for me, I’d already heard the trio on Wednesday,
but they were even better last night. (Incidentally, the set was recorded for CD release–go here to find out how to buy a copy.)

– Back at home again, I squared off the evening by watching the first hour of Brute Force, a 1947 Popular Front-style prison-break film noir directed by Jules Dassin, scored by Mikl