Archives for August 2005

– Amount Benny Goodman charged in 1938 for a one-nighter by his big band: $2,000

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $25,743

(Source: Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman, by Ross Firestone)

“‘Is there mental illness in your family?’

“‘No, not really.’ Her reply was automatic, and she immediately doubted its veracity. Really, insanity was the only explanation for some of them. But there was no diagnosed mental illness in her family, so she was telling the truth.”

Laura Lippman, The Last Place

“‘Is there mental illness in your family?’

“‘No, not really.’ Her reply was automatic, and she immediately doubted its veracity. Really, insanity was the only explanation for some of them. But there was no diagnosed mental illness in her family, so she was telling the truth.”

Laura Lippman, The Last Place

“‘I have writers the way other people have mice,’ a disturbed hostess has written me. ‘What can I do to keep them from arguing, fighting, and throwing highball glasses after dinner? One doesn’t dare mention names, such as Herman Melville and Harold Loeb, or the fight is on. What would you suggest?’

“Well, now, it isn’t easy to entertain writers and have any fun. You might begin by saying, over the first cocktail, ‘I don’t want any writers to be mentioned this evening.’ Do not make the mistake of adding, ‘From Washington Irving to Jack Kerouac,’ because that would instantly precipitate an argument about Washington Irving and Jack Kerouac. You might begin by saying, ‘The porcupines are getting our artichokes.’ This could, of course, lead to literary wrangling and jangling, but everything is a calculated risk when writers are present, even ‘My grandfather almost married a Pawnee woman,’ or ‘I wonder if you gentlemen would help me put the handle back on my icebox.’ A writer, of course, can turn anything at all into a literary discussion, and it might be better not to say anything about anything.

“I myself have found, or rather my wife has found, that you can sometimes keep writers from fighting by getting them into some kind of pencil-and-paper game. You could say, for example, ‘There are thirty-seven given names and nicknames, male and female, in the word “miracle.” I want you all to see how many you can find.’ This almost always takes up a good hour, during which the writers are mercifully silent.”

James Thurber, “The Porcupines in the Artichokes”

“Let us glance at a few brief examples of creative literature in the very young, for which they should have been encouraged, not admonished.

“The small girl critic who wrote, ‘This book tells me more about penguins than I wanted to know,’ has a technique of clarity and directness that might well be studied by the so-called mature critics of England and the United States, whose tendency, in dealing with books about penguins or anything else, is to write long autobiographical rambles.

“Then there was a little American girl who was asked by her teacher to write a short story about her family. She managed it in a single true and provocative sentence: ‘Last night my daddy didn’t come home at all.’ I told this to a five-year-old moppet I know and asked her if she could do as well, and she said, ‘Yes,’ and she did. Her short story, in its entirety, went like this: ‘My daddy doesn’t take anything with him when he goes away except a nightie and whiskey.’…

“Finally, there was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them the day before from our garden. ‘I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber was dead, and I hate trees,’ said Lisa, thus conjoining in one creative splurge the nursery rhyme about pease porridge cold, the basic plot sense of James M. Cain, and Birnam wood moving upon Dunsinane. Lisa and I were the only unhorrified persons in the room when she brought this out. We knew that her desire to get rid of her mother and my wife at one fell swoop was a pure device of creative literature. As I explained to the two doomed ladies later, it is important to let your little daughters and sons kill you off figuratively, because this is a natural infantile urge that cannot safely be channeled into amenity or what Henry James called ‘the twaddle of graciousness.’ The child that is scolded or punished for its natural human desire to destroy is likely to turn later to the blackjack, the golf club, or the .32-caliber automatic.”

James Thurber, “The Darlings at the Top of the Stairs”

That I don’t understand all of the fuss about Target usurping the New Yorker‘s ad pages this week must mean that I’m part of the problem. And it would, in fact, be less than honest to deny that I’m a passionate fan of the place. Terry can personally attest to this: before I owned a car, he used to rent one when visiting Chicago and always, but always, cheerfully acceded to my pleas to be driven to Target in said rental during his stay. That, dear readers, is a true blue friend.

But, personal shopping preferences aside, exactly what is it about the infernal New Yorker-Target alliance that is raising so many eyebrows? Is it simply the purchased exclusivity, or is it something about Target being the purchaser? Again, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the notion that anyone would regard Target as less than sublime. But even if I didn’t harbor this deep bias, I think I’d still be a lot more disturbed/bemused by, say, those frequently turgid theme issues of the NYer that have seemed so to proliferate over the past few years, and so many of which seem designed to lure ad dollars as much as to lure readers. In these cases the line separating editorial integrity from the bottom line begins to look perilously thin. As far as I can tell, the Target discomfort doesn’t have anything to do with fears about the contamination of the editorial side of the magazine–or if it does, they haven’t been aired out. So what’s the hubbub, bub? What am I missing?

P.S. This isn’t an isolated incident of Target-targeting animus, either. Earlier this summer I attended a Chicago architecture event where it was mentioned that a Target may open in the historic Carson, Pirie, Scott Building. I was startled when a large contingent of the audience hissed at the news as though they’d heard that a Wal-Mart was opening in Robie House. Sure, it would be grand if Carson Pirie Scott could live on forever in the great building named for it, but at least we’re talking apples and apples; one retailer replacing another hardly seems grounds for a hissy fit. Is the Dayton Company, which owns Target, worse than Saks, which owns Carson (but is trying to sell it)? Related: a few years back, Bloomingdale’s moved its Chicago home store into the abandoned Medinah Temple, thereby saving the building from being condemned. So the place where Terry and I once attended an earth-shattering performance of Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand is relegated to retail now–but at least it’s still standing, and has even received some loving restoration. Is that all bad?

Not surprisingly, people in and out of town are always asking me what plays they should see, so here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated each Thursday. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter, strong language, one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex)

– Chicago* (musical, R, adult subject matter, sexual content, fairly strong language)

– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, implicit sexual content)

– Fiddler on the Roof (musical, G, one scene of mild violence but otherwise family-friendly)

– The Light in the Piazza* (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene)

– Sweet Charity (musical, PG-13, lots of cutesy-pie sexual content)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Orson’s Shadow (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, very strong language)

– Philadelphia, Here I Come! (drama, PG, closes 9/25)

– Sides: The Fear Is Real… (sketch comedy, PG, some implicit sexual content)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly)

CLOSING SOON:

– Glengarry Glen Ross (drama, R, adult subject matter, copious quantities of spectacularly strong language, closes 8/28)

– Alexander Woollcott’s fee in 1929 for “Shouts and Murmurs,” his single-page New Yorker column: $200

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $2,160.94

(Source: A. Woollcott: His Life and His World, by Samuel Hopkins Adams)