Archives for June 14, 2006

I spent all of Tuesday rummaging around in the Louis Armstrong files at the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark. It was a wonderfully absorbing and profitable day, but it wore me out, and by the time I finally made it back to Manhattan I was too tired to do anything but check my e-mail, take a really hot bath, watch a Lawrence Tierney movie, and call my mother in Smalltown, U.S.A.

Yes, I have tales to tell, and no, I’m not going to tell them until later in the week. On Wednesday I’m returning to the Louis Armstrong Archives to wrap up my primary-source research for the sixth chapter of Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong, which I intend to start writing on Monday. I’m not quite over the cold that laid me low last weekend, so I’m headed for bed as soon as I publish this posting. Remember, this is the New Me, the one who takes better care of himself, or at least tries to.

See you soon.

P.S. If you don’t know anything about Lawrence Tierney, go here and shudder. I had more or less the same experience described in the first paragraph of the profile to which the link will take you–it happened in a hotel room a couple of years ago–and I’ve never forgotten the impression it made on me.

Finally, somebody out in the ‘sphere (thank you, Kate) has posted a link to John Updike’s six rules for book reviewing, which I first read years ago and have been citing admiringly ever since.

I usually make a point of mentioning this one whenever I have occasion to teach a seminar in criticism:

2. Give [the author] enough direct quotation–at least one extended passage–of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

I’ve never heard a better piece of book-reviewing advice.

Alas, I no longer buy Updike’s first rule: “Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.” To find out why, go here.

I continue to stand by the others, but Number Two remains my all-time favorite. It’s also the one most likely to be forgotten by big-name reviewers, as I had occasion to point out last month. Should you ever catch me breaking it, feel free to send me a rocket!

“So far as it has merit, a painting is a fact, arbitrary and individual.”

Fairfield Porter, Art in Its Own Terms