Archives for June 2006

“Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overwhelming.”

Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

New Yorkers with cars go crazy when it rains, which it did all day Wednesday. It took me well over an hour to drive the thirteen miles from my Upper West Side apartment to the Louis Armstrong Archives, located on the first floor of the Queens College library. I sedated myself by listening to an advance copy of If You Have to Ask, You Ain’t Got It, a three-disc Fats Waller anthology coming out later this summer from Bluebird/Legacy, but I still experienced periodic flashes of road rage along the way. Accidents, construction sites, vicious cabbies, psychotic bike messengers, suicidal pedestrians–you name it, I saw it, and in several cases barely missed it.

No sooner did I arrive at the Armstrong Archives, though, than I forgot my troubles. I spent the whole day going through three of Louis Armstrong’s scrapbooks. He started keeping them in the late Twenties, right around the time that his career was taking off. They’re a mixture of snapshots and newspaper and magazine clippings, and anyone with the slightest interest in his life and work would find them fascinating. I effortlessly uncovered one nugget after another, including his first appearances in Walter Winchell’s column and The New Yorker. (If you should ever have occasion to use The Complete New Yorker for research, by the way, be warned that the anonymous compilers neglected to include “Goings On About Town” in their computerized index!)

Not surprisingly, the scrapbooks are perilously fragile, and they have yet to be scanned, so anyone who uses them has to put on a pair of protective white gloves and handle them with the utmost care. I found it impossible to type with the gloves on, meaning that I had to take them off in order to make notes, then put them on again each time I turned a page. It was a nuisance, but it was also a small price to pay. To be sure, microfilm and its successor technologies are (mostly) unmixed blessings, but any scholar can tell you that there’s no substitute, emotionally speaking, for handling the thing itself, be it a scrapbook or a holograph manuscript. Though constant use has drained the word awesome of much of its meaning, I don’t know any other way to describe what it feels like to turn the crumbling pages of the personal scrapbooks of the greatest of all jazz musicians. How amazing that such things exist–and that they’ve been made accessible to researchers.

The archive closes at four p.m., so at 3:55 I reluctantly packed up my iBook, unfurled my umbrella, and headed for the parking lot to collect my Zipcar and return to Manhattan. The traffic was even worse going back, but it didn’t bother me nearly as much the second time around. I was too busy thinking about how fortunate I am to be spending my spare time, such as it is, writing the biography of a man who was both good and great.

An hour and a half later I dropped off the car at the neighborhood garage, then met a friend for dinner at Calle Ocho, just around the corner from my apartment. We ate and talked and enjoyed ourselves enormously, and when we were done I walked back to the tiny little apartment-museum in which I live, somewhat soggy from the day-long downpour but happy all the same. I put on a Louis Armstrong record to warm myself up and beamed at the familiar sound of his sunny, gravel-choked voice:

Boy, you the lucky guy.

When you consider the highest bidder

Can’t buy the gleam in your eye,

You the lucky guy.

That I am.

P.S. The next time you need a fast-acting dose of good cheer, listen to Fats Waller’s “Loungin’ at the Waldorf.” It’s infallible.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. 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 and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, extended through Aug. 6)

– Chicago* (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)

– The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

– Faith Healer* (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here)

– Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– 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, reviewed here)

– The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING SOON:

– Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes June 25)

– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here, closes July 2)

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, reviewed here, closes July 2)

“Communication is everything to you artists. You can’t look at a landscape or a bowl of fruit without thinking how you will put it on a canvas so that somebody else will see it as your landscape or your bowl of fruit. That is the inescapable vulgarity of art.”

Louis Auchincloss, The Rector of Justin

Take a look at the right-hand column, where you’ll find a fresh set of Top Five picks and an updated link to my latest Commentary essay.

I lost my once-considerable fondness for the National Spelling Bee when I read the first two paragraphs of this column by Larry Elder:

“These aren’t nerds, they are intellectual athletes. They’re all incredibly likable kids that you’re rooting for.”

So spoke ABC’s executive vice president for alternative programming, Andrea Wong, on the network’s decision to air the finals of the 79th Scripps National Spelling Bee–in prime time. The kids received the “American Idol” treatment, with hair and makeup handled by professional stylists. The show included interviews with the contestants, reaction shots of parents and background pieces on some of the finalists. How soon before contestants show up with their own agents and publicists? How long before one of them drops out of the eighth grade to “turn pro”?

I might add that Elder’s column was a favorable account of the National Spelling Bee. Those last two sentences, he explained, were meant as a joke. Alas, ABC’s decision to use “professional stylists” to turn the young contestants into Pretty Pod People was all too unhumorously true.

Stories like this never fail to remind me of a remark George Orwell made to a friend: “This age makes me so sick that sometimes I am almost impelled to stop at a corner and start calling down curses from Heaven.”

That was in 1934.

I have nothing to say, wise or otherwise. I spent most of Tuesday writing a “Sightings” column for the Saturday Wall Street Journal, and by the time it was finally done I wasn’t good for much beyond listening to some undemanding music and watching Only Angels Have Wings.

On Wednesday I plunge back into the world of Louis Armstrong. I’ll be spending the day going through the scrapbooks Armstrong kept in the Twenties and Thirties, followed by dinner with a drama-critic friend. I’ll check in with you thereafter. Meanwhile, onward and upward with the arts!

“Oh, yes, they made a beautiful couple, Frank and Eliza, Gibson boy and Gibson girl, standing like newlyweds in an insurance poster to represent all the brave new things that life seemed to offer. I could not help but be a bit disgruntled; the sexual happiness of others has always had an excluding effect.”

Louis Auchincloss, The Rector of Justin