Archives for 2008

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I ran into the tuba-playing son of a member of the Sousa Band on one of my recent theater-related journeys. He loaned me a copy of Marching Along, John Philip Sousa’s long-out-of-print 1928 autobiography, which I read and found (somewhat to my surprise) to be utterly fascinating.
I resolved at once to write a “Sightings” column about Sousa and his memoirs, and the fruits of that resolution will be published in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. It turns out that Sousa, who also wrote three full-length novels and 138 newspaper and magazine articles, was as vigorous and engaging a prose stylist as he was a composer, and Marching Along offers a vivid glimpse of his offstage personality.
To find out more about Sousa and Marching Along, pick up a copy of Saturday’s Journal and see what I have to say.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.”
William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

A few months ago I announced in this space that the University of Chicago Press would be bringing out a uniform edition of the Parker crime novels of “Richard Stark,” the nom de plume of Donald E. Westlake. Interested parties will be pleased to know that the first three titles in the series, The Hunter, The Man With the Getaway Face, and The Outfit, have just been published. (I reviewed them here.)
For more information about the Parker Edition, visit the blog of the University of Chicago Press, where you will also find a link to a very interesting interview with Donald Westlake:

When Bucklin Moon of Pocket Books said he wanted to publish The Hunter, if I’d help Parker escape the law at the end so I could write more books about him, I was at first very surprised. He was the bad guy in the book.
More than that, I’d done nothing to make him easy for the reader; no smalltalk, no quirks, no pets. I told myself the only way I could do it is if I held onto what Buck seemed to like, the very fact that he was a compendium of what your lead character should not be. I must never soften him, never make him user-friendly, and I’ve tried to hold to that.

Read the whole thing here.

“If my discoveries are other people’s commonplaces I cannot help it–for me they retain a momentous freshness.”
Elizabeth Bowen

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

• August: Osage County * (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• Boeing-Boeing (comedy, PG-13, cartoonishly sexy, reviewed here)

• Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN LENOX, MASS:

• Othello/All’s Well That Ends Well/The Ladies Man (Shakespeare/Feydeau, PG-13, not suitable for children, playing in festival repertory through Aug. 31, reviewed here)

IN GARRISON, N.Y.:

• Cymbeline/Twelfth Night (Shakespeare, PG-13, playing in festival repertory through Aug. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• A Chorus Line * (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

“I am omnbibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all. I learned early in life how to handle alcohol and never had any trouble with it. The rules are simple as mud. First, never drink if you have any work to do. Never. Secondly, never drink alone. That’s the way to become a drunkard. Thirdly, even if you haven’t got any work to do, never drink while the sun is shining. Wait until it’s dark.”
H.L. Mencken, interview (recorded by the Library of Congress in 1948)

John McCormack sings “I Hear You Calling Me” in 1929, accompanied by Edwin Schneider:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
John Berryman, “Dream Song 14”