Archives for January 29, 2009

Sikeston, the Missouri town that normally goes under the guise of “Smalltown, U.S.A.” on this blog, was hit three days ago by a fearsome ice storm, one of the worst on record. The power is out throughout the city and its environs and is expected to remain that way for the next few days. Cellphone service is spotty. Last night I managed to talk to my brother, albeit briefly and through heavy static, during the intermission of Chicago Shakespeare’s performance of Macbeth. He told me, as best as I could make out, that my seventy-nine-year-old mother has been evacuated to Cape Girardeau, a town thirty miles north of Sikeston where the storm was much less severe and the power is still on, and that’s she’s all right. I haven’t spoken to her since the night before the storm hit.
Times like these remind me of how big America is. Right now I’m in a Chicago hotel room four hundred miles from Sikeston, but I might as well be on the far side of the world. I felt a bit like this on 9/11, when I was visiting my mother in Sikeston and suddenly found myself out of touch with my many friends in New York City. It doesn’t help that Mrs. T is in Connecticut, where the weather is somewhat better but still pretty rocky.
I’m glad I had a piece to write this morning, and that I have a show to see tonight. It’s a comfort to be distracted by art when there’s nothing to do but sit and wait.
UPDATE: I finally got through to my mother in Cape Girardeau a few minutes ago. She’s safe and warm. The situation in Sikeston, she says, is fairly chaotic and likely to remain so for a few more days, but my brother and sister-in-law are safe as well.

This is the cover of the orchestral score of The Letter, which will be published by Subito Music. Paul Moravec and I are still proofreading what’s inside, but we passed the cover for publication on Tuesday.
I’ve written or edited seven books in the past twenty years–Pops: The Life of Louis Armstrong will be the eighth–and one of the many things I’ve learned along the way is that few things in life are more exciting than seeing the dummy of a dust jacket that has your name on it. For me, at any rate, that’s the first moment in the publishing process when a book starts to seem real.
The Letter, by contrast, has seemed real to me ever since the Santa Fe Opera workshopped the first six scenes in front of a live audience last March, and it became realer still in December when Paul and I got our first look at Hildegard Bechtler’s set designs. Yet my heart still beat a little faster when I opened up the e-mail from David Murray of Subito Music that contained the cover design for The Letter. No, it’s not especially fancy, but it seems to me both elegant and suitable. And…real.

A friend writes in response to my recent posting about my Louis Armstrong biography:

“Sooner or later, everyone who interviews me about Pops will ask some variation on this question: Why do we need another book about Satchmo? The short answer is that I am…”

Terry.

I stopped reading (at the ellipsis).

The short answer is (as if I were you, speaking): Because I never wrote one before.

I would believe this about any “subject” and about any writer. There may be a million books about Mahler, but someday, SOMEDAY, there is going to be one written by a person who somehow actually speaks to ME! And THAT will be the Mahler bio I turn to again and again. Same with Louis Armstrong. There may be a million books, but I’ve not read a single one. There NEEDS to be another (another, another, and another) book about singularly interesting people, subjects, topics…because “the greatest book” or “definitive version” is not universal. I just do NOT believe it can be so. Your book needs to be written because you, your voice, will speak to people who a) may never have read about Louis Armstrong, b) know every book on Armstrong, but read yours and say, wow, what a great new facet!, c) know every book, and think yours sucks, and thus are inspired to TALK ABOUT IT, and WHY. And there’s probably d) e) and f) too.

O.K. So now I’ll go actually read your post….

My friend is a bit of an idealist, but I happen to agree with her, though I’d put it somewhat differently: there’s no such thing as a definitive biography of a great man. There can’t be. A great man (or woman) is too big to cram into a book-sized box. The best that you can do is offer a summary of the current state of knowledge about him, written from your own point of view–but you can never know everything there is to know. The day after your book is published, somebody may dig up an immensely important fact that you missed, or interpret the facts that you dug up in a way that makes more sense than your version. Biographical understanding is a journey without a destination, only stops along the way.

For this reason I, too, believe that there ought to be many books about Armstrong. As I recently said in an e-mail to Ricky Riccardi, the indefatigable Armstrong blogger who is currently writing a book about Armstrong’s later years:

I hope that Pops provides stimulus for the emerging monographic literature on Louis Armstrong. That your book will come out a year after mine seems to me enormously appropriate and significant–it will be a signal that specific aspects of Armstrong’s life and work are now seen as no less deserving of full-length treatment than, say, Matisse’s later years. If that wish comes true, then I’ll undoubtedly want to publish a revised edition of Pops in, say, 2030.

I should live so long!

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)

• 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 Cherry Orchard (elegiac comedy, G, not suitable for children or immature adults, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

• The Cripple of Inishmaan (black comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 1, reviewed here)

• Enter Laughing (musical, PG-13, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

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

IN CHICAGO:

• The Seafarer (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN SAN DIEGO:

• Six Degrees of Separation (serious comedy, R, nudity and adult subject matter, closes Feb. 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• Equus (drama, R, nudity and adult subject matter, closes Feb. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN SAN FRANCISCO:

• Rich and Famous (comedy, PG-13, closes Feb. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN FORT MYERS, FLA.:

• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.:

• The Chairs (surrealist comedy, PG-13, far too complicated for children, reviewed here)

“Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.”
William Manchester (quoted in Book-of-the-Month Club News, June 1983)