Archives for January 2010

I am, or was, in Winter Park, Florida, preparing to take up my duties as a visiting scholar-in-residence at the Winter Park Institute and part-time teacher of criticism at Rollins College. But the ongoing saga of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong is still going strong, so by the time most of you read these words, I’ll be flying north to Washington, D.C., where I’m speaking at Politics and Prose at seven p.m. tonight and making a string of radio and TV appearances later today and tomorrow morning. Among other things, I’m taping an interview with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN, about which more as soon as I know the air date.
I’ll be taking the train to New York after finishing up my last taping on Friday, and my plan is to spend the evening doing nothing whatsoever. On Saturday afternoon I’ll be speaking about Pops at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, about which more here. (Alas, you can’t come if you don’t already have a ticket–the event is sold out.) I fly back to Orlando that night, then scoop up Mrs. T and drive to Tampa on Sunday to see Jobsite Theatre‘s production of Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, one of my favorite plays. On Monday we return to Winter Park, where I teach my first class on Tuesday morning.
As if all that weren’t enough for one long weekend:
• Pops has just been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, about which more here.
• Pops debuts at #32 on the New York Times‘ nonfiction best-seller list for January 17.
Yeah, I know, I buried the lead. Sue me.

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:

• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, 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:

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

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

• The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Parts 1 and 2 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, will be performed in rotating repertory with third part of cycle starting on Jan. 7, closes Mar. 28, reviewed here and here)

• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Emperor Jones (drama, PG-13, contains racially sensitive language, closes Jan. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Understudy (farce, PG-13, closes Jan. 17, reviewed here)

• Finian’s Rainbow (musical, G, suitable for children, dramatically inert but musically sumptuous, closes Jan. 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

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

“Address to younger writers, who think older writers like me are so famous and so different. We are no different at all, we are just the same as other writers, only we work harder.”
Patricia Highsmith, notebook entry, Sept. 10, 1962

Color-field abstraction long ago ceased to be fashionable, but in the Sixties it was one of the most admired movements in modern American art, and Kenneth Noland, who died yesterday at the age of eighty-five, was one of its most celebrated practitioners.
To his admirers, Noland’s circles and chevrons were as endlessly and subtly varied as Giorgio Morandi’s jugs and bottles. Clement Greenberg, his greatest critical admirer, spoke of how Noland was “not interested in circles as such, but in concentricity and color,” going on to say that he used those elements “for the sake of feeling, and as vehicles of feeling.” As time went by and fashion changed, fewer people responded to Noland’s work, but he continued to be regarded as a master by those who shared his fecund fascination with the expressive power of pure color.
I have a passion for Noland’s paintings, and four years ago ago I was lucky enough to acquire Circle I (II-3), a 1978 monoprint on handmade paper that I wrote about here. I love everything in the Teachout Museum, but that particular piece is a special treasure, and since I’m in Florida and Circle I (II-3) is in Manhattan, I thought I’d post a snapshot of it in order to remind myself of how beautiful it is.
Alas, I never met the man who made it, but if I had, I would have done my best to tell him how much his art meant–and means–to me.

John Wayne talks to the CBC about the art of acting:

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

“Movies in America destroy that fine, seldom even perceived sense of the importance and dignity of one’s own life.”
Patricia Highsmith, notebook entry, August 27, 1945

The first is from a famous musician:

What an incredible job you did, Terry. Pops is not only the best biography of a jazz musician ever, but you really reclaimed Louis from that sad, brown, PBS-y place that Ken Burns & Co. sat him down in that took all the life out of him and used him as a prop to tell their same-old same-old. This book was about Louis and brings his incredible life and music back to full luster. And I learned so much too, of course. Knowing the basics and a few details, your book straightened me out on a few things and, best of all, sent me listening anew….

The second is from a soldier:

I wanted to write a thank-you letter for the wonderful book Pops. I had been looking forward to reading it since I first read about it on your blog. I am serving with the Army in Afghanistan, and I had to order it as soon as it was published. It was a great read on my long shifts, and I wanted to tell you that being able to read about Armstrong’s sunny disposition keeps my spirits up. I only have a few recordings of his music here (luckily one is “West End Blues”), and now I listen to them almost every day. We can’t actually download music here, so I will have to wait to hear “Potato Head Blues” and “Snafu”, but because of your book, Armstrong’s music is one more thing to look forward to when I get back….

These two e-mails came on the same day. I can’t tell you how proud I felt as I read them.

Time: five p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Place: the living room of a rural farmhouse in Connecticut.

HE Do I really have to wrap all these presents? You know I can’t wrap presents.

SHE You can’t cook, either.

HE But they look awful. Everybody’s going to laugh when they see them–they’ll know I wrapped them. Couldn’t we just put them in grocery bags or something? I used to do that when I was a kid.

SHE (very patiently) Do the best you can. It’s the thought that counts.

HE I guess it’s sort of the Marxist approach to wrapping presents.

SHE Huh?

HE From each according to his ability, to each according to his means.

SHE That’s the most pretentious thing you’ve said all year. Just shut up and wrap, O.K.?