“It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.”
Henry James, letter to Charles Eliot Norton, Feb. 4, 1872
Archives for 2011
TT: Almanac
“Never underestimate the role of the will in the artistic life. Some writers are all will. Talent you can dispense with, but not will. Will is paramount. Not joy, not delight, but grim application.”
Alan Bennett, The Habit of Art
TT: On the move
I’m making an unscheduled trip to Missouri to spend some time with my mother. I depart this morning and will be on the road all week. You can count on the usual almanac entries, videos, and theater-related postings, but everything else will be (like me) up in the air until I return to New York some time on Saturday.
To keep you additionally amused in my absence, I’ve completely updated the Top Five and “Out of the Past” modules of the right-hand column and added new entries to “TT in Commentary” and “TT Elsewhere.” If you’re in search of food for thought, take a look.
Till soon.
TT: Just because
Marian Anderson and Leopold Stokowski perform Schubert’s “Ave Maria” in 1944:
TT: Almanac
“I desired the hitherto unattainable–to be left alone: what Henry James once described as ‘uncontested possession of the long, sweet, stupid day’: that peace to which no living creature has a natural right.”
Francis Wyndham, “The Ground Hostess”
HARD SZELL
“In 1966, NBC broadcast a Bell Telephone Hour program about George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra called ‘One Man’s Triumph.’ Nowadays, most viewers would find it presumptuous for that phrase to be used as the title of a TV documentary about a hundred-man ensemble whose members included some of America’s top instrumentalists. But no one would have thought to complain at the time–for Szell was universally believed to be solely responsible for the transformation of a merely regional group into a virtuoso ensemble…”
THE CHARMING CONSERVATIVE
“It’s impossible to talk intelligibly about William F. Buckley Jr., without talking about his personality. Indeed, it’s far more important to talk about his personality than about his philosophy, which was anything but original. He was a journalist, not a systematic thinker, and in addition to his personal charm, his other special gift was the ability to popularize the ideas of others. The Brits call such folk ‘publicists,’ and Buckley was, if such a thing exists, a publicist of genius…”
SCRIPT
Horton Foote, Horton Foote’s Three Trips to Bountiful: Teleplay, Stageplay, and Screenplay. Originally written for live TV in 1953, The Trip to Bountiful, the poignant story of an old woman trapped in Houston who longs to visit her rural home one last time, was adapted by Foote for the stage and, in 1983, the screen. This invaluable 1993 volume, published by Southern Methodist University Press, contains all three scripts, accompanied by interviews with Foote and his various collaborators. I can’t think of a better way to study the differences between the three media–or to deepen your familiarity with a once-obscure play that is now rightly regarded as an American classic (TT).