Wednesday, February 12, 2020
“It is audacity to write about anyone from the past. One can never know what their jokes were, their sophisticated nuances. One will take seriously what they laughed at and laugh at what t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AMBette Davis appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? The panelists are Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Tony Randall and the host is John Daly. Davis’ segment…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AMTuesday, February 11, 2020
From 2007:
I just got word that another book tentatively called Hotter Than That will be published around the time that my Louis Armstrong biography of the same name will be coming out fro…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Have been pondering over what someone said the other day: that when one is awake at 3 A.M. then one sees life, and death, as they truly are, in their stark, terrible, hopeless reality; th…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, February 10, 2020
A 1946 newsreel story about R. Buckminster Fuller’s prefabricated Dymaxion House:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:01AM“Perhaps we learn nothing from history, and the historian teaches us only that we are ignorant.”
Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French
Continue reading Almanac: Thomas Flanagan on lea…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMFriday, February 7, 2020
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review an all-female off-Broadway production of Macbeth. Here’s an excerpt.
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Hunter College’s Hunter Theater Project, which mounts professio…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMJohnny Cash and the Tennessee Two perform “Get Rhythm,” “You’re the Closest Thing to Heaven,” and “I Was There When It Happened” on Town Hall Party. This episode was originall…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.”
Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Life of J…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, February 6, 2020
This is something I wrote in 1991:
Memory is the key to a small town. A stranger driving through Smalltown, U.S.A., would see nothing but schools, stores, and houses. Some are handsome, othe…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 02:02AM“The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”
Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson
Continue reading Almanac: Dr. Johnson on encouragement at About …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 02:00AMWednesday, February 5, 2020
In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about an important museum exhibition devoted to the work of a pioneer of modernism. Here’s an excerpt.
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Surr…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMCharles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, is interviewed on TV by Charlie Rose in 1997:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”
Samuel Johnson, quoted in Jam…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, February 4, 2020
From 2005:
I thought and thought, and suddenly it came to me: why not the bathroom? Not only is it tastefully decorated in cornflower blue and yellow, but it’s next to the living room, thu…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, February 3, 2020
Joe Louis is the guest on This Is Your Life, hosted by Ralph Edwards and originally telecast by NBC in 1961:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.”
Samuel Johnson, The Idler (May 26, 1759)
Continue reading Almanac: Dr. Johnson o…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, January 31, 2020
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Broadway premiere of Bess Wohl’s Grand Horizons. Here’s an excerpt.
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Old-fashioned stage comedy is in short supply o…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMMartyn Green sings “My Name Is John Wellington Wells,” a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer. This performance was originally telecast as part of an episode of Omnib…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.”
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Continue reading Almanac: Douglas A…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, January 30, 2020
One of the nice things about collecting art is that you needn’t leave home to look at it. This is especially comforting at times when life is too complicated for you to visit museums or ga…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:03AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal“Sightings” column, occasioned by the unsealing of a crate of love letters sent by T.S. Eliot to Emily Mann, I write about artists who have sought to use…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”
B.F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement
Continue reading Almanac: B.F. Skinner on artificial intelligence at …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, January 29, 2020
“Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf,” a TV musical featuring Art Carney and Bil Baird’s Marionettes. The score, based on the music of Serge Prokofiev, was arranged and performed by P…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism”
Continue reading Almanac: Emerson on fear at About Last Nig…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, January 28, 2020
From 2004:
On the surface, Annie Hall purports to tell the tale of how his peculiarities alienate the woman he loves, but its true subject matter is how their relationship actually makes D…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, January 27, 2020
My old friend Jody Bottum recently wrote a social-media posting that has stuck with me:
There’s a book I’ve always wanted to write—titled, maybe, The Christ of the Mind, about the dee…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMThe Dave Brubeck Quartet performs Brubeck’s “The Duke” in an undated 1956 film clip. Paul Desmond is the saxophonist, Bob Bates the bassist, Joe Dodge the drummer:
(This is the latest…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“One needs a town, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A town mens not being alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the soil, there is something of yourself, that even when you�…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM 
