2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
"For me, something is in good taste if I can accept it, understand it, and judge it as valuable property." George Shearing (interviewed in Leonard Lyons, The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of…
From 2006: I lost my mother in Wal-Mart last Friday. This sounds less like a true-life event than the first line of the sort of song you might hear on the radio in Smalltown, U.S.A., but it …
"It is only a dying cause which can attain to perfect taste." John Buchan, A Lodge in the Wilderness
I have a theory that you don't become a full-fledged adult until you've weathered the death of someone with whom you are intimate, not in distant memory but at the actual moment of that pers…
The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys perform "Worried Man Blues" on Rainbow Quest, a TV series hosted by Pete Seeger. This episode was taped in 1965: (This is the latest in a se…
"To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail. You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even tri…
Mrs. T and I just got back from seeing Maria Schneider's first set at the Jazz Standard. Two thoughts come to mind, the first original and the second not: ' In the presence of music, time an…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review an important new off-Broadway revival of Sweet Charity. Here's an excerpt. * * * Why is the New Group, which specializes in hard-headed plays by such …
Peggy Lee sings "Blues in the Night," by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, on The DuPont Show of the Month: Crescendo, originally telecast by CBS on September 29, 1957: (This is the latest in …
"The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits." François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
"I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite,"only a sense of existence." Henry David Thoreau, letter …
I recently reread a novel, Jon Hassler's North of Hope, whose protagonist, Frank Healy, is a fortysomething priest without family ties. His mother died when he was twelve, after which his fa…
Aaron Copland leads the New York Philharmonic in his El Salón México, introduced by Leonard Bernstein. This performance was part of "Aaron Copland Birthday Party," a Young People's Conce…
"Being in a garret doesn't do you any good unless you're some sort of a Keats. The people who lived and wrote well in the twenties were comfortable and easy living. They were able to find st…
From 2006: Can you seriously imagine a senator, or any other public figure, commiting suicide under similar circumstances today? In fact, let's take it one step further: can you think of any…
"Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are." Dorothy Parker, interviewed by Marion Capron (Paris Review, Summer 1956)
It doesn't happen all that often these days, but I found myself home alone in New York last Friday night. Mrs. T was in Connecticut. I had no show to see that evening, nor was a pressing dea…
Richard Diebenkorn talks about starting work on a painting in an undated interview: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, a…
"Let's face it, honey, my verse is terribly dated"as anything once fashionable is dreadful now." Dorothy Parker, interviewed by Marion Capron (Paris Review, Summer 1956)
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Broadway transfer of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, directed by Rachel Chavkin. Here's an excerpt. * * * Immersive t…
Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney appear in a scene from Life With Father, a play adapted by Lindsay and Russel Crouse from Clarence Day's autobiographical essays. The scene is introduced …
"What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll c…
My Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column is about Sweat, Lynn Nottage's new play. Here's an excerpt. * * * Here's my number-one recommendation for life in the Age of Trump: Lynn Nottage's "…
"There is, in fact, an element of sour grapes in Stoicism. We can’t be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pretend that, so long as we are good, it doesn’t matter being u…
Donald Gramm and Richard Cumming perform Charles Ives' "Two Little Flowers," "Serenity," and "Charlie Rutlage" on TV. The performance, originally broadcast on WGBH-TV in 1965 as part of a se…
