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Terry Teachout Biography

Terry Teachout (born February 6, 1956) is an American author, critic, biographer, playwright, stage director, and librettist. He is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the critic-at-large of Commentary, and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in The Wall Street Journal. He blogs at About Last Night and has written about the arts for many other magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times and National Review. He is a regular panelist on Three on the Aisle, a bimonthly podcast about theater in America that is hosted by American Theatre magazine.

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Terry Teachout Quotes

I was interested in Armstrong to begin with because he is the most important figure in Jazz in the 20th Century. There's simply no question about it. I mean, if you're going to compare him to somebody, it's Shakespeare in terms of centrality of the tradition, in being at the beginning of it.

Beginning, Compare, Important, Jazz, Mean

I know that luck has a way of happening to people who shoot high, who never sell themselves short.

Graduation, High, Luck, People, Shoot

Blogging has mostly been an opportunity to react more immediately to experiences to try out ideas that I may end up using in the print media or in some other place. When I write books, it's a way for me to bring readers into the experience of writing the book, all through the process of writing the books that I write. I talk about what I'm up to in the blog. I let people know what I am doing. To me, it's just part of putting my professional life up in a way that people who are interested in it can access; and learning things from them as well.

Blog, Book, Books, Media, Opportunity, Writing

We are born into a vast room whose walls consist of a thousand doors of possibility. Each door is flung open to the world outside, and the room is filled with light and noise. We close some of the doors deliberately, sometimes with fear, sometimes with calm certainty. Others seem to close by themselves, some so quietly that we do not even notice.

Certainty, Close, Doors, Light, Thousand, Wall

I'm especially interested in what I call practitioner criticism, which is when people who practice an art form start writing about it on blogs. I think that's an immensely important development. I want to see much, much more of that. People who make music who are verbally articulate. And not all musicians are verbally articulate. But those who are should be encouraged to write about what they do and their perception of what other people do. It makes the discourse smarter.

Art, Writing, Thinking, Articulate, Perception

I wouldn't care to speculate about what it is in Westlake's psyche that makes him so good at writing about Parker, much less what it is that makes me like the Parker novels so much. Suffice it to say that Stark
Westlake is the cleanest of all noir novelists, a styleless stylist who gets to the point with stupendous economy, hustling you down the path of plot so briskly that you have to read his books a second time to appreciate the elegance and sober wit with which they are written.

Appreciate, Book, Books, Briskly, Suffice, Writing

There will be this mix of people like me who write for major national newspapers and amateur critics, practitioner critics, whose primary way of distributing what they talk about is through blogs and on the web. The line between professional and amateur criticism will become increasingly blurred. The problem here is that if you want to do this for a living, you have to be able to earn a living doing it.

Criticism, Line, Mix, National, People, Writing

That's something you can't get off the wires in New York is people providing intelligent coverage of what your theater company in Podunk is up to. Many of the people who write what we call amateur criticism are professionals in anything other than name and receiving a paycheck. Very often, they know more than the professional critic who might be writing for their local newspaper. So, really, I'm all for it. It's changing the playing field, it's shaking things up, it's going to make the critical environment a healthier environment.

Intelligent, People, Writing, York

The most important thing to remember is that the composer is a senior partner. You cannot force a subject on a composer if it doesn't inspire him. He has to take the lead, you are an enabler, and you are creating the enabling conditions under which he can write great music. Your words are secondary. Many librettists in opera collaborations in the past have forgotten this, or not known it, or refuse to accept it and tried to get out in front of the creative process and it just doesn't work that way.

Collaborations, Creative, Enabling, Past, Senior, Writing

I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto. One of my closest friends is a composer, Paul Moravec, and a few years ago, Paul and I were at lunch, and I said to him, "you really have to write an opera. " So, he says very casually to me, "I'll do it if you write the libretto. " Well, little did I know that the within a couple of years we would end up getting a commission from the Santa Fe Opera to write an opera together, "The Letter," which turned out to be the most successful commissioned opera in the history of the Santa Fe Opera.

Couple, Letter, Paul, Successful, Writing

Virgil Thomson, the great classical music critic, who was also a composer, but said that criticism was the only antidote he knew to pay publicity. Critics at their best are independent voices people take seriously their responsibility to see as many things as they can see, put them in the widest possible perspective, educate their readers, I really do think of myself as a teacher. Newspapers that don't carry arts criticism at all while not fulfill this function. And probably their arts journalism will be deprived as a result.

Art, Classical, Independent, Result, Teacher, Thomson

A critic should always strive to recapture the sense of wonder and surprise with which he first beheld a now-familiar work of art.

Art, Beheld, Firsts, Strive, Wonder

This impeccably researched study of the classic black insult game may be the funniest work of serious scholarship ever published.

Black, Funniest, Games, May, Scholarship

The best of Donald Westlake's pseudonymous thrillers about Parker, the toughest burglar who ever lived. . . . Out of print for years and years, Butcher's Moon is the ultimate Parker novel, best read as an installment in the series as a whole but comprehensible and wholly satisfying on its own.

Installment, Moon, Print, Thrillers, Ultimate, Years

The problem with the Jude Law "Hamlet" was simply that it wasn't unpredictable, that it was a very down-the-center modern production. You wouldn't go to the theater expecting to see an old-fashioned "Hamlet" where everybody wears an old fashioned costume. You don't get points for putting on a "Hamlet" where everybody dresses in black. I've seen that one several times. But again, it's not that it has to be new, it simply that it has to be different, fresh, that it doesn't bore, that it doesn't make me - I don't feel as I'm watching it that I know where it's going to go.

Black, Different, Everybody, Fashioned, Old, Problem

Your regional newspaper, and I like to use this example, in your local museum buys a Picasso, that's news especially if they've spent $10 million for it. But if you don't have a credit on your staff then you don't have anybody who's confident to say whether or not it was a good Picasso, might even be aware of the fact that there are bad Picassos. Arts journalists who don't have the experience of criticism, the skill of criticism, don't think in terms of critical evaluation are not going to be as good a journalist as they might be.

Art, Bad, Criticism, News, Thinking

If I ever see another Shakespeare production where somebody drives a Jeep on stage, I'm going to run screaming up the aisle. These tend to be matters of design. I mean, we're seeing a lot of - it's very common to see Shakespeare with automatic weapons, things like that. They are clichés. They're new clichés, but they are clichés. And they're provincial. It's not clever to do Henry V, and have everybody dressed in United Nations soldier's costumes anymore. I've seen that one too. That kind of thing irritates me.

Anymore, Clever, Jeep, Mean, Running

The average age of the Jazz audience is increasing rapidly. Rapidly enough to suggest that there is no replacement among young people. Young people aren't starting to listen to Jazz and carrying it along in their lives with them. Jazz is becoming more like Classical music in terms of its relationship to the audience. And just a Classical music is grappling with the problem of audience development, so is Jazz grappling with this problem. I believe, deeply that Jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say to ordinary people. But it has to be systematic about getting out the message.

Believe, People, Age, Message, Increasing

EXTREMELY FUNNY! A SUPER-VIRTUOSO! I expected to enjoy 'The Two and Only,' but I didn't expect to be touched, much less to find my eyes growing moist.

Enjoy, Extremely, Eye, Growing, Touched, Two

Whether early or late, the Parker novels are all superlative literary entertainments.

Entertainment, Entertainments, Late, Novel, Novels, Superlative

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