calimac

TT is an arts critic whose work I often read. (He does a fine music column, mostly on classical, for Commentary magazine, which I browse through in the library occasionally as it's not consistently on the non-subscription web.) Years ago he wrote an article on Allen Drury (also not available free), and yesterday on his blog he revisited the topic, linking to my Advise and Consent page as evidence that he's not the only nostalgia buff for it out there.

A little further back, in the course of a long post, he mentions the deaths of James Brown and Daniel Pinkham in the same breath, and, like me, considers himself far more personally affected by the latter.

In other cantankerous critical reading: So I've Heard, a new collection of columns by the LA Weekly's venerable Alan Rich. I desultorily collect books of columns by classical music critics, and have done so since long before I became one myself. This book makes enjoyable reading for those of us inclined in that direction, and while I disagree with many of his opinions (he's much fonder of old-hat ultra-modernism than I am), one of his most controversial opinions - or at least he says it got him a lot of hostile mail - I entirely agree with: Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat is as boring a piece as he ever wrote.