Song Lyric of the Day (The Rolling Stones, on a Line of Cars, ‘All Painted Black’)

“I see a line of cars and they're all painted black
With flowers and my love, both never to come back.”—English rock ‘n’ rollers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, “Paint It Black,” from the Rolling Stones’ Aftermath LP (1966)

Sixty years ago today, “Paint It Black,” was released as a single in the U.S., eventually spending two weeks at number one during the summer and serving as the lead song of their fourth studio album, Aftermath.

Among the early hits of the Rolling Stones, this one remains distinctive to me. With “Satisfaction” in 1965, Mick Jagger was already well-launched on the misogyny that characterized so many of his subsequent lyrics, and he stayed stuck in the same mental groove in in two songs from this new collection, “Under My Thumb" and "Stupid Girl."

But “Paint It Black” gave evidence of something larger than dissatisfaction with “the birds” that so obsessed the Stones’ lead singer. It’s far more than the sweet, strings-laden melancholy of “Yesterday” by their compatriots in the British Invasion, the Beatles.

From Brian Jones’ unusual, even unnerving sitar opening, the Stones were evoking a severe depression with the potential to throw you off your axis, even locating it in something specific: grief (that “line of cars” suggesting a funeral procession).

“ ‘Paint It Black’—I wrote the melody, he [Jagger] wrote the lyrics,” Richards recalled in his 2010 autobiography, Life. “It’s not that you can say in one phrase he wrote that and he did that. But the musical riff is mostly coming from me. I’m the riff master.”

According to Simon Harper’s May 2025 account, the March 1966 recording session for the tune in RCA’s Los Angeles studio wasn’t jelling. Producer Andrew Loog Oldham had decided that, if no movement occurred in 10 minutes, they’d move on.

Just then, bassist Bill Wyman suggested Hammond organ pedals, with Jones—tiring of his normal six-string guitar and becoming the band’s de facto multi-instrumentalist—tried out sitar chords he’d been strumming, the byproduct of tutelage under virtuoso Harihar Rao.

The song had evolved into something far more mesmerizing and disturbing than what everyone in the studio had been hearing originally. The other Stones supposedly felt that their collective improvisational input entitled them to share songwriting credit on the band’s sixth single with Jagger and Richards.

In the end, it may not have mattered that much. In the early 1970s, to free themselves from their early, pugnacious manager Allen Klein, the Stones signed away rights to this and others up to 1971.

And that would be enough fill most ordinary people with the kind of depression associated with “Paint It Black”—except that the Stones have made so much more money, and been even more savvy about saving it, since then.

Oh, by the way: some audiophiles have their recordings of the song with a comma in the title: “Paint It, Black,” as seen in the image accompanying this post. Why?

Years later, Richards confirmed that it was the band’s intention not to include the comma. It was a mistake on the part of their record company, Decca, that produced the errant punctuation mark.

This reminds me of what happened with one of my favorite Supremes songs, “Stoned Love.” Writer Kenny Thomas had written it as “Stone Love,” intending to evoke the strength of amour with the lyrics. Yet when it came back from the Motown warehouse, the letter “d” had been tacked onto the first word of the title.

I couldn’t help but think that someone at the record plant had been stoned when he made that mistake—and that similarly, a mind-altering substance led someone at Decca to insert that idiotic, confusing, useless comma. If that was the case, it’s too bad that the Rolling Stones didn’t take the cue and quit drugs cold turkey.

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on ‘Golden Moments in the Stream of Life’)

“The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.”—English novelist Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), quoted in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quote of the Day (Idris Elba, on Bad Guys’ Appeal to Audiences, Actors, and Authors)

“These people get to say things that we only think in the deepest, darkest recesses of our brains. They say horrible things and scream horrible things and get to be completely socially unacceptable. As an actor, that’s sometimes a gift, sometimes a bit of therapy. These characters tend to be well-written. When you see a really interesting bad guy, you’re going to think about the actor, but think about the writer. It’s the writer who’s dark. You’ve got to give him or her a hug.”— British actor-director Idris Elba, on playing villains, quoted by Lane Florsheim, “My Monday Morning: Idris Elba on 4 A.M. Workouts and the Best Part of Playing a Bad Guy,” The Wall Street Journal, June 8-9, 2024

The image accompanying this post, of Idris Elba at the Berlinale 2018, was taken on Feb. 22, 2018, by Harald Krichel.

Flashback, May 1926: Miffed Sinclair Lewis Nixes Pulitzer for ‘Arrowsmith’

After bypassing Sinclair Lewis twice in the past half-dozen years, the Pulitzer Prize board –whether in recognition of present merit or compensation for past mistakes—awarded him the fiction prize for Arrowsmith in early May 1926.

Whether out of genuine principle or annoyance over his Main Street being passed over in 1920 for Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence or, in 1922, his Babbitt for Willa Cather’s One of Ours, Lewis rejected the citation. It may have been the most resounding rebuke of a cultural institution before George C. Scott and Marlon Brando refused to accept their Best Actor Oscars in the early 1970s.

Privately, Lewis told publisher Alfred Harcourt that he intended to turn it down because of “the Main Street burglary.” While some observers suspected peevishness on his part, Lewis gave a more high-minded public justification.

The terms of the Pulitzer called for the award to go to work that represented “the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood”—precisely the grounds on which Main Street and Babbitt, with their withering satire, had been bypassed before.

Those terms, Lewis wrote in his letter of rejection, “would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novels shall be made not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of Good Form may chance to be popular at the moment.”

With three bestselling, highly acclaimed novels to his credit, Lewis wielded a great deal of credibility, particularly when he framed his rejection in the context of his also declining election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His refusal of the Pulitzer and the $1,000 that went with it earned front-page notice in The New York Times.

As there always are in such cases, cynics wondered if there was more to the situation than Lewis explained, and their case was bolstered four years later, when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature—particularly because, in turning down the Pulitzer, he had stated that “All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous.” [emphasis added]

Arrowsmith may have been the most universally appealing of Lewis’ novels to this point, featuring a protagonist who, though flawed, was an idealistic, science-oriented doctor dedicated wholly to the pursuit of knowledge and truth.

While not dispensing with the author’s gift for satire (in this case, targeting medical quackery, public-health bureaucrats, and doctors who shamelessly pursuit financial success at the expense of patients), it gave readers a chance to admire a major character unreservedly.

As the son and brother of doctors, Lewis came by his interest in the medical profession naturally. But what many critics and ordinary readers may not have realized at the time is that the career of Martin Arrowsmith drew on Lewis’ recent friendship with 35-year-old microbiologist and pathologist Paul De Kruif—one that became so close that it evolved into a genuine working collaboration.

As James Tobin explains in this blog post, Lewis even suggested to De Kruif that he be listed as co-author, with the two splitting royalties 50-50. The doctor, as much stunned by the generous offer as aware that Lewis’ name constituted the proposed project’s main selling point, thought that the split should be 75% to 25% in Lewis’ favor.

In the end, either Lewis’s publisher or the author himself rejected the microbiologist’s request for a single line on the title page: “In collaboration with Paul De Kruif.”

Instead, Lewis set out his debt to De Kruif in a different fashion, acknowledging his help “not only for most of the bacteriological and medical material in this tale but equally for his suggestions in the planning of the fable itself  – for his realization of the characters as living people, for his philosophy as a scientist.”

In the end, it wasn’t insufficient acknowledgement of his creative input that fractured De Kruif’s relationship with Lewis, but at least several incidents of the latter’s erratic, often alcohol-fueled misbehavior that at last couldn’t be ignored.

Nevertheless, his association with the now-prizing author benefited De Kruif enough that he came to write a bestselling nonfiction account of medicine later that year, Microbe Hunters, launching a second career for him as a popular writer of medical histories, biographies, and public-health advocacy.

After winning the Nobel Prize, as his alcoholism worsened, most critics agreed that the quality of Lewis’ work suffered, and his reputation took a further hit with Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography. But periodically, readers who have returned to the novels written at his peak discover their continuing relevance, and Arrowsmith is no exception.

As I mentioned in this post from late last year, though not read as widely as two other novels published in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, it shared with them a searing criticism of American materialism at the height of the Roaring Twenties.

More than a few 21^st-century patients will nod appreciatively at how, in med school, Arrowsmith listens to a professor who extols the value of salesmanship to his students—including the value of convincing patients of the need for dubious small but money-making operations.

They will also detect the early baleful influence of Big Pharma in the Hunziker Company’s harassment of Arrowsmith’s mentor, the German scientist Max Gottlieb, for his reluctance to market an antitoxin he’s developed until he’s absolutely certain of its effectiveness—and, since COVID-19, they will shudder on the enormous pressures and responsibilities felt by Arrowsmith as he battles the outbreak of bubonic plague on an island in the West Indies.

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, on Parents Who 'Behave Like Bozos' at Their Kids’ Games)

“As the years have passed, I find myself fondly recalling the experience of watching other parents behave like bozos. I miss hearing the refs accused of gross miscarriages of justice, of being on the underworld payroll, of lacking even a scintilla of basic human decency. I miss getting to stand on the sidelines watching other parents drench the ground with tears just because the ump called leaden-footed Bree out at the plate. Which she forgot to tag anyway.”—American satirist and critic Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: A Tribute to the Inane Dramas of Sideline Parents,” The Wall Street Journal, June 8-9, 2024

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Jean Bethke Elshtain, on Peace, Love and Justice)

“This is where love comes in — love of God and love of neighbor — and this is where justice comes in as well. Augustine's alternative definition [of the commonwealth] starts with love. ‘A people is the association of a multitude of rational beings united by a common agreement on the objects of their love.’ It ‘follows that to observe the character of a particular people, we must examine the objects of its love. No single man can create a commonwealth. There is no ur-founder, no great bringer of order. It begins in ties of fellowship, in households, clans and tribes, in earthly love and its many discontents. And it begins in an ontology of peace, not war.”—American ethicist, political philosopher, and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain (1941-2013), Augustine and the Limits of Politics (1996)

Quote of the Day (Tana French, on Irish Speech as a Product of Colonialism)

“Ireland is a postcolonial country and that makes a huge, huge difference to the entire mentality. What I was talking about just now where people are quite oblique about communicating anything —especially anything with any heavy emotional charge—I think that has a certain amount of post-colonial resonance, where if you've spent centuries culturally in a position where anything that you say could in fact have huge consequences and be used by an occupying power, an oppressor, it makes you quite cautious about what you say and what you say openly….We've got a weird relationship with authority over here where we don't like to defy it openly. We don't like to stand up against it, but we really like finding clever ways around it. So, it makes for an interesting combination where you can see these people who have been the subject of really brutal penal laws and oppression like valuing the skill of finding a clever way to outward authority. But now it's changed because the people who are in authority, the government, are in fact elected by the Irish. They are the Irish. And yet you still have this mentality that you'll get some politician who took a ton of bribes or something and there's a slight undercurrent of ‘fair play to him--stuck it to the man.’  [Now,] it's like, dude, you are the man. We are the man. What do you mean we stuck it to the man? But there's still that respect for outwitting authority underlying.”—American-born Irish mystery novelist Tana French, in conversation with Anna Kusmer, Boston Globe, “Say More” podcast, “Tana French’s Endless Fascination with the Irish,” aired Apr. 9, 2026

Quote of the Day (Raphael Warnock, on the Supreme Court’s ‘Jim Crow in New Clothes’)

“The Supreme Court did the democracy a terrible disservice today….These efforts to effectively disenfranchise black voters have always, even during the dark days of the Jim Crow era, claimed to be race-neutral….By the time you had the Voting Rights Act, black people theoretically had a right to vote for 100 years, when the 15^th Amendment was passed. But through literacy tests, through grandfather clauses, through poll taxes, they effectively disenfranchised black voters. This is just the 21^st century version. This is Jim Crow in new clothes. This Supreme Court is an activist court. They did us a terrible disservice several years ago in the Shelby v. Holder decision.  And Justice [John] Roberts opined back then that this is not necessary. Well, what have we seen since then? Since then, the racial voter turnout gap has increased all over the country. I think it’s important for me to stress that, because I’m sitting here and people say, ‘You got the first black Senator from Georgia, you have a black President.’ Here is the reality: the racial turnout gap since Shelby v. Holder [in] 2013 has widened all over the country. And in the South, in the states that required pre-clearance [under the Voting Rights Act] because of a history of discrimination, that gap has grown twice as fast. We’re all entitled to our own opinion. We’re not entitled to our own facts, and the numbers and the facts bear it out. Today was one more assault. Shelby says you can engage in disenfranchisement practices, which has increased the gap in voter turnout. Today’s decision says that even when non-white voters show up in robust numbers, we’re giving you permission to play with the lines, because that’s all gerrymandering is. So that even as they show up, they will not have the kind of representation that their voice suggests they ought to have. And the proof is in the pudding. They are busy right now, supercharging redistricting. There are people in my state, even though early voting has already begun, some are already saying, ‘We ought to do something about that. We ought to redraw the maps.’”—U.S. Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), on the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais et. al. decision on voting rights, on “The Briefing With Jen Psaki,” MS-Now, original air date Apr. 29, 2026

Senator Warnock has concisely summarized the voting-rights legislative history that too many people don't know, as well as effectively rebutted Justice Samuel Alito’s contention in Louisiana v. Callais et. al. that the remedies dictated by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are no longer needed.

In the short term, the Roberts Court has offered not guidance but disorder for the upcoming midterm elections, okaying a blatant gerrymandering attempt after previously ruling that these were "political decisions" beyond the reach of the federal judiciary.

In the long term, though, the Alito-penned decision will be regarded with the same disdain and revulsion as the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Reconstruction Era civil-rights legislation to which Senator Warnock refers.

This ruling follows a pattern in which the conservative majority has only departed, in one notable instance—tariffs—from what the Trump Administration has desired.

Ironically, by clearing a path for chaos and lawlessness by the President and his MAGA minions at the federal and state levels, the court (or what a friend of mine calls “The Extreme Court”) has only brought their own reasoning into disrepute and consigned themselves into an irrelevance that would have dismayed the great Chief Justice John Marshall two centuries ago.

(The image that accompanies this post—the Rev. Warnock’s official Senate photo—was taken on Feb. 3, 2021, by Rebecca Hammel of the U.S. Senate Photographic Studio.)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,’ With a Typical Executive Disclaimer of Responsibility)

J. B. Biggley [played by Rudy Vallee, on the left with Robert Morse]: “I realize that I'm the president of this company, the man that's responsible for everything that goes on here. So, I want to state, right now, that anything that happened is not my fault.”— How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), based on the novel by Shepherd Mead, adapted into a Pulitzer and Tony-winning musical with book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, movie written and directed by David Swift

For years, I’ve heard many politicians—I won’t say from which party—express their belief that government should be “run more like a business.” I wonder if the business they have in mind is J.B. Biggley’s World Wide Wicket Company?

Well, I’ll tell you: that statement of his that I’ve highlighted here is, for all intents and purposes, the continued default option for corporate executives who run into trouble, whether in the form of product or service failure, a disastrous earnings report, even fraud or misconduct. Their most common method for avoiding responsibility is to blame a predecessor.

Now that I think of it, a politician I can think of immediately has also taken this very course.

Photo of the Day: Shark River, Avon-by-the-Sea, NJ

Yesterday an event took me down to an area that, despite my lifelong residence in the state, I have rarely gone to in recent years: the Jersey Shore. As soon as I stepped out of my car in the parking lot next to the Marina Building, I was enthralled by this setting, with the bridge leading to Belmar off to the right, so I took this picture.

The Shark River is one of three bodies of water, along with Sylvan Lake and the Atlantic Ocean, that surrounds Avon-by-the-Sea. It was a quiet late afternoon when I got down there, so I missed the parade of boats that often go by. But I gloried in the view and the crisp air of this seaside community.

Running eleven miles, the Shark River is bordered by Avon-by-the-Sea, Neptune City, Neptune Township, Wall Township and Belmar Borough. Despite its approximately 800 acres of shellfish growing waters, much of the river is classified “Restricted “by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Oh, yes: wondering about sharks? Turns out none is present in these waters. So why this name? Some possible theories:

*Maybe the name dates from the mid-1800s, when a shark might have been in the river;

*Maybe it derives from the “low-grade” fishing huts or shacks around in the late 1700s, with “shark” being a twisted form of  “Shirk” or “Shack”; or

*Maybe it comes from because upstream in Shark River Park can be found shark teeth left in fossil from the Cretaceous geologic period.

For an interesting oral history of the Avon River (including bootlegging that went on during Prohibition), see this interview with longtime area resident Ray Dodd, recorded and posted online by his son Charlie after his death.

Quote of the Day (Steve Almond, on Frustration, ‘The Underside of Desire’)

“Frustration is the underside of desire. It's an important part of the human arrangement because it's the thing that makes us realize that we must use patience and persistence to the things that evade us. Our frustration level in America is incredibly high, which is a result of a consumer culture dedicated entirely to instant gratification. We’re constantly being shown the dangling, beautiful fruits of capitalism; we're exposed to advertising where we get exactly what we want. So, as a result, we’re ready to murder each other because of traffic jams or punch each other out over a burger and fries.” —American short-story writer and essayist Steve Almond quoted in “Soapbox: The Columnists; WSJ. Asks Five Luminaries To Weigh in on Single Topic; This Month: Frustration,” WSJ. Magazine, August 2018

The image accompanying this post illustrates the explosive consequences of the frustration that Almond describes: Michael Douglas’ commuter D-Fens in the 1993 film Falling Down, who starts a murder spree after getting stuck in traffic on the way to his daughter’s birthday party.

Quote of the Day (N.C. Wyeth, on ‘Practical’ and ‘Artistic’ Ideals)

“Practical ideals and artistic ideals are as foreign to each other as black is to white. They are of equal value (in their proper places) in their relations to life and living. But if a boy is naturally gifted with the ‘artistic ideal,’ be it in either art, music or writing, he should be guided into it, placed into its atmosphere unhampered by too much practicality; the latter will come from necessity."—American illustrator and painter N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), letter to his father, Andrew Newell Wyeth II, July 30, 1906, in The Wyeths: Letters of N.C. Wyeth, 1901-1945, Second Edition, edited by Betsy James Wyeth (2008)

Wyeth, the patriarch of a great family of painters, knew all too well the tug between practical and artistic ideals. 

As I discussed in this prior post about his death, he was afflicted towards the end of his life with “melancholy and self-doubt over an inability to be taken seriously as a producer of fine paintings rather than of popular commercial art”—illustrations he created for classics by Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, and Jules Verne for which he is still best known.

In some way, many artists, writers, and musicians who’ve achieved popularity have struggled with the same aspiration for higher achievement that Wyeth did.

(The image accompanying this post is a self-portrait of Wyeth.)

Quote of the Day (Lawyer Allen Grubman, on the Best Results of a Negotiation)

“When you walk away from negotiation, both sides should feel the same way—happy, but also a little sad that they didn't get everything they wanted. That's a success. If you walk away delighted that you got everything, the guy who got screwed will be waiting for the opportunity to get you back. Getting everything you want is the beginning and end of the relationship.”—American celebrity entertainment lawyer Allen Grubman quoted by Holly Peterson, “Earn Your Luck: Allen Grubman,” WSJ. Magazine, Spring Women’s Fashion Issue 2026

This observation holds as true in high-level diplomacy as in business contracts or divorces. There’s at least one public figure I can think of (and I’m sure you can, too) who’s familiar with all three situations. These days, let’s hope he’s taken this advice to heart.

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Beverly Hillbillies,’ on ‘The Saddest-Lookin' Horse’)

[Granny and Jed are looking at a sheik's royal camel.]

Granny [played by Irene Ryan]: “Ain't that the saddest-lookin' horse you ever seen?”

Jed Clampett [played by Irene Ryan]: “Pitiful, just pitiful.”— The Beverly Hillbillies, Season 4, Episode 3, “The Sheik,” original air date Sept. 29, 1965, teleplay by Paul Henning and Mark Tuttle, directed by Joseph Depew

Spiritual Quote of the Day (First Letter of St. Peter, on the Need to ‘Rid Yourselves of All Malice’)

“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”—1 Peter 2: 1-3 (New International Version)

In the past week, the man currently occupying the highest office in our land participated in a marathon Bible reading session. This was rather surprising news to those of us not previously aware that he read much from the Good Book, or indeed from any book.

The other eye-opener happened to be the verses he read, from the seventh chapter of 2 Chronicles: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Oh, I know why he read this passage. It’s that word “heal.” He regards himself as a doctor ministering to the nation, you see!

Well, when I was in a bank yesterday morning, my teller wore a sweater with a number referring to this epistle from St. Peter. I was going to cite it, until I saw the first couple of verses from the chapter, which I felt might be infinitely more instructive for our President.

The image accompanying this post is from a painting of the apostle by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

Theater Review: The Musical ‘Ragtime,’ at Lincoln Center

The musical Ragtime has been playing at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater since October (with its engagement there extended through August 2), but I finally got around to seeing it last week. 

Now in its third Broadway run since it premiered in 1997, it is not a musical comedy (the humor relieves the overall tone of tragedy) so much as something quite different: a musical protest epic.

When the E. L. Doctorow novel was published in 1975, its unusual premise—real-life characters interacting with each other and with fictional ones, in ways they were never recorded to have done—brought acclaim as well as debate about its fidelity to history.

These days, whatever stir it creates comes from our current moment: a national atmosphere that takes its cues from a President spewing inflammatory anti-minority rhetoric and policies.

In moving from its prior acclaimed "Encores" concert, the production, under director Lear deBessonet and set designer David Korins, has taken full advantage of its greater resources. A sprawling, multicultural group of characters, whose fates are spelled out over nearly three hours, is matched by startling stage effects, including:

*A trap door that yields the entire cast rising for the opening number, “Prologue: Ragtime”;

*Harry Houdini dropping down to the stage from a fly space;

*A steamship carrying a New Rochelle patriarch on one of Robert Peary’s polar expeditions, while simultaneously the Jewish immigrant Tateh arrives in a “rag ship”; and,

*Other Jewish immigrants walking in a circle around the stage turntable.

Surprisingly, the score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens includes without concentrating on the musical genre of the title, while also mixing elements of Harlem jazz, gospel, Jewish klezmer/folk music, Sousa-style marches, even impassioned operatic ballads.

All of this, along with the early 20^th-century costuming, might encourage the unwary to think they will be seeing a piece of nostalgic Americana—except that, as we find in following the fortunes of the three families in pursuit of the American Dream in this pageant, the good ol’ days were marked by media sensationalism, racial divisions, and violence.

Arriving penniless on the Lower East Side, desperate to keep his young daughter from want, Tateh uses a moving picture book he creates as a foothold into the fledgling silent film era, restyling himself as Baron Ashkenazy. In New Rochelle, an African-American baby boy left on their doorstep rocks the once stable relationship between Father and Mother. The child’s biological father, aspiring African-American musician Coalhouse Walker Jr., is maddened into domestic terrorism when his attempt to seek redress for the destruction of his new car is repeatedly frustrated by a white establishment that is at best indifferent and at worst hostile.

The soundtrack to the musical traces these characters’ transformation and, sometimes, dislocation: 

*Ben Levi Ross expertly voices the pivot by Mother’s Younger Brother from purposelessness to committed radicalism in "The Night That [Emma] Goldman Spoke at Union Square." 

*Tateh (played by Brandon Uranowitz) segues from protective father in “Gliding” to early motion-picture impresario in “Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc.” 

*The exquisite mezzo-soprano Caissie Levy delineates Mother’s progression from dutiful wife (“Goodbye My Love”) to outright questioning of her society and marriage (“Back to Before”), while 

*Colin Donnell makes plain Father’s rigidity and unease with changing times and marginalized people with “New Music.”

But the greatest alteration of any character—and the steepest vocal demands made on any of the talented cast—comes in the form of Coalhouse.

Joshua Henry, previously Tony-nominated for Carousel, makes him first a powerhouse of optimism and pride in his work as a pianist (“Wheels of a Dream”) that dramatically turns into all-consuming rage (“Coalhouse's Soliloquy”) at a Progressive Era America oblivious to the grinding daily humiliations inflicted on African-Americans. And his baritone rings with righteous power in the musical’s finale, the protest song “Make Them Hear You.”

I came to the musical partly because my curiosity had been aroused by watching the 1981 film adaptation directed by Milos Forman.

I was surprised, then, by the greater presence onstage of anarchist agitator Emma Goldman and the total disappearance of police commissioner Rhinelander Waldo (played onscreen by James Cagney), whose function in the plot is assigned to DA Charles Whitman.

But Terrence McNally, author of the musical’s “book” (non-musical elements), was in both cases sticking closer to the novel.

Too bad that he and the other creators of the musical didn’t add nuance to another element of the book that they carried over: its stereotypical treatment of Irish-Americans. 

Unlike the musical’s white Protestants, Jewish immigrants, and African-American families, they are depicted as holders of service jobs—and almost singularly ignorant, resentful, and bigoted in a country where such personality traits crossed ethnic, sectional, and sectarian lines.

Mother upbraids her servant Kathleen for not moving faster to help the baby left outside, like Scarlett O’Hara bossing around Prissy in Gone With the Wind. And, lest we be in any doubt about the ethnicity of the cretins who destroy Coalhouse’s beautiful car, not only is their leader named Willie Conklin but they operate out of the “Emerald Isle Firehouse.”

In the last decade, New York’s theater community has made a laudable effort to foster inclusiveness and avoid offending particular groups. With a couple of short text edits, the Vivian Beaumont could have done so again in this case. The fact that it didn’t doesn’t speak well of their judgment.

The practice of “revisal” has arisen in recent years to clean up older, worthy musicals by removing outdated or stereotypical elements. Future companies that mount Ragtime should consider doing so to burnish an already fine musical.

Quote of the Day (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on What It Takes ‘To Move the Masses’)

“I hold you will not compass your poor ends
Of barley-feeding and material ease,
Without a poet's individualism
To work your universal. It takes a soul,
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,
To move the masses ... even to a cleaner stye:
It takes the ideal, to blow a hair's breadth off
The dust of the actual.–ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within.”— English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), “Aurora Leigh” (1856)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Seinfeld,’ As George Doesn’t Take Well to a Breakup)

[George’s girlfriend Gwen announces she’s breaking up with him. George suspects it’s because she saw him on TV pigging out on a hot-fudge sundae at a tennis game.]

Gwen [played by Linda Kash] [disputing his reasoning]: “It's not you. It's me.”

George Costanza [played by Jason Alexander]: “You're giving me the ‘it's not you, it’s me’ routine? I invented ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Nobody tells me it’s them, not me. If it’s anybody, it’s me.”

Gwen [fast tiring of this]: “All right, George, it's you.”

George: “You're damn right it's me!”—Seinfeld, Season 5, Episode 6, "The Lip Reader,” original air date Oct. 28, 1993, teleplay by Carol Leifer, directed by Tom Cherones

 

Quote of the Day (Peter James, With Advice for Beginning Authors)

“The two best pieces of advice I can give are: Firstly, read, read, read the biggest-selling books in the genre you want to write, and deconstruct them—literally dissect them—to analyze what made then work, what kept you hooked, what made you want to follow the characters. Writing is a craft, at one level—if you were going to be a doctor, as a medical student you would be given a cadaver to dissect, to learn how it all worked. If you wanted to be a car mechanic, you would take apart a car and its engine to see how they work. The second piece of advice is: love your characters—even the bad guys. That was terrific advice I was once given. If you think back on many of the most enduring villains in literature, they have something about them that makes you them. Frankenstein’s monster, telling the doctor that he didn’t want to exist—the doctor created him! Dracula: a monster, but charismatic and charming. Hannibal Lecter—a monster, but we like him, so we engage and, in a strange way, care for him.”—Mystery novelist Peter James, quoted by Andrew J. Gulli, “Interview: Peter James,” The Strand Magazine, Issue XXXVI (2025)

Photo of the Day: Saddle River County Park, Fair Lawn NJ

I took the image accompanying this post yesterday while soaking in the sun. 

Though I entered Saddle River County Park from Fair Lawn, that’s not the only suburb encompassed by its 577 acres. It also runs through five other Bergen County towns: Glen Rock, Paramus, Ridgewood, Rochelle Park, and Saddle Brook.

I can never get enough of bodies of water, and though the crisp air may have kept more people from venturing outside, I was happy to take the path around this pond without bumping into crowds.

Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on a Fearful People ‘Possessed With Rumors’)

“But as I traveled hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied,
Possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams,
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.” —English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), King John (1594-6), Act 4, Scene 3 

William Shakespeare died on this day in 1616 at age 52, but his influence reverberates to this day.

Following decades of Tudor authoritarianism, Shakespeare knew that it was safer to project his insights into distant times (King John’s death predated the playwright’s by four centuries) and even distant lands (in the case of The Tempest, a small, remote island in the Mediterranean).

His history play King John is one of his thornier and less performed works, but such was The Bard’s genius that even in this passage from the play, he served as a profound analyst of how corruption and tyranny at the highest government levels lead inevitably to rampant conspiracy theories and contagious fear.

Quote of the Day (Langston Hughes, on the ‘Little Sleep Song’ of April Rain)

“The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.”—African-American poet, librettist, translator, and fiction writer Langston Hughes (1901-1967), “April Rain Song,” originally published in 1921, reprinted in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel (1994)
 
I had a somewhat different reaction to overnight rain than Langston Hughes did: I awoke to hear its soft patter outside my window this morning, rather than falling asleep to it.
 
But I recalled that I had just heard yesterday about this poem. It’s a lovely set of verses (only five more lines than you see here) and easy to find on the Internet. I urge anyone who’s never encountered it to look it up.

Quote of the Day (Bernard Holland, on Musical Echoes)

“Creating music indoors is like throwing a number of balls around a four-sided handball court and waiting for them to come back to you. If the balls are of different sizes and thrown at different speeds, your ears, so to speak, will have their hands full.”—American music critic Bernard Holland, “How's That Again? An Echoing Refrain,” The New York Times, Dec. 20, 2025

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Stranger Than Paradise,’ As A Hungarian Teen Learns About ‘The Way We Eat in America’)

Willie [played by John Lurie]: “You're sure you don't want a TV dinner?”

Eva [played by Eszter Balint]: “Yes. I'm not hungry. Why is it called ‘TV dinner’?”

Willie: “Um... You're supposed to eat it while you watch TV. Television.”

Eva: “I know what a TV is. Where does that meat come from?”:

Willie: “What do you mean?”

Eva: “What does that meat come from?”

Willie: “I guess it comes from a cow.”

Eva: “From a cow? It doesn't even look like meat.”

Willie: “Eva, stop bugging me, will you? You know, this is the way we eat in America. I got my meat, I got my potatoes, I got my vegetables, I got my dessert, and I don't even have to wash the dishes.”— Stranger Than Paradise (1984), screenplay by Jim Jarmusch and John Lurie, directed by Jim Jarmusch

Quote of the Day (W.H. Auden, on ‘The Situation of Our Time’)

“The situation of our time
Surrounds us like a baffling crime.
There lies the body half-undressed,
We all had reason to detest,
And all are suspects and involved
Until the mystery is solved
And under lock and key the cause
That makes a nonsense of our laws.”— British-American poet, playwright, and essayist W.H. Auden (1907-1973), “New Year Letter (January 1, 1940),” from Collected Poems, edited by Edward Mendelson (1976)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Leo XIV, Warning Against ‘Other Securities’)

“Even today, there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent.  Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure."—Pope Leo XIV, in his first Mass as pontiff, May 9, 2025, quoted by Deborah Castellano Lubov, “Pope Leo XIV to Cardinals: 'We Are to Bear Witness to Our Joyful Faith in Christ,'” Vatican News, May 9, 2025

Photo of the Day: Swings at Lincoln Center

This past Wednesday, heading over to a matinee event at Lincoln Center, I was surprised to see this set of bright-red swings across the plaza. I didn’t recall ever seeing it before. Indeed, it was only just installed and is temporary.

"Mi Casa, Your Casa 2.0" is an interactive artwork, a series of open, house-shaped frames, each roughly 8 feet wide and nearly 10 feet tall. Designed by Mexico-based studio Esrawe + Cadena, it’s open to the public as part of Lincoln Center’s Big Umbrella Festival.

The piece only lasts as long as the festival, through April 26. On the warm, sunlit afternoon when I took this photo, many visitors were taking advantage of the installation while they still could at this New York entertainment and cultural mecca.