Other Entertainment: Collected Pieces

As a musician who is also a writer, Ned Rorem claims that some years ago the IRS, at a loss as to how to pigeonhole him for their purposes, settled on the designation of "Other Entertainment" when noting the source of his livelihood. Thus the title of this fourteenth book by a composer who has been universally acclaimed for his prose, and a writer who has won a Pulitzer Prize for his music.
He goes beyond music in this collection, however, reaching in some instances even beyond "entertainment." These essays examine in depth such contrasting human subjects as Billie Holiday and Arnold Schoenberg, Lillian Hellman and Kazuo Ishiguro, Benjamin Britten and Josephine Baker, Noel Coward and Marguerite Duras, Joe Orton and Jean Cocteau. And in addition to the reviews, profiles, tributes, and even obituaries, there are dialogues with critic John Simon and with physician Lawrence Mass that center on homosexuality, as it obtains both in the arts and in general conversation.
Two pieces about new American opera, and one on the old chestnut Carmen, demonstrate yet again Ned Rorem's informed wit on a subject near to his heart. Even nearer his heart are portraits of cherished colleagues Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson, plus snapshots of still more friends and idols, from Debussy, Ravel, and Sarah Orne Jewett to Myrna Loy, Libby Holman, and Jane Bowles.
Finally Rorem paints very personal and impressionistic landscapes of the artists' colony Yaddo, of Carnegie Hall, and of Nantucket island.

Rorem describes himself as a composer who writes rather than a writer who composes, but given the state of the audience for serious music, it's a good bet he is known to more people as a writer, particularly of often sensational diaries and more recently of a lively autobiography, Knowing When to Stop. That title is rather ironic in view of this collection, which is a pretty random assemblage of pieces that nearly all appeared elsewhere and don't add much to Rorem's record as a writer. Among the book reviews, he is particularly good on the diaries of Benjamin Britten and decidedly waspish about Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel. In addition, we find a long talk with critic John Simon on the latter's hostile remarks about gays; some eloquent obituaries of a range of friends; and a few fragments, of which a personal essay on his home in Nantucket has great charm. In a frank foreword, Rorem writes that looking over the pieces, he was impressed by how often he repeated certain obsessions and jokes, and hoped the editor would "weed them out." If the editor has, it doesn't show; this is a perfunctory volume, even if it is by a man who is always worth reading.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A charmless collection of 37 prose pieces (including essays, reviews, dialogues, even obituaries) by the Pulitzer Prizewinning composer and writer (Knowing When to Stop: A Memoir, 1994, etc.). Some are too short to have much impact: A piece on Ravel and Debussy is only five paragraphs long, consisting of program notes for a song recital. Others have more heft, including an essay exploring Debussy's influence on Bart¢k and Stravinsky, and a celebration of W.H. Auden. Ultimately, though, these pieces are mainly about Rorem. One learns that ``as a kid I not only loved Josephine Baker, I wanted to be her when I grew up.'' And that he feels at times as if ``Culture no longer existed, and that Learning, hand in hand with nuanced creativity, was hiding underground.'' (This reflection follows his observation that the New York Times Book Review and Vogue don't call anymore.) Rorem's two appreciations of Cocteau, clearly a great influence in his life, seem wildly exaggerated in their praise and terribly selective in their recitation of Cocteau's personal history. No mention is made of Cocteau's flagrant sucking up to the Nazis during the occupation of France; as a result, Rorem's description of Cocteau's postwar despair, attributed to a fickle public, seems a somewhat misleading gloss. His tributes to the departed often seem rather flat. Dawn Powell, in her recently published diaries, tells us more about Elizabeth Ames, the longtime director of Yaddo, in one precise page than Rorem does in six. There are, of course, some rewards in all the chatter: a fine limerick penned by Rorem's father after attending an incomprehensible lecture by Arnold Schoenberg; a portrait of a young Pierre Boulez serving as a rehearsal pianist in a run-through of Samuel Barber's violin concerto, attended by the caustic Barber; the recollections of Dr. Lox, who attended both Bart¢k and Stravinsky on their deathbeds. Overall, though, a petty scolding of those of whom Rorem disapproves, and a roaring tribute to himself. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

For his fourteenth book, the best writer among living American composers collects pieces mostly written to fulfill commissions--as is most of his music, he loves to remind us--and three interviews. Two-thirds of the essays are about music and musicians; the rest, about literature. The interviews saliently include Rorem's conversation with waspish critic John Simon about the latter's reputed homophobia and, in something of an about-face, gay-activist physician Larry Mass' with Rorem about his reticence to consider homosexuality as an influence on art, especially opera, and modern audiences. Everywhere, Rorem attractively demonstrates his strengths as a memorable and amusing commentator on culture. Chief among those strengths are the fearlessness with which he characterizes an artist's style, content, and attitude, and his ability to crystallize the leitmotivs of his analysis into apothegms that are as applicable to our common life as to the life of art--"We are what we repeat," for example, and "Wit stems from irony, not situation." And then there is his charm. Ray Olson

A winner of fellowships, commissions, and awards (including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976), leading American composer Rorem has led a life filled with eclectic associates and happenings. These selections, most of them originating in periodicals and previously uncollected, deal chiefly with music, although a third cover literary persons and diverse topics such as Myrna Loy, readings as a child, Carnegie Hall, and Nantucket. Of the 15 personalities covered in this book (Lillian Hellman, Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, Jean Cocteau, Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein, and Aaron Copeland, to name a few), Rorem knew personally all except four. In his introduction, he sketches the evolution of his writing from 1966 to the present and discusses why particular selections were chosen. He even briefly wrestles with what the title may be. Although the word entertainment is not mentioned, it is surely appropriate, for Rorem's collection of pieces offers a mix of entertainment through a gifted power of words. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?Kathleen Sparkman, Baylor Univ., Waco, Tex
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.