Teachout, Terry 1956-

views updated

TEACHOUT, Terry 1956-

PERSONAL: Born February 6, 1956, in Cape Girardeau, MO; son of H. H. (a hardware salesman) and Evelyn (a typist; maiden name, Crosno) Teachout; married Elizabeth Cullers (an opera coach), 1980. Education: Attended St. John's College, 1974; William Jewell College, B.S., 1979; attended University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign, 1983-85. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, playing the piano, listening to classical music and jazz, watching movies, collecting animated cartoons from the forties and fifties, attending performances by the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Paul Taylor Dance Company, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—205 West 84th St., Apt. B, New York, NY 10024-4660. Agent—Glen Hartley, Writers' Representatives, Inc., 25 West 19th St., New York, NY 10011. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Music critic, author, and editor. Star and Times, Kansas City, MO, music critic, 1977-83; Harper's, New York, NY, assistant editor, 1985-86, senior editor, 1986-87; New York Daily News, New York, NY, editorial writer, 1987-93, classical music and dance critic, 1993-2000; Commentary, music critic, 1995—; Washington Post, arts columnist, 1999—. Country and bluegrass bassist in southeast Missouri, 1972-74; jazz bassist in Kansas City, 1977-83. Founder of Vile Body (gatherings continue under the name, The Fabiani Society), a salon for young New York conservatives.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Whittaker Chambers, Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959, Regnery Gateway (Washington, DC), 1989, republished, with a new introduction by Milton Hindus, as Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Essays, Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ), 1996.

(Editor) Beyond the Boom: New Voices on American Life, Culture, and Politics, introduction by Tom Wolfe, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1990.

City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy, Poseidon (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor and author of introduction) H. L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, Knopf (New York, NY), 1995.

The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

A Terry Teachout Reader, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2004.

All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including American Scholar, American Spectator, Commentary, National Review, New Criterion, Time, and New Dance Review. Contributing editor, Musical America.

SIDELIGHTS: Terry Teachout has had a long and varied career as a writer, editor, and critic for such prominent publications as Harper's, New York Daily News, Commentary, Time, and the Washington Post. Working as both a writer and an editor for such publications prepared Teachout to publish his own books.

Teachout's Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959 is a collection of magazine articles written by Chambers and published in periodicals, such as New Masses, Time, and National Review. Chambers, formerly a member of the Communist party, appeared before the House of Un-American Activities Committee in 1948 and accused Alger Hiss, an official in the U.S. State Department, of being a Communist. These accusations eventually led to a conviction on perjury charges and jail time for Hiss, and ruined Chambers's career as a journalist. According to Joseph Sobran of the National Review, in Ghosts on the Roof, "we finally meet Chambers alone, without the shadow of the Hiss case." The articles in the book introduce readers to a writer who "combined depth of mind with an elegant popular touch" and wrote "intelligently about serious things without writing 'down' to his readers," voiced Sobran. "In its way, this book of fragments rounds out the record of a shattered life," he concluded.

Teachout is also the founder of Vile Body, a salon for right-leaning, conservative writers and thinkers that later changed its name to The Fabiani Society. Beyond the Boom: New Voices on American Life, Culture, and Politics is a group of essays penned by Vile Body authors such as Andrew Ferguson, Bruce Bawer, and Maggie Gallagher. Born at the latter end of the Baby Boom generation, these authors question and criticize the generation of free-loving, authority-questioning hippies that preceded them. Beyond the Boom examines an array of topics, including politics, movies, books, and decades of art. Priscilla L. Buckley of the National Review called the book "the nearest thing yet to that serious book that cries out to be written on a generation—the Woodstock generation—whose unexpunged sins have poisoned America's cultural and spiritual landscape for the successor generation, and the rest of us." James Wolcott of the New Republic, on the other hand, felt that the Vile Body essayists "can't imagine anything better than what they've already had. The only future they want belongs to the past."

City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy is an autobiographical account of Teachout's boyhood in a Missouri town, his education and early career, and his move to New York City. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Teachout explains "how he eventually had to lift himself out of his comfortable and secure Midwestern life" and move to New York if he ever hoped to make a career out of writing. "Mr. Teachout's remembrances are presented with charm and wit," wrote National Review critic Brad Miner, "and they provide a passage into one's own past."

While working on a biography of the controversial journalist and critic H. L. Mencken, Teachout edited and published A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, an anthology of Mencken's works. Teachout discovered the unfinished work, a gathering of excerpts collected by Mencken himself, while researching the noted author's life. A Publishers Weekly reviewer considered the most impressive aspect of the anthology to be the variety of topics Mencken discussed, which ranged from politics to music.

The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken is the result of a decade's worth of research and writing. In an interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez on the National Review Web site, Teachout explained his interest in writing Mencken's biography: "Not only did I find Mencken hugely interesting, but I was also struck by the fact that our careers had followed similar paths." Both Teachout and Mencken worked variously as writers and editors for several different periodicals, often switching between political topics and critiques of the arts. In The Skeptic, the author explores the personal and professional life of the infamous Mencken.

Mencken was known for hurling insults at anyone and everyone who would read them. Documents published before and after his death established his reputation as an anti-Semite and showed his admiration for Germany. Teachout reveals that Mencken's bold, brash writing style differed greatly from the cautious lifestyle he led in private. Writing in Commentary, John Gross pointed out that The Skeptic provides "a rounded personal portrait rather than an intellectual one." Mencken "remains a difficult case, but in addition to telling a very good story very engagingly, Terry Teachout's book makes it much easier for us to achieve a balanced judgment," concluded Gross. A Publishers Weekly critic observed that Teachout "simplifies" Mencken's life for readers and provides "a tidy, fascinating biography that has much of the neat phrasing and sly wit that the rancorous writer displayed himself."

In his National Review interview, Teachout told Lopez that while he admired Mencken's "ability to get himself—his personality—onto the printed page," he disliked Mencken's "coldness." A Kirkus Reviews critic praised Teachout's objectivity, stating that the biography is a "balanced portrait of the muckraking newsman, and an excursion into American intellectual history and journalism."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Spectator, March, 1990, review of Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959, p. 36; January, 1991, review of Beyond the Boom: New Voices on American Life, Culture, and Politics, p. 37; January, 1992, review of City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy, p. 70.

Biography, spring, 2003, review of The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, p. 374.

Book World, October 13, 1991, review of City Limits, p. 4.

Christian Century, March 6, 1991, review of Beyond the Boom, p. 271; April 5, 2003, David Stewart, review of The Skeptic, p. 41.

Commentary, March 6, 1991, review of Beyond the Boom, p. 63; November, 2002, John Gross, "Bane of the Booboisie," review of The Skeptic, p. 70.

Commonweal, April 5, 1991, review of Beyond the Boom, p. 234.

Economist, November 2, 2002, "A Good Hater; H. L. Mencken," review of The Skeptic.

Hudson Review, summer, 1991, review of Beyond the Boom, p. 326.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 1991, review of City Limits, p. 1150; August 15, 2002, review of The Skeptic, p. 1208.

Nation, November 25, 2002, Carlin Romano, "The Scourge of Baltimore," review of The Skeptic, p. 25.

National Review, June 2, 1989, Joseph Sobran, review of Ghosts on the Roof, p. 48; October 15, 1990, Priscilla L. Buckley, review of Beyond the Boom, p. 70; October 21, 1991, Brad Miner, review of City Limits, p. 40.

New Republic, December 3, 1990, James Wolcott, review of Beyond the Boom, p. 34.

Newsday, November 14, 2002, Dan Cryer, "The Work and Not-So-Wonderful Life of Mencken."

New Yorker, December 25, 1995, review of A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 144.

New York Observer, November 25, 2002, Adam Kirsch, "The Scourge of the 'Booboisie,' Briskly, Judiciously Measured."

New York Times, November 17, 2002, Christopher Hitchens, "The Skeptic: Mencken, a Smart Set of One."

New York Times Book Review, November 10, 1991, review of City Limits, p. 14.

Publishers Weekly, August 30, 1991, review of City Limits, p. 74; December 12, 1994, review of A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 57; August 19, 2002, review of The Skeptic, p. 74; March 1, 2004, review of A Terry Teachout Reader, p. 57.

Reason, April, 1991, review of Beyond the Boom, p. 51.

Time, December 3, 1990.

Washington Post Book World, April 8, 1990.

World and I, April, 2003, Charles A. Fecher, "A Partial Portrait—Critic Terry Teachout Has Done an Impressive Job of Bringing Together in One Unified Narrative the Many Distinct Faces of H. L. Mencken's Life," p. 230.