Thursday, July 08, 2004

The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large: "n October 24, 1937, Cole Porter went out for a horseback ride at the Piping Rock Club, in Locust Valley, Long Island?one of those swank playgrounds whose names he liked to rhyme in song and which signalled his fully paid-up membership in the Elegentsia. In the woods, the skittish horse, which the forty-six-year-old Porter had been warned against riding, shied and fell on him, crushing both his legs. According to Porter?a story that William McBrien, the author of ?Cole Porter: A Biography? (1998), finds ?difficult to believe??he passed the excruciating hours while he waited to be rescued composing the lyrics to an elusive verse of his song ?At Long Last Love.?"

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