Look, I made a hat Collected lyrics (1981-2011) with attendant comments, amplifications, dogmas, harangues, digressions, anecdotes and miscellany

In the second volume of his collected lyrics, Sondheim explicates his meticulous craft. STEPHEN SONDHEIM claims to dislike most opera, and I guess I believe it. He also says he avoids serious fiction, and I suppose I believe this, too, even if his new book, "Look, I Made a Hat," which collects his lyrics for the musical theater written from 1981 to 2011, does conclude with a quotation from James Joyce's "Ulysses." He makes it difficult to take his denials altogether seriously. Ever since he wrote the lyrics for "West Side Story" (in the mid-'50s, when he was only in his mid-20s), Sondheim has been pushing the essentially bright and slap-happy American musical toward tragic opera's darker and more unrelieved terrain. And he seems to possess a born novelist's passion for delineating dense but believable motivation. "What lasts in the theater is character," he once observed - a conviction underpinning many of the outflung reflections in "Look, I Made a Hat." His new book is a follow-up to last year's "Finishing the Hat," which assembled lyrics from 1954 to 1981. Both books carry long subtitles. "Finishing the Hat" promised "Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes," while "Look, I Made a Hat" offers "Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany." These are overlapping lists with instructive differences. The "grudges" of "Finishing the Hat" often involved score-settling, mostly with critics but also with a few impossible colleagues. By contrast, "Look, I Made a Hat" feels less bristly than resignedly rueful ("The desire for failure emanating from people who presumably love musicals is persistently baffling to me"). Sondheim once briefly served as a visiting theater professor at Oxford, and "Look, I Made a Hat" exhibits a donnish ease while blending amusement with edification. In introducing "Look, I Made a Hat," Sondheim notes that his previous book's reticence disappointed some reviewers. Their prime complaint was that "I didn't speak enough about my personal life, 'personal' being the euphemism for 'intimate,' which is the euphemism for 'sexual.' . . . If I'd wanted to write a memoir, I would have, but I don't, and I didn't. Caveat to the general: This book is going to be no more satisfying to the seriously prurient than the previous one." What we have instead is an outstanding reconstruction of rethinking and revision by an outstanding lyricist-composer: a lucid chronicling of the complexities that can arise in shaping even the sparest song lyric. Some of Sondheim's artistic forebears have left valuable accounts, both formal and anecdotal, about their struggles in fusing melody with American speech: Hoagy Carmichael, Oscar Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Ira Gershwin. (Sondheim's two volumes are probably closest in spirit to Gershwin's "Lyrics on Several Occasions," whose endless subtitle promised "informative annotations and disquisitions"; Gershwin, like Sondheim, shifted smoothly from crass practicalities like theatrical deadlines to the lyricist's timeless art of testing syllable against syllable.) But none of these other practitioners can match Sondheim for depth of analysis, for the clarity and patience he shows, over hundreds of pages, in scrotinizing the all but ineffable process by which words on a page are translated into an effective staged performance. Sondheim's career is notable for its sweeping forays. He has wandered far afield. He has written a musical about Commodore Perry's arrival and the "opening" of Japan ("Pacific Overtures"), Georges Seurat and the creation of "La Grande Jatte" ("Sunday in the Park With George"), America's long history of political violence ("Assassins"), a fairy-tale forest ("Into the Woods"), murder and unwitting cannibalism ("Sweeney Todd"). Yet what is perhaps most impressive about his two books of lyrics is how unsweeping, how determinedly close-focused and minute, they are. One of Sondheim's trademarks is the employment of clean, exact rhymes. Not for him any pairings like moves/ woos (as in the Beatles "Something"). I don't suppose he has enjoyed himself at many rock musicals. Both volumes seem pointedly meant as primers for a younger generation of songwriters; Oxford's former professor continues to.teach. And if he sometimes sounds doctrinaire ("I've never come across a near rhyme that works better than a perfect one would"), his care and punctiliousness are steadily inspiring. Here he is discussing a rhyme from "Follies": "I had a similar moment when I paired 'soul-stirring' and 'bolstering.' The rhyme is not perfect, of course - the equal accents on 'soul' and 'stir' don't quite match the heavy accent on 'bol' and the lighter one on 'ster,' but I tried to mask that by leaping the melody up on each '-ing' to distract the ear." In fact, I can't imagine how serious craftsmen in any field wouldn't find both books inspiring. The quilt maker fussing over which shade of red to employ as a highlight; the cook experimenting on how most appetizingly to glaze a plate of scallops; the automobile designer sketching a streamlined new speedometer - all such people should experience a sense of kinship when reading Sondheim debating whether, when seeking a rhyme, he might fairly use "wood" rather than "woods": "What justification was there to use 'wood' here (and in the 'Finale') and 'woods' everywhere else? I finally hit on an explanation: 'wood' sounded statelier and therefore suited a lyric sung by someone outside the action." Over the past two decades, some of America's greatest lyricists have been honored with expansive anthologies: Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin. I've read these other books in hopscotch fashion, jumping from song to song. But the Sondheim volumes demand to be read consecutively. They have the advantage of having been compiled by their creator, and Sondheim superbly turns each of his musicals into a propulsive narrative. IF "what lasts in the theater is character," these two collections ultimately encourage us to form a portrait and a judgment of the reserved man behind them. Often criticized as dry and cerebral, Sondheim comes across here as emotional and needy. (Understandably, he's most defensive when dealing with critical or commercial failures; of "Assassins" - which many critics panned - he declares, "The show is perfect.") He calls himself "an easy crier," which will come as no surprise to anyone who has read Meryle Secrest's biography (1998), in which - endearingly, to my mind - the artwork whose beauty he weeps over is often his own. He occasionally emerges as dourly severe; he can seem harsher than perhaps he is because his put-downs are quick and adroit ("There's a fervent lack of surprise in Hammerstein's thoughts" - in which "fervent" twists the knife). He's especially hard on Hart ("pervasive laziness"), to me the most lovable of the great lyricists. How could anyone not embrace Hart, that lunging, impulsive figure who brought the world such happiness ("Blue Moon," "My Funny Valentine")? Not cherish the man who, while bearing three monkeys on his back (a dwarfish physique, alcoholism, closeted homosexuality), contrived so many improbable, smile-inducing rhymes? But Hart, with his scattershot life, could never have assembled the comprehensive feat of empathetic imagination represented by "Finishing the Hat" and "Look, I Made a Hat" As Seurat in "Sunday in the Park With George" observes, "There's a part of you always standing by,/ Mapping out the sky." Year after year, Sondheim has retreated into his study and worked and worked, mapped and mapped. It shows. Brad Leithauser's most recent novel is "The Art Student's War." His new and selected poems, "The Oldest Word for Dawn," will be published in 2013.

With this chronological continuation of Finishing the Hat, musical theater lyricist and composer Sondheim has produced another delightful book that melds lyrics, anecdotes, opinions, and whimsy. This volume features lyrics from Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, and other shows, including unproduced works and television material. As in the previous volume, Sondheim includes descriptions about each show, as well as running commentary. Sondheim's general essays (the "harangues" and "dogmas" of the subtitle) show him at his opinionated and literate best. In "Awards and Their Usefulness," for instance, he writes, "the only awards that have significant value are the ones that come with cash." He also discusses (as in the first volume) his fellow lyricists and notes, for example, how the opening scene in Meredith Willson's The Music Man approaches modern rap. The book includes appendixes ("Oversights," "Original Productions," and "Selected Discography") and "Index of Songs" and "Subject Index." Verdict Highly recommended; certainly all libraries owning the first volume will want the second.-Bruce R. Schueneman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., Kingsville (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.