Musicals

Kurt Ganzl has written numerous tomes on the musical theater, all of which are well-written, scholarly without ever approaching the pedantic, and often illuminate new corners of this much-surveyed territory. The plainly titled "Musicals" is no exception and. even when trodding in well-worn areas, always an exhilerating experience. But, as they say, that's not what I want to talk about. Rather, I have a rant about the over-all design of the book. I belong to that (admittedly rapidly dwindling) breed of readers who wants to READ the book in front of me! Yet modern designers of many of these illustrated works seem not content with supplying us with words (no matter how clever) and pictures (no matter how interesting). They feel the urge to combine both on a single page. I cannot state emphatically enough that laying light black print over a grey illustration makes the picture unseeable and the copy almost completely unreadable! I have no problem with deciphering obscure ideas from a dense text. I have no problem with discovering subtle hidden messages in a dense work of pictorial art. But those are chores for books of philosophy and great paintings. Why must I devote as much time to merely deciphering what words ae on the page?! Please, oh great designers of books who can't seem to resist the siren call of filling every page with as much material as they possibly can; please, oh please, I beg: "Resist!"