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The George Gershwin Reader.

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The George Gershwin Reader. Edited by Robert Wyatt and John Andrew Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [xiv, 354 p. ISBN 0-19-513019-7. $30.00.] Chronology, bibliography, index.

The life and music of George Gershwin have occasioned a wide-ranging and voluminous mass of written commentary--beginning in the early 1920s, when the young composer of "Swanee" was celebrated as the hottest new songwriter emerging from Tin Pan Alley, and continuing to the present day. There is relatively little in this body of writing that could properly be considered scholarship, and the material itself has rarely been the subject of systematic scholarly scrutiny. Even items obviously essential to Gershwin studies, like the handful of short but important articles written by the composer himself, go in and out of print in various formats with frustrating regularity. A volume devoted to presenting diverse, representative, and significant material by and about Gershwin in one uniform collection, carefully edited and designed for permanence, would fill a deep and lingering lacuna in the literature on American music. Considering the vast popularity of Gershwin's music, such a volume could also appeal to an unusually large group of readers. Expectations run high, consequently, for The George Gershwin Reader.

It gives me no pleasure to report that The George Gershwin Reader fails to fulfill the high expectations it excites. Even worse, it fails for the most basic and egregious of reasons: the editorial methodology is inadequate. Carelessness and inconsistency in editing mar the volume to an alarming degree.

Editors of anthologies like The George Gershwin Reader have two principal areas of responsibility. To begin with, the selections must be well chosen, arranged in a logical order, and of course present the original texts with scrupulous accuracy. This is primary, but the reader of such a collection should also expect that the editors will provide helpful commentary--offering succinct background information on the authors and the selections, clearly identifying errors found in the original sources, cross-referencing issues and possible contradictions...

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