Philadelphia Weekly

Henry Louis Gates speaks at the Free Library on Thursday night.

By any measure, a book about a blind child reared in slavery who becomes a piano prodigy and travels across the world should be interesting. And yet Deirdre O'Connell's The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist: America's Lost Musical Genius is deadly, even from the start. In her intro, she writes: "Back in London I set to work writing--what? A biography, novel, documentary? What was the right format to fit this mixed bag of tour dates, concert reviews, lawsuits and judgments; this social history of slavery, war, emancipation?" If she doesn't know, who would? She chooses biography but only in the loosest sense of the term, vomiting out Tom's story with little style, verve or persuasive historical context. It's almost miraculously unexciting, given what O'Connell says she had to work with: "In my fat little hand I had an anarchic, hilarious, quirky, mythic, tragic picture of Blind Tom--the stuff of greatness." Perhaps, but not in O'Connell's (fat little) hands. One of the great archival photos in the book is of Dizzy Gillespie crouched by Blind Tom's grave site, playing his trumpet in Tom's honor. It's a poignant moment and one that shows Tom's influence on subsequent generations of black musicians. If only the words on the pages were half as powerful.

• Speaking of slavery (weren't we?), Henry Louis Gates Jr.--director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research--has been extremely busy these days. He's promoting a book he co-edited, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, as well as his new PBS series, Looking for Lincoln. It's all Lincoln-this and Lincoln-that, as Gates explained when he appeared, deliciously, on The Colbert Report.

Colbert asked Gates, "What Lincoln are you looking for in your work? Are you looking for the conservative, the liberal, the gay, the depressed, the racist, the transcendental?" Gates replied, "Each generation of Americans remakes the image of Lincoln in order to remake ourselves. The myth of Lincoln is so capacious that every successive generation of Americans has been able to look in the mirror of Lincoln and see themselves reflected." Et tu, Obama? In Philly Gates will give a talk called "In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past." Doesn't this guy ever get tired? Thurs., Feb. 12, 7:30pm. $7-$14. Central Library, 1901 Vine St. 215.686.5322. www.freelibrary.org.

• Finally, a wee note about an in-the-theater movie adaptation. When Dan Savage came to Philadelphia a couple years ago to do a live show at the Troc, he expressed his distaste for Leonardo DiCaprio by saying the actor looked like a fetus. Perfect.

That, uh, youthful appearance is part of what's wrong with the movie version of Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates' incredible book that garnered universal praise upon its publication. But over the years its themes--1950s suburban ennui, chief among them--seemed anachronistic, and all the period dialogue ("You're swell," "Don't get sore," etc.) made it harder to access. But as with Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, those who love Revolutionary Road do so with a passion that feels personal and hard-won. So it's painful to watch fetus-faced DiCaprio try to essay Frank Wheeler; he's disastrously miscast. Kate Winslet, on the other hand, is excellent, but she can't save the movie for fans of the book, who will feel that though the film is one of the most faithful movie adaptations of all time--virtually word for word and scene for scene--there's something in the rich characters and complex marital dynamics that Sam Mendes' film just doesn't convey. On the other hand, who could best Richard Yates? It was probably folly to try.