'Look, I Made a Hat': A Sondheim encore

LOOK, I MADE A HAT: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011) With Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany, by Stephen Sondheim. Alfred A. Knopf, 453 pp. $45.

When we staggered out of Stephen Sondheim's brain last year around this time, the hero of the grown-up American musical had taken us on a mind-altering stroll through the lyric-writing of 13 shows, including such groundbreakers as "Follies," "A Little Night Music" and "Sweeney Todd."

That was just volume one.

As promised, here's the second half -- which is more of the same, but perhaps a bit better because it has less structure to establish and less to prove. Like the first book, called "Finishing the Hat," this one takes its title from a number in "Sunday in the Park With George" that is arguably the greatest song ever written about the creative process and, Sondheim says, his most personal one.

But while the altogether accurate subtitle of last year's edition warned us to expect heresies, grudges and whines with our comments and anecdotes, the new book includes mere amplifications, dogmas, harangues and digressions.

In other words, we can no longer be shocked -- or distracted -- by his sensationally blunt impoliteness about fellow theater artists such as Noël Coward and W.S. Gilbert. Sondheim does save a few toxic darts for P.G. Wodehouse (for his "archness" and "tweeness") and Bertolt Brecht ("insufferably simplistic"). But there is even a generous sidebar here about lyricists -- Johnny Mercer, Meredith Willson, Carolyn Leigh -- he wishes had written more for the stage.

The new book begins where the other stopped, at the disappointing reception to "Merrily We Roll Along" in 1981 and the sense that his long, astonishingly creative collaboration with director Hal Prince had reached a turning point.

"Then I met James Lapine," he writes, picking up where he left us hanging last year with the writer-director of their Pulitzer-winning masterwork, "Sunday in the Park," then "Into the Woods," "Assassins," "Passion" and last season's biographical revue, "Sondheim on Sondheim." Describing the new partnership, Sondheim says that Lapine, like his plays, "is elusive where Hal is open, romantic where Hal is sociological, formal where Hal is freewheeling, subtle and suggestive where Hal is forceful and immediate, as unflappable as Hal is volatile."

Equally fascinating is the detailed, primary-source analysis of the "torturous evolution" of his most recent musical, "a saga which took 14 years to play itself out," the one called "Wise Guys," then "Gold!," then "Bounce." By the time the modest musical comedy had its premiere at the Public Theater in 2008, the name was "Road Show."

"Perhaps my fondness for it and my pride in it exemplify the parent's defensive love of the homelier child," he said, trying to explain his attachment to the story of two con-men brothers from the Gold Rush to the Florida real estate bust of the 1920s.

As in the first book, there are priceless pages of handwritten notes, typed lyrics and asides of provocative essays. He also shares his songs for movies, television and birthdays of famous friends. "Writing is a form of mischief," he says, suggesting both the daring and the joy of his genius.