I had a record of “Trouble in Tahiti” when I was young. LOVED it. Saw it twice in person. LOVED it each time.It’s a small masterpiece, IMHO. And predated “West Side Story.”

Ratty boo, indeed.

One of my favorite duets from it—so sad— is the one where Diana and Sam sing “Why, why did I have to lie…”

There was a biographical film about Thomas Wolfe called “Genius” that was good. He had a tough time getting published because he didn’t have an elite background, and his writings were much too long. He and his first editor went at each other hammer and tongs and the editor took a meat axe to the material. In later years, after a falling out, the editor wondered if he had damaged the artistry of Wolfe’s work.

When the biographer Meryle Secrest asked Stephen Sondheim what caused Leonard Bernstein’s composing career to fall apart, the West Side Story lyricist answered with a single word: “importantitis.” Lenny’s desire to be a profound artist had prompted him to pen the sort of tuneless, modernist dreck that he had begun his career abjuring. He went from writing the charming melodies of Candide to the drab and tedious music of Trouble In Tahiti.

I don’t remember it as being that bad, although it was indeed no “West Side Story,” which it actually pre-dates, as it does “Candide.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Leonard_Bernstein

Noting this error in chronology is not to cast any aspersions on Mr. Leaf’s review of Simon’s book, which I enjoyed reading, but illustrates that every writer should fact-check his own work.

“Skid a lit day: skid a lit day… Ratty boo.”