“[She] won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1951 for her debut novel, The Beautiful Visit. But she is best known for her five-part family saga, The Cazalet Chronicles.” Martin Amis (her stepson) declared her “the most interesting woman writer of her generation.”
“A federal judge has issued a declarative judgment stating that Holmes, Watson, 221B Baker Street, the dastardly Professor Moriarty and other elements included in the 50 Holmes works that Arthur Conan Doyle published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law, and can therefore be freely used by others ”
“Aaron Betsky is leaving his post as director of the Cincinnati Art Museum after seven years in the job.” Says the board chairman, “It’s time to give someone else a chance. He has done an incredible job and gotten done what he set out to do.”
“Performances of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Apollo Theatre have been cancelled for an extra week until January 11.” The auditorium ceiling at the Apollo fell in mid-performance on December 19.
“When Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark goes dark for good at the Foxwoods Theater [in Manhattan] on Saturday, just how much dimmer – and for how long – will the immediate neighborhood be?”
“As e-books are stripping down to the bare-bones of what is actually book-like, physical books are growing more sumptuous and fetishistic.”
He was known as an astute critic and a historian of Beethoven and Bizet, it was “his series of books on Handel … completed when he was 90 – that indelibly lingered and really mattered.”
A visit to an out-of-the-way atelier in Florence where an all-female team restores historic fortepianos.
“To those who would argue that a computer’s demonstration of humanlike behavior is hardly enough to make it legitimately ‘conscious’, Turing responds that the same can be said of human behavior … Belief in the minds of others is just as much of a leap as love is. Following Turing’s logic, Twombly is not a solipsist for getting emotionally involved with his O.S.; he’d be a solipsist not to.”
“The seemingly simple word has a nuanced series of functions that children somehow master early on. In fact, no is among the top 10 or so words that English-speaking babies say when first beginning to talk … By the way, yes doesn’t even crack the top 20.”
“Performance artists confront an extra dose of bewilderment in South Africa, a nation less accustomed to the whimsical world of public and performance art than the U.S. or Europe.”
“What is the sound of one hand punching? It depends what movie you’re watching.” It could be a human body part, a turkey, pizza dough, a watermelon, or dry pasta shells.
“The National Science Foundation sent Jynne Dilling Martin to Antarctica this winter (the austral summer) as an artist-in-residence. [Here] are two poems she wrote from there.”