How Virginia Woolf Invented Modern Literature (And The Contemporary Essay Too)

WORDS Posted: September 1, 2014 7:00 am

“Her drive to observe her own perception, to take an ice-core sample of an instant, or of a day, or of a memory, is at heart a restorative gesture in the face of her era’s intensified speed, instability, and violence.”

Facebook

Twitter

So you want to see a show?
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-19
Almanac: Clive James on leaders and intellectuals
“Finally leadership, in any democracy, is a matter of character—a fact few intellectuals find palatable.” Clive James, Fame in the 20th Century ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-19
THE FUTURE OF ORCHESTRAS — Part Five: Kurt Weill, El Paso, and the National Mood
“Wherever I found decency and humanity in the world, it reminded me of America.” Kurt Weill wrote those words after returning from a visit to Germany in 1947. I read them aloud at least ... read more
AJBlog: Unanswered QuestionPublished 2018-04-18
La Salle Sales Shortfall: Two of Five 19th-Century Offerings Fail to Sell
Today’s auction at Christie’s of the first five of 46 deaccessions from the La Salle University Art Museum got off to an inauspicious start when the auction house’s earlier sales ran late, causing an hour’s ... read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-04-18
Snapshot: Robert Preston sings “I Died for a Living”
Robert Preston sings “I Died for a Living” on An Evening With Carol Burnett, originally telecast by CBS on February 24, 1963. This song, by Burnett’s writers, refers to Preston’s pre-Music Man career in Hollywood ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-18
Almanac: G.K. Chesterton on vanity and equality
“The doctrine of human equality reposes upon this: That there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. That there is no big man who has not felt small. Some ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-18
Propwatch: the plastic bags in Macbeth
Rufus Norris’ bereft, survivalist production of Macbeth was the show that launched a thousand thinkpieces about his regime at the National Theatre. The reviews were overwhelmingly hostile, and this apparently misfired Shakespeare followed on ... read more
AJBlog: Performance MonkeyPublished 2018-04-18
Rethinking Entrepreneurship in the Arts
…coming soon will be a series of reflections based on my experiences creating, launching and teaching in the master’s degree in Entrepreneurship in the Arts at Purhcase College SUNY. ... read more
AJBlog: State of the ArtPublished 2018-04-17
Lookback: on Bob Dylan’s Pulitzer Prize
From 2008: I wouldn’t dream of denying that precious few newspapers (mine fortunately excepted) are doing their duty, or anything like it, to high culture in America and the world. Which is why it strikes ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-17
Almanac: Chekhov on writers of fiction and their characters
“I have read your story ‘On the Road.’ If I were the editor of an illustrated magazine, I should publish the story with great pleasure; but here is my advice as a reader: when you ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-17
Why Max Hollein Was Inevitable as Met’s Director
Put yourself in the position of a member of the Metropolitan Museum’s search committee: Despite all the pressure to choose anyone but another white male–somewhat wrong-headed pressure, imho–I think you’d have picked Max Hollein (at ... read more
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2018-04-16
Monday Book Recommendation: Lilian Terry’s Jazz Friends
Lilian Terry, Dizzy Duke Brother Ray And Friends (Illinois) Lilian Terry’s book is full of anecdotes about her friendships with the musicians mentioned in the title—and dozens of others. Enjoying modest renown ... read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2018-04-16
“West Side Story,” and Leonard Bernstein at 100
IT’S hard to think of a figure in American cultural history more complex and protean than Leonard Bernstein. For my generation, he was already in eclipse when we came of age in the ’70s ... read more
AJBlog: CultureCrashPublished 2018-04-16
Fixing the Actual “Glass Ceiling” at the Metropolitan Museum: My Q&A with Keith Christiansen
With all the recent pushback against the supposed “glass ceiling” at the Metropolitan Museum (occasioned by the naming of an eminently qualified male, Max Hollein, to assume its directorship), let’s take a look at another ... read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-04-16
Music by the Second
Sometimes I’m amazed when I realize the number of clocks I encounter every day: on the wall, on the stove, on the phone, on the screen I’m typing on now. Reminders of the passage of ... read more
AJBlog: Infinite CurvesPublished 2018-04-16
Just because: Johnny Hodges plays Billy Strayhorn
Johnny Hodges plays Billy Strayhorn’s “Passion Flower” with Duke Ellington’s band in Copenhagen in 1967: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-16
Almanac: Merrill Markoe on the difference between actors and comedians
“Rule of thumb: Actors are people who know how to pretend to be someone else. Comedians are people who know how to pretend to be themselves.” Merrill Markoe (Twitter, March 6, 2018) ... read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-16
This Week’s Review of Audience Insight Stories
This Week’s Insights: How streaming is changing music… The selfie-driven museum… The data-driven bestseller… How museums’ purposes are being redefined… The first five-billion-view video How Streaming (And Its Data) Is Transforming Music: Now that ... read more
AJBlog: AJ Arts AudiencePublished 2018-04-15
Let’s move before they change the parking rate
No, I cannot quit writing about economic-impact-of-the-arts reports. Let’s try something a little more focused, and talk about … parking. Parking is part of the cost of attending a show, if it takes place in ... read more
AJBlog: For What it’s WorthPublished 2018-04-15
Filthy Rotten T.S. Eliot
When my staff of thousands sent me this book cover, APRIL IS A MOTHERFUCKER, by none other than T.S. Eliot, it put me in mind of Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917, which includes ... read more
AJBlog: Straight|UpPublished 2018-04-15

Older posts