ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Today's Stories

The Amazon Review Artist

Kevin Killian published over a million words on Amazon, across almost twenty-four hundred reviews, before his death, in 2019. The products he evaluated included DVDs of classic twentieth-century cinema, literary biographies, and experimental poetry collections—but also toiletries, Halloween costumes, and a chestnut tree. - The New Yorker

How Games Are Shaping Our World

Play is something that predates humans. It’s fundamental to how animals engage in and understand the world. It’s how we test and figure out the rules of our environment, how social relationships work. - LA Review of Books

A Theatre Troupe Struggles On Amid The Murderous Chaos Of Port-au-Prince

"'Every day (there’s shooting),' sighed the director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of gunfire. 'But even with the shooting, we keep on working because that’s our mission. We don’t want to stop.'" - The Guardian

Writers Demand Giller Prize Funder Divest From Arms Company

Some Giller winners state that “the only way to remedy what has been a deeply divisive period in Canadian arts is for the chief funders of so many arts prizes and organizations in Canada — banks such as Scotiabank — to divest from companies whose products are currently being used in mass killing.” - The Conversation

How Did We Lose Our Excitement For The Future?

As a child, I felt lucky to be born in 1960. I’d be only 40 in the year 2000 and might live half my life in the magical new century. By the time I was a teenager, however, the spell had broken. The once-enticing future morphed into a place of pollution, overcrowding, and ugliness. - Works...

Is The Era Of AI, Is There A Future Teaching Writing?

It turns out that there is some benefit to working in an industry that is clearly contracting but has not yet died. It forces you to think. Which is anyway your job, if you’re a teacher. As Samuel Johnson said of the death penalty, it concentrates the mind. - Plough

Italian Police Present An Exhibition Of Artworks Seized From The Mafia

"Eighty works, confiscated by the Italian authorities, went on show at Milan‘s Palazzo Reale this week. The exhibition, 'Save Arts: From Confiscations to Public Collections,' features paintings, graphic works, and sculptures by Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Robert Rauschenberg, Christo, and other prominent artists." - ARTnews

U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Law Requiring Sale Or Ban of TikTok

"A three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that a law designed to force a TikTok sale or ban is constitutional." - Business Insider

If You Can’t Tell If The Music Is Created By AI, It Doesn’t Matter

Background music for commercials, once the domain of human composers, can now be generated by AI in minutes, meeting technical and emotional requirements at a fraction of the cost. Why would a business pay a premium for human creators if AI can deliver similar or better metrics? - Shelly Palmer

Has BookTok Passed Its Prime?

We’ve had enough of endless, disappointing BookTok recommendations that promise payoff, not to mention its other cons. So are we finally at the end of BookTok’s chapter? - BookRiot

The Most Arts-Vibrant States, Ranked 1 To 50

"In its second annual release, our State of the Arts: Arts Vibrancy Rankings analyzes measurements of arts-vibrancy for all 50 states, using a comprehensive, data-driven approach that considers factors like supply, demand, and public support for arts and culture, along with adjustments for cost of living and population size." - SMU DataArts

Report: Podcast-Listening Continues Strong Growth

While podcasts’ popularity grows overall, the strongest momentum is with watchable podcasts. The data shows four in ten say they like actively watching a podcast, while another 29% prefer listening to a podcast while the video is minimized or playing in the background — for what one might consider an audio-like experience. - Inside Radio

New Black-Centered Arts Center Is Coming To Boston

"Castle of Our Skins, an arts institution that celebrates and aims to generate curiosity in Black music, cut the ribbon on Thursday … at its new location," to open in 2027. "The 2,491-square-foot space, which will be called Gold Hall, will function as a performance and community space." - WBUR (Boston)

Yuval Sharon Is Leaving The Industry, The Experimental L.A. Opera Company He Founded

"The company's executive director, Tim Griffin, who came on board in summer 2023, will ... become both executive and artistic director. Co-artistic directors, Ash Fure and Malik Gaines, who joined forces in an artistic director cooperative with Sharon in 2021, will form a new artistic advisory council." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

Bayreuth Festival Makes Deep Cuts To Its 150th Anniversary Season

Blaming its cash shortfall on the public-service sector employee contracts it has with staff and an inability to raise more revenue, Bayreuth management cut four productions from the summer 2026 schedule, leaving only Rienzi and the Ring cycle along with a concert performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.. - AP

“The Nutcracker” Is Saved! San Francisco Ballet Dancers’ Union And Management Agree On Contract

"San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker season will kick off as planned, despite concerns that opening night would be canceled due to a stall in contract negotiations. Ballet management … reached a tentative two-year agreement with its union members on Thursday." - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

The Guardian Approves Sale Of The Observer To Tortoise Media

"Tortoise agreed to invest £25 million ($31.9 million) in the British title over the next five years and has pledged to keep publishing the print edition of the approximately 230-year-old paper. Under the terms of the deal, the Scott Trust will become a key shareholder in Tortoise Media." - Bloomberg (MSN)

In His 80s, Claude Monet Developed A Visual Superpower

When cataracts had rendered him almost completely blind, Monet finally agreed to the eye surgery he had been avoiding for years. When he recovered, he evidently gained the ability to see ultraviolet light, and thereby could see colors normally invisible to human eyes. - Artnet

Lessons Learned From A Century Of Hollywood Box Office Flops

There are three rules for avoiding a cinematic flop.Rule one: don’t pick a title that is boring, misleading or hard to pronounce. - Literary Review

What Do Right-Wing Media And Improv Theater Have In Common? A Lot

Two researchers of information ecosystems find that the structures and mechanisms of improv theater and the right-wing media ecosystem are surprisingly similar — which explains why the latter's followers become so devoted. - The Conversation

By Topic

How Games Are Shaping Our World

Play is something that predates humans. It’s fundamental to how animals engage in and understand the world. It’s how we test and figure out the rules of our environment, how social relationships work. - LA Review of Books

How Did We Lose Our Excitement For The Future?

As a child, I felt lucky to be born in 1960. I’d be only 40 in the year 2000 and might live half my life in the magical new century. By the time I was a teenager, however, the spell had broken. The once-enticing future morphed into a place of pollution, overcrowding, and ugliness. - Works in Progress

If You Can’t Tell If The Music Is Created By AI, It Doesn’t Matter

Background music for commercials, once the domain of human composers, can now be generated by AI in minutes, meeting technical and emotional requirements at a fraction of the cost. Why would a business pay a premium for human creators if AI can deliver similar or better metrics? - Shelly Palmer

How Our Weird Obsession With Youth And Beauty Blinds Us To Real Meaning

With a crazed sense of humor and geysers of gore, these works demand recognition of simple and obvious facts: that looks aren’t everything and that everyone is going to die. Some will even be lucky enough to grow old. Why keep torturing ourselves to deny the truth? - Washington Post (MSN)

Why Snark Has Replaced Healthy Humor

Today that anger has festered to the point that we are losing sight of the real enemies of human vitality and imagination. Instead of satire, which aims at improvement, we have snark, derived from the old Low German word snarky, meaning bad-tempered. - Hedgehog Review

How AI Can Move Us From Being Productive To Being Creative

The AI's role isn't to automate organization; it's to suggest connections we haven’t considered and amplify our ability to see patterns and possibilities. I like to think of it as inspiration as a service. - Every

The Most Arts-Vibrant States, Ranked 1 To 50

"In its second annual release, our State of the Arts: Arts Vibrancy Rankings analyzes measurements of arts-vibrancy for all 50 states, using a comprehensive, data-driven approach that considers factors like supply, demand, and public support for arts and culture, along with adjustments for cost of living and population size." - SMU DataArts

New Black-Centered Arts Center Is Coming To Boston

"Castle of Our Skins, an arts institution that celebrates and aims to generate curiosity in Black music, cut the ribbon on Thursday … at its new location," to open in 2027. "The 2,491-square-foot space, which will be called Gold Hall, will function as a performance and community space." - WBUR (Boston)

Inside The Race To Rebuild Notre Dame

While the people of France supported the effort in the immediate aftermath—within days of the fire, there were donations of more than $900 million—the years that followed were beset by pushback, controversy and outrage. - The Wall Street Journal

Scotland’s Desperate Arts Sector Gets An Extra £34 Million From Government

Culture secretary Angus Robertson predicted the new funding for culture earmarked for the coming financial year would be 'transformational" for the arts industry. Finance secretary Shona Robison said that she aims to allocate an additional £20 million for the following fiscal year. - The Scotsman

Kennicott: What Should Be The Role Of Artists To Help Us Process The Upcoming Trump Years?

To survive the next four years, to make sense of where all this could be going, we need to understand barbarism as a living, ever-present force tending always to cruelty and destruction. And more important: We need to understand how culture pushes back against it. - Washington Post (MSN)

How Should Cities Decide What Buildings Should Be Protected?

There’s a loosely defined term of art for things that are prized and embedded in a culture but not necessarily architectural landmarks: intangible heritage. - The New York Times

Yuval Sharon Is Leaving The Industry, The Experimental L.A. Opera Company He Founded

"The company's executive director, Tim Griffin, who came on board in summer 2023, will ... become both executive and artistic director. Co-artistic directors, Ash Fure and Malik Gaines, who joined forces in an artistic director cooperative with Sharon in 2021, will form a new artistic advisory council." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

Bayreuth Festival Makes Deep Cuts To Its 150th Anniversary Season

Blaming its cash shortfall on the public-service sector employee contracts it has with staff and an inability to raise more revenue, Bayreuth management cut four productions from the summer 2026 schedule, leaving only Rienzi and the Ring cycle along with a concert performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.. - AP

Report: Workers In The Music Sector Will Lose One Quarter Of Their Incomes To AI In The Next Five Years

The report concluded that while the AI boom will substantially enrich giant tech companies, creators’ rights and income streams will be drastically reduced unless policymakers step in. - The Guardian

How Taylor Swift’s Tour Has Changed The Concert Business

Music executives say Swift has raised the bar for the concert industry, not just with ticket and merchandise sales, but conceptual ambition, stage production, wardrobe and news-cycle penetration. - The Wall Street Journal

A New Kind Of Music Therapy? Music Could Help Change The Way You See Your Past

"People often think of these musical memories as fixed snapshots of the past. But recent research my team and I published suggests music may do more than just trigger memories – it might even change how you remember them." - The Conversation

What It Takes To Be An Orchestra Librarian

"They obtain scores and parts, consult with conductors and concertmasters, check the music for accuracy, ensure that page turns are realistic, and make corrections as necessary. … Can you get the mute out fast enough? Who’s going to need more time to turn a page?" - San Francisco Classical Voice

Italian Police Present An Exhibition Of Artworks Seized From The Mafia

"Eighty works, confiscated by the Italian authorities, went on show at Milan‘s Palazzo Reale this week. The exhibition, 'Save Arts: From Confiscations to Public Collections,' features paintings, graphic works, and sculptures by Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Robert Rauschenberg, Christo, and other prominent artists." - ARTnews

Workers Found More Than 1000 Artifacts Under Notre Dame

It would have been unfathomable to dig up the famous cathedral before the fire. However, archaeologists now had the chance per a French law on preventative archaeology, which can be used “to detect and undertake the scientific study of archaeological remains. - ARTnews

Anonymous Donor Gives Millions To Milwaukee Museum To Make Admission Free To Kids

The gift will enable the museum to establish a endowment that will fund the admission waiver in perpetuity. The gift went into effect the day of the museum’s official announcement on December 3. - ARTnews

Reviving George Washington Carver’s Patented Prussian Blue Pigment

His recipe for making blue pigment from the clay soil of Alabama is of one of the few things the great African-American inventor patented. Yet he never commercialized the process. Now, for the art triennial Prospect.6 in New Orleans, Amanda Williams has painted some structures in Carver blue. - CNN

The Doctor Is In: What Is The Health Of That Painting?

Just as it is with a medical doctor, discretion is part of Suzanne Siano’s business model — she does not reveal to anyone what works she has inspected or conserved. Some of the paintings in the Grand Palais booths were familiar to her as former patients, but she was mum on which ones. -...

Tennessee Museum Asks Visitors To Sign Waiver Before Viewing Show Criticized By Republicans

“By suggesting that some works may be construed as hate speech and requiring visitors to sign a waiver, the sign not only misrepresents the purpose of the exhibit but also undermines the intent of the artists and the curatorial process." - Hyperallergic

Writers Demand Giller Prize Funder Divest From Arms Company

Some Giller winners state that “the only way to remedy what has been a deeply divisive period in Canadian arts is for the chief funders of so many arts prizes and organizations in Canada — banks such as Scotiabank — to divest from companies whose products are currently being used in mass killing.” - The...

Is The Era Of AI, Is There A Future Teaching Writing?

It turns out that there is some benefit to working in an industry that is clearly contracting but has not yet died. It forces you to think. Which is anyway your job, if you’re a teacher. As Samuel Johnson said of the death penalty, it concentrates the mind. - Plough

Has BookTok Passed Its Prime?

We’ve had enough of endless, disappointing BookTok recommendations that promise payoff, not to mention its other cons. So are we finally at the end of BookTok’s chapter? - BookRiot

The Guardian Approves Sale Of The Observer To Tortoise Media

"Tortoise agreed to invest £25 million ($31.9 million) in the British title over the next five years and has pledged to keep publishing the print edition of the approximately 230-year-old paper. Under the terms of the deal, the Scott Trust will become a key shareholder in Tortoise Media." - Bloomberg (MSN)

How The Chinese Communist Party Overhauled The Nation’s Comic Books

Lianhuanhua, read by children and adults alike, are palm-sized books with two or three lines of text and one image per page, and they became hugely popular in the early 20th century. But their storylines, often traditional tales, frequently incorporated magic and the supernatural — anathema to Mao Zedong Thought. - History Today

Guardian Journalists On Two-Day Strike To Protest Sale Of Sister Paper The Observer

"Nearly 500 journalists are on strike at The Guardian and its sister paper, the Sunday-only Observer, to protest the planned sale of The Observer to a small digital startup. … Says (star reporter) Carole Cadwalladr, 'The sale of The Observer to a loss-making startup is potentially the death of this historic brand." - NPR

U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Law Requiring Sale Or Ban of TikTok

"A three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that a law designed to force a TikTok sale or ban is constitutional." - Business Insider

Report: Podcast-Listening Continues Strong Growth

While podcasts’ popularity grows overall, the strongest momentum is with watchable podcasts. The data shows four in ten say they like actively watching a podcast, while another 29% prefer listening to a podcast while the video is minimized or playing in the background — for what one might consider an audio-like experience. - Inside...

Lessons Learned From A Century Of Hollywood Box Office Flops

There are three rules for avoiding a cinematic flop.Rule one: don’t pick a title that is boring, misleading or hard to pronounce. - Literary Review

What Do Right-Wing Media And Improv Theater Have In Common? A Lot

Two researchers of information ecosystems find that the structures and mechanisms of improv theater and the right-wing media ecosystem are surprisingly similar — which explains why the latter's followers become so devoted. - The Conversation

How Do Film Critics’ Circles Choose Their Award Winners? Same Way The Guys In This Movie Do.

"One thing voting for awards has taught me is that virtually every outside assumption about how the process works is wrong, (especially) any attempt to extract an overarching meaning from the results. … Fortunately, there’s an easy way to explain the process. … All you have to do is watch Conclave." - Slate (MSN)

British Film Censors Slap “Wicked” With A Trigger Warning Label

Regulators also cited a disabled woman in a wheelchair being “treated in a condescending manner by able-bodied people,” and talking animals being “persecuted in a fantastical society,” as additional reasons for the content warning and PG rating. - The Daily Beast

“The Nutcracker” Is Saved! San Francisco Ballet Dancers’ Union And Management Agree On Contract

"San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker season will kick off as planned, despite concerns that opening night would be canceled due to a stall in contract negotiations. Ballet management … reached a tentative two-year agreement with its union members on Thursday." - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

A Way To Teach Pointe Work That Won’t Wreck Dancers’ Feet

Lynne Charles, artistic director of English National Ballet School, has developed a method she calls 4Pointe. "There are all these methods ... but there’s no pre-pointe teaching ... the balance as you go through your foot. I’ve developed exercises for specific parts of the foot and put them in a specific order." - Bachtrack

A Choreographer Exhibits At Art Basel Miami Beach

"Diego Vega Solorza does not want people to think of him as a visual artist. He is certainly not a sculptor, he insists, nor a photographer or videographer — even though he will exhibit that kind of work ... at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach." - The New York Times

Why America’s Regional Dance Companies Matter

"In the performing arts, it’s often assumed that audiences consider international or 'big-city' imports higher quality than locally-produced talent and creativity. But for decades, regional companies have been proving that false. … While these 'homegrown' companies may have relatively low profiles, they’re a crucial part of the national dance landscape." - Dance Magazine

San Francisco Ballet’s Dancers Threaten Strike Just As “Nutcracker” Season Begins

"After five months of tense negotiations, the American Guild of Musical Artists says it has made limited progress in securing a new collective bargaining agreement for its members that addresses important issues like wages, safety and working conditions." The contract ends on Dec. 6, Nutcracker's opening night. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Elite Athletes Are In Serious Copyright Trouble

“Athletes, coaches, and choreographers are now facing the fact that they’ve been unintentionally breaking the law nearly every day, through the music that soundtracks their performances. And as rumors of the dollar amounts in musicians’ complaints spread, many athletes began to question” if their sports can continue at all. - Slate - Slate

A Theatre Troupe Struggles On Amid The Murderous Chaos Of Port-au-Prince

"'Every day (there’s shooting),' sighed the director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of gunfire. 'But even with the shooting, we keep on working because that’s our mission. We don’t want to stop.'" - The Guardian

What’s The Point Of Being A Theater Critic? This Is.

"Why would anyone want to be a critic? As I’ve admitted before, it wasn’t in my case an aspiration but a series of accidents that only in retrospect seem inevitable." Charles McNulty explains how it happened as well as the principles that shape his criticism. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Of Ticket Prices And Low Funding Of UK Regional Theatre

According to UK Theatre, the majority of tickets sold in regional theatres cost under £35, with 99.9% priced below £100. Even in commercial venues, 65% of all tickets sold for less than £45. Furthermore, since 2019, the average ticket price at UK Theatre venues has decreased by 5%. - The Stage

One Of DC’s Oldest Black Box Theaters Is For Sale — At A Price No Local Company Could Afford

A nonprofit called CulturalDC bought the Source Theatre in 2006 so it could remain a performance space. Now, however, CulturalDC's board wants to sell the building by the end of the year and is asking for $5.8 million. The company using the Source has offered to buy it, but not at that price. -...

Though California Shakespeare Theatre Has Shut Down, Its Scenery Shop Is Still Thriving

The shop has been building sets for other Bay Area companies for several years, and when the theatre's board closed the company in October, scenery for other shows was in progress. So the workers had a decision to make, and they made it fast. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Highest Theatre Ticket Prices In Britain Went Even Higher In 2024; Lowest Were Slightly Lower

"In 2024 the average most expensive ticket outside of London was £56.46, compared to £49.19 last year. This is 63% cheaper than the average top-price ticket across West End theatres, which was £154.56. The average cheapest ticket in theatres across the UK was £20.96, a 1.5% decrease on 2023." - The Stage

The Amazon Review Artist

Kevin Killian published over a million words on Amazon, across almost twenty-four hundred reviews, before his death, in 2019. The products he evaluated included DVDs of classic twentieth-century cinema, literary biographies, and experimental poetry collections—but also toiletries, Halloween costumes, and a chestnut tree. - The New Yorker

In His 80s, Claude Monet Developed A Visual Superpower

When cataracts had rendered him almost completely blind, Monet finally agreed to the eye surgery he had been avoiding for years. When he recovered, he evidently gained the ability to see ultraviolet light, and thereby could see colors normally invisible to human eyes. - Artnet

South Coast Repertory Theatre Co-Founder Martin Benson, 87

Benson’s path to success was fraught with challenges. Early in SCR’s history, Benson experienced literal starvation for his art, competing with seagulls for morsels of dumpster food near the beach. He survived esophageal and prostate cancer, clinical depression, and the shattering grief of his first wife’s suicide. - CultureOC

Lance Morrow, Once A Star Essayist At Time Magazine, Has Died At 85

"(He) was both observer and narrator during a more than seven-decade career that included books and memoirs, more than 20 years with a coveted back-page column in Time, and, later, time as a contributing writer to outlets such as The Wall Street Journal." - The Washington Post (MSN)

Founder Of Collapsed American National Ballet Sentenced To 20 Years For Shooting Ex-Husband

Ashley Benefield, whose marriage to Doug Benefield disintegrated after the ballet company they attempted to launch fell apart, was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter for shooting him during an altercation at her home in Florida in 2020. - CBS News

Ira Glass Says He’s Not As Nice As He Pretends To Be On The Radio

"I contain that sort of empathetic people-pleasing person who I'm playing on the radio. ... But I'm a person under weekly deadlines, and I get freaked out and tired and irritable and don't want to talk to people and get annoyed. And I curse a lot in real life." - NPR

AJ Premium Classifieds

Michigan Maritime Museum – Executive Director

Seeking an entrepreneurial and data-driven leader passionate about the Great Lakes to serve as the next Executive Director of the Michigan Maritime Museum.

Managing Director-Goodspeed Musicals

Goodspeed Musicals (Goodspeed) seeks an accomplished, inspiring, and inclusive arts leader to help guide this storied organization into a vibrant next chapter.

Managing Director – Roundabout Theatre Company

Roundabout Theatre Company is seeking a strong business and operations leader to serve in partnership with with its Artistic Director to chart the future of the nation’s largest theatre producing organization.

AJClassifieds

Artistic Director, Nashville Children’s Theatre

Nashville Children’s Theatre (NCT), the oldest professional children’s theatre in the U.S., seeks a visionary and collaborative leader as its next Artistic Director.

North Carolina Symphony seeks Director of Communications

North Carolina Symphony is seeking a communications professional skilled in strategic storytelling, social media, press outreach, video production, and email communications for the performing arts.

Stratford Festival seeks their next Artistic Director

“Stratford is by every measure – budget, employment, attendance, production – the largest repertory theater in North America, and likely the largest nonprofit theater, period.”

Forest Forward seeks Executive Director of Programming & Production

The Executive Director of Programming and Production will serve...

How Do Film Critics’ Circles Choose Their Award Winners? Same Way The Guys In This Movie Do.

"One thing voting for awards has taught me is that virtually every outside assumption about how the process works is wrong, (especially) any attempt to extract an overarching meaning from the results. … Fortunately, there’s an easy way to explain the process. … All you have to do is watch Conclave." - Slate (MSN)

When Historic Preservation Means More Than Just Landmarking Buildings

"So what do we mean when we designate something a landmark? It’s a trickier question than you might think. Landmark laws across the country have come into existence to preserve things we deem culturally significant. But they don’t always protect what we actually want to save." - The New York Times

Hundreds Of Authors Support Their Fellow Novelist

Lisa Ko “was subjected to weeks of harassment as well as a broader smear campaign in the media which resulted in a loss of professional opportunities,” and many of her fellow authors will not have it. - LitHub

Bringing Fanny And Alexander To Life As An Opera

The TV series version of Fanny and Alexander is more than five hours long, but the opera (perhaps sadly) has to be shorter. “The key to their adaptation was to capture the look and feeling of the movie with efficiency, and in new ways." - The New York Times

Elite Athletes Are In Serious Copyright Trouble

“Athletes, coaches, and choreographers are now facing the fact that they’ve been unintentionally breaking the law nearly every day, through the music that soundtracks their performances. And as rumors of the dollar amounts in musicians’ complaints spread, many athletes began to question” if their sports can continue at all. - Slate - Slate

Canada’s Largest Publishers Have Had It With OpenAI

And they’re filing a major lawsuit over copyright violations. "The suit was filed by several leading Canadian media companies, including the owners of the National Post and Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada.” - The Verge

Jonathan Franzen Shares His Journal About The Agonizing Process Of Writing “The Corrections”

Adam Moss: "(it) is full of notes-to-self that provide a real-time map of what was going through his mind. … It’s rare for a writer to allow you this far in to see how a novel is written; most are secretive, superstitious about exposing a process that even they don’t understand." - Vulture

How An Iranian Director Made His Award-Winning Film In Secret — And Was Then Smuggled Out Of The Country

Mohammed Rasoulof had been imprisoned for his work before, and he knew that his The Seed of the Sacred Fig — which ultimately got a 13-minute ovation and a special jury prize at Cannes — would land him there again. Yet he felt compelled to do it. - The New York Times Magazine

The Google Empire Is Under Assault From All Sides

"For many years, Google’s sprawling empire has faced little legal scrutiny, allowing the company to freely build up its search engine, browser, operating systems, and line of hardware products that all intersect to bolster one another.” But all empires must fall. - The Verge

How Public Libraries Can Prepare Themselves For The Incoming Administration

Well, this is a cheery article. “There are fewer than two months—and honestly, about one month with the holidays—to shore up your institutions to make them as strong and solid for the community as possible.” - Book Riot

Should We All Toss Our Phones Now, Or What?

Ronan Farrow’s new article argues that we’re all at risk of being hacked - by our own government. “When it happens in a democracy … , it creates a sense of disorientation: ‘Could this happen to me? Here? Really?!’ And yet it can, and it does.” - The New Yorker

Will The New Info About Cormac McCarthy Affect The Writer’s Reputation?

“Everybody knew about Augusta, but they all knew her as a secret. … Because they met when she was so young, she was an abused child, she was a runaway, and Cormac was in his 40s, it was a situation that in many ways would look bad.” - The New York Times
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