As the philosopher Noam Chomsky has said, “we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology” – something the critic and author David Lodge has explored. In his 2004 book Consciousness and the Novel, Lodge argues that “literature is a record of human consciousness, the richest and most comprehensive we have… The novel is arguably man’s most successful effort to describe the experience of individual human beings moving through space and time.”
Archives for June 2018
Norman Lebrecht, Confessor Of The Music World
[The gossip] is the human comedy, that’s what I like. I came into music because nobody was writing about it in a way that interested me. Musicologists were writing arcane and abstruse things which had no relation to who the composer was, where he or she was at that particular time in her life. They weren’t answering the questions of, “Why is this piece meaningful to me, why is this phrase meaningful to me?” In the way that you’d ask in every other human transaction from the restaurant to the bedroom. And so I started asking those questions.
Art Gallery Of Ontario Puts Indigenous Art At The Center Of The Conversation
The centre has doubled the number of gallery spaces dedicated to Inuit art to four, and contemporary indigenous art fills a large new gallery of its own. Labels in the McLean Centre are now written in indigenous languages (either the local Anishinaabemowin language or Inuktitut), as well as English and French.
Scotland Plans To Put Culture At The Centre Of Public Policy
“The draft strategy is an opportunity to raise ambitions around the potential and profile of culture and to recognise that culture can be at the centre of wider societal shifts,” the strategy reads. “It places culture as of equal importance alongside other areas such as the economy, education, environment, health and tackling inequality, and values culture for the unique perspectives it can bring.”
Five Literary Magazines That Have Shaped African Literature
African literary magazines and journals don’t just shape literary culture, they offer the most rebellious responses to political and social movements. They not only respond to the cultures they’re in, these magazines also create distinct cultures of their own that reflect the personalities of their editors.
The Mountain Of (Unsolicited) Advice One Gets when Opening A Bookstore
“A part of the difficulty of opening a bookstore in this day and age is the years of work we’ve put in up to this point and how little credit booksellers get. Friends, family, loved ones, strangers all want to give you advice, often because they care, and one can get weary of very gingerly saying No Thank You.”
A New York Times Book Critic Runs A Secondhand Bookstore For A Day
“[Wigtown] is Scotland’s national book town, its Hay-on-Wye. With a dozen used bookstores tucked into its small downtown, it is a literary traveler’s Elysium. Best of all, Wigtown offers a literary experience unlike any other I’m aware of. In town there is a good used bookstore called the Open Book, with an apartment up above, that’s rentable by the week. Once you move in, the shop is yours to run as you see fit.” And, for one day, that’s what Dwight Garner did.
Censor Shakespeare? Let’s Be Clear What We’re Talking About
Every generation re-evaluates the art it has received and decides whether or not it is still worthy and relevant to their interests, but it feels like we’re in a moment of particularly intense scrutiny right now. Maybe it’s important to remind Shakespeare-lovers that much of Shakespeare’s work is deeply problematic. But if we’re going to force people to confront Shakespeare’s problems, then what is the point if we’re not allowed to then say, “Actually, you’re right, this is incredibly offensive, hopelessly out of date, and I want to walk out of this play/stop studying this subject/decide never to watch, read, or produce Shakespeare again.” I think that’s a legitimate response, but not the one, I suspect, that people who are most precious about censoring Shakespeare would support.
Why The Spanish Monks And Nuns Of The New World Branded Their Books
No, that doesn’t mean they tried to be savvy marketers: they marked their books with hot branding irons. And these marcas de fuego weren’t put on the cover, binding, or frontispiece; they were burned onto the sides of the pages as the books were held shut. Jessica Leigh Hester gives us the background.
How Chelsea Became A New York Art Power Neighborhood
The vogue for new art from the present was revving up, such that Chelsea’s rise as a commercial gallery district in the mid-’90s coincided with the arrival of “contemporary art” as a dominant category in the art world.
The Woman Who Was Kidnapped And Forced To Impersonate Aretha Franklin Before Thousands Of People
In 1969, Mary Jane Jones, a 27-year-old single mother in Petersburg, Virginia with a big, spectacular voice for gospel, was tricked – by a small-time James Brown impersonator – into traveling to Florida, where he threatened and bullied her into giving a series of performances that he sold to the black public in then-segregated cities as appearances by the Queen of Soul herself (who was the same age). Then Aretha, who was singing in Miami, found out – and so began a strange series of events that ended up with Jones performing (as herself) with Duke Ellington.
Podcasts Are The New Documentaries
True crime has outgrown the news magazines in favor of in-depth episodic storytelling. In thinking about whether the stories themselves have changed, it’s important to note the goals haven’t. First and foremost, podcasts, like documentaries, strive to put us in the room, and to explore the context of a murder. True crime audiences need to go deeper than the motives and the method. We’ve seen that summary level story on Dateline for the past twenty-five years.
Buying The Coliseum For English National Opera Was A Big Mistake, Says UK Culture Minister Who Arranged It
“David Mellor said that while he thought begging the prime minister to buy the Coliseum for the ENO had been ‘a major contribution to the cultural life of the country’, he now thought it was an ‘act of stupidity’. His intervention has been sparked in part by the decision of the ENO management to lease out the Coliseum in London for almost half the year [to producers of commercial musicals].”
Israeli Playwrights Are Bringing To The States The Scripts They Can’t Get Produced At Home
“Although representatives of first-rank Israeli companies, such as the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, argue that their organizations do not shy away from controversial work, American artistic directors whose companies have become havens for marginalized Israeli playwrights say otherwise. Groups such as [Boston’s] Israeli Stage and, even more prominently, Mosaic Theater Company in Washington consider themselves outposts for Israeli dramatists who find it increasingly hard to get a hearing in Israel for their most political works.”
Why A Nationwide NPR Or PBS Fund Drive Has Never Worked Out
“Why don’t all public broadcasters coordinate on a national pledge drive? … Though it may sound promising, a systemwide pledge drive for public media would get bogged down in logistics and clash with the system’s localized business model.” April Simpson explains how/why.
A Farewell Essay From Chicago Tribune Classical Critic John Von Rhein
“My central aim was to give the reading public an informed yardstick of opinion by which they could measure their own reactions to a given performance. … Contrary to what many assume of critics, I took no delight in panning performers. I always tried for balance in my reviews. I appreciated the power of the pen but was often reminded of the limitations of language when it comes to evoking arguably the most word-proof of the arts.”
Harlan Ellison, Superman Of Science Fiction, Dead At 84
“During a career that spanned more than half a century, Ellison wrote some 50 books and more than 1,400 articles, essays, TV scripts and screenplays. Although best-known for his science fiction, which garnered nearly a dozen Nebula and Hugo awards, Ellison’s work covered virtually every type of writing from mysteries to comic books to newspaper columns. He was known as much for his attitude as his writing — he described himself once as ‘bellicose.'”
Why The Doris Duke Foundation Revived The Artist Awards It Ended Last Year
“The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation wound down its Artist Awards in 2017, only to bring it back in a modified form as a core component of its mission moving forward. It just announced the seven winners of its 2018 class, and in doing so, addressed two of the big trends in arts philanthropy right now.” Mike Scutari explores how and why.
The Problem With Big Philanthropy
“Big Philanthropy is definitionally a plutocratic voice in our democracy, an exercise of power by the wealthy that is unaccountable, non-transparent, donor-directed, perpetual, and tax-subsidized.”
Orlando Ballet Has A(nother) New Executive Director (Will This One Stay?)
“Shane Jewell, announced today as the new executive director of Orlando Ballet, says he’ll be sticking around. But he’s keenly aware that after a revolving door of ballet executives in the past few years, there’s no reason for Central Floridians to believe him. … [There have been] years of financial crises and leadership changes at the ballet, which has had six executive directors since 2011. It nearly shut its doors for good in 2015.”
Glenda Jackson Will Return To Broadway In A New King Lear
The Oscar- and Tony-winning actor, now 82, returned to the stage two years ago, after a 23-year career in the UK Parliament, playing Lear in a modern-dress production at the Old Vic. Rather than bringing that staging to Broadway, she’ll be performing next spring with an entirely new creative team and cast assembled by lead producer Scott Rudin.
Glasgow School Of Art Will Have To Be Partly Demolished – And Fast
Contrary to reports last week that the landmark building by Charles Rennie Mackintosh remained “structurally solid” following the fire that raged through it earlier this month, “Glasgow City Council officials said that their surveys … have shown that there has been substantial movement in the building, meaning a sudden collapse of certain parts of it was ‘likely’.”
We Started A Theatre Company In An Old Bus Station (And No, We’re Not Entirely Bonkers)
Peter Tate and Anthony Biggs write about how they launched The Playground Theatre in a former depot near the recently-burned Grenfell Tower in London, how they decided to configure and equip the empty building, how they connected with audiences in what may be the most diverse area in the entire UK, and how they raised the money to pay for it all.
Founder Of Museum Of Russian Impressionism Flees Russia
“The real estate developer Boris Mints opened the Museum of Russian Impressionism in the former Bolshevik confectionery plant [in Moscow] in 2016. At the end of May, news emerged that Mints and his family had fled to London, reportedly to avoid possible criminal investigation in Russia over bank dealings.”
Germany Increases Arts Budget To €1.8 Billion
“The German parliament has approved a 9% increase in federal spending on culture, bringing the total budget to €1.8bn. Additional funding has been earmarked for preserving and protecting heritage buildings, archive materials and memorial sites. Another priority of the budget is to increase arts offerings and education in rural regions, says the German culture minister Monika Grütters.”