ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Today’s AJ Highlights

Good morning: Here are this weekend’s highlights:

  1. Booker Shortlist Authors On The Moment Inspiration Struck “It feels incorrect, to have inspiration strike in the midst of grief, but what probably happened was that I was trying to get away somehow, to tell myself a distracting story. And a distracting story it was.” – The Guardian
  2. Dudamel In New York “LA Phil Dudamel in New York, offering a glimpse of what is to come. ‘You have the vision of a maestro who at least wants to try, who isn’t content with the base line of a symphony concert. And that is something to be excited about.'” – The New York Times
  3. Why Doesn’t Being A Good Writer Equal Being A Good Public Speaker? “Often, it’s an inverse relationship, as anyone who has gone to too many readings can tell you.” – LitHub
  4. A Time To Mourn, A Time To Publish “This is a tale of Walt Whitman’s influence on an AIDS activist, his partner’s devotion, and a posthumous novel.” – NPR
  5. Who Defines Asian American Literature? “There is no overarching chronology or guideline of how one behaves as an Asian in this country. One can immigrate and have no knowledge of the history and burden of yellowface, the Chinese Exclusion Act or the incarceration of Japanese Americans.” – LitHub

As usual, skip down to read all the stories we collected arranged by topic. See you tomorrow.

Doug

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Japanese City Cancels Major Cherry-Blossom Festival Because Tourists Behave So Badly

City officials in Fujiyoshida, not far from Mount Fuji, said residents had been littering, entering private homes to use the bathroom, and even defecating in people’s yards and getting belligerent when confronted. The weeks-long event had attracted about 200,000 visitors each year for the past decade. - The Guardian

How Typists Have Shaped Literary Masterpieces

The typewriter, from its birth, has been tied to a set of assumptions about gender and skill. These assumptions persist to the present and color our cultural understanding of typists’ labor. - Public Domain Review

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