Hurrah for copyright expiration: There are many new editions, with introductions and critical essays by voices that haven't been heard enough in the American canon. Then there are the graphic novels, editions with lavish new art, a novel about Nick Carraway's life before Jay Gatsby, The Gay Gatsby (Just how is that different from the original, you may wonder? It's overt), and, well, vampire Gatsby. We eagerly await the musicals. - The New York Times
And casting villains, that is to say law enforcement and others deeply committed to white supremacy, as heroes. But the new documentary MLK/FBI isn't confused: it "weaves a deeply troubling portrait of King being hounded and harassed by the FBI, while the murders of his fellow activists went strangely unsolved." - Washington Post
"Kim’s drops can seem to sit miraculously atop his raw canvases or be in the midst of gliding down them, leaving a trail of moisture. They glimmer with light and cast shadows, and while vividly present, they are always on the verge of evanescing." - The New York Times
Black arts groups are "historically passed over for foundation funding of this magnitude," but the Lula Washington Dance Theatre won over its grantors. The history of Black arts groups needing funding to get more funding is long and depressing - but things may be changing. - Los Angeles Times
Amanda Gorman will read a poem called "The Hill We Climb" at the inaugural ceremony on Wednesday (assuming it goes according to plan). "Unlike most 22-year-olds, Gorman has experience in inaugural poetry, having written one for the inauguration of Harvard’s president Larry Bacow." - LitHub
What's Lady Whistledown's business model? Seriously: To produce and print enough scandal sheets to feed the appetite of the ton, surely Lady Whistledown owns a printing press or something. And how does she pay her workers? Also, let's talk about that typeface. - Slate
Yes, it's partly because of TikTok and the world of duets, collaborations, and free-flowing (but in this case, very directed) creativity. But it's so much more: "Averno the setting of a sprawling, cross-platform universe over TikTok (125,000 followers), Instagram (47,000 followers), Spotify (1.4 million streams), YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr. It encompasses podcasts, livestreams, novels and short stories, TV and film scripts, an extensive alternate-reality game and, yes, musicals — all at different stages of completion." - The New York Times
Well, not in the foreseeable future, anyway, unless we can accept some "okayist" awards instead of trying to be number one all of the damn time. "Two developments that are making a substantial group of Americans busier, Sayer explained, are that a larger share of the country now takes on the combined 'social roles' of worker, spouse, and parent, and that the expectations of each have risen. Increases in busyness, she told me, are a matter of 'both feeling like there’s more feeling that you have to ‘be the best you can be’ in all of the roles, or you’ve failed as a person.'" - The Atlantic
Coventry is the UK 2021 city of culture. But ... yikes. "Much of the city’s pioneering postwar urban fabric is under threat. A gargantuan planning application has been submitted to demolish half of the town centre and replace it with a shopping mall with flats on top, in what has been condemned as a violent assault on the city’s modernist heritage, just when it should be being celebrated." - The Guardian (UK)
TV writers have helped changed public opinion on drunk driving, cigarette smoking, and - in the opposite direction - marriage equality. Why not mask-wearing, social distancing, and getting vaccinated? - Los Angeles Times
Ashton Edwards, an 18-year-old student at the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Professional Division, got tired of studying for and dancing "male roles." Last year, the dancer said was ready to go after something else - en pointe work. Peter Boal, the ballet's artistic director: "Ballet can be a little bit slow. We said, 'Why not? Lead us and we will work with you.' " - NPR
Bateson, an anthropologist like her famous parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, had a busy and famously documented life. "Still, it wasn’t her babyhood, her lineage or her scholarship — an expert on classical Arabic poetry, she was as polymathic as her mother — that brought Dr. Bateson renown; it was her 1989 book Composing a Life, an examination of the stop-and-start nature of women’s lives and their adaptive responses — 'life as an improvisatory art,' as she wrote." - The New York Times
The film is based on a one-act play by Kemp Powers (a long one-act play), and the playwright calls it "a work of fiction powered by the truth" - the truth being that Malcolm X, Cassius Clay before he was Muhammed Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, "four modern legends, really did hang out for one night in Miami, and yes, they really did bond over vanilla ice cream. - Vulture
Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning: "I grew up middle class and I went to school, and from the school bus you’d see kids washing plates in the gutter, working at these little roadside eateries. We had to get school uniforms made, and the tailor’s apprentice would be a person your age. Books are very meaningful to me; at the same time, I believe books do nothing for a lot of people, and that is a very valuable truth too." - The Guardian (UK)
