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Ocean Vuong Recounts The Death Of His Mother And Taking In His Young Brother

“It had been more than a decade since we lived together … a straight man with an affinity for collectible sneakers, basketball, sports cars, anime and first-person-shooter video games coming to live with his nerdy gay professor brother in a house full of books.” - The New York Times

Yes, No, And We Give Up: The Verdicts In Harvey Weinstein’s New York Retrial

After what were reported to be extremely contentious deliberations, the jury found the disgraced producer guilty of one count of sexual assault and not guilty of a second count. The judge declared a mistrial on a count of rape after the jury deadlocked and the foreman refused to continue deliberating. - AP

Günther Uecker, Who Made Art With Hammer And Nails Rather Than Paint, Has Died At 95

“In his art work, seemingly endless numbers of nails, which would by themselves perhaps be perceived as potentially aggressive and hurtful, turned into harmonic, almost organic creations. His reliefs with the tightly hewn nails are reminiscent of waving grasses or fields of algae in a marine landscape.” - AP

Brian Wilson, Creative Mastermind Of The Beach Boys, Is Dead At 82

“There was an abiding pathos in his best records — not merely the idealized scenes the songs depicted, but also that they were created by a depressed, socially awkward, partially-deaf young man who never surfed or much liked the beach and spent his time alone in his room.” - The Washington Post (MSN)

The Most Popular TikTok Star On The Planet Is Detained By ICE And Leaves The U.S.

Khaby Lame, a 25-year-old Senegalese-Italian influencer with 162 million followers on the video app, was detained at Las Vegas airport for (as an ICE spokesperson put it) “overstaying the terms of his visa.” He was allowed to depart the country without being held to wait for a deportation order. - AP

Barbara Holdridge, Co-Founder Of Caedmon Records (And The Entire Audiobook Industry), Has Died At 95

“Ms. Holdridge, along with her best friend, Marianne Mantell, built the label, Caedmon Records, into a recording industry dynamo by releasing LPs of such notable authors and poets as T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, Eudora Welty, and Ernest Hemingway reading their own words.” - The New York Times

Twenty Years After His Fabricated Memoir And Grilling By Oprah, James Frey Is Trying For A Comeback

“As Frey sees it, the public has gotten increasingly comfortable with falsehoods, without getting fully comfortable with him. He finds it all a bit absurd. ‘I just sit in my castle and giggle,’ he said.” - The New York Times

William Kentridge On Creating Art

You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve written something, it feels really great and, the next morning, you read it and think, “Who wrote that? Not me. I would’ve written something much more intelligent.” One tends to disappoint oneself, and that split is very common in the studio. - The New York Times

Frederick Forsyth, One Of The World’s Best-Selling Thriller Novelists, Has Died At 86

“A mega-selling British novelist of political thrillers, cunning spy craft and globe-trotting intrigue, (he) used his own background as a foreign correspondent to inspire such page-turners as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and The Dogs of War.” - The Washington Post (MSN)

What To Make Of Damien Hirst At 60?

Ever since Hirst burst on the art scene in the 1990s with his macabre readymades (or “objets trouvé”) of dead animals in vitrines, he has divided art critics and the public alike. - The Conversation

What Makes A Great Live Event Producer?

Ask Jesse Collins: “‘Credibility with your word’ is what makes a great producer. ‘If something goes wrong, nobody knows me — they’re just going to look at the artist,’ he said, so it’s imperative to deliver or to make it clear when you can’t.” - The New York Times

Gertrude Stein Was A Self-Promotion Genius

Some of her PR tactics were terrific even by today’s standards, and she achieved a level of fame in America that’s astonishing, then or now, for an avant-garde writer, let alone an expatriate. That fame got her just about everything but the one thing she really wanted. - Prospect (UK)

Walt Whitman, The Original Self-Mythologizing Selfie King

“Unlike many of his contemporaries, the poet collected an ‘abundance of photographs’ of himself. And like many people today who snap and post thousands of selfies, Whitman, who lived during the birth of commercial photography, used portraits to craft a version of the self that wasn’t necessarily grounded in reality.” - The Conversation

They’re Making An Animatronic Walt Disney For Disneyland. Walt’s Granddaughter Says He Would Hate That.

Joanna Miller expresses great admiration for the skills of the Disney Company’s animatronics team. But she argues that "two minutes with the robot will do much more harm than good to Grampa's legacy. They will remember the robot, and not the man.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Novelist Edmund White, 85

The novelist, five-time memoirist, and co-author of the pioneering 1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex “was a major influence on modern gay literature, with LGBTQ+ writing prizes named after him and authors including Garth Greenwell, Édouard Louis, Ocean Vuong, Brandon Taylor and Alexander Chee all noting his importance.” - The Guardian

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