[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Pln6fxEk2TX0tQNMAlUpd0JSCmyG43Dh"] WHEN I was in Puebla, Mexico, a few weeks back, the story of the 43 missing students -- thought to have been murdered by a collusion between a drug gang and government officials in Guerrero -- was heating up and protests were beginning. To some, they are the latest victims of the War on Drugs launched, and largely maintained, by the … [Read more...]
Is El Sistema Authoritarian?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="OBug1WHMcv4Mu8jWVEU2LxPTK8wO2pBx"] A NEW book by a British academic has charged that the Venezuelan-born classical-music-for-all program is run like something between a corporation and a cult. I've not seen the book yet, but David Ng of the LA Times interviews its author, Geoffrey Baker. Here's Baker -- whose book is published by Oxford University Press -- discussing … [Read more...]
The Future of Reading, and Farewell to Garcia Marquez
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="wpIfhTFr9kKtMpx4vb9kTfcqutjYEoQT"] ONE of the reasons we're all here -- as lovers of Beethoven quartets, long Kurosawa films, serious novels, challenging visual art -- is that we experienced the joys of immersive, uninterrupted reading at an early age. There's a lot of talk -- rightly so -- about how poor kids get less of this than wealthier ones. But are the … [Read more...]
Roberto Bolano’s Eternal Life
Given the perilous state of publishing these days, it makes my heart sing whenever a writer of substance generates a serious following. And I keep bumping into people who feel passionate about the Latin American writer Roberto Bolano, who died near Barcelona in 2003. He's in the news these days for the publication of a slender sort-of-mystery novel called Monsieur Pain, but he has not stopped … [Read more...]