“I’ve imagined Plato shuddering at a certain conception of the field he helped to shape. Would he likewise shudder at having been left so far behind by that field?”
In The Internet Age Do We Still Need Editors Of Vision?
“The role of editor emerged in an era of constraint: there are only so many words and pictures you can fit into fifty pages of newsprint. We now live in the age of abundance, in which anything and everything can be published. There is, in theory, less need for an editor to say what works and what doesn’t.”
Random House Wins Bidding To Publish New Shirley Jackson Collection
“The new collection, called Garlic in Fiction, is edited by two of Ms. Jackson’s children … and includes her fiction (like the short story ‘Paranoia,’ which was published for the first time in The New Yorker last summer), as well as drawings, lectures and works of nonfiction that previously appeared in women’s magazines of the 1940s and ’50s.”
The Ten Best Documentaries Of All Time, Per The New Yorker’s Film Blogger
Richard Brody: “I’m the first to admit that it’s a somewhat tendentious list, with an odd preponderance of French movies. This isn’t merely the result of a personal affinity for an adoptive cinematic homeland but, rather, the crystallization of an idea.”
Adam Gopnik And Elizabeth Gilbert On The G.A.N. (Great American Novel)
“On this week’s Out Loud podcast, Gopnik and the writer Elizabeth Gilbert … join newyorker.com’s literary editor, Sasha Weiss, to discuss how the concept of the G.A.N. has evolved over the years and how it has influenced the aspirations of American writers.” (audio)
‘Love Is Something You Do’: Jamaica Kincaid And Lawrence Weschler On James Baldwin
The two authors – novelist/essayist Kincaid and longform journalist Weschler – join scholar Rich Blint and radio host Brian Lehrer to talk about Baldwin’s life and his ideas on love and race. (audio)
‘Mad Men’ and the Sexual Revolution, According To Gay Talese
Who better to take on this subject than the author of Thy Neighbor’s Wife?
Staging The Stories Of Bangladesh’s Shamed And Forgotten ‘War Heroines’
The birangona (Bengali for “brave woman” or “war heroine”) were ordinary Bengalis, hundreds of thousands of them, who were abducted and raped by Pakistani soldiers during the Bangladeshi War of Independence – only to be rejected by their families and communities afterward. Leesa Gazi has used their testimony to create a theatre piece now touring England.
What The Heck Are Dance Critics Looking For, Anyway? A Choreographer-Turned-Critic Explains
“Love us or hate us, we need each other.” Lauren Warnecke (who’s still a bit surprised to hear herself called a critic) understands where choreographers and dancers are coming from – and explains for them her new point of view. (She really is on your side. Most critics are.)
In Defense Of Aerial Dance
Lindsey Butcher, artistic director of Gravity & Levity: “Audiences don’t quite know what it is. Circus aficionados tend to think it waters down aerial skills and feel excluded because it is contemporary dance, but equally I’ve had dance buffs tell me I’m ‘selling out’ to circus. The truth is that aerial dance borrows from both disciplines but aims to forge its own artistic identity.”
Finland Is Actually Issuing Tom Of Finland Stamps
Yes, that Tom of Finland, the one world-famous for line-drawings of rough gay erotica. (The stamps will be self-adhesive, so there will be no need to lick them.)
Can Standardized Tests Predict Success? The Short Answer Is Yes
“We know as well as anything we know in psychology that IQ predicts many different measures of success.”
The Remarkable Neville Marriner At 90
“Given his work ethic and the fact that it’s only 4pm, Marriner could probably conduct a quick opera and record a string quartet before the day’s out. Doubtless there’s more coming from the Academy of you-know-where conducted by you-know-who.”
Simon Brault Named New Head Of Canada Council For The Arts
“Brault, CEO of the National Theatre School in Montreal, a former vice-chair of the Canada Council’s board and a co-founder of Quebec’s annual Journées de la culture (Culture Days), will assume the job June 26 for a five-year term, the Canada Council said in a news release.”
Low-Income Housing Doesn’t Have To Be Ugly. Look At Vienna…
“Vienna’s system, which produces proportionally far more subsidized housing each year than New York’s private developers do, proves that architecture does more than slather a varnish of luxury on otherwise basic shelter.”
Annie Baker’s ‘The Flick’ Wins Pulitzer For Drama
A three-hour play “drama that prompted an abundance of head-scratching and some audience walkouts during its off-Broadway run last year,” The Flick “follows the employees of a single-screen movie theater as they clean, converse and otherwise pass the time silently in front of the big screen.”
Donna Tartt’s ‘Goldfinch’, Dan Fagin’s ‘Tom’s River’, Vijay Seshadri’s ‘3 Sections’ Win Lit Pulitzers
Tartt’s novel, Fagin’s general nonfiction work and Seshadri’s volume of poetry were joined by prizewinners Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall (biography) and The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor (history).
Guest Artist With L.A. Phil Collapses And Dies Before Rehearsal
Jeff Dinsmore, of the Philadelphia choir The Crossing, was warming up before a Disney Hall rehearsal for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s upcoming performances of Louis Andriessen’s De Materie when he collapsed and died. Dinsmore was 42.
San Diego Opera Isn’t 100% Doomed (Yet)
“The company’s board of directors met Friday afternoon and voted to keep an April 29 deadline for the opera’s closure. But the board also formed a special committee of six members to explore alternatives to shutting down. … The special committee will focus on the retention of consultants, [the board chair] said, but she didn’t explain the purpose of those consultants.”
L.A. Moves To Unfreeze $7.5M In Frozen Arts Money
The funds, from a levy on developers to pay for public art and/or performance, have been accruing unspent since a 2007 City Attorney ruling that the money had to be spent within one block of the construction that generated it – which, depending on the location, isn’t always realistic.
Passover, The Jewish Holiday For Goyim
“Every spring, restaurants, churches, and student organizations invite non-Jews to relive the Israelites’ exodus from bondage. How did such an exclusive feast come to have seats for so many different faiths? … Does it dilute the real essence of Passover to turn the seder into a general celebration of freedom and a call for universal justice? Is it really that commendable to dip one’s toe into millennia of someone else’s tradition?”
Cubicles: How We Got Them And What They Mean
“The design was intended to increase the power of ordinary workers; in practice it came to do something quite different, or at least that’s how it felt to many people.”
The ‘Failed Intellectual’ Who Became Twitter’s Favorite Nihilist
Or, how a soon-to-be-former German professor (he gave up on getting tenure) acquired more than 67,000 followers for his “compendium of utopian negation”. (Sample: “The Tickle Me Werner Herzog doll I got for Christmas only laughs when I tell him the universe isn’t utterly indifferent to our pain.”)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.14.14
Now Hirshhorn Loses Interim Director
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-04-14
What I Thought I Wrote about “Porgy and Bess”
AJBlog: Unanswered Question | Published 2014-04-13
Inner direction
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-04-14
Irony, Minimalism, Ehrenreich and God
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-04-14
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John Luther Adams Wins Pulitzer For “Become Ocean”
The work, premiered on June 20, 2013, by the Seattle Symphony and published by Taiga Press/Theodore Front Musical Literature (BMI), was described in the citation as “a haunting orchestral work that suggests a relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels.”