The great man said that his advice was going to be painful—or maybe that was just in his tone—but he knew what he was talking about, and if I wanted to make a go of it as a novelist, I would do well to pay attention. The guy was nearly twice my age, but he was not old. He was young enough, for example, to wear black Chuck Taylors. He was young enough to smile ironically at himself, laying the Polonius routine on some raw hurler of metaphors out of U.C. Irvine. “Don’t have children,” he said. “That’s it. Do not.” The smile faded, but its ghost lingered a moment in his blue eyes. “That is the whole of the law.”
In The Wake Of #MeToo, Publishers Are Adding Morality Clauses To Writers’ Contracts
“Until recently, the term ‘moral turpitude’ is not one that crossed the lips of too many people in book publishing. But Bill O’Reilly, Milo Yiannopoulos, Sherman Alexie, Jay Asher, and James Dashner changed all that. … Major publishers are increasingly inserting language into their contracts – referred to as morality clauses – that allows them to terminate agreements in response to a broad range of behavior by authors. And agents, most of whom spoke with PW on the condition of anonymity, say the change is worrying in an industry built on a commitment to defending free speech.”
A Great Writer Warned Michael Chabon Never To Have Kids If He Wanted A Successful Writing Career
The unnamed éminence grise warned the young novelist-to-be that human spawn are giant time thieves and that each child would be a book he never wrote. Chabon gives his reply here.
The Nobel Prize For Literature May Be Cancelled This Year
Yes, the fallout from the sexual harassment scandal has gotten that bad: “The Swedish Academy yesterday discussed the Nobel prize and came to no decision,” said the head of the panel last week. “After our next Thursday meeting there will most probably be a statement on whether we will award a prize this year or reserve it for next year, in which case two prizes for literature will be announced in October 2019.”
Director Of Rome’s Galleria Borghese Charged With Crime For Going To The Gym While Clocked In At The Office
“Anna Coliva, the well-respected director of Rome’s Galleria Borghese, one of Italy’s top museums, is to stand trial on charges of absenteeism and defrauding the public purse … In total, she was absent from the museum for 41 hours over 12 days, according to evidence reviewed in court. At a hearing, Coliva said that the overtime she had worked more than made up for her absences.”
Poland’s Theatres Kick Back Against A Hard Nationalist Turn
If, as Dostoevsky contends, ideas are demons, they are also nourishment that can forge collective bonds and reinvigorate human connectivity. Contemporary reality, in Poland and elsewhere, has flown off the rails. Click, rewind. Start again.
Another Reason The Whole Shakespeare-Couldn’t-Have-Written-Shakespeare Argument Is Ridiculous
Most of the Will-Shakespeare-of-Stratford skeptics, such as Mark Rylance, seem convinced that no one from a 16th-century small-city artisan-marchant background could possibly have written such artful and erudite drama. That’s ridiculous because, points out Oxford historian Jonathan Healey, “many, perhaps most, of the greatest minds of the age were people of ‘middling’ origins.”
Arts Orgs Fear They Simply Can’t Afford To Turn Down Donations From Ethically Dubious Sources
“Although the vast majority are concerned that taking the ‘wrong’ sort of money could damage their reputation, just one in four report that their organisation has any sort of ethical fundraising policy. The findings emerge out of a survey of over 500 arts workers who shared their views on ethical fundraising and sponsorship. Their comments also reveal why organisations do or do not have a policy in place, and how useful they consider such policies to be.”
Resellers Who Use Bots To Buy Up Hot Tickets Could See Their Fines Soar
Under a new law submitted in the UK Parliament last week, “anyone caught using automated software to instantly buy tickets in such a way will face an unlimited fine. The move is part of a wider government drive to protect ‘real fans’ whose experience is being soured by inflated prices and limited ticket availability.”
In Interview On Record-Breaking Episode, ‘Simpsons’ Creator Matt Groening Puts His Foot In It
With its 636th having aired last weekend, The Simpsons now holds the record for most episodes of any scripted prime-time series. Said Groening, “I actually sometimes meet a famous actor and say, ‘Aw, you should do The Simpsons sometime.’ And they say, ‘I already did.'” But that’s not where he put his foot in it – his comment about the Apu controversy is what has Twitter a-twitter.
An Ambitious (And Revolutionary) Plan To Reconceive Paris
The new Guide for Grand Parisians “is a guide to the present and the future,” says Rémi Babinet, the president both of BETC and of the Endowment for Art and Culture of the Grand Paris Express. “It proposes quite simply and radically to reconsider our representation of Paris. It’s a new imaginary, a new mental map that helps render more concrete the Grand Paris of tomorrow.” Enlarge Your Paris’s co-founder Renaud Charles has said that the book “is not a guidebook. It’s a manifesto.”
In London’s West End, Understudy Steps In Halfway Through First Preview – On No Rehearsal
Rock star Tim Howar, playing Freddy in a new revival of the ABBA/Tim Rice musical Chess, had to leave the theatre at the intermission of the first preview performance because his wife had gone into labor. “Understudy Cellen Chugg Jones stepped into the role despite never having completed a full cast rehearsal – winning a standing ovation and praise from co-stars Michael Ball and Alexandra Burke, who both said he ‘smashed it’. “
The First Pussy Riot Oratorio
Prisoner of Conscience, composed by Jennifer Jolley for female vocal quartet the Quince Ensemble, draws its texts from the Russian punk rockers’ lyrics and from the transcribed proceedings of their 2012 trial on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for an impromptu (and very brief) protest performance they gave before the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.
This Singer Spent The Entire Rehearsal Period In The Hospital And Still Triumphed On Opening Night
Mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel was set to sing the female lead, Penelope, in Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses for Toronto’s baroque opera company, Opera Atelier, when she suffered third-degree burns in an accident. But she was determined not to miss out up on the project – and she didn’t. Here’s how she and the company pulled it off.
25,000 People Pitch In To Buy A Picasso Together
“The 1968 painting titled Buste de mousquetaire (Musketeer Bust) was offered up [by the Swiss discount retail website Qoqa] at the bargain price of two million Swiss francs ($2.0 million, 1.7 million euros). Over the course of three days, 25,000 people purchased 40,000 shares, at a price of 50 Swiss francs each, to become the proud owners of the artwork.”
Jazz Saxophonist Charles Neville, Of The Neville Brothers, Dead At 79
“The group melded rhythm and blues, gospel, doo-wop, rock, blues, soul, jazz, funk and New Orleans’s own parade and Mardi Gras rhythms, in songs that mingled a party spirit with social consciousness. Charles Neville – who usually performed in a beret and a tie-dyed shirt, with an irrepressible smile – was the band’s jazz facet, reflecting his decades of experience before the Neville Brothers got started.”
At 83, Jacques d’Amboise Is Still Helping Kids To Dance
Even now, d’Amboise still comes to the Harlem building each day — that is, when he’s not traveling the country, visiting one of the 13 affiliate dance institutes (there’s also an exchange program in China) and working on fundraising. “Yes, he’s here every single day,” confirms Ellen Weinstein, NDI’s longtime artistic director, who met d’Amboise some 30 years ago as a student at SUNY Purchase, where d’Amboise was teaching “for a minute” (academics did not suit him). “And four to five times a day I get a call, ‘Ellen how about this?’ It’s always something exciting, always fabulous!” she laughs, mimicking her mentor’s enthusiasm.
Leonard Bernstein And His Struggle For A New American Music
This August will mark Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday. The centenary celebrations started last August and are worldwide. The Bernstein estate counts more than 2,000 events on six continents. And there is plenty to celebrate. But if Bernstein remains a figure of limitless fascination, it is also because his story is archetypal. He embodied a tangled nexus of American challenges, aspirations, and contradictions. And if he in some ways unraveled, so did the America he once courted and extolled.
We Know Very Little, Actually, About The Meaning Of Life
What is the meaning of ‘meaning’ in ‘the meaning of life’? We talk about the meaning of words, or linguistic meaning, the meaning of an utterance or of writing in a book. When we ask if human life has meaning, are we asking whether it has meaning in this semantic sense? Could human history be a sentence in some cosmic language? The answer is that it could, in principle, but that this isn’t what we want when we search for the meaning of life.
Saturday Was Independent Bookstore Day, But Then, So Is Every Day If You Care About Books
Writer Celeste Ng explains the Gen X bookstore experience, including those joys of the mall: “I grew up haunting the B. Dalton and Waldenbooks in the mall. So my first indies—the long-gone Booksellers in Beachwood, Ohio and the redoubtable Mac’s Backs in Cleveland Heights—were revelations; they carried such a wide array of books, including niche titles that a more mainstream retailer wouldn’t have. I discovered many of my favorite authors just by browsing their shelves.”
This University Used To Ban Dancing On Campus, But Now It’s Adding A Musical Theatre Dance Track
Abilene Christian University spent many years quashing college students who wanted to dance on campus; the first on-campus dance was held a mere six years ago. But now a donor has stepped up to pay for a full-time dance instructor – and the head of the department says dance classes fit well within the university: “It’s missional because we’re helping students grow their God-given gifts.”
A Photography Prize Gets Yanked Because, Well, The Anteater Was Stuffed
Oh: “The dramatic photograph of an anteater approaching a glowing termite mound in the dead of night was originally considered a worthy winner of a Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. The prize has now been withdrawn after judges noticed a problem: the anteater pictured is almost certainly a stuffed animal kept outside a visitor centre.”
As Kansas City’s American Jazz Museum Teeters On The Brink Of Closing, Is The City Pushing It Over The Edge?
The city has gone through various creative processes to fund its other attractions, including Union Station, the National World War I Museum, and the Kansas City Museum. “Why didn’t city officials and museum stakeholders explore progressive options to breathe new life into the American Jazz Museum? It’s puzzling that none of these creative solutions was seriously considered.”
How Did Ferrero Rocher Become The Preferred Status Symbol For Immigrant Families?
Marketing – and the history of war. “Most Americans now know Ferrero Rocher by way of Nutella, but long before the hazelnut cocoa spread became an ingredient seemingly found in every trendy dessert recipe, the gifting and receiving of a Ferrero Rocher chocolate box (48 pieces if you were lucky) was a secret, universal language shared by immigrants in the ’80s and ’90s. It was a truth acknowledged amongst the hospitality-ladened cultures of their families: You never showed up to someone’s house — whether they were strangers or family — without a gift. And if the gift turned out to Ferrero Rocher, it was a surefire way to know you had almost literally struck gold with your hosts.”
You Think You’re Waiting A Long Time To Publish? This Zora Neale Hurston Book Took Ninety Years To Get To Print
She first tried to publish the novel in 1931, but its genesis was earlier. “Hurston began researching Barracoon in 1927, when she first interviewed the former slave Kossola (later named Cudjo Lewis) on an assignment from the famed anthropologist Dr. Franz Boas.”