“There is no shame in being a minor writer. Some of my favorite writers were, in their day, considered minor writers: Nathanael West, Charles Bukowski, Mikhail Lermontov, Blaise Cendrars, Flann O’Brien, and even Gertrude Stein. It is an honorable way to make a living. Certainly I’ve done less damage to the forests of America than my better-selling peers. And while a major writer can be reassessed and reduced in stature in posterity, for a minor writer, there is only potential upside.”
Did The Young Mark Twain Pull A Con Job On A Group Of Boston Abolitionists?
“The renowned Thoreau scholar Robert Sattelmeyer spotted an odd entry in the Boston Vigilance Committee’s accounting books and wondered: is that the Samuel Clemens, who grew up to be Mark Twain? The committee used most of its funds to help runaway slaves escape to freedom, in direct violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. But in an unusual expenditure in September 1854, the radical abolitionists sent $25.50 to a Samuel Clemens for ‘passage from Missouri Penitentiary to Boston — he having been imprisoned there two years for aiding Fugitives to escape.'”
Could A Classical Music Talent Show Become A TV Hit? (Well, It Worked In Hungary)
“Virtuosos is a talent contest which already has a track record of attracting a mass viewership – in its native Hungary. It was started in 2014 by entrepreneur Mariann Peller, … with impressive results: the show’s fourth series has been reaching audiences of over 700,000 per episode, with the 2017 final not far short of the million viewer mark – nearly one in ten of the country’s population, which is comparable to the reach in the UK of mass market talent shows like The X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent.” Now Peller is going to try bringing the show to Great Britain and the U.S. – with no less than Plácido Domingo signing on to be a guest judge.
What Improv Does To Your Brain
“Does the brain of a comedy improv actor or freestyle rapper work in a particular way? Is it measurably different? Is it processing language (or sound) faster than a regular, lower-improvising brain? … We asked our pal Ari Daniel from our partner program NOVA to look into this. As it happens, he found a group of researchers and a group of professional improvisers working together on some of these questions.”
Why We All Need Our Personal Space (And How We Define It)
The most consistent finding out of this vast literature, the one fundamental result, is that personal space expands with anxiety. If you score high on stress, or if the experimenter stresses you ahead of time—maybe you take a test and are told that you failed it—your personal space grows with respect to other people.
Man Who Accused George Takei Of Drugging And Sexual Assault Admits It May Not Have Happened That Way
“A fabricated coffee meeting. Key facts withheld or walked back. A ‘great party story’ about a sexual assault — which the accuser now says may not have actually happened. What happens when an activist’s legacy is tarnished by the story of an old friend who later says it could have all been a misunderstanding? And how do we process such an anomaly in an era of overdue social justice?”
After Giving Birth To Her Fourth Child, Conductor Joana Carneiro Resigns From Berkeley Symphony
Not only does the Portuguese conductor have a new baby, but her triplets are still toddlers. She leaves the Bay Area orchestra, where she succeeded Kent Nagano as music director, after nine seasons.
Oops – Pay For Canadian Arts Workers Did Not Actually Decline Over The Past Decade (Never Mind That Report)
“On April 19, the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) released a report outlining changes to the not-for-profit arts sector in Canada. The study asserted that from 2008 to 2017, real wages had decreased for those working in the field. This proved to be erroneous, and with some independent calculations of our own, we discovered a significant error in the calculations’ methodology.”
When A Controversial 1950s Erotic Novella Was Illustrated In 2018, People Flipped Out Like It Was Still The Fifties
Natalie Frank, the artist who illustrated “The Story of O,” saw her work get disinvited from at least one gallery because of its content. “O became wildly popular and wildly controversial. In the 1970s and 1980s, some anti-porn feminists railed against it, deeming its explicit content pornographic, dehumanizing and ultimately detrimental to women’s fight for equal rights. In a twist of fate, Frank’s visual interpretations of Aury’s literary smut faced similar allegations in 2018.”
Apparently, Kids’ Brains Are Like Goldilocks (And Reading To Them Is ‘Just Right’)
If a child gets only the audio of a book, as when parents as one of their AIs to read the child a story, the kid might not get engaged – the info is “too cold”. But if the child is looking at a graphic novel, the information may be “too hot.” The best info is an illustrated book, and even better if a caring adult is reading that book to the kid.
Remembering Extraordinary Literary Agent Elaine Markson, Who Died May 21 At Age 87
Author Alice Hoffman: “Everyone knows that if Elaine Markson was your agent you had a fierce and loving protector for life. … She was pure Greenwich Village with clients like Andrea Dworkin, Abbie Hoffman (I was often billed for advances Elaine loaned him as we were both A. Hoffmans) the great Grace Paley, and the iconic feminist writer Tillie Olsen. Elaine was the one agent in America who didn’t care about making deals.”
European Union Will Increase Culture Budget By €400 Million (27%)
From 2021-27, the budget allocated to the EU culture sub-programme would increase from approximately €450m to €650m, whilst the budget for the media sub-programme would increase from roughly €820m to €1.2bn.
New European Data Privacy Law Causes Havoc For Arts Org Data Sharing
Under the new regulation, passed by the European Parliament in April 2016, arts organisations will need to keep detailed records of which of their customers have consented to be contacted with marketing information, when that consent was given, and what they were told would happen with their data.
How Misbehaving Actors Do Violence To Our Culture
Fun, meaningful, even great works that dozens or hundreds of people labored over, that built careers and fortunes and whole industries, become emotionally contaminated to the point where you can’t watch them anymore. Forget the masterpieces that Jeffrey Tambor has been a part of. Louis C.K.’s show Louie helped pave the way for the “Comedy in Theory” genre that includes You’re the Worst, Atlanta, Better Things, Master of None (ahem, Aziz), High Maintenance, Insecure, and many other notable shows. Now, because of the indecent-exposure allegations by Corry and others — allegations C.K. himself confirmed as true — that series has become the Voldemort of recent TV: You dare not speak its name.
The Incredibly Prolific Lawyer Who’s Making Media Companies Nervous – And Photographers Hopeful That They Might Get Paid
“Our story starts with Geno Smith getting punched in the jaw by a teammate, as most good stories about copyright law do.” Justin Peters introduces us to “the scourge of the media industry, the shame of many in the copyright bar, and the salvation of the underpaid photographer” — Richard P. Liebowitz, who, “in the past 2½ years, … has filed more than 600 federal lawsuits on behalf of photographers who believe their copyrights have been infringed by entities that have used their pictures without license or permission. That number averages out to roughly five lawsuits per week.”
Should I Push My Kid To Keep Taking Lessons?
I saw how practicing, even when I didn’t want to, led inevitably to progress. That lesson affects everything I do today professionally and personally, because in my adult life I actually got to apply it to something I wanted to do. Obviously, if I had never been made to continue, it may have taken me decades to really learn the value of pushing myself.
Why Alexa Recorded That Couple’s Private Conversation Without Warning And Sent It To A Contact Of Theirs
Reporter Jason Del Rey followed up with Amazon on the scariest of the recent Alexa mishaps and got the company’s explanation of what exactly went wrong. (He doesn’t seem 100% convinced.)
Does The Success Of The “Harry Potter” Show, A Threat To Broadway?
To some theater veterans, the success of “Potter” — a 5½ hour extravaganza set in the world of a Hollywood mega-franchise — is cause for concern. Is this, they wonder, what it takes to make it here now? Shows based on known properties are mounting an offensive on the New York stage. And some in this old guard worry a sacred American institution — and a time-honored way of doing business — is becoming endangered.
MoMA Sues A Tea Shop For Trademark Infringement
“Momacha, a small matcha café on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is fighting back against a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by the Museum of Modern Art, otherwise known as MoMA. On Monday, the café — whose name was originally styled MoMaCha — moved to dismiss MoMA’s claim of trademark dilution.
Why There’s Still A Debate Over Returning Looted Art Treasures To Ethiopia
The Victoria and Albert Museum’s new show of items taken by British soldiers from the court of Emperor Tewodros after the 1868 Battle of Maqdala had led to renewed calls for the valuable art objects and manuscripts to be repatriated. Reporter James Jeffrey looks at the history of the loot (there have been calls for its return from within Britain ever since it was taken) and the reasoning behind the British Library’s reluctance to relinquish the objects.
A Standard 7 PM Curtain Time Would Make Theatre Better For Almost Everyone
The trend has started with Matilda the Musical in the West End, and Mark Shenton makes the case that it should spread.
Was This Tribute To Sausage Robert Indiana’s Last Sculpture?
“The odd, isolated end of Robert Indiana’s life included a lawsuit filed in his final days that accused two associates of taking advantage of the elderly artist in his later years by churning out inauthentic works under his name. … That conversation is likely to escalate with the discovery Thursday that Mr. Indiana’s last monumental sculpture was a tribute to bratwurst. It was commissioned by the owners of Johnsonville Sausage, in Wisconsin, that is one of the country’s largest producers. Mr. Indiana appears to have taken to the task of designing ‘BRAT’ with (sorry) relish.”
Protesters Disrupt Philadelphia Orchestra Concert In Brussels
“Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Thursday night performance in Brussels, urging the orchestra to cancel the upcoming Israel leg of its tour. The protesters broke into a performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor with chants of ‘free, free, Palestine,’ and after about 30 seconds, music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin stopped conducting and the music came to a halt … Security removed the protesters, and the concert resumed about 25 minutes later.”
Los Angeles Times Blocks European Readers Because Of EU’s New Privacy Rules
Friday’s the day the new EU rules go into effect; that’s why you’ve been getting so many emails about GDPR (the new regime) and updated privacy policies. While most websites appear to have tweaked their data-collection policies and are updating their users about the changes in order to continue operating in Europe, some appear to be throwing in the towel completely — among them one of the biggest newspapers in the United States, the Los Angeles Times.”
Head Of Major Vienna Museum Quits To Protest Interference By New Right-Wing Government
“Kunsthalle Wien director Nicholas Schafhausen … had an agreement with the City of Vienna to stay at the helm of the art center until the end of his ten-year term in 2022. But Schafhausen will instead leave next year, citing the fact that ‘advanced experiments in the arts’ in the country are being suppressed by the far-right government that took power at the end of 2017.”