“The lack of widespread acknowledgement or recognition for Harriet E. Wilson, the first African American novelist and author of Our Nig (1859), comes as a surprise. A New Englander, Wilson reclaimed in her work the domestic, maternal, and liberating space of 19th-century women’s fiction. She constructed a fiction which in turn dismantles Frenchman of Letters Phillipe Vilain’s ‘autofiction’ definition with its requisite of the first-person.” – Zora
America’s First Banned Book, Published And Suppressed Back In 1637
Thomas Morton came to Massachusetts with the Puritans in 1624, but he was there strictly on business. What’s more, he didn’t fear the surrounding landscape as the devil’s dwelling place, he loved it and the Native Americans who lived there. He was a dandy, and one year he even (gasp) put up a maypole. Morton and the Puritans despised each other, and when he let them have it in his New English Canaan, they promptly banned it. – Atlas Obscura
London Review Of Books – A Clique To Be Part Of
“It’s not gossipy, cosy or cliquey,” observes long-time contributor Alan Bennett. But, in a mostly productive way, it is cliquey. It has always had favourites and has nurtured them. With pages catching the work of writers including Lorna Sage and Jenny Diski, this celebratory volume looks like a justification of that habit. – The Guardian
Has The Publishing Business Become Too Reliant On Huge Hits?
Though the hits-driven nature of publishing has not changed in recent years, the nature of those hits has. Due to a number of coalescing factors—including a shrinking physical retail market and an increase in competing entertainment driven by the proliferation of streaming TV platforms—book publishing has watched as a handful of megaselling titles have begun to command an ever-larger share of its sales. – Publishers Weekly
Howard Sherman: Seeing a favourite show performed in Sing Sing gave it a fresh meaning
“At this moment, when the US is deep in the throes of an impeachment investigation, it is startling and bracing to be immersed in the debate over the country’s founding principles, however simplified and with musical accompaniment.” (The show is Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776.) “But the added layer of who performs that story transcends the present-day politics in unexpected ways. Phrases from our founding document, such as: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ spoken on a makeshift stage by a cast predominantly made up of black and Hispanic men, becomes a personal declaration, not simply a national aspiration, one often ignored in these days of closing borders and shallow nationalism.” – The Stage
Why Contemporary Architecture Cognoscenti Like “Ugly” Buildings
“A widespread public bewilderment at the ‘Deconstructivist’ showcase buildings that they are told is great modern architecture is well known. But less well understood is that most of the Western world’s architectural academy are militantly disdainful of most popular conceptions of architectural comeliness. And this disdain extends not only to the “classical” in public and commercial buildings but equally to the average person’s ideal of a home and neighborhood.” – The American Conservative
Study: More Innovation In Denser Neighborhoods
Neighborhoods with higher street density not only have more patented innovations, but more citations of the patents they generate. This suggests that neighborhoods with denser streets help facilitate greater knowledge exchange and higher levels of interaction over the ideas they generate. – CityLab
Writing Versus The Performance Of Being A Writer
No doubt social media in particular seems to represent the triumph of the writerly type over the writing itself. But DeWitt, Baker, Whitehead, and Atwood are among our most accomplished writers; so what if they’re willing to play the type on occasion? It might seem possible to just perform the office of writer—thoughtfully curated Instagrams of to-read piles, tweets geo-tagged at the MacDowell Colony—but it’s still a publish-or-perish business. – The New Republic
Meet Colombia’s Grand Entrepreneur Of Graffiti
“Where the average eye sees empty and drab building walls, [Camilo Fidel] López, the founder of the graffiti artists crew Vértigo Graffiti, sees blank canvases, opportunities to colorfully further the cause of social justice, whether in his home city — the Colombian capital, Bogotá — or the rest of the world. … Not a graffiti artist himself, Mr. López plays multiple roles: art director, business manager, promoter, negotiator, lawyer, entrepreneur, festival producer, even tour guide.” – The New York Times
Anna Deavere Smith Hands Over The Docu-Play That Made Her Famous — And For Which She Did All The Interviews — To Another Actor
A revival of Fires in the Mirror, Smith’s 1992 solo show about the riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and the tension between Caribbean Blacks and Hasidic Jews there, is opening in New York next week. For the first time, all 29 parts are being played by another actor: Michael Benjamin Washington. Salamishah Tillet interviews both of them about the handover. – The New York Times
Look Out, Akhnaten — Your Famous Son Is Getting An Opera Of His Own
As Philip Glass’s work about the monotheist pharaoh gets a major revival at the Met, news comes that a new opera on the life of King Tutankhamun is set to premiere late next year in Cairo. The libretto is co-written by the famous archaeologist Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former minister of antiquities, with the score by Italian composer Lino Zambone. Performances are planned to mark the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. – The Art Newspaper
Annie-B Parson Talks About Choreographing David Byrne For Broadway
“Often when I work with directors, or when I’m directing myself, what you think at the beginning often changes. That’s fair and normal. But with this show [American Utopia], the ideas David first presented me with have not changed. … I’ve worked with him for so long that I can literally get in his body.” – Vulture
Arts District Planned For London’s Former Olympic Village Is Already Late And Over Budget
The “East Bank” cultural quarter project — to include Sadler’s Wells dance theatre, the BBC, the London College of Fashion, a new University College London campus, and both a public building and a Collections Centre for the Victoria & Albert Museum — is running £14 million over the £470 million budget, which doesn’t even include UCL or the V&A Collections Centre. – Arts Professional
Why Helsinki’s New Public Library Might Be The Best In The World
The central library is built to serve as a kind of citizenship factory, a space for old and new residents to learn about the world, the city, and each other. It’s pointedly sited across from (and at the same level as) the Finnish Parliament House that it shares a public square with. – CityLab
Is Cellphone Prison The Solution For Stopping Ringing During The Show?
“As you reached your row, you were told to turn off your phone or put it on silent and insert it to a glove-like pouch. You keep your phone but you cannot turn it back on without unlocking the pouch, which uses a simple mechanism not unlike the security tags you find in clothing stores and that have to be removed by cashiers. At the end of the show, ushers show up and quickly unlock the devices.” – Chicago Tribune
How Theatre Helped Bring Down The Berlin Wall 30 Years Ago Today
What is intriguing is that the collapse of East Germany was, in many ways, a piece of theatre. The Alexanderplatz demonstration, one of the largest in GDR history, had been planned by actors and directors from leading East German theatres. They invited playwrights and actors to address the crowds, alongside dissidents and politicians. They even had a baddie: the former deputy head of the Stasi secret police spoke – and was booed. – The Guardian
Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre Company Settles With Remaining Plaintiffs In Sex Abuse Cases
At the announcement of the settlement, theatre administration and survivors stood side by side. “The moment brought a close to a decadeslong ordeal and underscored the pain of those whose childhoods were taken away, their lives scarred by abuse. It also saw theater management publicly acknowledge the abuse committed by former employees, and offer an apology and commitment to continue working with survivors.” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Students At Scotland’s Royal Conservatoire Say The School Ignored Claims Of Systemic Abuse
Both students and alums want a public apology, an independent investigation – and change. “Their allegations include claims of physical intimidation and inappropriate remarks about students’ mental health issues and about sexual abuse.” – The Stage (UK)
The Queens Dance Troupe Made Up Of Grandmothers
Says one 79-year-old dancer, “While I am dancing, I am very focused. I listen to the music and the lyrics. I also think about my movement: How can I dance beautifully? I actually forget that I am aging.” – The New York Times
Who Helped Save The Reagan Presidential Library From A Wildfire?
Vincent van Goat, of course. – Hyperallergic
Former Royal Ballet Dancer Jailed For Molesting Girls
Stephen Beagley was a leading classical ballet dancer in the 1970s and 1980s in Britain, and starred in CATS as well. He’s been jailed for 10 years for molesting girls ages 9-13. – BBC
TV’s Time Shift Is Accelerating
This may be the last bow for the idea of fall TV. “The more that streaming becomes the default way people watch, the less that the concepts of time on which TV has operated — seasons, schedules, time slots — will matter. And with those customs will change the very culture of America’s essential medium.” – The New York Times
The Glorious Aesthetics Of A ‘Mundane’ Halloween
The tradition, which has been focused in Japan but spread out from there via the internet (of course), gets people wearing “costumes” like “just got out of bed and grabbed the first thing I saw to spray a roach with.” This is, perhaps, a great thing. “Philosophers interested in the ‘aesthetics of the everyday’ argue that the way we think about aesthetics is too focused on heightened ideas of beauty. In fact, they point out, repetitive tasks like chores, unremarkable objects like trash cans and diapers, and common interactions between family members and neighbors can all be considered to possess ‘aesthetics.'” – Slate
As ‘Nutcracker’ Season Cranks Up, Kansas City Ballet Says It’s Time To ‘Phase Out’ Racist Stereotypes
The Nutcracker, which is the source of much funding for ballet companies across the Western world and especially in the U.S., is a huge tradition – and one that, increasingly, audiences are finding disturbing. So ballet companies are making changes for this year’s and future productions. “On Friday, the Kansas City Ballet announced the company has signed on to a national campaign called Final Bow for Yellowface, a pledge to remove outdated caricatures.” – KCUR
An Old Text, Set To New Music
Catholic Scottish composer James MacMillan, whose version of the “Stabat Mater” – a meditation on Mary, the mother of Jesus, suffering during the Crucifixion – is at the Lincoln Center this week, “sees himself as part of a widespread search among composers for the sacred in contemporary music.” – The New York Times