“We all read from different places, different backgrounds, and my meeting with Proust or Woolf, or Lydia Davis or J. M. Coetzee, will not be yours, nor should it be. On the other hand I do believe reading is an active skill, an art even, certainly not a question of passive absorption.”
Board Fires CEO Of Queens Library System In NYC
“The library’s Board of Trustees axed Galante on Wednesday after reviewing his expense accounts, which included charging more than $40,000 to his library credit card for food, alcohol and entertainment. Galante is still facing federal and city probes into how he managed library funds.”
Dancer With Severe Autism Says Ballet Saved His Life
“The stage is the one place Philip Martin-Nelson feels right at home. But it wasn’t always that way. Diagnosed with the most severe form of autism, Philip was unable to speak, make eye contact, or even allow someone to touch him for the first three years of his life.” (includes video)
Director Of Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum To Retire
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while,” said Susan L. Talbott, who will step down this fall. “I’m 65. I’ve had a great career and I really like the idea of leaving on a high note, when the [museum’s $33 million] renovation is complete.”
England’s Public Library System Needs Urgent Overhaul, Says Panel
“William Sieghart’s Independent Library Report for England, published today, urges ‘a reinvigoration of the library network’, calling on Westminster to provide funding so local authorities can roll out Wi-Fi to every public library in England as part of a new national digital resource.”
The Hipster Rebranding Of Libraries Has Begun
Libraries should “become more like coffee shops with free Wi-Fi and comfy sofas, according to a report into the future of the service. The era of libraries as hushed reading rooms with books as their sole product is over.”
The Author Of ‘Unbroken’ Has Revolutionized Nonfiction Writing – Without Leaving Her House
“Perhaps the biggest challenge for Hillenbrand as a reporter are the periods when she cannot read. When the vertigo surges, as it has in recent years, she has trouble focusing her eyes on the page without dizziness.”
The Hacked Sony Emails Are Picking Apart The Tangled Web Of Hollywood
“Another set of broken or bruised relationships involves black stars and filmmakers, a group with whom Sony formerly had very sturdy ties.”
The Intricate Dance Of Machine And Human In The Marble Quarry [VIDEO]
“In the Apuan Alps of northern Tuscany in Italy, ‘Il Capo’ or the chief directs the processes of extraction at a quarry for Carrara marble.”
The Art Of Making A (Perfect) Tutu
“Bacon only takes on a handful of commissions per season—this year, she has five in the works. They’ll keep her busy until competition time rolls around early in 2015.”
Too Much Choice? Yeah, Well, That’s Why You’re Unhappy…
“We evaluate ourselves by comparing ourselves to other people. Well, if you compare yourself to other people in life, you get to see their good moments and bad moments. But if you’re comparing yourself to other people on Facebook, well, everyone is a superstar on Facebook. The result is you feel that your life is duller and duller, shabbier and shabbier. You seem less and less special, less and less competent, because everyone else is living this perfect life.”
A Gajillion Gallons Of Water, A Piano, And A Concert
“The Armory’s latest installation-meets-performance piece Tears Become…Streams Become…required its staff to slowly, over the course of a 10-minute piano piece, fill the 55,000 square feet of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall with a standing pool of water that would mirror the hall’s gilded ceilings.”
The $100 Million Painting You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
“The Edsel & Eleanor Ford House quietly sold a Paul Cézanne oil painting in 2013 to a private buyer for $100 million, likely making the piece one of the 15 most expensive works of art ever sold.”
New York Times Lays Off Critic Allan Kozinn
The paper’s longtime classical critic (on staff for 23 years, a freelancer for 14 years before that), who was reassigned to the general cultural news beat in 2012, departs on Friday.
The Highs And Lows Of Classical Music In 2014 – A Roundtable
“Joining host Naomi Lewin for this discussion … are Anne Midgette, the classical music critic of The Washington Post; David Patrick Stearns, classical music critic of The Philadelphia Inquirer and for WQXR’s Operavore blog; and Zachary Woolfe, freelance classical music critic for The New York Times.” (audio)
“One Of The Most Bizarre Cultural-Political Episodes Of Recent History”
Andrew O’Hehir: “Let me see if I have this right, because the whole thing stretches credulity: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has apparently managed to kill a major Hollywood movie. … We had a choice – ‘we’ being a term of art that does not actually include you and me – of whether to stand tall for the supposed principles of free expression and free enterprise or ‘let the terrorists win.’ We let them win, with barely a moment’s hesitation. … It’s a breathtaking and total victory by a despised, isolated and impoverished nation (or by those acting on its behalf), over one of the biggest media corporations in the world.”
North Korea Is Not Funny, And “The Interview” Is Not Brave
Adrian Hong, co-founder of the refugee rescue organization Liberty in North Korea: “It takes no valor and costs precious little to joke about these things safely oceans away from North Korea’s reach. … To pretend that punchlines from afar, even in the face of hollow North Korean threats, are righteous acts is nonsense.”
U.S. Gov’t Should Pay Costs Of Releasing “The Interview” (Argues Pundit)
Jonathan Chait: “We don’t entrust for-profit entities with the common defense. And recognizing that the threat to a Sony picture is actually a threat to the freedom of American culture ought to lead us to a public rather than a private solution. … Either Washington should guarantee Sony’s financial liability in the event of an attack, or it should directly reimburse the studio’s projected losses so it can release the movie online for free.”
Watching What Might Have Been One Of The Last-Ever Screenings Of “The Interview” – With Seth Rogen
Your correspondent talks with the co-star/co-producer/co-writer of the comedy-turned-cause célèbre about why he decided to make a movie about Kim Jong-Un in the first place, negotiating with Sony about the details of the Dear Leader’s exploding head, and what he listens for at the many, many test screenings he attends.
Amazon Publishing ‘Suppresses’ Book With Too Many Hyphens
“When they ran an automated spell check against the manuscript they found that over 100 words in the 90,000-word novel contained that dreaded little line,” says author Graeme Reynolds. “This, apparently, ‘significantly impacts the readability of your book,’ and, as a result, ‘We have suppressed the book because of the combined impact to customers.'”
An Old Membership-Only Library Remakes Itself As A Thriving Intellectual Equivalent Of Church
“The [Providence] Athenaeum, a Greek Revival edifice that still gives its solid wooden card catalog pride of place, looks and feels like it belongs in another century. But it has lately become a vital part of 21st-century civic life, thanks to a lively Friday night salon series with discussion topics ranging from the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to the Rhode Island quahog clam industry.”
Virna Lisi, 78, Italian Actress Who Won, Then Fled, Hollywood Stardom
“In the 1960s, like many other female Italian actors of the time, Virna Lisi was tempted to try her luck in Hollywood. However, after films in which her co-stars included Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Frank Sinatra, she returned to Europe, where she had painstakingly built up a reputation, particularly in Italy and France. It was in these countries that Lisi … had the opportunities to show her mettle.”
“If They Stop Clapping, Tinker Bell Will Die”: What “The Colbert Report” Taught Us About The Psychology Of American Conservatives
Leslie Savan: “You can’t stick with that kind of truthiness-based character (and play him in public appearances off the show) without some sympathy for him, and even for conservatism itself. Colbert expressed that sympathy by showing that beneath his character’s assertion of omnipotence and certitude, there’s a fragility, one that’s also buried in most of the real-life blowhards and their dittoheads. If they stop clapping, Tinker Bell will die.”
The Colbert Report’s Executive Producer And First Co-Head Writer Remembers
“One of the tricky things about the show, especially early on, was figuring out what the honest point of view of the show was, and then how to communicate that through the character of Stephen’s contrasting point of view. When you’re working very quickly on complicated stories, that can get hard. It always reminded me of driving in reverse. Usually, we knew our destination, but we had to drive there super-fast and backwards.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.18.14
Freer-Sacker Digitization Project: A Modest Suggestion
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2014-12-18
Digitization Project Raises A Question
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2014-12-18
Dynamic pricing and fairness – Uber in Sydney
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2014-12-18
Music in the midst of life
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2014-12-18
Analyzing Music No Longer Allowed
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2014-12-18
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