Published when she was 51, Barker's O Caledonia won several awards and was popular in Europe for several years, then faded away. She parlayed the book's success into a busy career as a journalist and essayist, known for being quirky and free-spirited, but never wrote another novel. - The New York Times
To spend a lot of time with your head in dictionaries is to understand the extent to which your head is made up of dictionaries. And if our language doesn’t give us a word that another language contains, it may be that we won’t think or feel things that speakers of other languages do. - The New York Times
Anuparna Chandrasekhar has wriiten about a sex tape going viral in conservative India to the notorious 2012 gang rape on a bus in Delhi. Her latest, The Father and the Assassin, examines the journey of Nathuram Godse from boy-raised-as-a-girl to Gandhi-admiring journalist to Hindu nationalist assassin. - The Guardian
How can immunotherapy cure a 65-year-old, newly retired man of Stage IV lung cancer, restoring the promise of his golden years with his family, but do nothing for the 55-year-old woman whose cancer robs her of decades of life? We do not know. - LA Review of Books
The English composer, now remembered primarily as a firebrand suffragette, and librettist Henry Brewster wrote this story (of Cornish villagers who survive by plundering shipwrecks) in French. But it was produced, with cuts, first in German, then in English, then not at all. This summer sees the original version's premiere. - The Guardian
Can activism thrive within the strip-lit booths of essentially glorified trade shows? And does the commodification of protest art render its radical impulses null and void? - The Art Newspaper
The crusading lefty investigative magazine profiles Royal, a principal dancer at ABT and one of the still-all-too-few Black stars of classical ballet. The marquee pull quote: "We have to break ballet out of the 18th century." - Mother Jones
"Today, as metaverse engineers, designers, and architects map out the look of digital future experiences, for some, smell has become a key part of the puzzle. Whoever defines the smell-o-verse first will lead this nascent category, meaning the smell-off is ON." - Fast Company
Using mass spectrometers and techniques from the field of molecular biology on residues from ancient containers, refuse, and even dental tartar, archaeologists and historians have been working to rediscover aromas ranging from myrrh to condiments to Cleopatra's perfume. - Artnet
"We have not been able to sleep, eat and live peacefully. We are fed up with the scary dreams and are returning your valuables," said a note left by the thieves who had taken ritual objects from a temple to Balaji, an incarnation of Vishnu, in Uttar Pradesh state. - The Guardian (AFP)
"The United Kingdom will hold formal talks with Greece regarding the potential repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles, which have been in the British Museum since 1816. ... The contested sculptures were stripped from the Acropolis in 1801 by Lord Elgin while Greece was under Ottoman occupation." - ARTnews
She came to prominence as co-founder of string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, moved to a solo career, and now directs the Silkroad Ensemble, the world-music group founded by Yo-Yo Ma. But she trained as an opera singer, and her first opera is now premiering at Spoleto USA. - The New York Times
A staff memo from Gimlet Media chiefs said that "the decision to end this iteration of the show" was made as the series's two hosts, Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi, were leaving. The move comes after a turbulent 18 months at Reply All, Gimlet, and parent company Spotify. - The Verge
Five years ago the German painter, one of Europe's most prominent living artists, announced that he was ending his career. But he couldn't stop painting, and now he has a major exhibition at a museum near Basel. - Artnet
We begin with the hypothesis that, due to the rate of growth and development of A.I. technology, #resistanceisfutile. Which is to say that computer-composed music is here, and the conversation needs to change. - NewMusicBox
