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What It Was Like To Work For The New York Review of Books

The mailroom was out of control. Employees helped themselves to books, telephone calls to Hong Kong, extra sandwiches during press week. They had a softball team. My duties included babysitting for the publisher’s assistant’s children. - LitHub

Jerry Lee Lewis, 87

Lewis ultimately transcended category. With typical arrogance, he would frequently declare that there were only four real stylists in American music: Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and, of course, Jerry Lee Lewis. - Variety

All About The Chemistry: What Makes A Stradivarius Extraordinary? New Study Suggests…

That quest for answers got a boost from Italian researchers in a paper published by the American Chemical Society that outlines the findings of their chemical analysis of two venerable violins. - Ludwig Van

Politics In Art – There Really Is A Role

It seems reasonable to pose the question of art’s relation to politics in the context of the specific crisis that democracy seems to have entered within the past 10 years or so. The dominant intellectual responses to this crisis have, if anything, pushed the arts further outside the sphere of political relevance. - Aeon

Quixotic? One Man Tries To Recreate The Orchestra Mahler Would Have Heard

Mahler would be appalled at the recorded perfectionism of the modern Vienna Philharmonic. He changed his mind from one rehearsal to the next. His music is about living in the moment. That’s what Steinaecker’s Toblach ensemble achieved. - The Critic

Broadway’s New Hot Play? About A Man New Yorkers Love To Hate

Starring Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses, the play has churned up considerable interest: Performed in a 500-seat theater, it’s already sold out for the entire two-month run, and tickets are reselling for as much as $2,000. (Don’t despair entirely, though: There’s a waitlist.) - Bloomberg

Did She Introduce Eastern Spirituality To America Or Merely Hoodwink People? The Tale Of Madame Blavatsky

The answer to that question is "yes." - Mental Floss

What Museum Directors Think About The Climate Change Protesters

“We shouldn’t be vehicles for political protest and we shouldn’t be vehicles in and of itself for political change. I regard museums as civic institutions playing their role in society as providing a frame and context for the political and social discussions while remaining highly trusted.” - ARTnews

A New Director For The Restive Paris Opera Ballet

Taking the helm of an unhappy company is José Carlos Martinez, a 53-year-old Spaniard, who spent 23 years dancing therey, 14 of them as an étoile, before retiring from the stage in 2011 and serving for eight years as director of Spain's Compañía Nacional de Danza. - The New York Times

Which Way Up? Museum Discovers Its Mondrian Had Been Hung Upside Down For 75 Years

The first clue that the painting, an adhesive tape version of the similarly named New York (which hangs right-side up in Paris at the Centre Pompidou), was hung incorrectly came from a photograph of the artist’s studio in taken in 1944, shortly after he passed away. ARTnews

Has History Finally Moved Ahead Of The Manchurian Candidate As It Turns 60 Years Old?

"John Frankenheimer's thriller ... managed the neat, eerie trick of looking prescient for multiple decades following its 1962 release. ... Watching the movie now, it's striking to see how some of its dynamics have been reversed in US politics." - The Guardian

Just What Did Elon Musk Buy In Twitter?

As of early last year, just one in five U.S. adults said they ever use Twitter—a slice that plateaued by 2018. The research shows Twitter’s general user base skews left-leaning and relatively young and that just one quarter of U.S. adult users produce 97% of Americans’ tweets. - The Wall Street Journal

Schirmer To Publish Hundreds Of Scores By Jewish Composers Silenced By The Nazis

"The list of music to be published includes more than 300 songs, 100 chamber music pieces, 50 orchestral works and other pieces, in genres including classical, opera, jazz and film music. The first works will be published next spring." - The New York Times

Not Creepy At All: Disney Wants To Integrate Your Data Across All Its Businesses

Once the company unites data collection capabilities between its various divisions, “we can give you a better experience in the park, because we know what your preferences are in terms of viewing and a better experience on Disney+ because we know what your affinities are.” - The Wall Street Journal

The Power Of Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Fiction

"His novels alternate restlessly from an East Africa of the past to the Britain of the present, as if they comprise two parts of a puzzle — parts that do not quite fit — that it will take a lifetime of writing to solve." - The New Republic

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