To wander through 125 years of book reviews is to endure assault by adjective. All the fatuous books, the frequently brilliant, the disappointing, the essential. The adjectives one only ever encounters in a review (indelible, risible), the archaic descriptors (sumptuous). So many masterpieces, so many duds — now enjoying quiet anonymity. - The New York Times
"Its lessons include: never marry; have no children; lawyer up early; keep tight control of your cover designs; listen to the critics while scorning them publicly; when it comes to publishers, follow the money; never give a minute to a hostile interviewer; avoid unflattering photographers; figure out what you’re good at and keep doing it, book after book, with...
“There are so many benefits to all this stuff, It’s going to make theatre more accessible. It’s going to help tackle the issue of diversity. It’s going to enable us to tell stories in completely new ways. And I know from experience that it actually encourages live audiences to come to the theatre. It’s actually going to support the...
Torstar's new owners say they are branching into online gambling to help pay for those continuing efforts. "Doing this as part of Torstar will help support the growth and expansion of quality community-based journalism," co-owner Paul Rivett said. - CBC
"Until quite recently there was a concern that ethical relativism had become the dominant cultural assumption, which meant that ethics was all just a matter of opinion, every view was ‘equally valid’ with no objective standard. We seem now to have been catapulted to the other extreme. Ethical positions are often held with a fervent certainty that would embarrass...
"In nearly 50 years of musical life, I can count on the fingers of two hands the occasions on which I’ve heard boos erupt in the concert hall or opera house. Some of those memories are far from pleasant." - San Francisco Chronicle
Pantone started out, under another name, as a printing company, and one of its employees, Larry Herbert, got tired of trying to figure out exactly what hue his clients meant when they said things like "I want kind of a wine red" or "Sort of like a sky blue, but darker." He was the one who realized that the...
Audience members sit on stools in separated cubicles surrounding the stage, each with its own door and letter-drop slots through which they can watch the dancers. - Reuters
Lady Chatterley's Lover, which now seems almost anodyne, was the subject of a criminal prosecution in 1960, but Lolita, which came out the previous year and still has the power to shock, was not. Why? Actor Emily Mortimer, whose father was a barrister who defended more than one client in obscenity trials, uses what she learned from him ("First,...
“This notion that we have to do something, that we have to find other ways to work. I was like, ‘Hello, this is an opportunity to just stop. Everybody just stop. Can we really not do that?’ I would say my track record is 50-50, but I’m more interested in looking than forcing things out.” - Los Angeles Times
"Carved instruments can be either completely made of ice, such as horns and percussion, or hybrids, like harps, in which the main body is ice with metal strings attached. … By studying and intricately blending materials — such as homemade clear ice and carbonated water, plus crushed mountain snow — can make instruments like violins and tune them...
One contradiction stands above the rest. The man who cofounded City Lights bookstore and press and wrote the million-selling poetry collection Coney Island of the Mind, a seminal text in the Beat canon alongside classics like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, did not consider himself a Beat. - Rolling Stone
Says the artistic director of a Twin Cities company, "I believe that theatre is storytelling and we are creating a new hybrid art form. It's not quite theatre in that it's video and not onstage, and it's not exactly film or television because it's live — but I still call it theatre." Here's a look at what exactly she...
In a reorganization plan filed in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware this week, the Boy Scouts listed nearly 60 pieces of art by Rockwell whose sale would help raise money for a settlement fund of at least $300 million for sexual abuse victims. - The New York Times
Michael Andor Brodeur: "I'm 'here' to virtually attend a rehearsal of Stride, a stirring newer work from the British composer Anna Clyne. And Clyne is 'here' with me as well, watching along through the eyes and ears of Ted — a standard-issue mannequin head, purchased off the Internet and outfitted with a 360-degree camera and an array of microphones...
