"Were you to lay this thing out by the sentence, it’d be as close as an array of words could get to strands of pearls. 'The cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses'? That line alone is almost enough to make me quit typing for the rest of my life." - Paris Review
"A Promised Land, the first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs, was the top print title in 2020, moving nearly 2.6 million copies at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. That number is lower, however, than the 3.4 million copies of Michelle Obama’s Becoming sold in 2018, and the former first lady’s book hit the top 25 overall list...
On January 17, 1921, in a north London theatre, "an English magician called Percy Thomas Tibbles literally and laboriously sawed through a sealed wooden box that contained a woman. It was a sensation and has since become one of the best known magic tricks, performed with all manner of tools and varying degrees of blood – always involving someone...
Although glamorous plans were unveiled in 2019 , the new hall is looking more and more like a fantasy. And now it is losing Rattle, its champion: it’s a kick in the teeth for London, a negation of that proud homecoming. - The Guardian
In the book, La familia grande, prominent attorney Camille Kouchner, the daughter of Bernard Kouchner, former foreign minister and co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, says that her stepfather — political scientist and well-known pundit Olivier Duhamel, chairman (until last week) of the body that oversees the renowned Paris university Sciences Po — sexually abused her twin brother for two...
How much of the telly you watch this year will be on a live, linear channel, at the scheduled hour, with millions of others tuning in at exactly the same time? For many of us, the answer is getting dangerously close to none. - The Guardian
Last week the former prima ballerina of the Bolshoi, ABT, and the Houston Ballet told the Georgian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that she had accepted the directorship of the ballet company at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater in Russia's third-largest city. However, she wasn't even scheduled to meet the dancers until late January, and telling the...
Political developments have revealed a nation split more fiercely than most people ever imagined. Many of the civic institutions that have sustained American life — both for good and for ill — are beginning to teeter. - San Francisco Chronicle
"Casual of gesture but deeply focused in demeanor, had an understated style that could nonetheless hold the spotlight in trio settings, or fit slyly into Schneider's 18-piece big band. In many ways, his playing reflected the Romantic, floating manner of his first jazz influence, Bill Evans. But his off-kilter style as both a player and a composer...
"Not content to simply establish the origins of our belief systems, philosophers focus on the evidence that supports our belief systems and whether we have good reasons to believe what we believe, which requires an inquiry into what exactly counts as a good reason. In other words, philosophers think about thinking and try to develop concepts that help us...
"A 'lost' recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his then-fresh epic poem 'Howl' in 1956 will be released for the first time in April, thanks to a personal connection between Reed College, where the performance was recorded 65 years ago, and the archivally oriented label Omnivore Recordings." - Variety
"The ancient city of Palmyra in Syria, which was severely damaged by ISIS militants in 2015, appears to be heading toward reconstruction. In November, a memorandum of understanding on rebuilding the city's Triumphal Arch was signed between Syria's Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums and Russia's Stone Industry Association, which is based in Yekaterinburg." - The Art Newspaper
" announced on Tuesday a statewide program of indoor and outdoor shows over the coming months that will feature upwards of 150 performers — among them Hugh Jackman, Wynton Marsalis, Renée Fleming, Amy Schumer and Chris Rock. The public-private partnership, which Cuomo called the 'New York Arts Revival,' commences next month and is the most ambitious attempt yet by...
"The steep decline in airport traffic because of COVID-19, coupled with all of the new ways that people are consuming content on their personal devices, has lessened the need for the CNN Airport Network and we had to make the very difficult decision to end its operation ," the cable news giant announced. - Variety
"The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday afternoon to initiate landmark designation for the 1931 Diego Rivera mural The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City located inside the San Francisco Art Institute's Chestnut Street campus. … The SFAI board of trustees was considering removing and selling the mural, appraised at $50 million, to...
