One of the big literary events of last week? The cover reveal for Sally Rooney's new novel. "In recent years, book cover design has taken on a higher profile, and we may be seeing a new heyday for book design. It was Rooney’s 2018 novel Normal People that Arter believes signalled the shift towards the book cover as a 'cultural phenomenon...
Michael McClure's final editor, Garrett Caples: "As any editor can tell you, turning a manuscript into a book is an affair in itself. Michael’s poetry is not easy to lay out. It’s always centered on the page, but only sometimes dead-centered, where you can just press a button and you’re fine. Often enough, he centered by hand and eye,...
Prisant was a 51-year-old antiques dealer with no professional experience writing when she wrote to the autocratic editor of the British magazine The World of Interiors, asking for a job. There wasn't one open in New York, but the editor created one for her. "'She told the truth, but always with subtlety and lashings of wit,' Rupert Thomas, Ms....
If you want to know how young people are experiencing the pandemic, the assault on the Capitol Building in January, vaccinations, and more, what better to do than ask? A project called Dispatches from Quarantine "launched in April 2020, and those questions were explored and answered through all sorts of mediums — like the stringing of words, the strokes of...
Kaluuya grew up on a council estate - the rough equivalent to "the projects" in the United States - the son of Ugandan immigrants to Britain. He took advantage of every possible free arts program, and, at 18, ended up bot a writer and an actor for the program Skins. And, years later, came Get Out. "By the time...
This doesn't seem like a great idea, but then again, who asked the audience? "Items can be digitally added to almost any movie or TV show. For example, advertisers could put new labels on the champagne bottles in Rick's Cafe in Casablanca, add different background neon advertising signs to Ocean's 11, or get Charlie Chaplin to promote a fizzy...
Artist Kenneth Tam started to keep a spreadsheet as microaggressions arose at the beginning of the pandemic. Then the micro became far too macro. "The rise of racist attacks, some of them horrifyingly lethal, has galvanized Asian-American artists around the country. They are leveraging social media to raise awareness, gathering to protest despite the pandemic precautions, making new work, and...
A rock wall, and a water feature as well, to be precise. "This is a debate in which everyone is a little right, and a little wrong, and this kind of argument can take a deceptively large toll on collective goodwill. The Cultural Landscape Foundation is an enormously valuable group when it comes to educating the public about mid-century...
Not great: "Broadway producers I spoke to told me that Rudin seems to be sincere about stepping away from the day-to-day running of his megahits, The Book of Mormon and To Kill a Mockingbird, but no one seems to think he’ll be relinquishing his financial stakes. When Broadway resumes, so will his revenue streams." What can Broadway, and Hollywood, do? - Los Angeles...
Of course, online shopping has done the most damage to physical stores. But do they need to be demolished? "Gems facing the wrecking ball include Birmingham’s mid-century Rackhams, which is currently home to House of Fraser, Debenhams in Taunton, which was built in 1938 and extended in the 1960s, and Marks & Spencer’s store near Marble Arch in London, which...
The outrage was so strong, including in statements by St+art India, that the beer company is backing down. Of course they can't fix what happened, and "it remains unclear why Budweiser chose to paint over these specific wall, but amends are in place. Budweiser is now approaching the original artists from Bollywood Art Project and St+art India to 'restore...
The flagship theatre was special for multiple reasons, but one is that Hollywood often doesn't seem very, well, Hollywood. "The ArcLight Hollywood, by contrast, represented the living, breathing movie industry. It accomplished the rare feat of melding Hollywood the real with Hollywood the ideal. With its costume and prop exhibits in the lobby and its Q&As with actors and...
Let an infectious-disease doctor explain why dancers need to get vaccinated. It's not just for themselves: "A significant part of the patronage of many ballet companies are those over the age of 60 and, therefore, at highest risk of death and complications if infected with COVID. Though a dancer may not get ill from COVID, if they are carrying...
Hummel was 19 when she began working as an assistant for William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who had created the character and the comic a few years earlier. Jill Lepore writes in The Secret History of Wonder Woman: "At first, Hummel typed Marston’s scripts. ... Soon, she was writing scripts of her own." - The New York Times
