[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6L1vQwHGvhhhWxyn2fDj3qlLYwI011YD"] ATYPICALLY, I'll start the week by recapping the weekend a bit. First, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is partway through its second Minimalist Jukebox. The Phil is doing its best to take an expansive view of this oft-caricatured movement. On Saturday I caught a John Adams-conducted concert that included a world premiere, U.S. … [Read more...]
Moonlighting in the Arts, and Indie Bookstores
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="YLE8JYvI5WjT9s4HqFR2NBxgeIk5XA2Y"] A NEW survey from the National Endowment for the Arts shows that alongside the 2.1 million people who work as "artists" (broadly defined) another 271,000 work as artists on the side. While not quite shocking, there's some useful data in the report, including the fact that artists continue to be unemployed at twice the level of other … [Read more...]
The Inventiveness of Brad Mehldau, and Another Bookstore Down
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="XtxFdbJyLsCS5dQHdicsk1xjrReqe1hk"] LAST night, pianist Brad Mehldau and tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman played separate sets at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. These are perhaps the two leading jazz musicians of my generation, so there was no way I was going to miss it. While I would have loved to see these two, who've worked together in the past, play a … [Read more...]
Where Are Steinbeck’s Heirs? Literature and the Recession
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="7Ob2euleB2pS7V1InChacTlQDk4kH4s8"] ONE of the things that's most baffled and frustrated me over the last few years has been our collective inability or unwillingness to grapple with the recession and the growing crisis on inequality in a meaningful, imaginative way. Journalism has not done a great job, on the whole, and the movies have almost completely whiffed on … [Read more...]
What’s the Matter With San Diego, and a Deadly Impostor
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="uXOtZCit5zazXO6t0Ht1wwihD894I3a9"] EVEN in an arts world familiar with groups going belly-up, this one surprised people: The San Diego Opera's board voted last week to call it a day, effective at the end of the current season. No pleading with donors or subscribers to pitch in, no Chapter 11 filing, just an abrupt, "Closed For Business" sign. Now the group's … [Read more...]
Dave Eggers on Artists in the Digital Age
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Sgct1PtiO3Y0LbD66DOqZ5sXTeAmgc4p"] FOR reasons I half understand, Dave Eggers's recent novel The Circle was dismissed and ignored in some circles. The book's not perfect, but works beautifully as a fable about what we're willing to give up to live in a digital utopia. The book's protagonist, Mae, lucks into a job at a Google-like campus in Northern California and … [Read more...]
Will Technology Eat Your Job?: The Second Machine Age
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="rH31sHcPNX2fJ8BUGdeIZ6rMJes54987"] THE honest answer to that question is, Well, maybe. Today I have a Daily Beast interview with Andrew McAfee, an MIT researcher and co-author of the new book The Second Machine Age. His previous book, Race Against the Machine, took a cautionary look at how digital technology, including artificial intelligence, was leading to levels … [Read more...]
Making it as a Writer: MFA vs NYC
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6RDST6owlrC0x8P60LIwnB5J7Z8Ftt9Q"] HOW does an aspiring novelist, poet, or essayist break into the business? What kind of ecosystem does he or she inhabit after getting established? Does grad school help? Among the best answers to those questions came from novelist Chad Harbach in his essay "MFA vs NYC," and he's expanded it into a provocative anthology that … [Read more...]
Scorning the Great American Novel, and The Return of Beck
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Jai56XiddmTkDBhUq1fwtKRmcQk3eCCw"] WHO wrote the Great American Novel? Does such a category make any sense? Did it ever? A provocative essay argues that we've outgrown the term, and that it was wrong to begin with. Whether we're talking about Melville's Moby Dick or Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, my old colleague David Ulin writes, we're missing the real point of … [Read more...]
Artists in the Digital Age, and Falling in Love with Technology
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="qC3vge9cgA87c22YRZr5Mjkjf9EcoUPy"] HOW will the digital age shape the livelihood of artists, writers and musicians? There’s a new story in The New York Times that everyone who cares about the subject should read. It’s by Robert H. Frank, one of my favorite economists and the sharpest observer of the winner-take-all phenomenon, which may seem to have little to do with … [Read more...]