It doesn’t take much for headline writers, editorialists, reporters, columnists, sports writers, what have you, to grab the reader’s attention with a catchy phrase. Some phrases have become such favorites that you see them used over and over. But I would bet that in plenty of cases the journalists who make use of them don’t […]
Archives for August 2015
‘Plato’s Frogs’: A Long Way from ‘Saturday Night Live’
In 1984 Malcolm Mc Neill won an Emmy for “outstanding graphics and title design” for the opening title sequence of “Saturday Night Live,” which he conceived, designed, and art directed. Here’s his storyboard: Thirty years later, contemplating a famous passage in the “Phaedo,” Mc Neill made “Plato’s Frogs.” I have not asked him about it. […]
Islam’s Pashtun Warrior for Peace: Badshah Khan
Heathcote Williams is not a Muslim and finds the Koran “about as enjoyable as eating gravel.” But his belief in, and devotion to, the “Muslim Ghandi” led him to write a book-length investigative poem Badshah Khan: Islamic Peace Warrior, published in June by the London-based Thin Man Press. It is one of Williams’s best polemics […]
Tibet Comes to Taos at ‘Enchanted Mountain’ Salon
The composer Andrea Clearfield will present her Tibetan Recording Project at the Enchanted Mountain Performance Space in downtown Taos, New Mexico, next Sunday, Aug. 30. It’s free and open to the public. (See details of time and place.) “Clearfield’s orchestral and choral works have been performed around the world,” according to an advance program note. […]
Time Capsule: Algren, Burroughs, Mailer, et al . . .
UPDATE The Z Collection is available for ordering on line. My staff of thousands insisted on a plug for me: The Z Collection: Portraits & Sketches — my reflections on many of the writers and artists I have known, worked with, or written about — is being published by AC Books in New York in […]
A Little-Known Master Artist’s ‘Uncollected’ Works
The pages of Uncollected illustrate the variety of the artworks that a little-known master artist produced over the years. Most of the pieces have appeared in scattered places but have never been collected in one place — thus the title. Norman O. Mustill, who died in 2013, also produced many other works that haven’t been […]
A Look Ahead: They’re Putting on a Party and a Show
My staff of thousands informs me that the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library has acquired the Granary Books archive. So publisher and library will mark the occasion with a bit of hoopla and an exhibition that opens Sept. 8, the day after Labor Day. It’s called . . . The Book Undone: Celebrating […]