Jesse Green: “Theater critics thus have the opportunity – provided almost entirely by Shakespeare, since contemporary drama is notably short on gore – to watch hundreds of people die horribly each season. … Rarely do I see the plays done well enough to justify the awfulness they ask us to witness. And if they’re not properly awful, what’s the point? Do Much Ado and be done with it.”
Your Favorite ‘NPR Show’ Probably Isn’t Made By NPR
The folks at NPR’s On the Media (not produced by NPR) explain the difference between public radio in general, the actual NPR network, the competitor networks (APM, PRI) whose shows air alongside NPR programs, the local public radio stations where most of us actually hear the shows, and local member stations who produce national programming.
Can Today’s Artists Reimagine (Or Even Properly Understand) Duchamp’s Readymades?
“What was an iconoclastic gesture has become an icon. Whatever the readymade stood for during Duchamp’s time, and for Duchamp, is no longer of any value.”
The Revolutionary Pre-Raphaelites (And Their Highly Retro Art)
“This was a group of talented kids with open eyes and minds who knew what they liked and what they didn’t. They were opinionated and they were brash. They were radicals. It wouldn’t even be wrong to consider them revolutionaries. The only question is why a bunch of young revolutionaries would want to make art that looks backward.”
How Our Brains Work When We’re Writing
“The inner workings of the professionally trained writers in the bunch, the scientists argue, showed some similarities to people who are skilled at other complex actions, like music or sports.”
The Final Working Days Of The NY Phil’s Longtime Concertmaster
“It’s an emotional time,” he said. “Whether we’re playing Beethoven or whatever, I’m thinking, ‘My last one, my last one.’ “
Spain’s Most Famous Literary Agent Has To Take On An American Partner
“Nicknamed La Mamá Grande, after a story by Gabriel García Márquez, she served as a confidante and coach, someone who paid her writers’ dentist bills and deftly resolved their domestic problems while promoting the greatest Latin American and Spanish authors across the globe, including Mr. García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and many more.”
What Poetry And Music Share (And Don’t)
“Poetry always remembers that it has its origins in music.”
What’s Lost In The Amazon Vs. Hachette Battle: Book Culture
“Naive as this sounds, doesn’t a bookseller as large as Amazon have a moral responsibility to books? In its early days, founder Bezos saw books more as a foothold for Amazon than a future. But by virtue of its size now, isn’t a business that built its reputation on the back of words obligated not to impede the spread of books?”
Want People To Come To The Symphony? Pick A Damn Theme
“The old overture-concerto-symphony model, with no real relationship among the pieces, gives no identity to a concert, no marketing hook. It’s just another ‘one from column A, one from column B’ mishmash. Slapping alliterative labels for single pieces on concerts — ‘Marvelous Mozart,’ ‘Bombastic Beethoven,’ ‘Ravishing Ravel’ — is pretty lame.”
Should You Go To Art School?
“Let’s face it sometimes it’s not about you; it’s about who you know. Relationships are important to artists and it’s never too soon to start developing them.”
What Do The Colorblind See When They Look At Colorful Art?
“Walking around the Making Colours exhibition, I was dazzled by the ultramarine blues and daffodil yellows. But was that a big patch of green in Degas’s La Coiffure? The sign said it was red, but my eyes said something different.”
How Amazon Has Amazon By The…
“It is precisely because Hachette has been so successful in selling its ebooks through Amazon that it can’t afford to walk away from the retailer. By allowing Amazon to put a lock on its products whose key only Amazon possessed, Hachette has allowed Amazon to utterly usurp its relationship with its customers.”
Seattle Bookstore Hand-Delivers Rowling Books While Amazon Blocks Hachette Book
“Third Place Books hand-delivered copies of The Silkworm yesterday around the Seattle metro area to 20 customers. (Dozens of other customers pre-ordered from Third Place and chose to pick up the books in the stores.)”
Michael Bloomberg: Cities Can Solve Societies’ Problems Better Than Countries Can
“Virtually all of society’s problems are problems that both originate in the cities and are being solved there.”
Gerry Goffin, 75, Lyricist For (And Ex-Husband Of) Carole King
Among the hit songs the pair wrote together in the late 1960s were “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”, “Take Good Care of My Baby”, “Up on the Roof”, and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?”