“The King James Bible may well be the greatest work of literature ever written by committee – and now we know a bit more about the collaboration that produced it.”
The Shape Of Things To Come: Is History A J-Curve, An S-Curve, Or A Spike?
“For some ancient Greeks and Romans, history was a downhill slide. … Nowadays some optimists think that history slants in the opposite direction. Some techno-utopians argue that technological progress is following an exponential curve, a J that is bending upward toward the vertical. … At the other extreme are today’s gloomy Malthusians. They view history as a spike, in which industrial and population growth overshoot the limits to sustainability, followed by a sharp crash likely to involve the collapse of industrial civilization … There is a third alternative: The shape of things to come may be a logistic curve or S-curve.”
The Business Of Broadway: An Infographic
“Using data provided by the Broadway League, the industry’s trade association, The Wall Street Journal examines the business side of show business, from hits and flops to cyclical realities.”
How Did The ‘Night Vale’ Podcast Go Viral, And End Up With A Novel Contract?
“If the Night Vale novel succeeds, it could inspire more podcast-to-book projects as publishers search for new mediums to mine.”
How Amazon Became The Biggest Publisher Of Translated Literature In The U.S.
“Amazon Publishing typically distributes its books only through Amazon.com. As a result, you won’t see them on the New York Times bestseller list, which discounts books that are only available from a single retailer, or on the subway: most are sold in electronic form. … It wasn’t necessarily supposed to be this way.”
Digital Journalism Tries To Straddle The Apple-Google, App-Web Divide
“Apple wants mobile devices to be filled with apps. Google supports a world where people browse the web for most things. Now websites are increasingly caught in the middle of those competing visions.”
Examining Steven Spielberg’s Fascinating Shift From Popcorn Movies To Politicized Ones
The films propelling his swift ascent – Jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), or E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982) – were free of anything resembling politics or ideology. But over the course of his career, Spielberg’s cinema has become increasingly self-aware and culturally engaged. His latest movie, Bridge of Spies, is a Cold War spy drama that’s interested not so much in the cloak-and-dagger espionage stuff, but rather in the moral and political issues at stake, both within its narrative and in present-day America. This is a fascinating reversal from earlier in the director’s career.”
What Does It Mean to Be a Private Intellectual?
For thirty-five years at Harvard, George Scialabba did his clerical duties, and then wrote commanding philosophical essays after work.
Theater J Hires A New Artistic Director, 10 Months After A Controversial Firing
“The controversial dismissal of Roth means Immerwahr and Theater J — a 240-seat company operating within the D.C. Jewish Community Center — will be closely watched regarding its programming and response to pressure.”
The (Illusory) Line Between Indian Dance And Modern Dance
“‘I needed to look at the body as body, movement as movement,’ he says, ‘not as defined by someone else’s aesthetic.’ The piece was developed from everyday actions: there are no formal hand gestures, no folk steps.”
As Actors Get Older, They Need To Keep Their Grubby Hands Off Women’s Roles
Eileen Atkins: “If you find me some brilliant boys who’ve voices that haven’t broken yet for Shakespearean use, then that’s fine, but there’s no excuse for the middle-aged men at all.”
Yes, Of Course There’s Free Will – And We Should Start Quantifying It
“As we start to understand, and learn to measure, the capacities that underlie behavioural freedom, we can begin to put this natural free will on a scale. Paralleling the measurement of intelligence, we could call it the freedom quotient: FQ. Such a scale should give us new insights into the factors that hinder or enhance our efforts to shape our lives. In other words, FQ should tell us how free we are – and how we can become even more so.”
Doodling, Transformed For The 21st Century
“Those accustomed to doodling on scrap paper know this: the bliss ends the moment you stop, study the result, and decide to trash it. (The alternative being, after an embarrassingly prideful assessment, not doing that.) But who bothers with scrap paper anymore? With any number of apps, you can doodle on a screen, in infinite colors, with your index finger. You can erase smoothly and cleanly, in a way that is satisfying and therapeutic. You can start over, draw new lines. No self-doubt, no paper cuts. When the picture is done, it floats away into the cloud.”
How Amazon Became America’s Biggest Publisher of Translated Literature
“This year, AmazonCrossing plans to publish ’77 titles from 15 countries and 12 languages’ in the United States, which will almost certainly dwarf the output of Dalkey and its ilk. And, with this new $10 million commitment, the number of works in translation published by AmazonCrossing should continue to soar.”
The Lost Performance Of James Baldwin And Ray Charles At Carnegie Hall
“If the image of Baldwin and Charles on stage together rings no bells, it may be because negative press had buried it out of range of critics.”
The World Heritage Fund ‘Watch List’ Hits Home With Listings In The U.S.
“The U.S. sites tell an interesting story about the period of Spanish colonialism in the American Southwest. Both churches were built by indigenous labor for Spanish colonizers and together capture two distinct periods of the Spanish colonial era’s architecture.”
Misty Copeland Hits The Late-Night Talk Circuit
Ballet becomes melded with pop culture as Jimmy Kimmel wears a pink tutu to dance with Copeland.
Google Books Is A 21st Century Library For Everyone
“Friday’s ruling is a big deal not just for search engine giants, copyright lawyers, authors, and publishers, but also for ordinary people. Only a generation ago, doing scholarly research in the way that Google Books now makes possible was a game only academics could play.”
Accusations Of Financial Skulduggery At The DeYoung
“The complaint by the Fine Arts Museums’ longtime chief financial officer, Michele Gutierrez, has landed both at City Hall and state Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office. It centers on $450,000 Wilsey ordered paid to an ailing staffer, and both the city and museum Board of Trustees have been looking into it, the sources say.”
Theatre: A Biological Imperative (For Some Of Us)?
“In fact, over the Foundation’s 90-plus-year history, the theatre artist study is the first in which a specific career group tended to have Foresight over any other aptitude. For theatre professionals, the aptitude for seeing possibilities is a defining characteristic.”
Philadelphia Musicians Sign A One-Year Contract
“The contract, which runs through Sept. 11, 2016, will keep the music going as the organization, which emerged from bankruptcy protection three years ago, charts its future.”
What’s Wrong With The Classical Concert Experience In The 21st Century? Maybe The Way We’re Mucking About With It
Philip Clark: “For decades, all the talk has been about how musicians dress; about the timing and duration of concerts; about the historical distance that audiences feel from classical music … Orchestras and ensembles have been experimenting with these strategies for years. … All this stuff – plunging string quartets into the dark, worrying about what shirts to wear or applauding between movements – speaks of a poverty of ideas. If you have nothing to say about content, talk instead about procedure.”
Is This Former Charlie Hebdo Cartoonist “The Arab Of The Future”?
With the first volume of his memoir – titled The Arab of the Future – Riad Sattouf “[has] emerged as France’s best-known graphic novelist … Not since Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of her childhood in Khomeini’s Iran, has a comic book achieved such crossover appeal in France. … [Yet] he claims to have forgotten the Arabic he learned in Syria, has no Arab friends, doesn’t follow the news from the Middle East, and knows no one in the Paris-based Syrian opposition.”
Robert Moses Vs. Jane Jacobs: The Opera (Yes, It’s Real)
“It’s called A Marvelous Order – the phrase is drawn from Jacobs’s masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities – … [with] music by composer Judd Greenstein, choreography by Will Rawls, and words from Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Tracy K. Smith.” Says director Joshua Frankel, “The biggest challenge is we don’t want to make this, Moses is Darth Vader and Jacobs is a perfect angel from heaven.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.19.15
It’s Not A Career. It’s A Lifestyle.
It’s hard to plan for how to follow your dreams. And those of us who work in the arts have landed here because of a personal calling, following an often … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-10-19
Your Career Plan: It’s not always a straight line!
Even though I am not an arts administrator, I have had to wear small versions of that hat in my career as a professional musician. In my past life as … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-10-19
Feeling Alive
The following two thoughts cross my mind nearly everyday. When I forget why I’ve chosen to build an unconventional career, they remind me. … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-10-19
Cartoon Artist Kate Evans Does Rosa Luxemburg
I notice that the NYT Sunday Book Review’s not-so-special “Special Issue” on graphic books (Oct. 18) makes no mention of Red Rosa by Kate Evans, forthcoming from Verso (Nov. 3). My tireless staff of thousands … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-10-19
Come for the sex dolls, stay for the protest
The Young Vic is calf deep in sex dolls. Tacky plastic fake-flesh spills over the stage as Measure for Measure begins, a ‘huge peach heap of vinyl orifices,’ as critic Natasha Tripney wrote. … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2015-10-19
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