Bestsellers are different from fast sellers, cult favourites or the brand known as “instant classics”. They bear no relation to those books we call “the canon”, such as Pride and Prejudice – which became a “bestseller” relatively recently, when it was remodelled as chick lit. The term has become a slippery one and is often used to describe the thing it’s not. Most of the books promoted by Waterstones as bestsellers are nothing of the sort. They don’t come close to the sales figures required (4,000 to 25,000 copies a week in hardback). Bestsellers are not simply the summer’s top beach reads; they are cultural phenomena, and we like to think that they come, like J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone or E L James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, out of left field.
What’s Up With This Othello In A Plywood Box?
They did what? “The two have turned the space into a plywood box, modeled in part on the kind of temporary military installations that U.S. troops have mounted in deserts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last dozen years or so, and put the audience on three sides of the action.”
Elites? What Elites? Defending Against Vague Scapegoating
“If pundits can agree on anything about 2016, it is surely that it has been bad for elites. Populist wave after populist wave has broken over Western politics, with a vote for Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and Italy’s loss of a popular young prime minister over a constitutional referendum that he called—and lost. The masses are out for blood, and the elites are quaking.”
Now Hundreds Of Academics All Over America Want To Be On The Professor Watchlist
Last month, a conservative college group launched the Professor Watchlist, which purports to name and shame academics who “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Last week, 200-odd professors at Notre Dame demanded to be included on the list alongside two of their colleagues who had already been singled out. (“This is the sort of company we wish to keep,” they said.) Now there’s a website called Free Academics where professors can join the petition to be added to the Watchlist, and more than 1,500 have signed on so far.
What Does It Take To Look Beyond The Moral Failings Of An Artist To Celebrate His Work?
“Many educated people want to boycott Woody Allen because of an accusation of rape, and I couldn’t get my sensitive friends to go see a Roman Polanski film with me if I paid them, but a clever Ezra Pound quote doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Indeed, it makes one seem more sensitive to know Ezra Pound. The fashions are complicated. It is by no means clear how stringent a good moralist must be when it comes to refusing the art of flawed people.”
The Grammar Police And Do They Matter?
The last time I Googled “grammar Nazi,” I got 1,660,000 hits, including many images of a “G” that looks like a swastika. “Grammarian” drew only 1,230,000, even though grammarians were performing their evils long before Hitler. The Urban Dictionary’s top definition of “grammar Nazi” was “someone who believes it’s their duty to attempt to correct any grammar or spelling mistakes they observe.” Not a very appealing someone. The next definition was “a person who uses proper grammar at all times, esp. online . . . ; a proponent of grammatical correctness. Often one who spells correctly as well.” “Grammar Nazi” seems harsh for this correct speller. Does the punishment fit the crime?
Screenwriter Versus Writer – The Contest Is Rigged
The fact is, in the war between author and screenwriter, the screenwriter virtually always wins. “Living authors are a problem. It’s much better to have an author safely departed because they do cause trouble. What you have to remember is that you owe everything to the movie, and nothing to the original.”
Hollywood Is Getting Even More Crowded. Facebook To Begin Producing Video
Facebook’s aim is to seed content for the new video tab in its mobile app, to make it more of a destination for users to spend time watching video content. The effort is similar to its program under which it has paid celebrities and media companies, including BuzzFeed, CNN and the New York Times, to produce video for Facebook Live.
Teachout: The Best American Theatre Not On Broadway
Few theatre critics have the opportunity to cover theatre the way The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout does. He’s on the road much of the year seeing theatre across the country. This year, he says, the best theatre was off Broadway and out of New York City.
NYT Book Critics Pick Their Favorite Books Of 2016
“The New York Times has three daily book critics: Michiko Kakutani, Dwight Garner and Jennifer Senior. Because they review different titles, it is impossible for them to compile a single unanimous Top 10 list. They have favorites, however, and are happy to have a chance to list them here.”
Washington DC Marching Bands To Sit Out Inaugural
At least one D.C. public school marching band has participated in the past five inaugural parades, but none applied for consideration this year.
The Problem Of Iago, And How Daniel Craig Solves It
“In recent productions he has been rendered modern (which is to say, not purely evil in the original, metaphysical sense) through complex psychological contrivances” – traumatized soldier, or repressed homosexual, or morbidly jealous husband, and so on. “Daniel Craig’s Iago is not a psychopath, or a victim of trauma, or a man deluded about right and wrong. He makes a choice.”
Three Misconceptions About Business Models In The Arts
For starters, a lot of us make the idea too hard: “A business model is a vital concept determining the success of any organisation and not a complex formula relating to its profit-making mechanisms. A business model is just a story explaining who your audiences and customers are, what they value, and how you will be able to sustain the organisation in providing that value.”
‘How Does It Feel’ – Patti Smith On Singing (And Fluffing The Words) At Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize Ceremony
“The opening chords of the song were introduced, and I heard myself singing. The first verse was passable, a bit shaky, but I was certain I would settle. But instead I was struck with a plethora of emotions, avalanching with such intensity that … I was unable to continue. I hadn’t forgotten the words that were now a part of me. I was simply unable to draw them out.” (includes video)
It’s Not Easy Out There For Women Composers Writing Operas, But Here Are Ten Of Them Who Are Making It Happen
“We asked 10 composers to reflect on … what it means to be a woman creating opera today. Read what they had to say while listening to excerpts from their works.”
Glenda Jackson Talks Acting And Politics
“They are not analogous. They are entirely different — They’re not entirely different … The exclusive responsibility for arguing against the Iraq war or stating my opinion of Margaret Thatcher’s regime was mine. If there was a fallout, it was mine. The responsibility in acting is not exclusively mine. There’s a shared responsibility.”
Academy Rules ‘Moonlight’ And ‘Loving’ Ineligible For Best Original Screenplay
“Both [films] were being campaigned for Original Screenplay and determined to be originals by the Writers Guild in their WGA Awards … Instead, the Academy’s writers branch ruled them eligible only in the Adapted Screenplay Oscar race.”
‘Arrival,’ ‘Manchester By The Sea,’ ‘Silence’ Disqualified For Best Original Score Oscar
“Per Rule 15 II E of the Academy’s rules and eligibility guidelines, a score ‘shall not be eligible if it has been diluted by the use of pre-existing music, or it has been diminished in impact by the predominant use of songs or any music not composed specifically for the film by the submitting composer.'”
Here Are The Nominees For This Year’s SAG Awards
Among this year’s movies, the Screen Actors Guild gave the most love to Manchester By The Sea, Fences, and Moonlight; the small-screen faves were The Crown, Stranger Things, and The People v. O.J. Simpson.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 12.14.16
The Art Emerging In A New(ish) Museum
Come along with me to see a new museum filled with contemporary art that, for the most part, hasn’t been overexposed. My recent trip took me to Morocco, where … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-12-1
Hedda Gabler: monster or philosopher?
My colleagues among the London critics are divided by Ivo van Hove’s new National Theatre production of Hedda Gabler, in an un-gimmicky, plain new version by Patrick Marber – except that they all agree in their high praise of Ruth Wilson’s performance in the title role. … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2016-12-14
Trifonov Plays Shostakovich
No other music so instantly evokes a sense of place as that of Dmitri Shostakovich. When Daniil Trifonov launched Shostakovich’s E minor Prelude at Carnegie Hall last week, the bleakness and exigency of Stalin’s Russia … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2016-12-14
How To Rethink Times Square To Make It Better
“The difficulty begins with the shape of Times Square—it’s narrow and lies in a slight dip in the land, increasing the feeling of crowdedness even when the space isn’t that crowded. Intuition might tell you that, to alleviate that sensation, a designer should open up the area as much as possible. Dykers explains that Snøhaetta’s approach is the opposite; the firm’s designers have found that the creation of well-placed obstacles is the key to unlocking the potential of a space, to giving people—whether they be front-of-the bull or back-of-the-bull people—the freedom to follow their instincts and shape the space for themselves.”
America’s Got Talent Star Jackie Evancho To Sing At Trump Inaugural
The 16-year-old said she was “so excited” to be performing at the ceremony on 20 January. She finished second on the TV talent show in 2010.
Alex Ross: The Music I Liked Best This Year
Recordings, concerts, experiences… and Saariaho. It was a remarkable and eclectic year of music-making in America.
How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing The Way Computers Think (And How We Relate To Them)
“A rarefied department within the company, Google Brain, was founded five years ago on this very principle: that artificial “neural networks” that acquaint themselves with the world via trial and error, as toddlers do, might in turn develop something like human flexibility. This notion is not new — a version of it dates to the earliest stages of modern computing, in the 1940s — but for much of its history most computer scientists saw it as vaguely disreputable, even mystical. Since 2011, though, Google Brain has demonstrated that this approach to artificial intelligence could solve many problems that confounded decades of conventional efforts.”
Christie’s CEO Steps Down
Patricia Barbizet “will hand over the reins to Guillaume Cerutti, who left Sotheby’s in 2015 to join Christie’s as president of Europe, Middle East, Russia and India operations.”