“The easiest form of self-suppression is to have an idea and not write it, and we may well wish that more authors would exercise this prerogative. It gets more complicated once the book exists, however – even in unpublished manuscript form.” Consider Kafka, Gogol, Gerard Manley Hopkins …
Month: February 2012
My Dinner With Ibsen: Shawn And Gregory To Film Master Builder
“After a cinematic hiatus of nearly 18 years, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, the creators of the influential art-house films My Dinner With André and Vanya on 42nd Street, are … [making] a filmed version of Ibsen’s Master Builder, adapted by Mr. Shawn and directed for the screen by Jonathan Demme.”
Cambodia Vs. Sotheby’s Over Prized (And Possibly Looted) Statue
“Cambodia has asked the United States government for help in recovering a thousand-year-old statue of a mythic warrior that sits in limbo at Sotheby’s in New York and that some experts believe was looted amid the convulsions of the Vietnam War and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.”
Is Black English A Language, A Dialect, Or Something Else?
“Kathryn Stockett’s dialogue-heavy The Help, the novel that was adapted into an Oscar-winning movie, caused a stir over whether a white writer should try to depict African-American English. But wait, what is African-American English exactly and isn’t it called Ebonics?”
So, Valley Girls Are, Like, Totally Linguistic Trendsetters
“Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang, [linguists] say, adding that young women use these embellishments in much more sophisticated ways than people tend to realize.”
Dancing About Islamic Extremism (It Can Be Dangerous)
Lloyd Newson’s Can We Talk About This?, for his company DV8, is “one of the most searching examinations of Islamic extremism to have hit any stage in the UK, and a production with the potential to make the blasphemy controversy that grew around Jerry Springer: The Opera … look like a mere hiccup of disapproval.”
Banned In Malaysia: Erykah Badu And Her ‘Allah’ Tattoo
“Malaysian authorities scrapped a concert by American singer Erykah Badu on Tuesday after she angered Muslims with a photo in which she sports body art including the Arabic word for ‘Allah’.”
The Father Of Standup Comedy
In the 1850s, Cleveland newspaperman Charles Farrar Brown began writing satirical columns as the character Artemus Ward, “a mostly literate showman of twenty-two years experience as a ‘base exhibiter of depraved monkeys and unprincipled wax works’.” By the end of the decade, “he added the ‘e’ to his last name, climbed onto a stage in Connecticut and made people laugh for an hour or so.” No performer had tried anything like that in a theater before.
Guy Who Stole Art Because He Liked It Gets 1-3 Years In Prison
Mark Lugo, “a wine steward who served time in California after going on a bicoastal binge of plucking pricey art off gallery walls and using it to adorn his own home was sentenced Tuesday to prison in New York.”
Occupy The Whitney Biennial! No, Cancel It!
“In a recent letter sent to the Whitney Museum of American Art, organizers of the Occupy movement write that they want an end to the Whitney Biennial in 2014. ‘We object to the biennial in its current form because it upholds a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers,’ the letter states.”