“It’s a real wrenching thing to go from being a private person to being a public person, especially when you’re being autobiographical. But it’s what everyone wants – to get everyone’s attention, to have your music make a living for you, to be validated in that way. So I’m a little embarrassed that [in ‘Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox’] I complained about getting what I wanted so badly.”
Month: May 2012
Egyptian Writers Plead With Their Government To Let Them Attend Gaza Lit Fest
“Egyptian authors, bloggers, journalists and revolutionaries are calling on their government to issue permits for them to enter Gaza and participate in the Palestine festival of literature, which is scheduled to start on Saturday in the embattled territory.”
Has Death of a Salesman Lost Its Meaning In Today’s America?
Lee Siegel: “While Death of a Salesman has consolidated its prestige as an exposure of middle-class delusions, the American middle class – as a social reality and a set of admirable values – has nearly ceased to exist. … Instead of humbling its audience through the shock of recognition, the play now confers upon the people who can afford to see it a feeling of superiority – itself a fragile illusion.”
Cranach Adam And Eve Case Goes To US Court Of Appeals
“A long-running lawsuit to force the Norton Simon Museum to surrender one of its prized artworks, 480-year-old paired paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder that were looted during the Holocaust, has reached what could be its last legal round: plaintiff Marei Von Saher’s recent appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.”
Boy Nouns And Girl Nouns: Why Languages Have Gender
“Languages all across the world have what’s called grammatical gender, which means simply that nouns get divvied up into different categories or ‘classes.’ Sometimes those categories are called masculine and feminine, like in Spanish, although for some other languages the categories have nothing at all to do with natural gender or biological sex.”
In The Philippines, A Mini-Sistema For Ballet
Jessa Balote, 14, who lives in a slum next to a giant waste dump and whose parents earn tiny bits of money scavenging and selling trash, “is one of 54 students enrolled in ‘Project Ballet Futures,’ a program run by Ballet Manila to provide free ballet training to children from some of the city’s most deprived neighborhoods.”
Leonardo – Great Artist Or Great Scientist? To Him, There Was No Difference
“Leonardo was a scientist and an artist at the same time and in a way totally unimaginable today. CP Snow’s famous image of the ‘two cultures’ of art and science, a great divide in the modern mind, did not apply in the 15th and early 16th centuries when Leonardo lived.”
Hilary Mantel On Putting Words In The Mouths Of Her Tudor Characters
“How do you give the past a human voice without betraying it or making your reader furiously impatient? Too much period flavor, and you slow up the story. ‘Nay, damsel, be not afeared,’ may be authentic, but it will make your reader giggle. If you give way to an outbreak of ‘prithee’ and ‘perchance,’ then perchance your reader will hurl the book across the room.”
Soweto Gets Its First Theatre
“The 150m rand (£12m) structure of concrete, ceramic tiles and glass has a multicoloured, curving design reminiscent of Frank Gehry’s architecture. It contains three auditoriums with a total of about 630 seats.”
‘Opportunities Missed’ – An Architecture Critic Reviews L.A.’s Expo Line Light Rail
“The architecture of the new stations, unfortunately, is not just weak but somehow aggressively banal. If that strikes you as a contradiction in terms, you’re right.”