Plenty of scientific linguists have debunked the sillier rules espoused by language pedants – those proscribing split infinitives, ending a sentence on a preposition, and so on. But Steven Pinker wants to go beyond that, “to offer guidance, based in evidence from actual use of language, for how people can improve their prose without recycling these superstitions”.
Month: November 2014
Thomas King Wins Canada’s Governor General’s Award For Fiction
“King had twice previously been a finalist: A Coyote Columbus Story was nominated in the children’s literature category in 1992, while his novel Green Grass, Running Water was nominated for the fiction prize the following year.”
Royal Shakespeare Company Earns More At Box Office But Sees Overall Income Drop
“It sold 1.7 million tickets globally, across 1,982 performances of 22 productions in 2013/14. In 2012/13 it sold 1.5 million tickets. Of the company’s £61.3 million income, 74% was self-generated, up from 73% the year before, with trading income amounting to £5.5 million, up 15% on 2012/13 figures.”
Death Of The Literary Feud?
“Writers today are less likely to engage in open antagonism because the political risks are too great. Between trolls on Twitter, libel law and the pressures of political correctness, writers no longer dare to insult their rivals in the hyperbolically abusive terms that Mailer and Vidal favoured.”
When Professors Refuse To Retire
“Professors approaching 70 who are still enamored with hanging out with students and colleagues, or even fretting about money, have an ethical obligation to step back and think seriously about quitting. If they do remain on the job, they should at least openly acknowledge they’re doing it mostly for themselves. Of course, there are exceptions.”
How Indian Classical Dance Healed A Down’s Syndrome Patient
Hema Ramaswamy, after 13 years of study, recently gave a 2½-hour solo recital. “She was able to achieve this despite her diagnosis and despite two major surgeries for a dangerous leak of cerebrospinal fluid. Her father said dance has strengthened Ramaswamy’s muscles and given her fine motor skills she simply didn’t have before.” (includes audio)
Crystal Bridges’ First President Leaves To Lead George Lucas’s Planned Museum In Chicago
“[Don] Bacigalupi has been named the founding president of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, to be built in Chicago, with a proposed opening date in 2018. The $700 million museum is funded by filmmaker George Lucas, who created Star Wars.”
Bring Back The National Book Award For Translation!
“The National Book Foundation should revive an award it should never have abandoned in the first place – an award that recognizes a category of books unusually sensitive to precisely this kind of recognition.”
The Art World Has Gotten Entirely Too Uptight, Says Jerry Saltz
“Flexibility is life, but lately I keep thinking that the art world has gotten a lot less flexible, and the freedom that I’ve always thought of as completely foundational – freedom to let our freak flags fly and express ourselves, even bizarrely – has constricted considerably. … Or maybe it’s me. Because, to be fair, a lot of this tempestuousness has been happening around moi.”
Salvador Dalí’s Erotic Cookbook
“The book’s contents range from discussions of the grotesque shapelessness and immorality of spinach to the masterful tool that is the human jaw. Recipes include exotic and experimental eats like Thousand Year Old Eggs, Crayfish Consomme and Conger of the Rising Sun (which is an eel).”