“What makes bibliomancy fascinating is that unlike other forms of divination, it trades in something which already has an interpretable meaning – words. Perhaps a butcher can figure out the narrative that a sheep’s liver conveys, but that The Aeneid, as indeed all texts, has a meaning requires no suspension of disbelief, even if the meanings which are being derived seem far from authorial intention.”
Month: February 2018
Jack Kerouac Was Really A Catholic Mystic Poet
Scott Beauchamp: “The spiritually inverted radicals of the Sixties who sacralized their politics and secularized their spirituality – blame Reich and Marcuse – read Kerouac with blinders on. They only saw what they wanted to see, and what they wanted to see was a celebration of the ‘freedoms’ of hedonism. … The truth is more complex and so much more interesting: Kerouac” – who described himself as a “strange solitary Catholic mystic” – “was one of the most humble and devoted American religious writers of the 20th century.”
Vladimir Nabokov Had Cooler Dreams Than You Do
“In 1964, living in opulence at Switzerland’s Montreux Palace Hotel, Nabokov began to keep a dream diary of a sort, dutifully inscribing his memories on index cards at his bedside in rubber-banded stacks.” And they contained some doozies.
Lost Klimt Drawing Turns Up In Dead Museum Staffer’s Closet
“In Austria and Germany, finding missing art is rarely simple. The drawing, along with three works by Klimt’s contemporary Egon Schiele, was part of a long legal battle and an even longer back story.”
Hollywood’s Lolita Complex: Molly Haskell Asks If Time’s Finally Up
“Nymphetmania has a long and hoary pedigree in Hollywood, and flourished years before Nabokov gave us the Lolita syndrome” – from DW Griffith’s child-woman ingénues such as Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh through Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby right up to late Woody Allen. “It is no longer possible to rationalise as consensual certain egregious pairings, or to accept with equanimity the sexualisation of underage performers. We have begun to take a second look at the smarmy overtones of movies such as Allen’s Manhattan and Louis CK’s now-shelved I Love You, Daddy, in which ‘protective’ older men ogle daughter figures in utterly self-serving ways.”
Top Off-Broadway Theater Abruptly Cuts All Ties With Playwright Neil Labute
“MCC Theater, a prestigious Off Broadway company, announced Thursday that it was canceling an upcoming production of Mr. LaBute’s latest play and terminating his tenure as its playwright-in-residence, effective immediately. The theater offered no explanation for its action.”
New York City Ballet’s Investigation Finds Peter Martins Accusations ‘Not Corroborated’
The inquiry, done by attorneys hired by the company and its school, into allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, and physical abuse that led the longtime chief of City Ballet to retire reportedly found no verification for the accusations. However, several former dancers, including some interviewed by the attorneys, argue that the entire exercise was meant more to “whitewash” the case than to find the truth.
New ‘Golden’ Man Booker Prize To Name Best Of All 51 Past Winners
“The new award, announced on Friday as part of the literary prize’s 50th anniversary celebrations, will be judged by five judges and then voted for by the public.” Of course, they’ve done this twice before, and the same book won both times.
New York Times Podcast ‘The Daily’ To Air On Public Radio
“The Times will produce a daily 30-minute radio version of the podcast for distribution to stations starting in April. Though the podcast is released at 6 a.m. Eastern time, public radio stations will be able to air the radio version between 4 p.m. and midnight Eastern time.”
Ai Weiwei Writes About The Artwork That Made Him ‘The Most Dangerous Man In China’
The piece, called Remembering, was a response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the thousands of children who died in it because their shoddily built government schools collapsed on top of them. “The kind of authoritarian state we have in China cannot survive if it answers questions – if the truth is revealed, they are finished. So they started to think of me as the most dangerous person in China.”