For many, having kids of their own provides an opportunity to share these beloved stories with the next generation. But revisiting them alone as adults can also provide comfort, relaxation and the pleasure of rediscovery. Not only do rereaders rediscover the story, but they may also rediscover themselves.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale” Has Become An International Symbol Of Protest
In many parts of the world, women’s-rights campaigners – particularly those concerned with reproductive rights and abortion – have embraced the symbolism of The Handmaid’s Tale. Language and iconography from the book and TV series are increasingly prevalent on marches, protests and social media.
NYT Theatre Critic Makes Flippant Gender Reference In Review And Gets Pummeled Online
In a review of Head Over Heels, the hybrid Go-Go’s jukebox musical and Elizabethan farcethat opened on Broadway last night, the New York Times’s chief theater critic Ben Brantley misgenders the character of an oracle played by former Drag Racecontestant Peppermint, who happens to be making her debut as the first openly trans woman actor to create a principal role on Broadway.
How A Venerable Oregon Chamber Music Festival Revitalized Itself
The first five weeks bristled with listener-friendly new music, fresh young performers, diverse older ones, jazz, tango and even contemporary music by Chinese-American composers. And Chamber Music Northwest has pulled this off while holding on to most of its aging core audience, its renowned longtime performers, and a healthy dose of core, classic repertoire. Audience numbers have stabilized—a triumph in the beleaguered classical-music world—and the demographic is gradually growing more diverse.
Licking Our Plate
I see plate-licking almost every day, which delights me because I do the cooking. (I will not consider the possibility that anything in front of this one would be equally licked.) For “plate,” you may substitute “platter,” “bowl,” even “charger.”
Ayn Rand and Libertarianism
FOR most of my life — I was a kid during the Reagan Revolution — I’ve been puzzled by otherwise smart people falling for Libertarianism and Ayn Rand’s brand of freedom snake oil.
Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize Wins Say Much About The Current State Of Global Literature
Ondaatje’s Booker wins are complicated. More than anything, Ondaatje’s Golden Booker win showcases the contradictions of literary value in the current context of the global commodifications of creative goods. His 1992 success can be examined within the broader context of the prize, its relation to postcolonial fiction and the globalization of Can Lit.
What a Beast!
“The Captain” is the best flick I’ve seen in years.If you need to read a review, you might as well read David Edelstein’s. My only demurral is that I see the setup as feral.
Have We Lost Our Sense Of Moral Rigor And Equivalency?
The outrage over a police shooting of an unarmed black teenager unfolds at the same level of intensity as the outrage over what might or might not be a case of racial profiling by a sales clerk in a small Brooklyn boutique. This is intentional: The general feeling seems to be that distinguishing between degrees of morally repugnant conduct will lead to some sort of blanket pardon of all such conduct; that to understand is always to forgive. Such concern is understandable, but misplaced — it flattens and obfuscates, rather than clarifies.
The Theatre Director Who Seeks To Divide His Audiences Rather Than Unite Them
“Dissatisfaction itself has become a commodity. Every day I see the headhunters from Western Europe’s theatres searching for fresh blood from problematic countries. At one point, everybody was asking me if I knew any directors from Ukraine. Then the focus shifted to Syria and Poland. There’s something deeply humiliating and colonial in the reduction of the work of an artist to her or his country of birth and the political problems of that same country.”