Author: Douglas McLennan

Grace Paley On Artists Engaging With Politics

Asked in the same Paris Review interview whether it’s good for a writer to be politically engaged in turbulent times, Paley registered the question’s absurdity, refusing the notion that politics might be a harmful distraction for an artist: “It certainly isn’t antithetical to a passionate interior life – all that noise coming in. You have to make music of it somehow.”

Inside The Horrible Cult Of James Levine

“Interviews with nearly two dozen former students and musicians from Levine’s Cleveland days, including six from the maestro’s inner circle, indicate the conductor’s alleged sexual behavior was part of a sweeping system to control this core group. As Levine yoked his musical gifts and position to a bid for power, he dictated what they read, how they dressed, what they ate, when they slept — even whom they loved.”

Conductor Jesús López Cobos, 78

López Cobos held several music director positions at leading orchestras throughout a long and successful career. He was the Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1986 to 2001, making several highly-regarded recordings for Telarc, and later became their Conductor Emeritus. López Cobos was also General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin from 1981 to 1990, Music Director of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra from 1991 to 2000 and Music Director of the Teatro Real in Madrid from 2003 to 2010.

How Screen Star Mary Pickford Became The Most Powerful Woman In Hollywood

In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with movie pioneers Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks (whom she married the next year). The goal was to make and distribute their own films, and then rake in the profits. They built a big office building in Los Angeles (today it’s an Ace Hotel), and the adjacent theater — ornate, Spanish Gothic, with murals, sculptures and lobby fountains — was for showing their films.

Why We Need More Translators

Literary translation is a difficult profession to break into. Plenty of people want to do it, but in the insular English-speaking world, there’s regrettably little work to go around, and it’s easier for publishers to entrust their books to already-known translators who are seen as less of a risk. But there are many benefits to widening our pool of working translators, not least because new translators often lead us to meet new writers. More than half of the books submitted for the TA first translation prize are debuts for their translators as well as English-language debuts for their authors, showing that translators are in the vanguard of literary change.