Author: Matthew Westphal

French Novelist Michel Déon, 97

“To French readers, Mr. Déon was a complicated and contrarian figure: a political reactionary whose work evolved from experimentalism to more traditional forms, and an enthusiastic champion of young renegade writers.” Almost as renegade, perhaps, he was a member of the august Académie Française who made his home in the far west of Ireland.

Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.02.17

7 Audience Development Resolutions for 2017
“Your beliefs become your thoughts; Your thoughts become your words; Your words become your actions; Your actions become your habits; Your habits become your values; Your values become your destiny.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Together, let’s make these resolutions for 2017: … read more
AJBlog: Audience Wanted Published 2017-01-01

Patti Smith’s New Year’s Eve vow: “We must not behave!”
Grey-haired but loose and limber — funny, fierce, profane and poetically incantatory — Smith celebrated her 70th birthday in the city of her origin as if for all boomers and our progeny. … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2017-01-01

Monday Recommendation: Andrew Cyrille
Andrew Cyrille Quartet, The Declaration Of Musical Independence (ECM)
Andrew Cyrille, a bold drummer, long since established his audacity and the independence underscored in the album title. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-01-02

What will remain
My posting about the sad fate of my beloved Uncle Paul, who vanished without trace from my life when I was a boy, brought me a fair amount of correspondence, including … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-01-02

12 Plays of Xmas: 6 Pal Joey by O’Hara, Rodgers & Hart
Book trouble – it’s the curse of the musical. One of my most slaveringly anticipated shows of the past winter was David Bowie’s Lazarus, but the book by Enda Walsh was an embarrassment of … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2017-01-01

 

Joyce’s ‘Portrait Of The Artist’ At 100: Colm Tóibín On The Book’s Ongoing Relevance

“When I read the hellfire sermon in A Portrait, I had heard some of those very words, even though I was born 40 years after the book came out. The Christmas dinner scene, with the bitter argument about Parnell between Stephen’s father and his aunt, could easily have come from many Irish tables in the 1970s and ’80s … Since corporal punishment in schools continued until as recently as the early ’80s, anyone who had the misfortune to be educated by priests or Christian Brothers (or indeed nuns) would have fully recognised the scene where Stephen is unfairly punished. It happened to us all.”

How Adam Driver, Of All Unlikely Personalities, Became A Movie Star

“If you, in 2012, watched Adam Driver on Girls – an unhinged, distasteful walking id, as magnetic as he was bizarre – and said to yourself, ‘This guy is going to be the cast’s biggest star,’ you should probably start betting on horses. … Especially considering that the only thing more obvious than Driver’s gifts might be his presumed limitations – that topographic map of a face, that woodwind voice – the actor’s ascent raises the question of how exactly he became Hollywood’s go-to young actor of excellence.”

Can You Make A Dance About Race And Politics That’s Also Truly Good Art? This Man Can

“The ideal, of course, is a piece in which the artistic qualities – in dance, those would be shape, tempo, rhythm, attack, etc. – are such as to elicit a feeling that you recognize as being on the side of justice. But you never know whether that’s really justice or just your wish for a piece you admire to share your politics.” Joan Acocella writes that choreographer Kyle Abraham manages to transcend the dilemma.