“This year, AmazonCrossing plans to publish ’77 titles from 15 countries and 12 languages’ in the United States, which will almost certainly dwarf the output of Dalkey and its ilk. And, with this new $10 million commitment, the number of works in translation published by AmazonCrossing should continue to soar.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.20.15
It’s About Defining Your Values
I think that defining your values is far more important than defining your career path. Careers change, values do not. Know the impact that you want to have in the world … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-10-20
Kill Your Darlings!
“Kill your darlings!” we were told by William Faulkner, a sentiment we take to heart in our writing and our creative practice. Authors must often rid themselves of their most labored over, most precious passages, for the greater good of the literary work. Unfortunately career planning and career paths ask you to “Kill your darlings” as well, … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-10-20
Get A Mentor
I got my first CEO job at a nonprofit because the woman who hired me as her second in command told me she would invest in my development and ensure that I was prepared to take over when she retired … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2015-10-20
Measure Revenue Differently. Cultivate Loyalty Collaboratively
Arts Journal blogger Doug Borwick recently wrote a post on the role of marketing and development departments that captured my attention. In the following quote he summarizes an issue that I’ve been thinking about for a long time: … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-10-20
A Don Friedman Day
Today was chock-full of interviewing, transcribing, researching and, in general, preparing to write liner notes for a new Don Friedman trio album. The research included diving into books, rummaging through the web for additional information … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-10-20
Lookback: must critics be “right”?
From 2005: Of course it’s desirable to be right, and I don’t see how it’s possible to take seriously a critic who’s wrong about most things. Nevertheless, I’m uneasy with the notion that “getting things right” is the ultimate test of a critic’s worth … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-10-20
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What’s Wrong With The Classical Concert Experience In The 21st Century? Maybe The Way We’re Mucking About With It
Philip Clark: “For decades, all the talk has been about how musicians dress; about the timing and duration of concerts; about the historical distance that audiences feel from classical music … Orchestras and ensembles have been experimenting with these strategies for years. … All this stuff – plunging string quartets into the dark, worrying about what shirts to wear or applauding between movements – speaks of a poverty of ideas. If you have nothing to say about content, talk instead about procedure.”
Classical Music Isn’t Exclusive Or ‘Elitist’ Unless We Make It That Way
Brigid Delaney: “Classical music is incredible. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t brought up with it, or don’t know how to pronounce the composers’ names … I wasn’t, I can’t, and it still lets me in … Experiencing this magic doesn’t ask much of you – just that you pay attention and surrender to it.”
The God-Hates-Renoir Movement Comes To The Met – And Meets Counter-Protesters
“One man who took severe offense at RSAP’s cause approached demonstrators, shouting at them, ‘You know who else tries to ban things they don’t like? Nazis! That’s what you are! Nazis!'” Renoir defenders’ signs read “You can take our Renoir when you pry them from our cold dead hands” and “Je suis Pierre-Auguste.”
California Launches A Cultural Districts Program
“Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 189 , a measure empowering the California Arts Council to designate areas as Cultural Districts in a competitive application process. … AB 189 charges the Council to formulate a plan to foster Art Districts throughout the state, thereby enhancing creativity, and in the process, reinventing the landscape of cities throughout the state.”
Is This Former Charlie Hebdo Cartoonist “The Arab Of The Future”?
With the first volume of his memoir – titled The Arab of the Future – Riad Sattouf “[has] emerged as France’s best-known graphic novelist … Not since Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of her childhood in Khomeini’s Iran, has a comic book achieved such crossover appeal in France. … [Yet] he claims to have forgotten the Arabic he learned in Syria, has no Arab friends, doesn’t follow the news from the Middle East, and knows no one in the Paris-based Syrian opposition.”
He’s All Around Us, Yet He’s Invisible: The Very Great Alexander Von Humboldt
“The Humboldt penguin, the Humboldt squid, and more than a hundred other animal species; Humboldt’s Lily, Humboldt’s Schomburgkia, and three hundred other plant species; … Humboldt Limestone, Humboldt Oolite, the Humboldt Formation, the Humboldt Current; … Humboldt Peak, and Humboldt ranges in China, South Africa, and Antarctica; … four Humboldt counties and thirteen Humboldt towns in North America alone, the Humboldt crater and Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.” So who was this man?
How We Read Joseph Conrad Changes With The Times
“There’s a long and noble tradition of literary critics misunderstanding Joseph Conrad. … Far more words have been written about him than he ever wrote himself – and not everyone can get it right all the time. Especially when you throw combustible postcolonial issues into the mix. Time has a cruel habit of amplifying those mistakes. A century after he was writing, any negative predictions about Conrad’s long-term durability, for instance, seem hilariously misguided.”
It Is Impossible To Stop Comparing Yourself To Your Peers
“They say comparison is the thief of joy, and this, as it turns out, is one cliché that has a raft of empirical evidence backing it up. But there is another truth about social comparison: It’s pretty much inevitable, so you may as well learn to use it to your advantage.”