“Chaplin’s art overflowed the bounds of cinema and raised the tides of history; but Chaplin’s life also overflowed the bounds of law and norms and submerged those who stood in the path of his desires.” As the man himself wrote, “I have no morals in the sense that I abide with them in awe. I respect no book of rules for they have been written by someone else.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Ya Know, ‘Lolita’ Just Isn’t A Great Novel, Let Alone Nabokov’s Masterpiece
In an essay to make a reader pound the table in either relieved agreement (“Finally someone said it!”) or incredulous vexation, Roxana Robinson argues that the book “lacks a crucial component of great fiction: compassion. … The only real emotion in Lolita derives from Nabokov’s embitterment, and its expression lies in his interior laughter.”
So Who *Was* John Singer Sargent, And Who Were The People He Painted?
“Sargent, said one of his biographers, was ‘at home everywhere, and belonged nowhere.’ Born in Florence to American parents in 1856, he grew up in Europe yet always considered himself American.” And by the time he settled in London in his thirties, he “seems to have known everyone.”
Zaha Hadid Pulls Out Of Tokyo Olympic Stadium Project
The British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid has abandoned her attempt to re-enter the race to build the main stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, two months after her initial design was scrapped amid soaring construction costs.
What Writers Need To Get Better, Says Ursula K. Le Guin, Is To Understand Grammar
“If I said, ‘Hey your syntax is a little ‘wonky,” they didn’t know what syntax was. And this makes it kind of hard to discuss writing if you don’t have the vocabulary of the very elements of your work – which is how the English language is put together, and what constitutes a sentence and a non-sentence and so on. And they were really afraid of semicolons! The semicolon struck terror into the hearts of many grown women.”
The Rise Of The Bite-Sized Romantic Comedy
“In contrast to Hollywood’s rom-coms – whose pleasures often feel like ‘settling’ – their TV analogues have a romanticism that is at once earnest and earned. They’re unphony about sex. They’re legitimately funny. They provide a helpful blueprint for any American planning to sleep with a Brit. It doesn’t hurt that they have short seasons: you can binge-watch these shows without losing your week.”
‘Domestic Suspense’ Novels – How Women Writers Revamped Crime Fiction
As opposed to the hard-bitten, urban lowlife milieu of male writers such as Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane, “the terror is lurking either in the home, or just outside of it, in the periphery. It makes everything seem unreliable … Even relationships that are supposed to be bedrocks, like marriage, like family, like friendship, or even in some degree, the workplace.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.21.15
How Not to Save Money
The other day one of the excellent character artists in opera wrote me that he was going into another business: he likes to perform in the United States, but many companies, both large and small, have … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-09-21
American Festival of Microtonal Music
We have a very busy week here, with the American Festival of Microtonal Music coming to town. Curated by two of our alumni, the festival has three concerts in three different venues on consecutive nights … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-09-21
LARB Video Interview: Miles on William S. Burroughs
Dunno how my tireless staff of thousands missed this. It’s as striking a summary of Burroughs’s life and writing as I’ve seen. His best biographer gives a sense of the man and his work that … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-09-21
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Andrew Litton To Depart As Colorado Symphony Music Director
“He’ll conduct his usual eight concerts this season starting Friday night, then shift into a new role as artistic adviser and principal guest conductor next year. That means he’ll lead just four concerts a year during the following two seasons, leaving him more time to carry out his duties as the recently hired music director of the New York City Ballet.”
Now This Is Loyalty: Yannick Nézet-Séguin Signs For Five More Years With His First Orchestra In Montreal
“If all goes according to the plan announced Wednesday morning in the concourse of Place des Arts, Yannick Nézet-Séguin will become a 20-year man with his hometown Orchestre Métropolitain.”