“I find a variety store-bar called the Sans-Souci. Inside is a drunk loudmouth of about 50 and a platinum blonde who looks like she’s been thru all the mills and talks tough. The drunk is saying: Well, if you waz ever in a war, you’d see something. She says: I ain’t gettin near no war! I’m not thinkin of wars, I’m thinkin of prisons!”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.30.15
Peter Brant’s Brands: Whither ARTnews and Art in America?
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-07-30
The Whole-Tone Hypothesis
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-07-30
So you want to see a show?
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-07-30
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Stage Fright – What Exactly Is It, And What’s Behind It?
“Stage fright has been aptly described as ‘self-poisoning by adrenaline'” – the fight-or-flight response. “But what Cro-Magnon man needed upon finding a bear in his cave is not what a modern person needs in order to play King Lear. Without the release of abrupt action, the hyperactivation becomes, basically, a panic attack.”
How A Stolen Rodin Was Tracked Down And Recovered After 24 Years
The bronze cast of Young Girl with Serpent was taken from a Beverly Hills home in 1991. The story of its discovery and restitution features an ace investigator, a sharp-eyed Rodin scholar, a recalcitrant dealer, and a filing mistake.
The 100 Best Movies Of All Time, As Chosen By Actors
The number-one film may come as something of a surprise …
Now That Americans Are Eligible For The Booker Prize, There Are Five Of Them On This Year’s Longlist
That’s five out of 13 in total. (The Brits only got three.) One of those five is a literary agent, and another – possibly the least famous of the group – is the bookmakers’ early favorite to win.
Dramatizing Egypt’s Political And Social Issues With A Bedroom Farce
Threesome, by Yussef El Guindi, “begins as a bawdy bedroom comedy whose main characters, a heterosexual Egyptian-American couple, invite a white American man into their bed. Over two acts it transforms into something darker, as all three grapple with the fallout of sexual assault, infidelity, war and the pain of lost hope, both political and personal.”
Can Arabic Literature Ever Be Fully Understood In English?
“In some ways, reading all this Arabic literature in English has been like listening in on a foreign-language recording when one understands the words’ meanings, but not the allusions, nor the jokes, nor the underlying rhythms. Some of this woodenness can be blamed on inadequate translations. But some of it falls to our historical blind spots.”
‘I Would Have Jumped Off A Roof For Mao’: Li Cunxin, ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’, From The Cultural Revolution To The 21st-Century West
“Forced into ballet as a child in Mao’s China, Li Cunxin defected to the US and had to work as a stockbroker to support his family back home. But he never quit dancing. As he brings the Queensland Ballet to Britain, he talks about his traumas and triumphs – and shock at seeing people take their privileged lives for granted.”
Harper Lee’s Attorney Takes Over Another Piece Of The ‘Mockingbird’ Brand: The Annual Play In Monroeville
Tonja Carter, who rediscovered the manuscript of Go Set a Watchman and sued the local museum over its gift shop’s Mockingbird-themed merchandise, has formed a company to produce the stage adaptation of the novel in the town’s historic courthouse – taking the rights away from the museum, which had presented the play for years.