“If the Catholic Church makes G. K. Chesterton a saint – as an influential group of Catholics is proposing it should – the story of his enormous coffin may become rather significant. Symbolic, even parabolic. … In his vastness and mobility, Chesterton continues to elude definition: He was a Catholic convert and an oracular man of letters, a pneumatic cultural presence, an aphorist with the production rate of a pulp novelist.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Where Are The Great New Musicals With Great Music?
Rupert Christiansen: “The glut of hugely successful shows – Mamma Mia!, Let It Be, Thriller, Jersey Boys, The Commitments – which effectively trade on nostalgia is rather depressing. Even more significant is the undeniable truth that the scores of the more recent crop of successful ‘original’ musicals – The Lion King, Billy Elliot, The Book of Mormon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Wicked – are their weakest element. Has one of them yielded a single song which has passed into the general consciousness?” (Maybe “Hakuna Matata”?)
Why Nicholas Hytner Is A Playwright’s Dream Director
Alan Bennett (The Madness of George III, Talking Heads, The History Boys): “To a playwright, what immediately commends him is the amount of work he puts in. Directing can be quite a lazy profession with the play once roughed out and in preview left to coast along or settle down. Not with Nick; he never lets up.”
The Two Things About Mark Rylance
“The first,” writes Catherine Shoard, “is that he’s the best actor of his generation. … [The second] is that he’s a bit of a fruitloop. A hippy – a pagan, even … Yet my bullshit detector never blips, even when he explains how the mind has two genders and is quite like a womb. Rather, Rylance just seems like one of the gentlest men I’ve met.”
From A Zulu Township To The World’s Great Opera Stages: Pretty Yende
She didn’t even know opera existed until she was 16 and heard the Lakmé Flower Duet on that British Airways commerical. “It didn’t sound human at all,” she says.
Islamist Extremists And The Destruction Of History
Jon Lee Anderson: “All around the Middle East, archeological treasures of the ancient world have been stripped of their original glory – often, of what some call graven images. ISIS’s fanatics do so hatefully, as if to spite all others, but they are not the only perpetrators. Muslim extremists have long sought to destroy the physical evidence that any other faith worth valuing existed before their own.”
An Atheist’s Search For A Useful Morning Prayer
Heather Havrilesky: “Unfortunately, I don’t like saying bold and glorious words out loud. So I need a prayer that’s not too prayer-like. I need a belief system that doesn’t require me to suspend my disbelief. My prayer shouldn’t conjure pews and crosses and a vengeful God, but also it shouldn’t conjure wind chimes and scented candles and middle-aged men in linen pants. I need to honour my soul, of course. Who doesn’t? But I want to do it in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m living in a douche commercial.”
Laws And Social Norms (One Can’t Work Without The Other)
Adam Gopnik: “A law is something that exacts an announced cost for being broken. A norm is something that is so much a part of the social landscape that you wouldn’t think, really, that anyone could break it.” Until, of course, people do.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.17.15
Does culture’s share of GDP matter?
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2015-03-17
Weiss’ Wishes: Dan’s Plans for the Metropolitan Museum – Part II
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-03-17
Steve Lehman and Cory Smythe as jazz-beyond-jazz artists
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2015-03-17
Music Schools in Transition, Part VI
AJBlog: State of the Art Published 2015-03-17
A handful of music
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-03-17
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Sotheby’s Finds Its New CEO At Madison Square Garden
“The art auction behemoth announced Monday that it has tapped Tad Smith, who has served as president and CEO of the Madison Square Garden Co. since 2014. Smith will officially assume his post at Sotheby’s on March 31.”