Matthew Westphal – Page 2036 – ArtsJournal Wayback

Crossing The Nabokov-vs.-Roth Divide

Joshua Ferris: “In book after book, Nabokov creates idiosyncratic, heightened, elaborately constructed worlds; Roth’s one book investigates and exhausts his world, the given world. When I was younger, I preferred Nabokov. … But you can’t choose what kind of writer you become; aesthetics is handmaiden to temperament. By dint of nativity, or culture, or epoch, or perspective, I was more temperamentally aligned with Roth.”

Author Walter Dean Myers, 76

“He sold more than 15 million copies of his more than 100 books. He was a National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and a three-time finalist for the National Book Award (in the Young People’s Literature category). He won the Coretta Scott King Award six times and was a Newbery Honor recipient twice. His slim, tightly focused novels most often took on the full scope of difficult lives.”

‘This American Life’ And Its Risky Move To Self-Distribution

“Gone are a distributor’s financial guarantees, which in the case of This American Life, reached seven figures. Instead, Mr. Glass will now be responsible for the show’s marketing and distribution, as well as for finding corporate sponsors. It’s the equivalent of Radiohead’s releasing its own album … or Louis C. K.’s selling his own stand-up special – except all the time, for every show.”

Let’s Just Ignore All Those Studies About The Terrible Things That Will Happen If You Watch Too Much TV, Okay?

Neil Genzlinger: “That television will kill you isn’t particularly new … But this critic, at least, has stopped paying attention to any report that begins, ‘A new study finds that watching television could …’ He has done so because there are so many of them, and they have sent confusing, sometimes contradictory messages.”

The Problem With Broadway ‘Commodity Musicals’

Aladdin. Bullets Over Broadway. 9 to 5. Young Frankenstein. The Little Mermaid. Beauty and the Beast. And so on. “The most distinctive feature of these musicals is that they usually treat their source material not as a springboard for fresh, creative endeavor but as an exploitable economic commodity that can be ‘repurposed’ for further profit.”

L.A. Metro Promises – With A Contract – That New Subway Won’t Make Disney Hall Rumble

“An agreement … went into effect this week, formally committing Metro to making sure that the sensitive stretch of its $1 billion downtown Regional Connector Project won’t add any audible vibrations. The agreement sets out a process for what will happen if those preventive measures fail – with a Music Center lawsuit to collect damages the worst-case scenario.”

Paris Court Rejects Guggenheim Descendants’ Suit Over Venice Palazzo

“In a 16-page decision, the Paris tribunal rejected legal claims made by a group of her descendants that the foundation was bound to display Guggenheim’s vast collection of modern art the way she had originally presented it in her home … without additions of contemporary works.”

Filmmaker Paul Mazursky Dead At 84

“A gentle satirist of contemporary society, Mazursky at his best” – in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Blume in Love, An Unmarried Woman and Down and Out in Beverly Hills – “chronicled the social trends of the late 1960s and ’70s, including the era’s touchy-feely self-improvement fads, drug experimentation and shifting rules for love and sex.”

The Wall Street Journal Analyzes The Met Opera’s Box Office Figures

“[The study] shows new productions spearheaded by the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb have had mixed success. While they generally sell better than revivals, some performed poorly when brought back to the stage a season or two later.”

Author: Matthew Westphal