“He wrote three novels himself, which drew on his own upbringing as a Jew in the South … But in a life of prolific production – he wrote or edited more than 30 books – his greatest contribution was as a cultural historian and critic who became … ‘perhaps the person most responsible for the emergence of Southern literature as a field of scholarly inquiry’.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Is Monty Python Still Funny? The Guys Themselves Want To Know
John Cleese: “The main danger we have is that the audience knows the scripts better than we do.”
Enough Of The Bad Sex Award – It’s Time For A Good Sex In Fiction Award!
William Nicholson, a nominee for this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award for a passage from his novel Motherland, explains in an essay why he will not be a good sport about this.
Are Broadway Musicals Really A Jewish Creation?
A recent PBS documentary made the case, but Mark Lawson argues that, for all the myriad contributions to the form made by artists who were Jewish, thinking that way isn’t necessarily logical or useful.
William Shakespeare, Rewrite Man
John Timpane considers three Jacobean plays attributed to other authors on which some scholars think Shakespeare may have collaborated.
Fun Home‘s Five-Year Journey To The Stage
Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, has presented his share of complicated new musicals. But Fun Home, he said, was in a class by itself. ‘They went through more iterations and drafts than I think I’ve ever seen a musical go through.'”
Why Do Some Paintings Draw Such Outrageous Prices (While Others Don’t)?
A senior auctioneer and art specialist at Sotheby’s explains.
“Like One Skyline Perched Atop Another”: Rem Koolhaas’s New Rotterdam Mega-Building
“Filling a hefty chunk of the southern skyline, at 150 metres tall and more than 100 metres wide, De Rotterdam looks like someone has sliced up the drawings and stuck them on the horizon – but not put the pieces back together quite right.”
Bankrupt New York City Opera Wins Approval To Sell Some Assets
“New York City Opera, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month after years of management missteps, won court approval to auction some assets, including costumes, wigs, props and about 60 musical instruments.”
L.A. MOCA Names Its Lawyer Interim Director
“The board of the Museum of Contemporary Art on Wednesday appointed Maria Seferian, counsel to the museum since 2008, as interim director. In addition, the co-chairs of the board of trustees, TV writer and producer Maria Arena Bell and lawyer-producer David Johnson, will step down at the end of the year.”