Daniel Mendelsohn: “Tone is everything. Translating Agamemnon? Clytemnestra shouldn’t sound like Joan Crawford.” Dana Stevens: “In their eagerness to make Homer accessible to impatient 21st-century ears, [two] new translations sometimes opt for speed and directness at the cost of nobility.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
What Daniel Radcliffe Is Out To Prove
“I have a massive chip on my shoulder. When you fall into something at age 11 and get paid incredible amounts of money for your entire teenage years for doing a job anyone would want, there is a part of you that thinks everybody is just saying, ‘He got there because he fell into it; he’s not really an actor.'”
The Problem With Malcolm Gladwell
“I had thought Gladwell was inadvertently misunderstanding the science he was writing about and making sincere mistakes in the service of coming up with ever more ‘Gladwellian’ insights to serve his audience. But according to his own account, he knows exactly what he is doing, and not only that, he thinks it is the right thing to do”
BBC To Overhaul iPlayer
Director General Tony Hall “announced a new version of the iPlayer, which will allow users to access programmes for up to 30 days after their initial broadcasts and even watch shows before they have been transmitted on TV.”
In The Digital Era, What Does “Watching TV” Even Mean?
“We spend a full five hours and 16 minutes a day in front of a screen, and that’s without even turning on a television. … For the first time we are devoting more attention each day to smartphones, computers and tablets. All of which points to a big question: What counts as TV-watching today?”
Choreographer David Dorfman, Transformed
“In 2007, Mr. Dorfman weathered a serious car accident near New London, Conn … It was the end of a long day (and, at around 1:30 a.m., the beginning of another); about 15 minutes from home, Mr. Dorfman fell asleep at the wheel. ‘I was so unbelievably lucky,’ he said. ‘So I’ve just had, as trite as this may seem, I’ve had this appreciation for every heartbeat, every moment.'”
When Anna Met Uday, And They Changed The Art Of Dance
“Uday Shankar was a student at the Royal College of Art in London when, in 1923, he was summoned to a meeting with Anna Pavlova.”
The History Of Cool, Part One
“But what is cool in 2013, and why are we still using this term for what scholar Peter Stearns pegged as ‘a twentieth-century emotional style’? … You’d be unlikely to use other decades-old slang – groovy or rad or fly – to endorse any current cultural object, at least with a straight face, but somehow cool remains evergreen.
Citizen Grand Juries In Kansas Try To Indict A Sculpture
“The bronze sculpture, installed in the Overland Park Arboretum, shows a headless, bare-breasted woman photographing herself. Artist Yu Chang may have intended it as a criticism of sexting, but the American Family Association of Kansas and Missouri sees his work as obscene.” And since citizens can have grand juries empaneled in Kansas, the AFA has had one convened (it returned no indictment) and is trying for another.
Director Patrice Chéreau, 68
“The French director of opera, theater and films such as Queen Margot and Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, died Monday in Paris of lung cancer. He was 68. A screenwriter and actor as well, Chéreau was director of the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre, France. His unusual production of Wagner’s Ring cycle] in Bayreuth in 1976 was described as changing the face of modern opera.”