“A teaching associate at a private school in Dubuque has been fired for allegedly disrupting classes by telling students that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a ‘racist’ novel.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Where’s The Culture In The Cultural Olympiad? Grouses Jonathan Jones
“This is the summer of stupid. … The jubilee was one big festival of refusing to think. … So is the Cultural Olympiad, with its high-class acrobats. Who really cares about [Elizabeth] Streb’s aerial choreography? It has no cultural depth at all. Nor do such highlights of the Olympic summer of culture as a bus balanced on top of a seaside pavilion or a poetry bombing.”
Melbourne’s Top Concert Hall Ready After Two-Year Revamp
“With its Hollywood interiors and showpiece auditorium, Hamer Hall was the jewel in Melbourne’s cultural crown when it opened three decades ago. Now – after multimillion-dollar renovations over two years – the landmark venue reclaims its glory with a slick design that embraces the river, a four-day mini-festival of celebrations and, best of all, a much-needed acoustic overhaul.”
Rajesh Khanna, 69, Bollywood’s First Superstar Heartthrob
“[His] dark, soulful, somewhat fleshy good looks established him as India’s leading romantic hero, and [his 1969 film Aradhana] marked the beginning of a phenomenon, familiar enough in Europe and America but never seen before in Hindi cinema – the frenzied mass hysteria of fans.”
And The Worst Book On American History Ever Written Is …
The results of the History News Network’s contest are in. “After a week of voting by readers, [right-wing historian] David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies won with some 650 votes, narrowly edging the left-wing historian Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, which received 641 votes.”
Sorting Out The Messy Villella Situation At Miami City Ballet
HuffPo provides a guide to the claims and counterclaims being made about Edward Villella’s contentious departure from the company he founded and built.
The Public Radio Shows That Won’t Quit, Even After Their Hosts Do
NPR is hardly alone in keeping Car Talk on the air in reruns, even though the Magliozzi brothers (that’s Click and Clack to you) have quit making new shows. Some programs remain on the air even after their hosts have died.
Strike Worries At Both Twin Cities Orchestras
Both the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra “face severe budget shortfalls and are exploring deep reductions in costs. Some fear that could lead to a walkout by musicians on both sides of the river.”
John Irving On Writing About Sexual Difference
“When I finished The World According to Garp in 1978, I was naïve enough to think that I will never write about this subject again; that our intolerance of our own sexual differences will surely go away, and that Garp will be seen someday as a relic of the post-sexual-liberation days … [But] it’s still the same damn subject. It’s still about our obstinate intolerance to sexual differences.”
What Are A Writer’s Obligations To The People Depicted In His Work? None, Says Colm Tóibín
“[It] is strange that the idea of rights versus responsibilities does not preoccupy me. I feel that I have only rights, and that my sole responsibility is to the reader, and is to make things work for someone I will never meet. I feel just fine about ignoring or bypassing the rights of people I have known and loved to be rendered faithfully, or to be left in peace, and out of novels.”