“[The] fifty-year birthday of a good children’s book marks a real passage, since it means that the book hasn’t been passed just from parent to child but from parent to child and on to child again. A book that has crossed that three-generation barrier has a good chance at permanence.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Catching Up With David Hallberg In Moscow
The 29-year-old star of American Ballet Theatre is now in the midst of his first stay in the Russian capital since joining the Bolshoi Ballet. He’s already doing classes and rehearsals all day and shows at night, and he’s making his first attempts to master Russian.
Should Fabio Luisi Really Become The Met’s Next Music Director?
“The 52-year-old Italian conductor’s record as music director elsewhere has been spotty, but Luisi is appreciated for his painstaking preparation, efficient conducting style and hands-on competence in all aspects of opera. … But dependable as he is, Luisi, who is not particularly imaginative nor a big podium personality, is no [James] Levine.” Mark Swed suggests a few alternatives.
Royal Ballet Launches Frederick Ashton Foundation
“Death concentrates the mind wonderfully, as they say. In the wake of the demise last week of Alexander Grant, who owned the choreographer Frederick Ashton’s world-wide hit ballet La fille mal gardée, the Royal Ballet has announced that it is launching a foundation to ‘perpetuate the legacy and work’ of the distinguished choreographer 23 years after his death.”
Haruki Murakami’s Surreal Fictions – Are They Prescient?
“In [his] world, fish fall from the sky near a Tokyo train station, backyard wells lead to personal and political violence, and a giant frog tells a businessman how to save Tokyo from its next major earthquake. The mundane mingles with the absurd, but neither offers solutions in a universe bent toward chaos.”
A Little TV Won’t Hurt Your Toddler (In Spite Of What The Experts Say)
Farhad Manjoo: “Baby books and child-rearing classes describe TV as a vice on the order of smoking or keeping firearms in the house. Our pediatrician told us that on-screen images move too quickly for kids’ brains, and could thus cause long-term developmental problems. … After digging into several studies, I found that there’s little to support a zero-tolerance policy on screen time.”
Creative Industries Are Not Bad Investments, And Banks Should Lend To Them: Report
“Risky Business,” a report issued by the think tank Demos, states that “start-up companies in the creative industries are no more likely to fail than the economy as a whole, and are statistically more successful than hotels and restaurants.” The study suggests that these industries pose less risk “as a result of the passion, dedication and skill of the individuals involved.”
A Salute To America’s Great Industrial Designers
“[The] United States in the first half of the 20th century is where industrial designers went mainstream. They put their stamp on telephones, refrigerators, typewriters, cars, and a variety of mass-produced goods. We are used to famous fashion designers branding otherwise undistinguished products, but these designers were different: They combined bold aesthetics with real engineering know-how.”
‘Middlebrow’ – Is The Word Still An Insult?
David Haglund: “While unabashedly lowbrow art has long ceased to be disreputable, has the term ‘middlebrow’ also lost its sting? It may be a tougher category to rehabilitate: Neither quite one thing or another, ‘middlebrow’ suggests something mushy and unsure of itself – and this in-between-ness evokes status anxiety far more than the art on either extreme of the spectrum.”
See The Library Books Joe Orton Defaced!
In the early ’60s, the mischievous English playwright and his boyfriend (and later murderer) would check out books from their local library and return them with satirical or surreal collages on the dustjackets and naughty alterations to the blurbs. Now the library is putting those dustjackets on display.