It wasn’t the usual impersonal voice reminding those of us sitting in the Joyce Theater to please turn off our cellphones, Instead, we who were waiting to see Camille A. Brown and Dancers perform her ink heard a muted, but excited babble and a voice that I took to be Brown’s. — Deborah Jowitt
Author: Matthew Westphal
Accessibility and its discontents
When I started blogging a decade and a half ago, I took for granted that it would be essential to draw a bright line between the things I talked about on line and the things I kept to myself. Many of my millennial friends, by contrast, seem not to draw that distinction. — Terry Teachout
A Two-Piano Encounter
A welcome surprise: I had no idea that veteran pianist Fred Hersch and the relatively new piano star Sullivan Fortner had worked together. — Doug Ramsey
Bookseller Has Emergency Surgery, And His Competitors Get Together To Keep His Store Open
Seth Marko, co-owner of the Book Catapult in San Diego, came home from a winter convention with chest pains and went straight to the hospital; his wife/co-owner had to help with his recovery, and the only full-time staffer came home from the same convention with bird flu. So the owners of four other San Diego bookstores (plus a bookseller couple from Los Angeles) pitched in to staff the Catapult rather than allowing it to close. — Publishers Weekly
‘MoviePass Does Still Exist. They’re Just A Little Harder To Find These Days.’
A reporter finds — after a lot of walking around, and behind a very inconspicuous door — the current offices of “one of the most glorious burnouts in corporate history.” The execs, he finds, are quite aware of their mistakes but determined to keep going, because they proved that “there is a massive group of people — into the millions — who are interested in moviegoing subscriptions.” — The Ringer
What Makes Television About History Succeed?
“Television’s scale and range testify to a remarkable level of public engagement with the past. And this makes it an excellent medium for history. The formats, so different from a textbook or monograph, often leave academic historians uneasy. A lecture-style delivery transferred to the screen is more palatable to many than anything that risks sensationalising or romanticising. … [But] drama and comedy are safety nets for catching those who hated history at school.” — History Today
Ben Hecht Hated Hollywood. He Also Helped Create Two Of Its Most Important Genres
“The best screenwriter in Hollywood was contemptuous of movies as an art form (‘an outhouse on the Parnassus,’ Hecht declared), and had little trust in the wisdom of studio bosses and producers (‘nitwits on a par with the lower run of politicians I had known’).” Nevertheless, Jean-Luc Godard said in 1968, “he invented eighty per cent of what is used in Hollywood movies today.” — The New Yorker
How A Book Gets The Cover You Judge It By
Three senior designers at publishing houses talk about the process of conceiving and trying out different designs, then choosing the one they think works best. — The New York Times
GuideStar And Foundation Center, Two Key Parts Of US Nonprofit Ecosystem, Will Merge
“In this case, neither organization’s name will survive, and both CEOs will be incorporated into the structure of the new organization, which now goes by the inspired name of ‘Candid.’ (As in, ‘a Candid Assessment of this’ or ‘a Candid Report on that.’)” — Nonprofit Quarterly
‘A Great Teacher Is A Gift. A Great Line Editor Is A Miracle.’
“Instead of thinking about line editing as a forgotten art, one callously consumed by the book business, we should consider it a privilege — a gift — enjoyed by some writers, but not most. … [It] is the ultimate union of writer and editor; the line-edit means we cede control, and the pen, to someone else. It is a gift of trust, and it must go both ways.” — Literary Hub