“In 1964, living in opulence at Switzerland’s Montreux Palace Hotel, Nabokov began to keep a dream diary of a sort, dutifully inscribing his memories on index cards at his bedside in rubber-banded stacks.” And they contained some doozies.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Lost Klimt Drawing Turns Up In Dead Museum Staffer’s Closet
“In Austria and Germany, finding missing art is rarely simple. The drawing, along with three works by Klimt’s contemporary Egon Schiele, was part of a long legal battle and an even longer back story.”
Hollywood’s Lolita Complex: Molly Haskell Asks If Time’s Finally Up
“Nymphetmania has a long and hoary pedigree in Hollywood, and flourished years before Nabokov gave us the Lolita syndrome” – from DW Griffith’s child-woman ingénues such as Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh through Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby right up to late Woody Allen. “It is no longer possible to rationalise as consensual certain egregious pairings, or to accept with equanimity the sexualisation of underage performers. We have begun to take a second look at the smarmy overtones of movies such as Allen’s Manhattan and Louis CK’s now-shelved I Love You, Daddy, in which ‘protective’ older men ogle daughter figures in utterly self-serving ways.”
Top Off-Broadway Theater Abruptly Cuts All Ties With Playwright Neil Labute
“MCC Theater, a prestigious Off Broadway company, announced Thursday that it was canceling an upcoming production of Mr. LaBute’s latest play and terminating his tenure as its playwright-in-residence, effective immediately. The theater offered no explanation for its action.”
New York City Ballet’s Investigation Finds Peter Martins Accusations ‘Not Corroborated’
The inquiry, done by attorneys hired by the company and its school, into allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, and physical abuse that led the longtime chief of City Ballet to retire reportedly found no verification for the accusations. However, several former dancers, including some interviewed by the attorneys, argue that the entire exercise was meant more to “whitewash” the case than to find the truth.
New ‘Golden’ Man Booker Prize To Name Best Of All 51 Past Winners
“The new award, announced on Friday as part of the literary prize’s 50th anniversary celebrations, will be judged by five judges and then voted for by the public.” Of course, they’ve done this twice before, and the same book won both times.
New York Times Podcast ‘The Daily’ To Air On Public Radio
“The Times will produce a daily 30-minute radio version of the podcast for distribution to stations starting in April. Though the podcast is released at 6 a.m. Eastern time, public radio stations will be able to air the radio version between 4 p.m. and midnight Eastern time.”
Ai Weiwei Writes About The Artwork That Made Him ‘The Most Dangerous Man In China’
The piece, called Remembering, was a response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the thousands of children who died in it because their shoddily built government schools collapsed on top of them. “The kind of authoritarian state we have in China cannot survive if it answers questions – if the truth is revealed, they are finished. So they started to think of me as the most dangerous person in China.”
Activists Use ‘Three Billboards’ Protest To Press London Authorities On Grenfell Tower Fire
In what seems to be the first, and surely won’t be the last, incidence of life imitating this particular piece of art, “members of the Justice 4 Grenfell group paraded billboards emblazoned with the words ’71 dead’, ‘And still no arrests?’, ‘How Come?’ around central London locations in an attempt to keep victims of last June’s tower block blaze ‘in the national conscience’.”
2,000-Year-Old Rock Sculptures Of Camels Found In Saudi Desert
“About a dozen life-sized stone sculptures and reliefs of camels have been found in a markedly inhospitable site in northern Saudi Arabia. While camelid art has existed in the region going back millennia, nothing quite like this has been found before.”