Robert McCrum: “Literary classics cluster on the north face of Parnassus. For this vertiginous terrain there are different sherpas. Italo Calvino says that a classic is ‘a book that has never finished what it wants to say’. Ezra Pound identifies ‘a certain eternal and irresponsible freshness’ … Alan Bennett wryly notes: ‘Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.'” (includes lame reason for including drama, poetry, and religious scripture)
Author: Matthew Westphal
Some Airlines Are Eliminating Seatback Screens
“Formally called in-flight entertainment, the screens, and the preselected media on them, go a long way toward keeping passengers happy and distracted. The longer the flight, the more useful the seatback entertainment becomes. But those entertainment systems are expensive to install. They can cost $10,000 per seat … They also add bulk and weight to seats and quickly become technologically obsolete.” (Other airlines, however, are doubling down on them.)
Hero Dogs Are Being Trained To Sniff Out Smuggled Antiquities
“Vets at the Penn Vet Working Dog Centre in Philadelphia are to train canines to sniff out illegally trafficked antiquities, in partnership with the city’s Penn Museum and the non-profit organisation Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research.”
Facing Allegations Of Abuse, Peter Martins Resigns From New York City Ballet
“After accusations of sexual harassment and physical and verbal abuse” – and following an arrest (his second) for drunk driving on Thursday – “Peter Martins, the powerful leader of New York City Ballet who shaped the company for more than three decades, has decided to retire.”
Trove Of Medieval Stained Glass Fragments Discovered At Westminster Abbey
“The salvaged glass – some dating back to the 13th century, including stars, flowers and sun rays, fierce little mythical animals and beautiful medieval faces – is being recycled into dazzling new windows being made for the abbey at the stained glass studio at Canterbury Cathedral, where some of the original medieval glass artists may have worked.”
New Poetry Awards Funded By Art-World Superstars
“Each award was endowed by visual artists like Ellsworth Kelly and his partner, Jack Shear, as well as the foundations of Cy Twombly and Roy Lichtenstein.” The first round of winners are Lisa Robertson, Anne Boyer, and Fred Moten.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.01.18
Fade to gray
Both of us had a feeling that we might not be coming back to Florida this January, and sure enough, the doctors told us a couple of months ago that the time had come at last for Mrs. T to hang up her traveling shoes and start waiting for the Big Call. This is, lest any of you forget, very good news. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2018-01-01
Wishing You A Perfect 2018
Over the years, the Duke Ellington Orchestra’s head arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne” took on new colors and quirky solo turns each time the band played it, as they invariably did in … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-01-01
George C. Wolfe And Joe Mantello Talk About Directing
“George C. Wolfe and Joe Mantello go back to the 1990s, when Mantello, as a young actor, starred as Louis in Wolfe’s Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. In the years that followed, Mantello found himself acting less and directing more. Now, they’re formidable colleagues in their prime, as well as great friends, to boot. In the latest edition of TheaterMania‘s Artist to Artist series, Wolfe and Mantello discuss what their successes and failures mean to them, how they approach actors in the rehearsal room, and what it takes to maintain a level of joy that carries them through adversity.”
Ridley Scott Explains How He Rescued ‘All The Money In The World’ From The Kevin Spacey Disaster
Kyle Buchanan: “I met with Scott recently in Beverly Hills to discuss how he did it, and what I found was a filmmaker who has the stamina of a man half his age and an octogenarian’s give-no-fucks bluntness.”
Colonial America’s Most Notorious Poet Was An Enslaved Teenage Girl
Phyllis Wheatley was abducted from the West African coast and sold to a Boston couple at roughly age seven. Their daughter taught the young slave to read, and within two years, Phyllis fluently read and wrote English and started learning Latin. When she was 18, her owners took her to London to publish a book of her poems, and – once disbelieving publishers and others were convinced that Phyllis had written them herself – she became famous on both sides of the Atlantic.