“After the better part of a decade in which various markets, from Intrade to the stock market, became many people’s preferred way to peer into the future, a backlash is clearly under way. Not so long ago, knowing about the existence of Intrade was a mark of being in the vanguard. Today, mocking Intrade, ideally on Twitter, is a sign of sophistication.” But don’t ask experts about the future either – they’re just as wrong, and just as mocked.
Author: ArtsJournal2
A Q&A With Cheryl Strayed, Author Of The Wildly Successful Wild
“Strayed has a special talent for glimmering, golden turns of phrase that seem to hold all the promise and hope in the world — they’re Bible verses for a secular audience — but these are not the sort of cheesy mottos that you’ll find on, say, motivational posters on Pinterest. … Take for example: ‘The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.'”
Spanish Police Arrest Four In Attempted Picasso Forgery
“The canvas, a counterfeit version of a 1964 work called The bust of Jeune Garcon was accompanied by false authenticity documents bearing the signatures of Paloma, one of the Spanish painter’s daughters, and a renowned French art expert.”
Sure, Hemingway Wrote 47 Endings, But What About Fitzgerald And Gatsby?
No. 11, “The Undiagnosed Colorblindness Ending”: ” ‘What are you talking about?’ the fisherman asked. ‘That light is blue, and your socks don’t match.’ “
As J.K. Rowling Prepares To Publish First Book For Adults, British Towns Claim The Book’s About Them
“The Casual Vacancy, published in September, charts rivalry and small-time political strife in Pagford, a seemingly tranquil town. While the author is remaining tight-lipped about any real-life inspiration, Kelso in the Scottish Borders this weekend boasted a”
Brooklyn, Writers’ Mecca (Why? How?)
“The phenomenon is now so pronounced that you could say, without exaggeration, that there are two principal avenues for would-be writers in America. The first is to swallow the exorbitant price tag for one of the country’s multiplying creative-writing courses (usually Masters of Fine Arts, or MFAs); the second is to move to Brooklyn.”
Goodbye To All That, Redux: Decamping Literary Brooklyn For L.A.
“I’ve never felt more important than when I lived in New York. I was poor and my work was neither very good nor very well-read, and yet every day I’d wake up in my 10-by-10 room, its window looking out over my building’s rusted trashcans, and somehow think I’d achieved another great victory.”
George Szell, Who Demanded Merely Perfection From The Cleveland Orchestra
“‘He sat down and played a chord something like this and he said, “How many?”‘ [Szell biographer Michael] Charry says. ‘I said six or seven and he said, “Can you name them?” and I actually did name them. And, passing that, then we went to the rest of the audition. I had the feeling, though, that if my ear hadn’t been good enough, he would have said, “Thank you very much, but you may go.”‘”
Robots, Taking A Mechanically Precise Bow (When They Don’t Fall Over)
In one high school theatre/robotics program, “The robots are forever keeling over, wandering off, missing their marks and stealing focus. … Will robots ever develop the acting chops to compete for top billing? Probably not anytime soon. Nonetheless some robotics researchers and experimental dramatists are finding fertile ground in working with a new generation of increasingly sophisticated robot actors.”
Creating Dance That Destroys (And Revives) The Creator
Choreographer Jack Fervor, who found it devastating (and freeing) to revisit his childhood for a new collaboration with a sculptor who had a similarly terrible youth: “After every performance, audience members come up, gay and straight, who say they identify with the isolation and fear that we felt. That’s my intention. I make my work so that people don’t feel as lonely as I have.”