Author: ArtsJournal2

Why Summer Isn’t For Reading

It’s for re-reading instead: “I pull this or that beat-up, food-spattered volume off a shelf, whimsically hopeful that this time around it will be a different story: Anna Karenina will skip the train tracks and Sydney Carton will avoid the guillotine. Nothing has changed. But of course everything has changed.”

Maybe It’s A Good Thing That Amy Winehouse’s Label Destroyed Her Demos After Her Death

“It’s understandable why Joseph might have called the destruction of the demos the moral choice. Posthumous releases are a thorny subject in the music business. They can be seen as one final, exploitative attempt to wean money from an artist no longer around to cash the check — the musical equivalent of a creepy Tupac hologram. And also, they can be terrible, so rough around the edges that they can serve to undo a legacy.”

Thank You, Robots, For Preserving Print Newspapers

“In the dark void of the National Newspaper Building, the robots are afoot. Towering 20 metres high and stretching far into the distance is an imposing expanse of racks, heaving with trays bearing volume upon volume of newspapers, laid flat and strapped between metal sheets. Suddenly, an enormous autonomous crane zooms forwards, stops abruptly and, with a hydraulic gasp, shoots out an arm. Lifting a large metal tray off the scaffold, it deposits it on a conveyor belt and races into the dark.”

Hollywood Gets Calls To Action For The Apparently Endangered American Movie Star

“The invasion of British and Irish leading men in Hollywood has now gone beyond a joke for many in the American entertainment industry. First noticed some time in 2011, the trend was initially dismissed as a novelty: an interesting phase that would pass, rather than as a threat. But this summer actors and directors are calling for action to mobilise American drama teachers and schools to counter it.”

What’s Going To Happen To Canadian Books?

“In reality, writers find that a belief in an author, as opposed to a particular book – an author as a long-term investment – tends to exist less and less. There is little loyalty. I know a half-dozen respected Canadian authors who have been breezily dumped in recent years by major publishers because their sales were just too low.”