“I remember more experienced writers telling me that I should say yes to every opportunity until I had earned the privilege to say no. But hope is both a strength and a weakness; it takes time to learn the difference between those who feed it and those who feed off of it. I wish someone had told me that early-career writers are the cheap gas on which much of the writing business runs.” – The New Yorker
Blog
Edinburgh International Festival Faces Big Cuts
The proposal would mean the EIF has taken a 19.4% cut in its funding since 2015/16. EIF director Fergus Linehan questioned the lack of a strategic plan for the festival, which took £3.8 million in ticket sales in 2018. Linehan told The Stage: “There has been 10 years of decline and now this is accelerated decline. So what is the plan?” – The Stage
Leonard Cohen Letters Sell For Five Times Estimates At Auction
The top letter, in which Cohen wrote in December 1960 about being “alone with the vast dictionaries of language,” fetched almost $75,000 compared to an original high estimate of $13,000. – CBC
Study: Busting Stereotypes Of What Millennials Are (And Aren’t)
Today’s young adults are just as likely to endorse traditional racial and gender stereotypes as members of previous generations. And by age 30, those who have earned college degrees enjoy incomes comparable to those of their predecessors. – Pacific Standard
Marin Alsop On Being A Pioneering Woman Conductor
Despite the progress made in recent years, she said, female conductors were still judged differently from their male counterparts while on the podium. “The thing about conducting is it’s all body language,” she said, and “our society interprets gesture very differently from men or from women.” – The New York Times
How Independent Bookstores Are Becoming Hip Again
Across Britain and Ireland indies are doing what they do best: hosting readings and signings, cooking up literary lunches and generally feeding curiosity. Bookshop crawls are quite the thing now and you can join one locally or engage in literary tourism farther afield. – The Observer
The story of Mrs. T and me — in a hundred words
Inspired by a series that The New York Times describes as “Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words,” I thought I’d try to sum up the wildly improbable but nonetheless true story of our courtship and marriage in one hundred carefully chosen words. – Terry Teachout
New Berlin “Super-Museum” Gets Delayed
The opening of a €600m super-museum in Berlin has been postponed to next year, raising sceptical eyebrows among locals wary of the German capital’s growing tendency to deliver large public building projects late and over budget. – The Guardian
How The Trump Era Has Changed Comedy
“When satire is doing a good job, it’s not just punching up. It’s reminding us of our complicity.” But there’s no double meaning in outrage: “Outrage tells you, ‘Here is the thing, here is the thing that’s bad, here is the thing that’s good. … It says exactly what it should conclude. You don’t have to draw conclusions.” – Politico
Genius From A Different Time: Elon Musk Is A Throwback Entrepreneur
“His personality isn’t so different from one of those determined entrepreneurs from the 1900s who wanted to stick a motor on a carriage and get people moving without having to hitch a horse. For grizzled industry veterans, Wall Streeters, and Musk critics, he can be tough to take. But he’s not usual, in the history of people who start car companies.” – Business Insider