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The Final Days Of Oliver Sacks

On that long August afternoon a little more than two years ago, Oliver completed his notes for the book he knew he would not see. He titled it “The River of Consciousness” — the title of one of the 10 essays — and dedicated it to his longtime friend and editor at The New York Review of Books, Bob Silvers. He wrote a letter to Mr. Silvers to share this news, and within days, he received a tender letter back. (Mr. Silvers died this year.) With that, I think he felt he had done everything he could.

Newly-Revealed Letters Provide Inside View Of Harper Lee

“Thirty-eight letters, written between 2005 and 2010 by the To Kill a Mockingbird author to her friend Felice Itzkoff, are up for auction this week. Addressed affectionately to ‘Clipper’, Lee’s nickname for Itzkoff, the letters span Lee’s memories of her father, her apparent atheism and her friendship with Hollywood figures. … [There’s also] a suggestion made by American president Lyndon B Johnson to the actor Gregory Peck that the US would one day have a black, female president.”

Research: Arts Attendance Is Primarily Linked To Its Location

“Our research reveals that the arts are radically local.  We expected distance to play a role as a cost in the value calculus, but we underestimated just how much location weighs in the decision to act or not to act.  Based on an exploration of related research in retail settings, we initially estimated that a person living roughly 7 miles (12 kilometers) from an arts and cultural organization would be 80% less likely to attend than a person living in the organization’s immediate neighborhood.”

Why We Keep Finding Great Artists’ ‘Lost’ Works On Display Right Under Our Noses

“Several Old Master paintings have turned up just this year. In July, two frescoes in the Vatican thought to be the work of Raphael’s students were determined be by the master himself. In October, a New Jersey town announced that a bust of Napoleon Bonaparte, on display for over 80 years in the council chambers of a local borough hall, was actually a long-lost work by Auguste Rodin.” Why are we only discovering them now? Partly, it’s because of newly-available technology, and partly it’s – well, it’s dirt.

Suzan-Lori Parks Wrote A Play Every Single One Of Trump’s First 100 Days

“I didn’t know what else to do. So I do what I always do, I wrote something. … I didn’t know what it was gonna be like until I had to type them up and corrected them and read them through. And it was very – I can’t explain it, but it was like reading a tragedy, and the cathartic effect that that has, and the healing effect that offers.” A Q&A with American Theatre‘s Diep Tran.

‘Dance Isn’t For Everyone’ – Mental Health And The Profession

Kathleen McGuire: “When I wrote about my struggle with depression, and eventual departure from dance because of it, I expected criticism. I was prepared to be challenged. But much to my relief, and horror, dancers from all over the world responded with support and stories of solidarity. The most critical response I saw was this one: ‘Dance isn’t for everyone.’ This may as well be a mantra in the dance world. We have become entrenched in the Darwinian notion that the emotionally weak will be weeded out. There is no room for them anyway.”

Do You Have A ‘Creative’ Job? That’s Actually Up To You (Partly)

“The common perception is that a lucky few hundred arts graduates get to truly flex their creative muscles, while the rest are condemned to creativity atrophy in 9-to-5 desk jobs. But it’s not that simple. Whether you see your profession as creative depends not solely on the job description or workplace environment, but rather on how you define creativity, and how you view yourself. That preliminary finding comes from a study published in American Behavioral Scientist earlier this month, titled ‘I Don’t Take My Tuba to Work at Microsoft: Arts Graduates and the Portability of Creative Identity.'”