Category: people

He had been highly regarded for his multi-volume life of Theodore Roosevelt, the first book of which won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer, when he shook up the literary and political worlds with a biography of Ronald Reagan that incorporated fictional elements, including a fictional “Edmund Morris.” – The Washington Post

“He’s extremely sure of what he believes in, so much so he doesn’t need to push it on people. He’s very open and non-dogmatic. His confidence about how good he is gives him a “fuck you” quality. People are clearly not going to take his career away from him because he speaks his mind.” – The Guardian

“Suddenly the worst thing that can happen to a creative person has happened to me. … Somehow I became respectable. I don’t know how — the last film I directed got some terrible reviews and was rated NC-17. Six people in my personal phone book have been sentenced to life in prison. I did an art piece called Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot, which is composed of close-ups from porn films, yet a museum now has it in their permanent collection and nobody got mad. What the hell has happened?” – The Paris Review

Starting in January 2018, Rebecca Brill started sending out short excerpts from Sontag’s published diaries on Twitter every day. And what happens when one does this? “You will start talking about Susan Sontag incessantly. You will bring her up at meetings … and in chats with your favorite bartender. … As hard as you try to refrain, you will constantly quote Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks on dates. … You will not get many second dates. Another thing is that you will have trolls.” – Literary Hub

“[She] first gained acclaim in the 1970s, when she appeared in New York nightclubs as a bluesy singer with a powerful voice and presence. She dropped out of show business for a decade before returning to the stage in the 1990s, using elements from her personal life — her size, her experience of sexual assault and depression — to heighten the emotional intensity of her performances, which were often so intimate that they seemed to be exercises in group therapy.” – The Washington Post

A federal court in Sydney ordered that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. must pay the Oscar winner A$1.98 million (US$1.36 million) compensation for economic loss on top of the A$850,000 (US$584,000) in punitive damages awarded in April for a Sydney Daily Telegraph story accusing Rush of “inappropriate behaviour” towards the actress playing Cordelia to his King Lear at the Sydney Theatre Co. in 2015. (Rush had earlier offered to settle for A$50,000; News Corp. rejected the offer.) – Reuters

“In a court filing on Monday, the personal representative of Ms. Franklin’s estate disclosed that three handwritten documents had been discovered just weeks ago at Ms. Franklin’s home — one in a spiral notebook under her sofa cushions, the others in a locked cabinet — and asked a Michigan probate judge to decide whether any of them are valid wills.” – The New York Times

“One of the first high-profile Kenyans to openly declare he was gay, … he won the Caine Prize for African writing in 2002 and was best known around the world for his satirical essay ‘How to Write About Africa.’ Wainaina was also named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2014 for his gay rights activism.” – BBC

“She wished she could talk about it, she said in her barrel-aged voice. She likes to read actors’ interviews, scouring them for details of life and craft. … She wanted to be cooperative. She wanted to support the show. … Yet discussing how she prepared the role, how she plays it would mean intellectualizing it, distancing herself from it, violating something veiled, even sacred, at the core of what she does.” – The New York Times