Anna Delvey’s story is a kind of apotheosis of the “Instagram Effect,” where everyone projects a more perfect, happier life than they actually have via social media, and the envy generated becomes a kind of currency. Her Instagram life is stuffed full of deluxe signifiers and only rare flickers of actual sociality. The sense they cultivate is of a private and exclusive world. They are, in their arid glamor, both self-aggrandizing and kind of haughty, which is the air she projected according to copious testimony from her victims.
Category: people
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Life As Family Woman And Celebrity
“In Lagos, she is as recognizable as the President. Her face is on billboards. People crowd around her at the airport. When she enters a restaurant, there is a ripple of recognition. Sometimes she will ask for the check and discover that someone else has paid for her meal. … She is admired as a Nigerian who has become an international celebrity, bringing renown to her country and a sense that now, for a Nigerian, anything is possible. But, because she is so visible, everything she does or says is scrutinized.”
How A Top Pianist, Toppled By Disease, Became One Of The UK’s Best Teachers
This was the beginning of the end of her performing career. However, far from sinking into despondency and brooding on fate’s cruel hand, Fisher reinvented herself as a piano teacher. And, over the past four decades, she has built up a reputation as one of the best in the business, dedicating herself to the advancement of pianists, many of whom are now enjoying the sort of career for which she herself was once destined.
Mary Ellyn Hutton, Longtime Cincinnati Post Classical Music Critic, Dead At 77
“Hutton wrote for 23 years for the Post, starting in 1984. … After the daily closed [at the end of 2007], Hutton established musicincincinnati.com, which was named ‘Best Web Site’ by the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.”
Katharine Whitehorn Was A Sharp-Eyed Columnist. She Wouldn’t Want To Continue Living Like This
Her sons say without doubt that if the real Katharine could see herself now she would be horrified, never having wanted to end up as she is. Indeed, most people find the prospect of this ending a negation of self, denial of a life’s work and character, a mortifying indignity no one should suffer. Who wants to leave family and friends with a final memory of themselves as a vegetable, a distortion, an alien being?
Man Who Accused George Takei Of Drugging And Sexual Assault Admits It May Not Have Happened That Way
“A fabricated coffee meeting. Key facts withheld or walked back. A ‘great party story’ about a sexual assault — which the accuser now says may not have actually happened. What happens when an activist’s legacy is tarnished by the story of an old friend who later says it could have all been a misunderstanding? And how do we process such an anomaly in an era of overdue social justice?”
Richard Peck, Who Wrote Spellbinding Realistic Fiction For Teens, Has Died At 84
Peck’s books, including Are You in the House Alone?, were popular, and he was a showman who always promoted his books. But “Peck’s final novel, “The Best Man” (2016), echoed his personal life more than most of his books. A coming-of age story about a young boy, it, deals in part with the same-sex marriage of his uncle and his teacher. Around the time of its publication, the intensely private Mr. Peck publicly came out as gay.”
‘Fearless’ French Filmmaker Claire Denis Has Inspired Young American Directors
Barry Jenkins, director of the Best Picture Oscar-winning Moonlight, is a fan. And her actors appreciate that she deeply understands her medium. “Alex Descas, one of the actors with whom Denis has worked longest, and who credits her with writing complicated, realistic roles for black actors at a time when few others did, described her artistic mode succinctly: ‘Film is not theatre,’ he told me.”
Remembering Extraordinary Literary Agent Elaine Markson, Who Died May 21 At Age 87
Author Alice Hoffman: “Everyone knows that if Elaine Markson was your agent you had a fierce and loving protector for life. … She was pure Greenwich Village with clients like Andrea Dworkin, Abbie Hoffman (I was often billed for advances Elaine loaned him as we were both A. Hoffmans) the great Grace Paley, and the iconic feminist writer Tillie Olsen. Elaine was the one agent in America who didn’t care about making deals.”
How Misbehaving Actors Do Violence To Our Culture
Fun, meaningful, even great works that dozens or hundreds of people labored over, that built careers and fortunes and whole industries, become emotionally contaminated to the point where you can’t watch them anymore. Forget the masterpieces that Jeffrey Tambor has been a part of. Louis C.K.’s show Louie helped pave the way for the “Comedy in Theory” genre that includes You’re the Worst, Atlanta, Better Things, Master of None (ahem, Aziz), High Maintenance, Insecure, and many other notable shows. Now, because of the indecent-exposure allegations by Corry and others — allegations C.K. himself confirmed as true — that series has become the Voldemort of recent TV: You dare not speak its name.