Category: people

She hasn’t changed, but she’s getting nonstop invitations to what she calls “feminist things,” and she’s published a new book to help a friend raise a daughter. “Adichie recently came across her own kindergarten reports. ‘My father keeps them all. You know what the teacher wrote? ‘She is brilliant, but she refuses to do any work when she’s annoyed.’ I was five years old.'”

She had a “prodigious” list of roles in movies, usually character acting and bit parts, but one of her biggest contributions was founding the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre.

Fox wrote for every age, and so, critics said, her adult work was often discounted. “Fox’s best-known novel for adults is ‘Desperate Characters’ (1970), about the disintegration of a marriage. It was made into a film of the same title, released the next year and starring Shirley MacLaine and Kenneth Mars.”

“Over a century ago, Henri Bergson, one of the first modern philosophers to think deeply on the subject, pointed out that laughter is an “inherently social” activity, and in recent decades, academics have found data to support this theory.”

“Yeah, see, this always drove me crazy. Not that in particular, but just the parsing of what you had to say and when. I don’t like to be told what to do. … I didn’t come out to my parents. I didn’t accept or embrace that trope, and say, ‘Oh, this is a thing one must do.’ Instead, I introduced them to the guy I love and he ended up being part of the family.” From a long Q&A with E. Alex Jung.

“Mr. Metzger developed his concept of auto-destructive art in 1959, defining it as ‘art which triggers its own destruction.’ He saw it as … an instrument to strike back at authoritarianism, nuclear weapons, commercialism and modern media.” And yes, as Matt Schudel explains, Metzger was responsible for developing two iconic facets of ’60s rock culture. (Pete Townshend studied art with Metzger.)

“The four other candidates in the competitive race, including incumbent Mayor Mike Duggan, may wish to take notes [from Ingrid LaFleur] on how to do politics real-Detroit-style.”

I realized the problem began with the fact that adjectives are mostly required of the less powerful. Thus, there are “novelists” and “female novelists,” “African-American doctors” but not “European- American doctors,” “gay soldiers” but not “heterosexual soldiers,” “transgender activists” but not “cisgender activists.” As has been true forever, the person with the power takes the noun — and the norm — while the less powerful requires an adjective.

“To me, Trump was someone who, he’s always searching for a stronger, better word, and he never finds it.”

“[He] overcame the limited use of his right hand to develop a distinctive punchy style that made him a stalwart of the hard-bop movement of the 1950s and 1960s and a notable collaborator with such stars as Charles Mingus and Dexter Gordon.”