Category: people

“The caller’s name might not have been familiar to the Times reporter, but to New Yorkers south of 14th Street, Coca Crystal was a countercultural celebrity, a Holly Golightly for the Aquarian age.”

“I went to a reading where a white author cracked a joke at the expense of Asians. Everyone laughed and I looked around and realized I was the only person of color in the audience. Last year I received a manuscript that was so racist I had to look at my calendar to make sure I didn’t accidentally time travel. There have been countless times that people have mistaken me for another Asian editor. I’m telling you this because these are ‘good’ people who ‘mean well’ and yet this still happens.”

“As a Jew persecuted by the Nazis, and then a writer living under repressive Hungarian communist rule, Kertész endured some of the most acute suffering of the 20th century and wrote about it in both direct and delicate prose.”

“In the popular presentations of the history of science, he is portrayed as a one-man revolution, an intellectual superhero who dragged science kicking and screaming into the modern era. … The descriptions sound too good to be true – and they are.”

The arts administrator once hailed as Canada’s cultural turnaround king has seen his reputation punctured after his estranged wife, Eleanor McCain, filed court papers portraying him as a remorselessly manipulative leader who fired and hired employees unjustly, boozed excessively and married only to escape workplace harassment allegations. None of the claims have been proven in court and Melanson has deemed them “inaccurate and undignified.”

Ms. Hadid “contracted bronchitis earlier this week and suffered a sudden heart attack while being treated in hospital,” her office, Zaha Hadid Architects in London, said in a statement.

“[She’s] a musical genius and a pivotal figure in the cultural history of the black freedom movement; she is also someone who has suffered countless losses, been mistreated in many ways, and at times has reactions that try the patience of her associates, creditors, family, and friends.”

After revelations contained in a messy divorce filing earlier this month, Melanson was on the defensive. The TSO announced the move in a statement released Wednesday morning, thanking Mr. Melanson for his “many positive contributions” to the organization.

Duke, “who won an Oscar at age 16 for her portrayal of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker but was more known for her bouncy 1960s TV sitcom The Patty Duke Show, … came to fame as a teenager, combining both a masterful talent for dramatic acting with a sunny, all-American image that enchanted both TV and film audiences. But her admirers had no clue about the much-uglier reality of Duke’s childhood.”