Category: people

Louis Menand looks at how a young and eager Goldwater Republican, the descendant of California pioneers, became the sharpest-eyed of social critics.

“[His] file contains 1,884 pages of documents, collected from 1960 until the early 1970s … [while] the FBI accumulated 276 pages on Richard Wright, 110 pages on Truman Capote, and just nine pages on Henry Miller. … [Yet] what is perhaps most interesting about the Baldwin dossier is that it reads like a long, poorly written novel itself – it is, in every sense, fiction produced by the state.”

Capote. Mailer. Buckley. Hitchens. “As he put it himself,” writes longtime friend Jay Parini, “‘I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.’ That he was also a brilliant novelist and essayist was often beside the point.”

The announcement is brisk and matter of fact. But to me it brings on a rich array of unmentioned questions about timing, possible consequences and future changes in Luminato’s survival strategy.

“It’s one of those stories that has lodged in the minds of many for its injustice and irony. Nina Simone – before she was Nina Simone, when she was still an aspiring classical pianist named Eunice Waymon – auditioned for the Curtis Institute of Music and was rejected on grounds of her race.” Yet there is evidence to indicate that she simply didn’t make the cut at an extremely competitive school.

As his improv teacher at Second City, Del Close, told him, “You have to learn to love the bomb.”

“This year marks 10 years since Pig Iron Theatre Company cofounder Dito van Reigersberg donned a wig and an evening gown, put a clever spin on the name of his legendary former teacher at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and strutted onstage at L’Etage.”

“His performance will be heard rather than seen – in an audiobook. The announcement on Thursday follows long-standing rumours that Idris Elba is in line to replace Daniel Craig when the latter’s run playing James Bond on the big screen comes to an end, potentially in two movies’ time.”

“For decades, Ms. McGovern’s books were mainstays of public libraries, classroom book nooks, bedroom shelves and children’s treasure piles.”

“It’s no wonder then that new claims about Shakespeare’s life draw so much attention. Take, for instance, the alleged discovery of Shakespeare’s dictionary by two New York booksellers, which prompted a piece in The New Yorker questioning the collective hunger for relics tied to the playwright. Articles from earlier this year reported on the claim that a likeness of Shakespeare had been discovered in a late-16th-century botanical book, and still others puzzled over several different portraits purported to depict the “real” Shakespeare. And that’s without even delving into articles about whether Shakespeare was a secret Catholic, or gay, or hey, did he even write any of those plays?”