Category: people

“With leading-man good looks, an uncommon diligence in preparing for a role and a fervid curiosity that led him across the breadth of the Shakespeare canon, Mr. Rogers spent his early career largely with the Old Vic company, first in Bristol and later in London, compiling a résumé of remarkable variety.”

Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton, 28, is the youngest to win. Here are some other precocious 28-year-olds.

Norris’s sheer energy and restless urge to explore make him hard to pin down.

“Harry Belafonte is 86, an age that tends to focus the mind on putting one’s affairs in order. And that is why, Mr. Belafonte says, he has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the three surviving children of one of his closest friends: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

Ashley Fetters observes just how much the disgraced cyclist has in common with the likes of Walter White in Breaking Bad, Don Draper in Mad Men, Nicholas Brody in Homeland (and maybe, just a bit, Tony Soprano or Dexter).

A Q&A with J. Michael Lennon, whose 1972 mash note to the author led to a long friendship and professional relationship, culminating in Lennon’s becoming Mailer’s authorized biographer.

Known for his skill in both classical Arabic music and Lebanese folk songs, Al-Sabi wrote more then 3,000 songs, some in Lebanese dialect (a breakthrough at the time). His likeness has appeared on Lebanese stamps, and musicians in Beirut are calling for a national day of mourning.

“Her own neuroses and eccentricities have helped humanize a string of characters who, on paper, range from peculiar to unlikable … Those idiosyncrasies, to choose a kind word for what others describe as erratic behavior, have also made her a target of gossip in New York theater.”

“His work was rarely outwardly political, focusing instead on the conundrums of assimilation. And rather than employing a syncopated musicality or fantastical flights of magic realism, Mr. Hijuelos wrote fluid prose, sonorous but more earthy than poetic, with a forthright American cadence.”

Author Penelope Lively: “I look around at my widowed friends, and the stereotype evaporates: one is a briskly busy academic, another writes books that are read around the world, another – at 85 – is a sheep farmer who wins prizes at sheep-dog demonstrations. Forget the image; forget the word, preferably.”