Category: people

The letters of John Horne Burns, who wrote the once-acclaimed, now-forgotten wartime novel The Gallery, “offer unparalleled insight into the life of a gay soldier at a time when, officially at least, gay soldiers did not exist and, to subsequent generations of traditionalists, never had.”

“By the time she entered Vassar she was the fully formed person she would be for the rest of her life: beautiful and brilliant, possessed of an eye protected against sentiment coupled with a steel-trap mind and a tongue feared by all who had been at the receiving end of its talented sarcasm … She married straight out of college in 1933, came to live in New York, soon got divorced, rented a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village, and began her life.”

“For those curious to see some of his best work outside the mob confines of northern New Jersey, here are 10 of Gandolfini’s most memorable roles.”

“The singer, whose tenor falsetto and ebony moustache and sideburns became global trademarks, recorded more than 65 albums and sold millions of records. His 1955 version of ‘Rose Marie’, the title song from the venerable operetta that spawned ‘Indian Love Call’, was No 1 for 11 weeks in Britain, where he was particularly popular.”

“To his opponents,” culture minister Alaa Abdel Aziz “is an artistic nobody, a know-nothing pawn of the [Muslim] Brotherhood, bent on an Islamic morality campaign that threatens a cosmopolitan cultural scene.” But he “styles himself an outsider fighting to break the hold of a privileged elite over spending on the arts … and see that cultural spending reflects how democratic revolution has changed Egyptian society.”

John Horne Burns was brilliant, handsome, egotistical, competitive, vainglorious, vicious, closeted, and very fond of alcohol. His now-forgotten 1947 book The Gallery was rapturously received as the first great novel of the War – a zenith from which Burns fell fall fast and hard.

“It is not clear why he so intently avoids the public eye. His literary peers – Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, among others – regularly appeared before the masses, either to teach fiction or grant interviews about this or that upcoming book. By contrast, Pynchon appears to interact only with people in his own line of work … It’s equally unclear how principled his avoidance of others is.”

“Most people who knew the situation would have agreed that Graves, in fact, did better under rotten conditions than any other plausible candidate would have done. He had been courageous, honest, hardworking and very steady.”

“The Longacre’s house electrician, Richard Rogers, kept feeding Mr. Kimmel encouragement and more wire. Mr. Kimmel improved rapidly at creating a statue made from a single continuous strip, like an impressive one-stroke pen drawing.”

“He said crazy stuff in this interview, but he also referenced making his album by going to the Louvre five times. He talked about architecture and design. When was the last time you read that in a hip-hop interview? You know, he’s just – he’s a genius.”