“Almodóvar, who has a new comedy, ‘I’m So Excited!’, coming out in Britain this week, says he, like many other Spaniards, is frustrated with a double-dip recession that started four years ago. The crisis has hit young people hard, with unemployment for those aged under 25 running at 57%.”
Category: people
How Edna O’Brien Came To Write ‘Country Girls’ (And Everything Else)
“There was a great suspicion on my mother’s part about writing. My mother, who was a very gifted woman, hated and mistrusted the written word. It was as if she felt it was redolent of sin.”
So, According To Those New Letters, What Was The Young J.D. Salinger Like?
“Salinger himself comes off as the caustic, brilliant, insecure friend you are constantly justifying to your other friends. Yeah, he can be a jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t mean it. His brain is wired differently from the average person’s, try talking to him one-on-one.”
Judy Davis, Still Prickly After All These Years
“Rich, powerful actors have minders to protect them. I’ve never had that. It’s just me walking into that zone. I’ve got children, I’ve got to make a living. And I have at times found myself in situations I’d have preferred not to be in.”
Conductor Jean-François Paillard Dead At 85
The man whose recording of Pachelbel’s Canon became a worldwide hit (and the theme music for hundreds of local public television and radio pledge drives during the 1970s and ’80s), Paillard and the chamber orchestra that carried his name made more than 300 albums, mostly on the Erato label, and won dozens of industry awards.
Lalgudi Jayaraman, 82, Titan Of South Indian Violin
Regarded as one of the top performers of Carnatic (South Indian classical) music on any instrument, Jayaraman was respected as a both a great soloist and an accompanist of singers and other instruments, composed numerous concert pieces and several film scores, and was a very influential teacher who developed an entirely new fingering technique for his instrument.
Who Was Moms Mabley? The First Successful Female Stand-Up Comedian, That’s Who
“Born Loretta Mary Aiken, she was a pioneer in her field – a black woman who pushed the boundaries of taste, politics, and race as far back as the 1920s, while performing on the Chitlin’ Circuit. … Her career extended well into the ’70s, leaving behind a legacy of over 20 albums, and memorable appearances” on Ed Sullivan’s, Johnny Carson’s and the Smothers Brothers’ television shows. Yet most people born after 1970 have never heard of her.
Nine Letters From Young J.D. Salinger Come To Light
From the 22-year-old author to a young lady in Toronto: “I’ll try a couple more [short stories], anyway, and if I begin to miss my mark I’ll quit.”
Salman Rushdie’s Problem With His Career Choice
“I really wanted to be an actor. It was the other thing I wanted to be. What’s difficult for me to work out is that, given that I was very involved in theater, and given that I was very obsessed with movies, I ended up doing this thing that you do by sitting alone in a room.”
How Ada Louise Huxtable Transformed Her Profession
“By making the case for architecture criticism as an essential beat for a metropolitan newspaper, by turning buildings into news and serving on the Times’s editorial board, Huxtable enjoyed a career that epitomized the argument she would repeatedly make in print: architecture is ‘the art we cannot afford to ignore’.”