At age 18, between terms at Princeton, Fitzgerald traveled to visit the Montana ranch owned by a school friend’s family. He did “what easterners visiting Montana often do: he went native. He outfitted himself in boots, brandished a pistol, rode horses, drank bad whiskey, played cards with cowboys, flirted with daughters of neighboring ranchers, and took but one bath a week.”
Category: people
Elliott Carter, Champion Of Complexity
“His first opera, written at the age of 90 with librettist Paul Griffiths, was followed by so many compositions that he ended up producing about half of his lifetime output in the past 13 years.”
Understanding Elliott Carter
“Mr. Carter died in Manhattan on Monday at 103, and it is impossible to overstate the significance of his astonishing longevity.”
‘I Numb My Intellect With Scotch And Water’: Kurt Vonnegut’s Daily Routine
From a letter to his wife: “In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details. … Last night, time and my body decided to take me to the movies. I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard.”
Alex Ross: How Things Change – Being Gay And The Culture
“One fashionable explanation for the turnabout credits popular culture: out-and-proud celebrities and gay-friendly sitcoms have made straight Americans more comfortable with their other-minded neighbors. Not that long ago, though, Hollywood was regularly portraying gays and lesbians as flouncing sissies, pathetic suicide cases, and serial killers.”
How Star Wars Wrecked George Lucas’ Life
“When the sale of Lucasfilm was announced last week, it felt partly inevitable. Mainstream success had taken its toll on Lucas. The experimental sci-fi films he had vowed to create once he made it big never materialized. In effect, he became what he once reviled: the corporate chieftain of a company for which scale and sparkle and box office numbers trumped the specifics of his artistic vision.”
Author Han Suyin, 95
“She published almost two dozen novels, nonfiction books and memoirs – and countless essays for mainstream newspapers and magazines,” repeatedly provoking controversy with her defenses of the Chinese Communist government through the Cold War. Yet her most famous book was the semi-autobiographical novel A Many-Splendoured Thing.
Colm Tóibín: ‘You Have To Be A Terrible Monster To Write’
As he told a classroom full of students, “If you can’t do it then writing isn’t for you. You’ve no right to be here. If there is any way I can help you get into law school then I will. Your morality will be more useful in a courtroom.”
A Conductor’s Scores (And Work Life) Make It Out Of The Sandy Wreckage
During the storm, conductor Marin Alsop’s studio was wrecked by a tree – but friends rescued her conductor’s scores, each representing hundreds of hours of work.
Another Hollywood Powerhouse Turns To Broadway
Paula Wagner, famously protective agent of Tom Cruise for years, is “the latest arrival in Hollywood’s extraordinary colonization of Broadway, now awash in screen-to-stage adaptations and star vehicles.”