“[He] funneled the proceeds from the sale of his father’s five-story town house on Gramercy Park into Grand Street, a journal conceived in the spirit of high-minded but nonacademic magazines like The Dial and Horizon. … A dandy, boulevardier and self-educated litterateur, Mr. Sonnenberg consulted only his own taste, backing it with substantial paychecks to his writers, some well known and others not.”
Category: people
Philip Larkin Wasn’t Such A Terrible Human Being
“After the publication of … Andrew Motion’s biography in the early 1990s, there was an outpouring of loathing for Larkin the man; a hysteria of disapproval that some feared would eventually destroy his reputation as a poet, too.” But newly-published letters as well as testimony from close associates may moderate, if not repair, Larkin’s reputation as a person.
Laurie Anderson And The Idea Of ‘Homeland’
“‘It’s a very cold, bureaucratic word,’ [she] said. ‘No one I know would say ‘my homeland’.” She notes its recent pairing with the word ‘security,’ which she contends ‘is not about security, really, but more about control. The phrase doesn’t make anyone feel particularly safe, does it?'”
What If Kinky Friedman Were Actually Elected Texas Governor? Reykjavik Tries Something Similar
In the wake of Iceland’s financial collapse, punk rocker/comedian Jón Gnarr founded “the Best Party” (that’s its real name) and promised voters things like a Disneyland at the airport and “a drug-free Parliament by 2020.” Gnarr has just become mayor of Reykjavík, and he’s taking the job quite seriously.
Tenor Saxophonist Fred Anderson, 81
“It may be impossible to fully measure saxophonist Fred Anderson’s impact on music in Chicago and around the world. As tenor saxophonist, he invented a rugged, craggy musical language that influenced generations of “free jazz” improvisers.”
Joe Deal, 62, Photographer And ‘Landscape Documentarian’
“His photographs were featured in the small but seminal 1975 photography exhibition ‘New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape’,” which arguably changed the history of photography, challenging the aesthetic of Ansel Adams. Deal and his fellows “were fine-art documentarians, capturing how man had altered the American landscape.”
The Rehabilitation Of Michael Jackson
“Within 12 short months, the clueless baby-dangler, the addled Peter Pan who bunked with little Johns and Michaels, the frightening and wasted Dorian Gray alien who cut himself up and cut himself off has evaporated from boldface memory and well-nigh vanished from the entertainment planet. Certainly, the postmortem process of editing out the bad parts is one we have seen before, but this latest example has been a model of mercantile efficiency.”
Kalmen Opperman, 90, ‘Elder Statesman Of The Clarinet’
“[His] intensive teaching methods helped mold some of the top players of the last 50 years … [It] was his relentless pursuit of musical perfection and highly personal teaching methods that drew generations of students to his studio.”
America’s Poet-President
Robert Pinsky: “The United States has had a head of state who was also a great writer. Only Marcus Aurelius can compete with Abraham Lincoln.”
The Frustration Of Samuel Barber (An Apotheosis)
Stephen Hough: “It is well-known that Samuel Barber, having written so many wonderful pieces, was frustrated that only one of them became really popular – his ubiquitous if ravishing Adagio for Strings. My singer friend Robert White, a close friend of Barber’s, sent me a touching anecdote about this the other day …”