Raduan Nassar was forty-eight and at the height of his literary fame when, in 1984, he gave an interview with Folha de São Paulo, the country’s biggest daily newspaper, in which he announced his retirement. He wanted to become a farmer. “My mind is lit up with other things now; I’m looking into agriculture and stockbreeding,” he told the interviewer. Many were baffled.
Tag: 01.23.17
What’s Next In Theatre? A Fascination With European Avant-Garde Adaptations
“Despite being highly different in content, the intentions behind the productions were strangely similar. They articulated an emerging aesthetic of theatrical art where originality is sacrificed in favor of irony, surface meaning is discarded as false, and even technological advances can’t turn our heads away from the specter of the past.”
Claim: European Culture Is Actually A Made-Up Idea
“The idea of a coherent European culture is actually quite new. Scattered uses of the phrase appeared in the 19th century, but it was only in the 1920s and ’30s that the idea came of age. Those decades saw an unprecedented burst of attention for the idea of Europe, in which the age’s leading liberal intellectuals developed a compelling vision of the continent’s purportedly shared cultural identity.”
The Film ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ Spawned A Viral Dog Abuse Video, And Here’s What Went So Wrong
One of the producers, a dog- and cat-owning vegan, explains that the dog is absolutely still alive, that the individual dog trainer is being investigated, and that he thinks (of course) the video editing was “fake news” – a publicity stunt for PETA and TMZ.
All Of The Winners Of The American Library Association’s Youth Awards (Spoiler: John Lewis Cleaned Up)
You thought the Congressman’s books were selling out before? Now it’s won quite a few of the coveted youth awards. But here’s a list of all of the winners and honor books, including the Newbery, the Caldecott, the Printz and so many more, from this morning’s ALA Midwinter gathering in Atlanta.
In South Korea, ‘Abused And Humiliated’ Government Officials Reveal Push To Blacklist Artists
A former minister of culture said that junior officials gave him evidence of the blacklists:”They were told to destroy the data, but they collected and saved it.” Up to 10,000 artists and writers were on the list by 2015, sources say.
How ‘South Park’-Style Humor And Trolling Elected Donald Trump
“There were things South Park had always had trouble imagining: it was complex and dialectical on male anger and sadness, and able to gaze with empathy into the soul of a troll, but it couldn’t create a funny girl or a mother who wasn’t a nag. What it did get, however, was how dangerous it could be for voters to feel shamed and censored – and how quickly a liberating joke could corkscrew into a weapon.” A longread by Emily Nussbaum.