“When Michou” — né Michel Catty — “first set foot in Montmartre in the 1950s, it was a cheap bohemian area, home to artists, writers and performers, as well as beggars and an ethnically mixed working class. These days, the neighborhood gleams with an expensive gentrification. … Yet in the twilight of his life, this darling of the Parisian demimonde and his club are still attracting large crowds even while performing an act fine-tuned decades ago.” – The New York Times
Tag: 03.31.19
Is Donald Trump Really A Great Novelist?
Richard North Patterson: “The aim of the novelist is to enlist others in his fantasies, immersing them in an alternative reality so emotionally compelling that they willingly suspend disbelief. Trump has dangerously conflated this sort of storytelling with real-life presidential leadership, casting himself in the role of the archetypal savior-hero, battling the forces of evil. He’s our first novelist in chief.” – The Atlantic
A New Bio Of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, “The Female Byron” Haven’t Heard Of Her? (It Was Complicated)
Landon has been labeled “the female Byron” and “the Sappho of a polished age.” But the public figure she probably most closely resembles is Britney Spears. The two had the same gimmick: Entice your audience by straddling the line between virgin and whore. – Pacific Standard
On Rereading Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” 50 Years Later
James Parker has been reading it since it first came out, and finds that it still resonates. Find your own personal canon, he writes, and you discover and rediscover new things over the years. What’s your go-to book or piece of art? – The Atlantic
Artists’ Paper Collage To Mark 30th Anniversary Of Louvre Pyramid Ripped To Shreds By Tourists
No, they didn’t mean to. They weren’t angry or anything. But it was paper, after all. In the courtyard of the Louvre. Outside. And there were soooo many people. – The Guardian (AFP)
It’s National Poetry Month in The U.S., And Poet Laureate Tracy Smith Has Some Things To Say
First of all, she has a daily podcast called The Slowdown (which honestly sounds perfect for a poet). She says that poems “remind us of what we feel. They bring language that may not have existed for us before that can be applied to … what’s going on inside. I also really like the way that when you read a poem with someone else, those feelings and thoughts become part of a conversation. And so, in my mind, poems are really great at bringing us into what feels like a real and meaningful kind of engagement with other people.” – NPR
How Did The Matrix, Which Was Super Weird For Its Day, Ever Get Made?
Truly, Hollywood is risk-averse, or at least its funders are. But “The Matrix was a mash-up of the Wachowskis’ many interests, blending their love of anime, martial-arts movies, cyberpunk literature, electronic music, and post-structuralist philosophy into a mainstream action flick. The siblings, still relatively unknown at the time, managed to do all of that on a moderate budget of $63 million, leaning on perfectly pre-visualized action sequences that helped define the next decade of cinema.” – The Atlantic
Not Only Aren’t Books Dead, But Cookbooks Sell Like Hotcakes
Cookbooks not only didn’t die, but one in the UK is selling as fast as J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown. What? “The future that Leith and Smith feared – where we do all our cooking from online searches on our tablets – simply hasn’t materialised. Or at least hasn’t caught on to anything like the scale of the apocalyptic projections. Many of us simply love cooking from cookbooks and, even in the Marie Kondo age, don’t want to give them up.” – The Observer (UK)
Thirty Years Ago, Winona Ryder’s Agent Begged Her Not To Star In ‘Heathers’
The cult classic turns 30 in a world where it could never get made again – and a world where Ryder became the representative for a certain section of her generation. Screenwriter Daniel Waters: “The triumph of the film is that Winona brings so much to the role. It’s so endearing. So, any rewrites I did, I ended up, I wouldn’t say softening her, but making her more real. Here I am trying to make a Stanley Kubrick teen film, a cold clinical dissection of teen films and I’ve got this pulsing heartbeat through Winona.” – Variety
Writers Guild Members Vote Overwhelmingly To Curb Agencies’ Power
When more than 95 percent of your voting members make the same choice, you know, as a union, that’s where you need to go. In this case, “members of the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new code of conduct [for agents] that would curb the use of packaging fees and other unpopular industry practices.” – Los Angeles Times