It’s a provocative claim, and I’ll admit my first reaction was to dismiss it out of hand. And yet … – Douglas McLennan
Tag: 12.29.19
What John Dos Passos’s ‘1919’ (And The Rest Of The ‘U.S.A.’ Trilogy) Got Right About 2019
“We’re often told, in hand-wringing tones, about the growing differences between red and blue states, and about our increasingly divisive political and social rhetoric. But, in Dos Passos’s view, division has been the rule in American life, not the exception; he considered it to be authentically American. The U.S.A. novels plumbed the depths of our rifts, and explored how they might be widened by a media-saturated age, and by the fragmentation of information and the latent social hysteria that come with it.” – The New Yorker
Newseum Faces Its Closing Day As A Painful Symbol
As the year and decade end, “it will shut its doors for the last time, becoming a glass-and-steel white elephant – and an almost-too-obvious metaphor for the crisis facing America’s newspaper industry.” – The Guardian
Alasdair Gray, Godfather Of Scotland’s Late-20th-Century Literary Renaissance, Dead At 85
“Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, AL Kennedy and Janice Galloway, among others, were all Gray’s bairns. Authors invited Gray to illustrate their books. Little magazines sported his self-portraits and cursive designs on their covers. A graphic artist known locally for his eccentric appearance and behaviour became, at the age of nearly 50, a central figure of the literary world.” – The Guardian
A Finger Picker Salutes Herbie Nichols
Spinning Song: Duck Baker Plays The Music Of Herbie Nichols
In the New York jazz scene of the 1950s and early sixties, the breadth and depth of his talent won enormous respect for pianist and composer Herbie Nichols. One of those affected by Nichols is Duck Baker, a fingerstyle guitarist from Richmond. – Doug Ramsey
How Opera Is Dealing With #MeToo
“Within the past year, most opera companies have started holding regular sexual harassment workshops, and many distribute and read aloud their sexual harassment policy to incoming casts before the start of rehearsals and distribute contact information for reporting incidents.” – The New York Times (AP)
Prolific Movie Producer David Foster Has Died At 90
Foster, who served in the Korean War and helped produce movies including the Oscar-nominated McCabe and Mrs. Miller, “was part of the migration from New York to L.A. where Hollywood was Shangri La. He was a classic poor kid from an immigrant family and he always felt really privileged and couldn’t believe he was in Hollywood.” – Los Angeles Times
On The Internet, Anyone Can Be A Catfish
But a new show (not so ironically called the same thing as Dave Eggers’ book satirizing social media) displays exactly how much we’re all implicated in a world filled with flurries of hashtags, emojis, and GIFs. – The New York Times
Europe’s Utter Failure To Protect Liberty In Hungary
Why hasn’t the EU acted to curb Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s clearly problematic takeover of the media? (Or theatre, for that matter?) Well. “European countries have dragged their feet with Hungary’s Article 7 investigation, reluctant to question a fellow member state over an issue—media policy and regulation—that many European governments believe is a national matter. Were they to carry out an aggressive inquiry, that could set a precedent for investigations into their own domestic issues.” – The Atlantic
The New York Times’ Highlights Of This Year In Books
There’s so much – so many Best lists, so many ideas about gifts, so many essays about types in books – and then … “What have tweets and emojis done to the novel? According to the writer Charles Finch, the digital age has ushered in new ways of reading — and revived old ones (the scroll and the ideogram). But could it also explain the rise of autofiction?” – The New York Times