“The producer said he had given the Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil musical ‘three shots’ and acknowledged that the writing team had ‘unfinished business’ with it. But he added: ‘I firmly believe there is something wonderful in there but I am not the person that will ever get it out of them.'”
Tag: 01.04.17
Makeshift Bookstore Helps Make Life In South Sudan Refugee Camp Bearable
“[Juma’a Ali] is fiercely proud of his role as the bookseller of Malakal. His little shop stands as a source of education and distraction from the often unbearable conditions the camp’s residents live with on a daily basis.”
What Top TV Stars Make For Their Work
“The high fees for television’s 1% — at a time when business models, episode orders, and distribution strategies are in the midst of a massive transition — has exacerbated the earnings gap between stars and supporting players.”
Vinyl Record Sales Reach 25-Year High
Great – but vinyl sales only accounted for about two percent of the market. Still, it shows that “people want tangible objects – it’s human nature, and there is still nothing as satisfying as cracking open a new record, placing it with care on the turntable, and letting the sound take you away, as you look at the album sleeve. Formatting a Spotify playlist will never compete with that, no matter how many millions of songs are at your disposal.”
Fight Back: One Lit Magazine Editor Explains A Boycott Of Simon And Schuster
For Simon & Schuster, publishing controversial nationalists can be immensely profitable. “During Milo Yiannopoulos’s tenure at Breitbart – where he’s told gay people to ‘get back in the closet‘ and women to ‘log off‘ the internet – he has amassed more than 1 million followers on Facebook. Threshold Editions, the Simon & Schuster imprint dedicated to ‘innovative ideas of contemporary conservatism’, has a hit on its hands.”
Each Generation Gets – Indeed, It Creates – The Drugs It Deserves
“Over the past century, popularity has shifted between certain drugs – from cocaine and heroin in the 1920s and ’30s, to LSD and barbiturates in the 1950s and ’60s, to ecstasy and (more) cocaine in the 1980s, to today’s cognitive- and productivity-enhancing drugs, such as Adderall, Modafinil and their more serious kin.” (Someone’s forgetting about heroin and crystal meth.) “If Huxley’s progression is to be followed, the drugs we take at a given time can largely be ascribed to an era’s culture.”
Casey Affleck Isn’t Getting The Heat For His Sexual Harassment Cases That Nate Parker Did – Is There A Racial Double-Standard?
Affleck is getting awards and nominations galore for his performance in Manchester by the Sea. Last summer, Nate Parker was considered an even more likely contender for The Birth of a Nation – until word of his rape trial during college spread, whereupon his prospects plummeted. (Parker was acquitted.) Is the difference because Affleck is white and Parker is black? There are certainly reasons to think not, but the question keeps coming up.
A Revolution Is Coming. Say Goodbye To The Jobs (Uh Oh)
“Fifty percent of the jobs will be gone in ~20 years. Not from the great sucking sound of jobs to Mexico that can be stopped with a wall. Not from moving offshore to China. From automation that is moving quickly from blue collar manufacturing to white collar information work. Second only to climate change, this is the greatest disruption of our time, and I don’t mean that word in a good way.”
Lit’s Top Ten Unreliable Narrators
“There are, of course, different types of unreliable narrators; those who are fooling themselves, those who are fooling others, and a range in between. Here are a few of the ones that stand out.”
So How Did A White Nationalist Land A Major Book Contract? Here’s A Window On The Publishing Business
“The fact that someone with extreme views considered offensive by many people got such a significant book advance shows how the publishing world reflects, and plays to, many of the divides in our culture. Few left-leaning readers realize that within mainstream publishing, conservative books are a booming business.”