Jeff Weinstein: “For a few years, when I was becoming an adult, I fell in love with Susannah York. I suppose there should be quotes around my ‘love,’ because it was long-distance, admiring, and sexless, more like a warm fascination. But now that she’s gone, those childish yearnings have come back, and I have to wonder why.”
Tag: 01.24.11
Hot New Career Track for Actors: Mark Twain Impersonator
“Long consigned to the dustbin of historical-society meetings and elementary school classrooms, Twain impersonators are now selling out shows, entertaining at fancy parties, presenting at conferences, making real money and adding new members to their ranks.” They have Twain’s newly-published “unexpurgated” autobiography to thank.
A Dow Jones/S&P 500 Index for the Arts (It’s a Bear Market)
“Billed as ‘the largest data set ever assembled describing arts and culture in America,’ the National Arts Index released Monday by the advocacy group Americans for the Arts aims to capture in a single number how the arts and entertainment sector has been doing – much as the Dow Jones and S&P indices do for stocks. The news is not good.”
Lois Smith, National Ballet of Canada’s First Principal, Dead at 81
“National Ballet co-founder Celia Franca invited Smith to join the new National Ballet of Canada in 1951 as a principal dancer. … She danced 18 years with the National Ballet and became associated with many dances in its repertoire, including the works of Antony Tudor and Walter Gore.”
Jaipur, The World’s Best Book Fair
“At the Jaipur Literature Festival, East meets West as it does at no other event in the book world. East and West immediately fall into heated debate about the role of the occupier in Afghanistan, and about why the most recognized South Asian writers are all expatriates from their homelands. Then West bums a smoke. East confesses to a mad crush on the writer U.S. writer Junot Diaz, who was just signing books in the courtyard.”
How Partisanship Is Like Racism
“Both seem to arise from aspects of social identity that are immutable or slow to change. Both are publicly decried and privately practiced. Both are increasingly employed in ways that allow practitioners to deny that they are doing what they are doing.”
Have Digital Music Sales Topped Out?
“In each of the past two years, the rate of increase in digital revenue has approximately halved. If that trend continues, digital sales could top out at less than $5 billion this year, about a third of the overall music market but many billions of dollars short of the amount needed to replace long-gone sales of compact discs.”
Finalists For National Book Critics Circle Awards
The 31 nominees in six competitive categories (autobiography has six finalists) announced Saturday were an international blend of popular authors such as Franzen, Christopher Hitchens and Patti Smith and the kind of lesser-known picks critics pride themselves on, such as German-Dutch novelist Hans Keilson, 101 years old, and cited for the acclaimed “Comedy in a Key.”
Study: Memory Helped With Sleep
A new study claims the best way to remember something important is to remember it while you are asleep.
“Glee” Cast Smashes Elvis Sales Record
The cast of the comedy drama Glee have smashed Elvis Presley’s record for the fastest act to score 20 top 40 hits, according to the Official Charts Company.