At Chez Panisse, no less. They talk about where in their lives their novels The Color Purple and Brooklyn came from and what it was like to see them made into movies.
Tag: 01.24.16
Kamasi Washington’s Giant Step
“With his popular, political, uncategorizable jazz, the young saxophonist has become something his genre rarely produces anymore: a celebrity.”
Those Guys Who Knocked The Beard Off King Tut’s Mask And Epoxied It Back On? They’re Going On Trial
“King Tut hasn’t been around for a few thousand years, but his power remains: after a botched repair job of the famed pharaoh’s beard left scratches on his burial mask, Egyptian prosecutors have ordered eight museum workers to a disciplinary court for ‘gross negligence.'”
Can Shame Be A Positive, Useful Thing? Under The Right Circumstances, Definitely
“Modern American culture is down on shame – it is, we are told, a damaging, useless emotion that we should neither feel ourselves nor make others feel. This is particularly the case when it comes to drug and alcohol addiction. … But in fact, the experience of shame – the feeling that one has failed to live up to one’s own standards – can play a positive role in recovery from addiction, as well as from other kinds of destructive habits.”
Oscar Voter Says Academy’s Diversity Push Is “Insulting” To Black People
“What bothers me most is how insulting this is to black people. I’m also shocked at the presumption of the president of the Academy to meet with David Oyelowo to explain to him “what went wrong” because he wasn’t nominated last year for his portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. I’m sorry, but are we missing the 800-pound gorilla in the room?”
Does A Writer Have A Responsibility To Anything Other Than Her Art (Like Being A Decent Human Being)?
Zoë Heller: “The belief that artists are entitled to be morally careless – that great art excuses everything – has proved to be one of the more tenacious parts of our Romantic inheritance.”
Francine Prose: “The landscape of literary history is littered with the wreckage of writers who thought they were on a mission.”
Shouting “Kill The Playwright” In A Crowded Theatre
In which one unhappy patron, while his fellows are applauding, calls out, “Booooo! Kill the playwright!”, and another patron – herself a playwright – takes umbrage: “I imagined myself confronting the man who’d shouted for Annie Baker’s death. Calling him on his privilege; his insistence on making his experience everyone else’s.”
Opera: Not Snobby, Not Elitist, Not Expensive (Says Comedian)
Chris Addison: “It seems mental to me. … People imagine it is all dickie bows. I have seen great stuff here; paid £6 and sat at the back. True, there are top price tickets I would never buy, but there are super-expensive seats at Arsenal too. You could come to four operas for the price of an Arsenal ticket and have two quid over for a lovely cup of coffee.”
Should Public Transit Pay Pacific Northwest Ballet School To Relocate?
“The Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Eastside school features studios framed in soaring glass and steel, ‘floating’ floors to absorb dancers’ leaps and pirouettes, expanses of mirrors, and barres to give even the youngest girls in leotards the surroundings of a professional ballerina. But the industrial warehouse building the ballet has so carefully transformed is directly in the path of Sound Transit’s East Link route through Bellevue.”
Banksy’s Newest Work: A Protest Of France, On The French Embassy In London
“The artwork, which depicts a young girl from the film and musical Les Misérables with tears in her eyes as CS gas billows towards her, appeared overnight on Saturday. In a first for the elusive graffiti artist, the artwork is interactive and includes a stencilled QR code beneath.”