“The Royal Court has weathered plenty of turbulence, but for the moment the theatre seems to have found, if not quite paradise, at least an earthly equivalent. Last year began with not one but two consecutive transfers to the West End – for the first time since 1968.”
Tag: 01.30.11
A Chat With Arundhati Roy
“Among Indian public intellectuals, a bright category that includes the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Roy is probably now her country’s most globally famous polemicist, as both a writer and speaker.”
When Herman Met Nathaniel
“Melville, who was just 31, had never met Hawthorne. But it’s no exaggeration to say that, after a day of open-air larks, a quantity of Heidsieck champagne, several impromptu toasts and a sudden downpour, the younger man was enraptured with his new friend who had, he wrote, ‘dropped germinous seeds into my soul’.”
In Search of London’s Underground Dance Scene
“My first enquiries hit a brick wall. ‘There isn’t an underground in any coherent sense,’ said [one well-connected editor] … Even those who passionately believe in the alternative scene weren’t happy about the Guardian poking around.” Rejoined the director of a small dance space, “If you write about it, it will no longer be the underground, will it? So don’t do it. Stop it right now. Go AWAY!”
Alas for All the Fantastic Foreign Films That Americans Never Even Notice
A.O. Scott: “My complaint, really, is about the peculiar and growing irrelevance of world cinema in American movie culture. … As fashion, gaming, pop music, social media and just about everything else have combined to shrink the world and bridge gaps of culture and taste, American movie audiences seem to cling to a cautious, isolationist approach to entertainment.”
Using a TV Scriptwriters’ Technique to Solve the US Budget Crisis
Dilbert creator Scott Adams: “[The technique is] called ‘the bad version.’ When you feel that a plot solution exists, but you can’t yet imagine it, you describe instead a bad version that has no purpose other than stimulating the other writers to imagine a better version.” Adams suggests some “bad version” ideas for convincing the wealthy to pay higher taxes.
What the Death of the Canon Has Led To (A Professor’s Harrumph)
“Now the kids who were kids when the Western canon went on trial and received summary justice are working the levers of culture. They are the editors and the reviewers and the arts writers … Even the most august publications and broadcasts no longer attempt to shape taste. They merely seek to reflect it. They hold the cultural mirror up to the reader … Narcissus looks into the book review and finds it good.”
People, Please Stop Writing Memoirs (A Critic’s Plea)
Neil Genzlinger: “There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir, by accomplishing something noteworthy or having an extremely unusual experience or being such a brilliant writer that you could turn relatively ordinary occur rences into a snapshot of a broader historical moment. Anyone who didn’t fit one of those categories was obliged to keep quiet. Unremarkable lives went unremarked upon, the way God intended.”
Louvre Installs Exhibit at Suburban Paris Prison
“The Maison Centrale de Poissy holds 230 convicts, 80% of whom are serving terms longer than twenty years. The paintings are reproductions, made for outdoor display but of high photographic quality and backed with aluminum. The ten paintings were chosen by ten inmates, selected from those with an interest in art.”
This Is Really Excellent (No It’s Not) Yes It Is
“It is virtually impossible to understand America without understanding the long ongoing battle between cultural commissars who have always attempted to define artistic standards and ordinary Americans who take umbrage at those commissars and their standards. This is hardly a recent occurrence occasioned by the internet and other democratising elements.”