“There’s a disease of the ‘great China novel’ that’s attacking Chinese writers. They feel they have to produce these enormous things that explain all of Chinese society and are filled with philosophy and ideas and thoughts. And they tend to believe that’s more important than story or character.”
Tag: 03.14.14
Philadelphia Aims to Restore Six-Day-a-Week Library Service
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial disaster, the city was forced to cut 20% from the Free Library system’s budget, and all the branches ended Saturday operations. Mayor Michael Nutter’s next budget aims to restore Saturday hours to all 39 branches.
Dancing About Cardiology? Yup.
Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects’ 4Chambers “is a kind of hybrid of a dance piece and a science project, with videos about the heart – including the choreographer Ismael Houston-Jones describing his own heart attack” – and a sequence depicting cardiac arrest and CPR (which can be quite a violent process). (audio)
Teju Cole Tweets a 4,000-Word Essay
“On March 13, author Teju Cole published ‘A Piece Of The Wall’ entirely on Twitter, a first-of-its-kind essay on Arizona and immigration comprised of approximately 250 tweets that were tweeted out over the span of seven hours.” In a Q-&-A, Cole explains what he was up to and how he pulled it off.
March Madness Comes to Scrabble
Sports journalist Stefan Fatsis reports on Hasbro’s public tournament – complete with a Sweet-16 bracket – to pick a new word to be added to the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.
Cezanne In Cyberspace – All Of The Artist’s Work To Go Online
In book form, the illustrations are all “lumped together.” With the web catalogue, users can search via almost any keyword that relates to a painting’s content, colors, exhibition history, owner, or many other attributes. This can lead to surprisingly specific explorations.
Protests As Detroit Gallery Plans To Sell Famous Banksy Mural After “Saving” It
“Artists and commentators are decrying the move by leaders of the 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios to profit from the work by the anonymous British graffiti artist. The 555 artists excavated the 1,500-pound piece from the crumbling Packard Plant four years ago in the name of preserving it and putting it on public display. They pledged they had no interest in selling it.”
Why Is Hollywood So Obsessed With Doppelgängers Lately?
“Our active pursuit of our own doppelgängers, though, would strike many throughout history as odd, if not suicidal: Encountering your match has long been considered a harbinger of death, or at least very bad luck. We all have a double in the world, the mythology goes, and most of us will never meet that person. But if we do, the universe only has space for one.”
Rethinking Documentaries, With A Creative Drive
“Every time you are getting ready to make a shot in a documentary film, you are asking yourself questions about your cinematographic approach. You are approaching the truth, but the image is never the truth itself.”
Wait, What If Uptalk Is Just A Normal Way For Millennials To Speak Now?
“Young women — surrounded in every other part of their lives by women who talk just like they do — are increasingly responding to mentors, teachers, and bosses who try to help them overcome these vocal habits by, as Ratner did, arguing that they shouldn’t have to change for society. Society should change for them. People should learn that asking questions and using uptalk is a sign of caring what the other person thinks, not of submissiveness.”