“The afterlife of the artist is a tricky thing. Some bestselling writers seem to be forgotten mere seconds after their deaths; others aren’t truly appreciated until decades into their posthumous career. Many artists and writers are subjects of campaigns to re-establish their place in the canon. A few take, but most fall back into oblivion until someone else takes up the cause 10 years later.”
Tag: 04.11.12
Pauline Kael: Personal Weakness As Critical Strength
“Pauline’s greatest weakness, her failure as a person, became her great strength, her liberation as a writer and critic. She truly believed that what she did was for everyone’s good . . . . This lack of introspection, self-awareness, restraint or hesitation gave Pauline supreme freedom to speak up, to speak her mind, to find her honest voice”.
Occupy Damien Hirst! Protesters Tag Sculpture At Tate Modern
“The lazily scrawled navy graffiti stretches no higher than arm’s reach on the thigh of Damien Hirst’s famous sculpture Hymn. It is the Occupy movement’s latest attempt to take action against the free market [sic] and, in this instance, its consequences on art.”
Meet Hong Kong’s Hot Young Choreographer (He’s Over 40)
“Strictly speaking, Dominic Wong isn’t a dancer. He’s a character. And, there’s little dispute, a comedic one.”
Street Walking: Figuring Out What Pedestrians Do, And Why
For instance, “the way walking speeds are slower at midday than before or after work; the way people don’t like to maintain the same walking speed as a stranger next to them; the way tourists walk in inappropriately spread out groups” (New Yorkers’ pet peeve); “crosswalk bulge” and “minimizing dissatisfaction.”
So What If Apple And Publishers Really Were Fixing E-Book Prices? Does It Matter?
“If there’s a case against the government’s [price-fixing lawsuit,] it’s that the forces of disruption buffeting traditional publishing are much too large to be blocked by any cartel. The good news is that literary culture should survive either way.”
For Carole King, Songwriting Just Came Naturally
On “You’ve Got a Friend”: “That song, pure and simple, came through me. I sat at the piano; the song came through me. People say, ‘Did you write it for James Taylor?’ No, no I didn’t.”
Microsoft Word Is Inefficient And Obsolete And Should Be Put To Death
“Like the fax machine, Word was designed to put things on paper. … [But] Microsoft Word is an atrocious tool for Web writing. Its document-formatting mission means that every piece of text it creates is thickly wrapped in metadata, layer on layer of invisible, unnecessary instructions about how the words should look on paper.”
MPAA Joins With Obscure Gay Porn Website In Copyright Lawsuit
“The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which counts Disney, Paramount and Sony pictures among its members, is supporting a case brought by Flava Works, an adult-film studio that specializes in black and Latino productions with titles such as Raw Rods and Snow Ballerz. The case revolves around the ongoing argument fought by far bigger players than Flava – namely, whether embedding videos on a third-party website constitutes piracy.”
England’s Sexual Revolution – 250 Years Ago
Historian Faramerz Dabhoiwala: “The ethos of western culture until the 18th century was dominated by the idea that sex is essentially a sinful act, that it is potentially a very dangerous thing to allow, and that it only has a place within marriage. … There were all these things that happened in and around the 18th century – the age of the Enlightenment – that are both extraordinary in themselves and collectively add up to a sexual revolution.”