“In Coeur d’Alene, four members of a committee dedicated to curriculum review have urged the city’s school district to ban Steinbeck’s famous novel from being taught in classrooms … In Asheville, one school has already suspended [Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 bestseller], a frequently challenged novel about an Afghan boy growing up in Kabul.”
Tag: 05.05.15
Why Is It So Difficult To Make A Good Film About Writing?
“One of the main problems with films about writers is that the films are too often very inarticulate when talking about books.”
Art And The Cherished American Right To Do Something Stupid
“Congress has made no law abridging the right of free speech for this or any of the other hack artists. The show itself was proof enough of that. But neither is there a law that requires liking their cheap propaganda.”
Can Silicon Valley Build Better Schools?
While “information technology has vastly expanded access to information, a major challenge remains: How do you figure out what kind of information each child needs, when, and in what way? Not surprisingly, Silicon Valley is home to an unusual number of schools devoted to solving this problem.”
Opera Australia Squeeze: Bigger Audiences But Not Enough Money
“Even as audiences grew, the company’s decisions to hold ticket prices relatively stable and offer discounts and packages meant the total box office of $67.4 million was lower than expected.”
Yannick Nézet-Séguin To Leave Rotterdam Philharmonic Post In 2018
“The Rotterdam Philharmonic said on Tuesday that its principal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin will step down in 2018, his tenth year on the job. The announcement was widely expected, as the conductor has also been juggling directorships at the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal, and is increasingly tapped as a guest conductor.”
Neil Shicoff Gets An Opera Company To Run – In St. Petersburg
The 65-year-old tenor, said more than once in the past to have been a candidate for the top post at the Vienna State Opera, has been named chief of opera at the Mikhailovsky Theatre which artistic director (and chief funder) Vladimir Kekhman has transformed from poor stepsister to the Mariinsky into one of Russia’s most dynamic opera and ballet houses.
Three Great Cartoonists – Bechdel, Spiegelman, Gaiman – Defend Charlie Hebdo’s PEN Award
“Cartoonists tend to stick together because they have to; as Gaiman points out, their work is disproportionately singled out for suppression both abroad and in the U.S., while at the same time often regarded as not ‘serious’ enough to deserve a full-throttle defense.”
Marc Maron Became A Comedian Because He Thought They Have Life Figured Out
“I think when I was a kid, I always thought that the comics seemed to have a handle on things because they had a joke about everything or they had a point of view about everything, or they were able to manage a certain amount of chaos and pain and family situations. They just seemed to be able to handle life.”
Before You Start: A Look At Introductions, Forewords, and Prefaces
Nick Ripatrazone considers some classic examples of the genre(s), from Walker Percy’s foreword to A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole to Graham Greene’s own preface to The Comedians (framed as a letter to his editor) and Jack Kerouac’s intro-in-the-form-of-a-questionnaire to Lonesome Traveler.