“One of the great mysteries of 20th-century literary history is why Ralph Ellison never completed the highly anticipated second novel that he worked on for four decades after Invisible Man was published to wide acclaim in 1952.” Paul Devlin has a theory. (It’s all Norman Mailer’s fault.)
Tag: 06.19.13
Gays In The Military In World War II (And The Author Who Documented Them)
The letters of John Horne Burns, who wrote the once-acclaimed, now-forgotten wartime novel The Gallery, “offer unparalleled insight into the life of a gay soldier at a time when, officially at least, gay soldiers did not exist and, to subsequent generations of traditionalists, never had.”
Are Ballet Dancers’ Teeth Too Bright?
Judith Mackrell: “Perhaps in normal daylight, or in front of a bathroom mirror, there’s nothing exceptional about the shade to which these men’s teeth have been whitened. But under stage lighting, an obviously bleached smile can take on a neon brightness. And I’m not alone in finding the effect to be disproportionately distracting.”
NSA Or No NSA, We Are Not Living In Orwell’s 1984
“A few points of similarity, like the monitoring of huge amounts of data without sufficient congressional or legal oversight, do not establish the literary analogy. The rule here is simple: If you are invoking 1984 in a country in which 1984 is available for purchase and can be freely deployed as a rhetorical device, you likely don’t understand the point of 1984.”
Let’s Stop Taking George Orwell’s Name In Vain
“People mention Orwell … to suggest that the writer of Animal Farm and 1984 would disapprove of the activities that Edward Snowden made public. And people may well be right about that. But Orwell would likely disapprove of the use – the overuse – of his name. That’s because Orwell crusaded against clichés like few public figures have before or since.”
Olivier Awards Add Category For Music Directors And Orchestrators
“Musical supervisors and orchestrators have secured a victory in their campaign to be honoured at the Olivier Awards, with next year’s ceremony set to include a brand new prize category for which they will be eligible.”
Warhol’s Factory Changed The Art World, And The Art World Changed Warhol’s Factory Art Right Back
“Postmodernism in the arts repudiated many of the basic teachings of modernism: the myth of individual genius, for example, and the concept of originality. Yet arts institutions continued to operate throughout the postmodern period, and do so right up to the present moment, as though that critique never happened. Museums, foundations, government endowments, and university art departments all effortlessly absorbed a movement which was more or less devoted to destroying their conception of the arts.”
How Tablets Have Changed Publishing
“Generally speaking, long-form editorial content like actual stories, video and slideshows do well across the board because the tablet is a lean-back device, where consumers aren’t looking for short snippets of content like they are on a mobile phone, for example.”
Is Today The Golden Age Of Printed Books?
“There is something increasingly reassuring today about the physicality of print books, about using one’s hands and fingers as well as one’s mind and brain as the instruments of reading.”
Actor James Gandolfini Dies Suddenly At 51
While he had a long and successful career as a character on screen and stage, he “swaggered his way to fame as the murderous, clinically depressed mob boss on HBO’s groundbreaking drama The Sopranos.”