“Worldwide today, pernambuco is used in fewer than 20 percent of all bows, but in more than 90 percent among professionals. Originally used for timber and dyes, pernambuco today is mostly cut for violin bows, with the best heartwood coming from trees more than 80 years old. In 1992, it was added to Brazil’s endangered species list. So why is pernambuco still used?”
Tag: 07.29.07
Why Online Lit Blogs Can’t Replace Print Reviews
So book reviews are leaving newspapers and going online. So what? “Proliferation — the chaos of the endlessly branching paths — is one crucial structural difference between the print and digital realms. Never mind that the Web has swallowed vast archives of print material; we are also seeing a significant shift in the nature of the discourse itself. Blogs and on-line journals do not simply transfer old wine into new bottles — the wine itself is changing.”
Taking Liberties With Jane
The latest Jane Austen film to emerge from Hollywood is actually about the author herself – specifically, about her romance with law student Tom LeFroy and his effect on her literary passions. Austen scholars are not expected to be among the film’s fans. “It’s all very be-still-my-beating-heart.” It’s also all very speculative, which is a nice way of saying that it’s probably very untrue.
Not Much Use For Used Books
Book collecting is a solitary pasttime, and the circle of devotees who partake of its delights is a relatively small one. That latter fact can make for a tough market for collectors looking to unload their treasures. “The [internet] has created a buyer’s market, by forcing sellers from all over to compete with each other for titles that are often abundant.”
Music In The Shadow Of Hitler
Two new novels exploring the lives of classical musicians living under Nazi rule in WWII-era Germany are raising eyebrows in the dual worlds of music and literature. At the heart of both books is the chilling conflict of great art in the face of great evil, and the inescapably human decisions that must be made in such situations.
The Perils Of The Indie World
Think being an indie filmmaker sounds like fun, working independent of the big studios and calling your own shots? Think again: “you can be a film festival favorite one day, the victim of a poor test screening the next, and then wake up in the hands of a new, untested distributor.”
Fugard In (Self-Imposed) Exile
South African playwright Athol Fugard is one of those rare artists who is credited with having effected true change on his entire country, through his plays that many feel helped to bring an end to the brutal apartheid system. But “postapartheid South Africa has disillusioned Fugard… His country, he says, is in denial about its problems, busy ‘blaming the past while taking no responsibility for the present.'”
50 Years Of Sharks And Jets
Leonard Bernstein’s timeless musical classic,West Side Story, is 50 this year. “It wasn’t just a flashy composer’s triumph: the great strength of West Side Story lay in its totality: a show where all the artistic elements blended to produce something that Broadway audiences genuinely couldn’t classify… West Side Story worked because it was a team effort – and because the team successfully deflected Bernstein’s highbrow inclinations.”
What Do Westerns Tell Us About Today’s America?
The Western is hot again in Hollywood, and there may be more to that fact than the cyclical nature of the movie business. Some of the new breed are the same as the old breed – simple stories stripped of the complications of modern life so as to tell pure tales of the human condition. But other new Westerns are seemingly using the form “as an allegory to comment on the existential anxieties facing America today.”
Fitting In, Against The Grain
When a city hires a superstar architect to design a major new urban building in its midst these days, you generally expect to see a structure that stands out from everything around it. So it’s a bit surprising to look at Robert Adam’s new building on London’s Piccadilly Circus, and note that the most remarkable thing about it is just how well it fits into its surroundings.