“I had been told that it was derelict and vacant; that after Baldwin’s death in 1987 there had been legal disputes about who in fact owned the eighteenth-century Provençal building (Baldwin thought he did). The rusty padlock on the austere gates and the broken buzzer confirmed that the house was unoccupied. I glanced furtively around to check that no one was watching and prepared to scale the wall.”
Tag: 07.30.14
What It’s Really Like Being A New York Subway Dancer
“Rayquan Perez is a 19-year-old dancer with 2Live, a group that performs on the 4 and 2 trains. He spoke to Brian [Lehrer] about what it’s like to flip and somersault through a moving subway car, and about the crackdown on dancers.” (includes audio)
Is Apple Gearing Up To Become An Ebook Subscription Service?
“Serving up relevant recommendations (and sometimes that means genre fiction rather than literary fiction) is critical to keeping subscribers engaged. Thus the acquisition of BookLamp by Apple could possibly herald Apple’s entry into ebook subscription services.”
Why Does A Vancouver Theatre Critic Write Under A Pen Name? (And Other Arts Journalism Lapses)
“Since the practice of pen names fell out of favour in the mid-20th century, after newspapers began promoting themselves with their new brand of ethics, I wondered why any daily newspaper would go along with it?”
Research Archive Meets Warehouse Meets Database Meets Flea Market: Behold The Accumulibrary
“Unlike modern libraries, the Accumulibrary doesn’t segment or segregate media types. It fails to differentiate documents from things, books from periodicals from pamphlets, devices from objects, the new from the used from the old, the rare from the common. The sole laws that it holds sacred are the law of number and the law of stuff.”
Indie Movie Makes More In Video-On-Demand Than In Theatres. Is This A More Viable Path?
“The movie, directed by Bong Joon-ho, made $3.8 million in its first two weeks of VOD release, compared with $3.9 million from five weeks in theaters.”
Newport Jazz At 60 – Grandad To The Modern Festival
“For the past 60 years, no institution has done more to help establish jazz as a legitimate art form than Newport and the notion of the jazz festival that Mr. Wein created. Where jazz once rubbed shoulders with pop stars like Frank Sinatra, it now competes for government and corporate funding with opera and chamber music.”
Will Creating An “Arts District” Make A City More Dynamic?
“Dallas is trying to create more “vibrancy” downtown; trying to attract more people and keep them there for longer. One way it is doing that is through its arts district, a truly phenomenal collection of cultural institutions housed in equally impressive buildings, which is just now completing the commercial infrastructure it believes will activate the streetscape both day and night.”
Why The Vienna Philharmonic Sounds Different From Other Orchestras
“The “Vienna sound” has been the subject of reams of music criticism, academic research, acoustical experiments and more than a little debate. Not everyone agrees on precisely what it is — it is sometimes described as plush, warm and rich or sumptuous — but many listeners say that they know it when they hear it.”
Amazon: Hachette Dispute Is About Lower Prices And More Money To Authors
“Books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more,” Amazon said in the statement, which was posted on the forum for its Kindle ebook reader. “If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.”