Inside The Head Of A Moscow Shaman

“All my ancestors were healers and performed rituals, even my surname Guslyak means ‘sorcerer’. Once a day my body convulses for 15-20 minutes. Reality changes in this condition and it takes special powers in order to return to normality. I still don’t understand everything.”

Bringing A British “American Psycho” To New York (It’s Scarier Than Patrick Bateman)

“Patrick Bateman has been haunting the theater director Rupert Goold lately. And it’s not just the ax, chain saw, and nail gun that Bateman uses on flashy A-listers … No, Mr. Goold is preoccupied with getting Bateman right for the Off Broadway run of his musical adaptation of American Psycho this winter after suffering mixed reviews during the world premiere at [London’s] Almeida Theatre.”

We Have Too Many Bogus Plagiarism Scandals

Laura Miller argues that few of us realize “just how commonplace plagiarism charges are, how thin most of the evidence is and how poorly the average person understands the nature of the transgression. … We’re a plagiarism-obsessed society, partly because we know how much damage we can do to someone’s career and life by accusing them of it, but largely because so many of us don’t really grasp what plagiarism is.”