“Durable, easily handled, yet retaining somehow the flavor of its coinage, the classic cliché has fought philology to a standstill: it sticks and it stays, and not by accident. … [It has been] an object, and a useful one: a concrete unit of communication that minimized labor and sped things up.”
Tag: 10.18.09
On The Bus With Philip Roth, Touring His Hometown
“Philip Roth came home again Saturday, which is not so unusual because he’s been a frequent visitor in recent years.” The twist to this visit? Roth was “the surprise guest on a bus tour of Newark” — “Philip Roth’s Newark,” as it was called.
When Neil Simon Had His Finger On The Audience’s Pulse
“For better and worse, Simon’s plays–in their complacency, insularity, and, yes, hilarity–connected with their audience on a level that theater almost never does anymore. Simon’s wisecrack-laden comedies made him, by many estimates, the most commercially successful playwright of all time.”
Beware: The Bean Counters Rule In Publishing
“Ezra Pound’s injunction to writers was ‘make it new’. But if the dice are loaded, and the people who are calling the odds are not readers but marketing people, what hope for new fiction?”
Richard Rogers Wins Britain’s Stirling Architecture Prize
“The prize comes as a ringing endorsement from his peers despite Rogers being bumped off the £1 billion Chelsea Barracks redevelopment project by the intervention of Prince Charles. His victory — for the Maggie’s Centre in Hammersmith, west London — came as a surprise.”
Google Books An Incendiary Topic At Frankfurt
“‘Garbage’ and ‘hysterical propaganda’ was one angry reaction at the world’s biggest book fair this year when Google, the world’s biggest Internet search service, defended plans to turn millions of books into electronic literature available online.”
What Makes San Francisco A Literary Haven
“Like the thriving theater culture in Chicago … San Francisco’s writers have come to recognize and trumpet the idea that this city prizes their craft, its solitary difficulty and what can emerge from it, even though there isn’t much of a publishing industry here.”
New York Puts Obstacles In Path Of Thriving Film Industry
“The latest shock to the industry is a plan by the city to charge the largest fees in the nation for filming in its buildings. The Mayor’s film office is also drawing up plans to charge for its famous free permits. Even more troubling, the city’s tax incentive program is out of money….”
Sex Scenes Can (But Needn’t) Unsettle Actors’ Home Lives
“The better the actor, the more convincing the sex scene — and the more potentially wrenching for the actor’s mate. No wonder so many couples devise rituals – some subtle, others more concrete — that they hope will ease the pain.”
The Mercurial, Meteorological Jane Campion
“A warm breeze, at play.” So actor Harvey Keitel once described his director in The Piano. An interviewer finds that “[t]he breeze derives from her quirky humour and the mercurial play of expression on her face; her greying hair and her black clothes suggest severity, but the woman herself is a riot of frank, flushed emotion.”