“I try to heed another piece of advice: don’t cherrypick, just select at random, and make sure to write a brief, factual note immediately after finishing each book. ‘I felt,’ confides another former judge, ‘that “X is Y’s brother” would have been a more useful observation than “haunting prose”.'”
Tag: 10.19.08
John Adams Says He’s Been ‘Blacklisted’
“Interviewed on BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters yesterday, [the composer] said he was now ‘blacklisted’. ‘I can’t check in at the airport now without my ID being taken and being grilled. You know, I’m on a homeland security list, probably because of having written The Death of Klinghoffer, so I’m perfectly aware that I, like many artists and many thoughtful people in the country, am being followed.'”
Pakistan Could Sure Use Someone Like This Now
A new documentary remembers Badshah Khan (né Abdul Ghaffar Khan), who “was called ‘The Frontier Gandhi’ and built an Islamic parallel to Gandhi’s violence-eschewing ideals of compassion for one’s enemies and peaceful resistance to oppression as a means of overcoming it.”
Miami’s Carnival Arsht Center Gets It Together
“After a budget-busting inaugural year marked by financial crises, empty seats and community outrage, the publicly owned Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts has closed out a second year that stands in stark contrast to the first. The budget is balanced, attendance has nearly doubled and elected officials no longer dress down leaders of the center in public meetings.”
Why The Movies Keep Destroying New York
“When the aliens shoot up a grain silo, we yawn. When they blast the head off the Statue of Liberty, we all gasp and know they mean business.”
The Comédie-Française, Colonialist In The Suburbs?
“France’s most venerable establishment theatre, the 328-year-old Comédie-Française, has become embroiled in a row with a cutting-edge drama company over the place of high art in Paris’s rough suburbs.” With the backing of the Ministry of Culture, the Comédie-Française decided that a smaller theatre company, MC 93, “was to become its entry point into the suburbs” — a move MC 93 views as a hostile takeover.
In China, A Pearl Buck Museum — And Tourism Industry
“In Zhenjiang, where [Pearl] Buck spent much of her first 18 years, the Chinese are working hard to create a viable, profitable tourist industry based on interest in the writer. They are renovating houses and places tied to her to lure visitors from Europe, the United States and Asia. Today, officials here dedicated a grand new Pearl Buck Museum.”
The Joy Of Sex, Minus Frigidity This Time
“What was the most influential book of the 20th century? Perhaps you’d vote for ‘Relativity,’ by Albert Einstein. But for my money,” Pagan Kennedy writes, “the book that blew the lid off the century could only be ‘The Joy of Sex.'” British sexpert Susan Quilliam talks to Kennedy about her unusual commission: updating the 1972 manual for a 2009 edition.
SAG Members To Vote On Strike
The Screen Actors Guild’s national board of directors has voted to bring in a federal mediator to intercede in its contract dispute with studios. The board also agreed to ask its 120,000 union members if they want to authorize a strike.
How The Beegees Save Lives
Their song from 1977 “Stayin’ Alive” has the perfect number of beats per minute by which to perform cpr. Research says it contains 103 beats per minute, close to the recommended rate of 100 chest compressions per minute.