“Conferences and corporate speaking gigs have helped replace the Âjournalist-as-translator with the journalist-as-sage; in a magazine profile, the scientist stands out, but in a TED talk, the speaker does.”
Tag: 10.28.12
Theory Of Novel (Generation Past?)
“This rather boring, seemingly “advanced” idea – that Theory would alter the novel’s very DNA, so that it would no longer be possible to write fiction the same old way – may hold good for writers working in a recognizably high-postmodern fashion. But now comes a wave of fiction that tells a more complicated, less academically consecrated story.”
Literature Next In The Gaping Maw Of Big Data? (Arghhh)
“Artificial intelligence has already changed health care and pop music, baseball, electoral politics, and several aspects of the law. And now, as an afterthought to an afterthought, the algorithms have arrived at literature, like an army which, having conquered Italy, turns its attention to San Marino.”
Japan May Be Conquering The Ballet World
There, “ballet is big business and local competitions set the barre. Japanese dancers now populate every major ballet company on the planet, and Japanese students are taking top prizes at highly rated competitions such as the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland and Youth America Grand Prix in New York.”
Introducing The Arts To Kids (It’s A Challenge?)
?When is it O.K. to introduce challenging cultural material — whether it is sexy or profane, creepy or violent, or simply adult and intense — to your children?”
It’s National Theatre V. Royal Court In London Theatre Awards’ Longlist
Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre leads this year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards longlist with 22 entries, followed by the Royal Court with 13 nominations.
How Can Orchestras Recover From Their Crises?
“I am dismayed by the ratcheting up of hostility, the evidence of poisonous internecine warfare. The musicians’ blogs, in particular, are painful expressions of hopes, dreams and aspirations being destroyed. How an orchestra comes back from such an experience with relationships and trust totally wrecked, I have no idea.”
A Heritage Theatre Shuts Its Doors
The Paramount Theatre in Peekskill, N.Y., successfully remade itself from an aging movie theatre into a performing arts center – until the Great Recession (and a rival town’s theatre) took its support and business away.
Penguin Authors Not Looking Forward To Possible New Corporate Overlords
HarperCollins – owned by the News Corporation, Rupurt Murdoch’s many-tentacled empire – may win a bid for Penguin. How do Penguin authors feel? “A number of writers warned that Penguin’s reputation would be damaged by a Murdoch takeover.”
Cultural (Choice) Overload! Condition Critical!
“I recently counted the books in the Tower of Doom, estimated how long it would take to read them all, tallied this against my available reading hours on an average day, and concluded that the only realistic solutions were to shoot myself in the foot like a panicky first world war Tommy or get sent to jail, where I might be able to fit in some regular exercise too.”