Zadie Smith: What Does It Mean To Be New York Anymore?

“Like many a New Yorker right now I talk a good game but my mind is scattered, disordered. To me, the city itself feels scattered, out of sorts; certainly carrying on like London, like Paris, but also, like those places, newly fearful, continuing with its routines while simultaneously wondering whether it still wants to, considering decamping to the countryside while being repulsed by that same thought—oh, and a ragbag of other random thoughts and anecdotes that will now converge in the next paragraph like a half-dozen strangers united for a moment on a street corner.”

The Bionic Ballerina

Despite what’s going on inside her body—and the scars that look like “the zombie apocalypse”—Bailey Anne Vincent dances. She glides across the floor with ease and grace, with extended lines and delicate movements that belie the medical battles within.

What Kind Of Music Director Should The San Francisco Symphony Hire To Replace MTT?

“The roster of tasks facing the next San Francisco Symphony music director will be daunting and varied. It includes finding new ways of making the standard repertoire speak directly to a younger and more diverse audience, including many for whom the music of Mozart or Brahms is terra incognita. It includes embracing a broader range of contemporary music — including works by women and composers of color, a point on which this orchestra has lagged woefully behind organizations like the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Music Director Gustavo Dudamel.”

Writing Versus The Writer

“What writers don’t realise is that people don’t buy the writing, they buy the writer. Writing is not about finding your voice, but finding your persona. You can’t just cloister yourself away and expect to become famous unless you’ve a backstory of dodgy health and dying relatives as big as Emily Dickinson’s.”

Has Book Reviewing Degenerated Into A Kind Of Thought Police?

The ‘own voices’ policy conveys to reviewers that their primary job is not to assess a book’s storytelling, but to rate its adherence to a left-wing catechism (the fairness of whose tenets is presumably self-evident), to identify authorial heretics, and to stick the apostates’ heads on spikes along the digital public highway. Reviewing for Kirkus is now a cross between penning literary criticism and joining a shooting party, a sufficiently athletic undertaking that it really should pay better.

Is This Planned $500 Billion City The Future of Cities?

Prince Mohammed envisions Neom as a hub for manufacturing, renewable energy, biotechnology, media, and entertainment, filled with skyscrapers, five-star hotels, and robots to free humans from repetitive labor. The website dedicated to the city proclaims that it will offer “an idyllic lifestyle…founded on modern architecture, lush green spaces, quality of life, safety, and quality in service of humanity paired with excellent economic opportunities.”