Todd May: “In their official guise, these doctrines are examples of what I am going to label ‘invulnerabilism.’ They say that we can, and we should, make ourselves immune to the world’s vicissitudes. … Instead, I want to say that most of us, when we really reflect upon our lives, would not want what is officially on offer, but instead something else.”
Tag: 12.27.14
African And Black Writers Need To Liberate Themselves From “Mental Tyranny”, Says Ben Okri
The Nigerian novelist argues that “black and African writers are read for their novels about slavery, colonialism, poverty, civil wars, imprisonment, female circumcision – in short, for subjects that reflect the troubles of Africa and black people as perceived by the rest of the world. They are defined by their subjects. The black and African writer is expected to write about certain things, and if they don’t they are seen as irrelevant.”
Hilary Mantel Writes About Grief
“Grief is like fear in the way it gnaws the gut. Your mind is on a short tether, turning round and round. You fear to focus on your grief but cannot concentrate on anything else. You look with incredulity at those going about their ordinary lives. … Your former life still seems to exist, but you can’t get back to it; there is a glimpse in dreams of those peacock lawns and fountains, but you’re fenced out, and each morning you wake up to the loss over again.”
Why Andrea Martin Keeps Getting Parts (And Winning Awards) In Her 60s
“I’m not the girl who gets to make out with Ryan Gosling in a scene. I’m the housekeeper who comes in on Ryan Gosling and then I do a spit take and then trip over his underwear and knock my head as I walk out on all fours. That’s my part. So I think there’s longevity … I really think, if you are funny, I don’t think age has anything to do with it, honestly.” (audio)
Working Close To The Art, As A Museum Jill Of All Trades
“Everyone wears a lot of hats. I also sweep the floor, take the garbage out and lay bug traps. I always thought when I reached this point that I’d wear pencil skirts and kitten heels and look fancy, but the reality is I spend a lot of time on the floor.”
Are Cinema’s New Shared Universe Sagas A Good Thing?
“There’s a chunk of every Marvel movie that doesn’t belong there, either because it’s effectively a trailer for a subsequent film, or because it’s an arch allusion to an earlier one. The danger is that as the MCU gets more byzantine, and the intertextual nods and winks become more common, its films won’t make any sense unless you’ve seen all the others.”
Will The San Fernando Valley Finally, Like, Get Its Own Museum?
“‘We’re on the verge of a cultural renaissance in the Valley,’ Sterling says. ‘It’s happening really fast, and people are getting behind it. If we were a city, we’d be the fifth-largest population base in the U.S. The Valley needs a world-class museum.'”
Janis Martin Sang In Italian Restaurants To Survive, And Then Became A Celebrated Soprano And International Star
“From the early 1970s on she became identified with Wagnerian soprano parts like Isolde, Brünnhilde and Kundry in ‘Parsifal,’ as well as the title role in Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ and Strauss roles like Elektra and the Dyer’s Wife in ‘Die Frau Ohne Schatten’ (‘The Woman Without a Shadow’).”
Cutting Lines – And Cutting Profanity – For An American Audience
“Terrible things happen, wonderful ones, too. There are big events, big emotions and the occasional influx of lobsters or Nazis. Her characters have juicier things to bite than their tongues.”
Some Authors Flee Amazon’s All-You-Can-Read Service For More Lucrative Shores
“For romance and mystery novelists who embraced digital technology, loved chatting up their fans and wrote really, really fast, the last few years have been a golden age. Fiction underwent a boom unseen since the postwar era, when seemingly every liberal arts major set his sights on the Great American Novel. Now, though, the world has more stories than it needs or wants to pay for.”