Rocco Landesman to Head the National Endowment for the Arts
It still has to be approved by Congress, but Rocco Landesman has been appointed to serve as the next chairman of the NEA, a post most recently held by poet Dana Gioia. I’m not much of a theatre-goer, so Landesman is new to me. Based on the info in the New York Times article, he sounds like a lot of fun: Mr. ...
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Fail, Fail Again
Just when you thought the Times had figured out how to correctly pair writers with appropriate topics . . . Kidding—the Times will never get that straight. Here’s some clips from today’s review of Lost‘s season finale: [. . .] the producers of “Lost,” who have devoted the show’s fourth and ...
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A Tribute to the Chinese Earthquake Victims
My friend Wen Huang — translator of Liao Yiwu’s The Corpse Walker and Xianhui Yang’s Woman from Shanghai — contacted me this morning about the article below that Liao Yiwu wrote in remembrance of the one year anniversary of the devastating Beichuan earthquake. As referenced in passing in the piece ...
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Karen Emmerich: Acclaimed New Talent on Contemporary Greek Writing
Where: 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco, CA Join the Center for the Art of Translation for this special event in honor of World in Translation Month as Karen Emmerich reads from her award-winning translations of modern and contemporary Greek poetry and prose, including I’D LIKE, a collection of linked stories by Amanda ...
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Idlewild Write-up
What kind of dreamer opens a bookstore in a recession, gives it a nostalgic name that means nothing to most people under 40, and stocks it with travel guides and obscure foreign novels? Meet David Del Vecchio, owner of Idlewild Books, who says business is thriving despite the odds against independent bookstores, the ...
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Critical Flame
Daniel E. Pritchard has just launched The Critical Flame, a promising new online journal of book reviews and criticism with a goal of engaging with literature in a serious way: A life of constant education is a life lived well, and the heart of our continued education is a public discourse that is free from small-minded ...
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Life Incorporated
A few weeks ago we posted a brief interview that Jason Boog of GalleyCat conducted with Douglas Rushkoff about conglomerates and the media. This interview tied into Rushkoff’s latest book — Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back — which is a fantastic critique of the rise of ...
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