Playing Telephone
We are overstimulated, overavailable, overbusy, and a long, meandering, curled-up-on-the-sofa chat seems an impossible luxury. Funny, how improvements so often subtract from life’s quality.
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Clarice Lispector, Brazil’s Most Beloved and Enigmatic Writer
Brazilians embraced her as their finest modern author, yet. Her writing process was intuitive, soaked in emotion, and “entirely unconscious”; you would never guess she studied law.
Persona
The persona was the mask worn by actors in ancient Greece—but its purpose was not to fool the audience about the actor’s identity. The mask’s exaggerated expressions helped define the character, and most important, the mask functioned as a tiny megaphone, making the actor’s voice more audible.
Remembering Paul Schoomer
Paul Schoomer did not care whether you came to buy or browse. For nearly thirty years, from 1969 to 1996, Schoomer was the purveyor of fine books in St. Louis. Along with his wife Suzanne, he made Paul’s Books into "Cheers" for bookworms.
Books Save the Queen
Primarily a playwright, Bennett won acclaim for "The History Boys" and "The Madness of George III." That theatrical sense of pacing and dialogue keeps "The Uncommon Reader" sparkling, even (or perhaps especially) during the Queen’s internal monologues.
A Little Originality, Anyone?
Novelty is what Americans are said to crave, yet it terrifies policy wonks, CEOs, art dealers, and almost everybody else. This is no time for experiments, we mutter, sharply aware of how precarious profit, amicable coexistence, and life itself are now. It is safer to follow a recipe exactly.
Emmett Till: The Horror Never Ended
More than half a century later, a sign was placed on the shore of the Tallahatchie at the spot where Emmett’s body was found. The sign was ripped from the ground and probably thrown into the river as forcefully as his body had been. By the time its replacement was removed, it had been punctured by 317 bullet holes.
Seeing a Friend on the Silver Screen
Yesterday was the first time I have seen him on the big screen, and I had to stop myself from telling the box-office person and film festival volunteers that I knew someone acting in the film I was about to see.
Slow Birding
Bask in a sunny garden and watch the birds. Hike slowly through the woods and listen for their calls. Pull up the new, free Merlin app to find out which bird sings that song. Gradually, you will learn intimate details about the lives of these “winged dinosaurs that have given up stored fat, hollowed their bones,” to fly.
Wakanda Forever is a Bad Film but an Important One
One of the ironies of Afrofuturism is that it is less concerned with the future than it is the mythological reconstruction of a past that would enable Blacks to see themselves differently in the present. Whether the idealizations of Wakanda are ultimately debilitating or liberating for the Black mind and its struggles with persistent racial persecution and the enfeebling belief in Black inferiority is open to debate.