Some of her PR tactics were terrific even by today’s standards, and she achieved a level of fame in America that’s astonishing, then or now, for an avant-garde writer, let alone an expatriate. That fame got her just about everything but the one thing she really wanted. - Prospect (UK)
“Unlike many of his contemporaries, the poet collected an ‘abundance of photographs’ of himself. And like many people today who snap and post thousands of selfies, Whitman, who lived during the birth of commercial photography, used portraits to craft a version of the self that wasn’t necessarily grounded in reality.” - The Conversation
Joanna Miller expresses great admiration for the skills of the Disney Company’s animatronics team. But she argues that "two minutes with the robot will do much more harm than good to Grampa's legacy. They will remember the robot, and not the man.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
The novelist, five-time memoirist, and co-author of the pioneering 1977 book The Joy of Gay Sex “was a major influence on modern gay literature, with LGBTQ+ writing prizes named after him and authors including Garth Greenwell, Édouard Louis, Ocean Vuong, Brandon Taylor and Alexander Chee all noting his importance.” - The Guardian
“Before the proliferation of A.I. music generators, before the emergence of Spotify and the iPod, before Brian Eno had coined the term ‘generative music,’ Mr. Cope had already figured out how to program a computer to write classical music” in the styles of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and other composers. - The New York Times
“Writing in The Village Voice in 2015 about a series of performances … in the East Village, Richard Gehr noted that, ‘having mastered the instrument in virtually all of its classical, modern, jazz and international manifestations,’ Mr. Klucevsek ‘has extended it into another dimension altogether.’” - The New York Times
“Sally Kellerman played Houlihan in the movie version and Swit took it over for TV, eventually deepening and creating her into a much fuller character. … The growing awareness of feminism in the ’70s spurred Houlihan’s transformation ..., but a lot of the change was due to Swit’s influence on the scriptwriters.” - AP
Old men are entitled to a little nostalgia, and Gioia isn’t the only postwar culture hero looking to escape, to some extent, into the past. - Commonweal
More than 500 Broadway artists are calling for "accountability, justice, and respect" after theater legend Patti LuPone received widespread pushback over recent comments she made about fellow stage icons Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis in a recent New Yorker profile. - Entertainment Weekly
“Victor appeared in a number of television series through her decades-long career, including as Lupita on the comedy Weeds” - but most people younger than 50 know her from her role voicing Abuelita in the 2017 movie Coco. - The New York Times
Natalie Venitia Belcon "insists that in her downtime, offstage, away from journalists, she is an everyday sort of woman who prefers oversize T-shirts and yoga pants. She loves to put on her bunny slippers and watch the UFC.” - The New York Times
Rondeau has been on a voluntary leave since the April 18 incident in which police were called to a United Airlines flight after it landed in Munich from Chicago, following reports that Rondeau had stripped off his clothes after drinking alcohol and taking prescription medication. - The New York Times
“Nørgård’s solution was to pioneer a form of musical functionalism that breathed new life into symphonic form. He hit upon an architectural formula he referred to as the Infinity Series – a potentially infinite constellation of predetermined notes, mapped according to a mathematical pattern, that could generate its own polyphony.” - Gramophone
These days, two factors are pushing the fun out of memoirs. For one, the entertainment business itself is, as has been much remarked, a far more conservative, risk-averse, vanilla place than it once was, when the personalities and tastes of its potentates defined and dictated its evolution. - The Hollywood Reporter
“In dozens of fiction and nonfiction books,” the Kenyan writer “traced his country’s history from British imperialism to home-ruled tyranny and challenged not only the stories told but the language used to tell them.” - AP
