The majority of the books nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize, the prestigious award for fiction translated into English, are under 200 pages long. Only one is over 300 pages: Mircea Cartarescu’s 627-page “Solenoid,” translated by Sean Cotter. It is also one of the most high-profile novels on the list. Many literary critics have … Read more
One of the most anticipated events of an overstuffed Mexico City Art Week earlier this month promised to be a surreal collision of architecture, performance art, power, privilege — and horses. Marina Abramovic, the grandmother of performance art, would be presenting her latest works (though she would dispute recognizing them as such) at a house … Read more
Elegance has a way of pouring out of Miriam Miller. Her arms open like wings, her fingertips part like petals. At 5 foot 10, with long legs and an elastic back, she has the kind of line that goes on for days. But a body isn’t everything in ballet. What makes Miller so striking isn’t … Read more
Inside a spacious room on Manhattan’s West Side, rehearsal for the latest Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” was full of macho bluster and trash talk. And that was before the actors started running their scene. It was a Friday morning, and the show’s British director, Patrick Marber, back after being briefly out … Read more
A Conductor at the Top, and Still Learning on the Job
When the great Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio made “Good Morning, Night” in 2003, about the 1978 kidnapping and killing of the politician Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, he provided a fanciful, heartbreaking coda: an image of Moro walking away from captivity, looking not much worse for wear after 55 days in a small cell. … Read more
“Well, guys, I’m having an odd day. This morning I got an email from NBC asking what I accomplished last week.” — JIMMY FALLON “Yep, they need to respond with five accomplishments from the last week. Federal workers wrote back: ‘I received this email, I opened this email, I read this email, I laughed at … Read more
“I don’t know why we have to do this over the phone,” says Arnold, speaking from Rotterdam to his estranged half brother, Jerry, in Idaho. That’s how I felt too, at least during the first half of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Grangeville,” a bleak two-hander named for the men’s hometown. Most of what happens happens at … Read more
new video loaded: Roberta Flack, ‘Killing Me Softly’ Singer, Dies at 88 transcript Back transcript Roberta Flack, ‘Killing Me Softly’ Singer, Dies at 88 As a Grammy Award-winning singer and pianist, Roberta Flack topped the charts as one of the most popular artists of the 1970s. Singing: “Killing me softly with his song, killing me … Read more
Altie Karper had been waiting for the call for years. An editor at a Knopf imprint, she had long wanted to publish an English translation of the last novel by Chaim Grade, one of the leading Yiddish authors of the 20th century. Grade was less well known than the Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, … Read more