Fodder from the Reader

Via SwissMiss

Taking another day for the old novel, which is still going full steam, I'm happy to say. However I did get a chance to do a little web browsing, and voila! interesting things abound:

• Hyperallergic has a lovely post contrasting museum art versus street art in terms of how we experience it, with bonus points for working in Proust.
• Innovative trend: artistic funeral urns?
• The Dull New Global Novel from the NYT Review of Books. The title says it all.
• Abstract Expression had a mother? Apparently those macho men have some secrets...
• Jerry Saltz's webpage
• Jhumpa Lahiri and Chuck Close make President Obama's advisory committee via Culture Monster
• The Royal Shakespeare Company is doing a residency at the Armory this June, maybe even one-upping my beloved Shakespeare in the Park

Unrelated thought: 'Write what you know' is rubbish advice. The whole point is to imagine and create, not replicate in dronish detail. If we did that, there would be no magical creatures, no fantasy, and no sci-fi. Not to mention relatively few happy endings, if only because it's hard to know where things end in life. You can't wrap up a person's life after the good parts like a story.


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