Feels good to cross the 10K barrier. (Working on my Sayers bio.)
Via Damon Krukowski, a reminder that even a basic calendar of events could be a work of art if you wanted it to be.
Here’s a new post for my BMAC supporters.
If you slip the cover art out of the plastic box that holds the Criterion edition of Perfect Days and look on the back side, you see this:
Full-size image here. (I ran that through the scanner but the folds are still somewhat visible. I apologize.)
China depicted by a 17th-century English artist – at the V&A.
Very interesting observation from Ethan Iverson:
Ross Barkan and Freddie deBoer are prolific on their Substacks; I strongly recommend subscribing to both.
Barkan and deBoer have also published essays in The New York Times within the past week. […] The articles are excellent, but they also inevitably went through the rather implacable editorial process of The New York Times. Everyone who writes for the Times ends up sounding like the Times. As a result, the exceptionally distinctive voices of Barkan and deBoer are toned down a little bit.
I became attuned to this particular topic after publishing my Gershwin essay “The Worst Masterpiece: Rhapsody in Blue at 100” in The New York Times this past February. There was at least a week of editing, with two different editors who answered to a higher third editor. After I thought I signed off everything, the final was edited further (without my oversight) and made even more “New York Times-y.”
Breaking news: VAR in the Premier League continues to be worse than useless. ⚽️
I wrote about Adam Roberts’s novel Space Satan!!! — that’s the title Adam’s son prefers and I can’t disagree.
