Edward Hopper’s New York

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) was the painter of small-town America. This we know. That his small town happened to be New York City, his home for nearly sixty years, we may not know. “Edward Hopper’s New York,” now on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, tells the hometown story of an artist we thought we knew all along in a novel and illuminating way. [...] 

Hopper treated New York as his own small town. James Panero, The New Criterion

“Edward Hopper’s New York” opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, on October 19, 2022, and remains on view through March 5, 2023.

e con questa mostra che si prospetta molto interessante auguro a tutti un felice 2023! 

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!

 Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!

Ghost Writer

Once a rare species, celebrity authored children’s books have become stalwarts of supermarket books aisles. Perfect for a grandparent hunting a last-minute Christmas gift, or a parent looking for something that will appeal to a child reluctant to read, books by stars have become the go-to for many. Those buying them might have it in the back of their minds that these “authors” might not have done much of the writing. But that doesn’t matter, does it? As long as the kids are reading, that’s what counts.

For children’s authors who do write their own stuff, it’s a little galling. They’d give their hind teeth for a spot on that shelf – and surely they are no less deserving of exposure and recognition. As a writer of children’s fiction, I’ve been known to turn a shade of green, too. But I’m conflicted, because in addition to writing original and mostly unrecognised books for young readers, I also work as a ghost writer. Anonymous (ghost writer), The Guardian

Coffeehouses and Proust

Coffeehouses had existed for centuries in the Muslim Ottoman realms before they spread to Christian Europe in the mid 17th century. They were introduced by merchants and migrants with links between the two worlds. The first was established on St Mark’s Square in Venice in 1647. Five years later Pasqua Rosée, a Greek, set up London’s first coffeehouse in St Michael’s Alley in the City of London. Armenians played decisive roles in establishing the first cafés in Paris (at the St Germain fair in 1671) and Vienna (a spy in the post-siege Habsburg capital set up its first kaffeehaus in 1685). Organised around the consumption of a stimulant, these places contrasted with the raucous intoxication associated with taverns. Coffeehouses soon emerged as centres of exchange, information and debate.  Jeremy Cliffe, New Statesman

e anche di dolcetti si parla, parlando di Proust:

Over the course of Villa Albertine’s Proust Weekend, a series of talks, workshops, and readings celebrating the forthcoming English translation of the last volume of the Recherche and the centenary of Proust’s death, I ate more cakes per diem than usual: on Sunday afternoon, a miniature pistachio financier, a Lego-shaped and moss-textured cake that reminded me of the enormous chartreuse muffins at my college cafeteria; on Saturday morning, a crisp, disc-like, almond-sliver-sprinkled shortbread cookie with a hole, which reminded me of a Chinese coin; and, on Friday night, at a holiday party, a dish of Reddi-wip and sour cream studded with canned mandarin slices and maraschino cherries apparently called ambrosia salad. It reminded me of the music video for Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” But these were really only preliminary research exercises for the episode in which Proust Weekend was to culminate: a “Proust-inspired madeleine event with surprise guests”!

Leggere

 the joy of reading slowly:

Elizabeth Strout, the Booker-shortlisted author of Olive Kitteridge and the Lucy Barton books, is also taking books at a more tranquil pace. “I was never a fast reader [but] I think I read more slowly than I used to. This is partly to savour every word. The way a sentence sounds to my ear is so important to me in the whole reading experience, and I always want to get it all – like when you read poetry.” Susie Mesure, The Guardian

the joy of reading everything:

n the summer of 2011, during the quieter days that followed hurricane Irene, the writer Phyllis Rose headed to the New York Society Library on the Upper East Side of the city in search of a 1936 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Hurricane [...] Once it was in her hand, however, her enthusiasm for it began to trickle away. [...] The question was: what should she read instead? [...] This was unnerving. It made her mildly anxious, her sudden awareness of all these unknown authors and their unknown books, and perhaps as a means of assuaging this unease, she began to formulate a plan. What if she was to pick, at random, a fiction shelf and read her way through its contents? What, if anything, would she learn? Rachel Cooke, The Guardian