Science now confirms what’s long been suspected by people related to theater kids: “the quality of a performance does not drive the amount of applause an audience gives.”
A(n Induced) Standing Ovation
Meet Miss Simone
Meet Eunice Waymon, who Nina Simone was before she became Nina Simone. John Lahr reviews What Happened, Miss Simone? by Alan Light. Pair with Bill Morris’s piece on the Hollywood biopic.
L’Chaim
You may have heard that X-Files star David Duchovny published a novel last week. The
book, which developed out of an idea Duchovny had in college, centers on a teenage cow named Elsie who befriends a Yiddish-speaking pig. At Salon, Anna Silman interviews the actor/author, who talks about his book's allegorical nature and his rumored beef with Vancouver.
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Reichenbach Pilgrimage
"I am lately returned from a pilgrimage, bearing bloodied knees and a holy relic; my destination was a place of love and sacrifice that’s lived long in my heart. No Lourdes for me, though: I went to the Reichenbach Falls." Sarah Perry makes a pilgrimage to the death place of Sherlock Holmes and writes about it for the Guardian.
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The Paris Review’s Roundtable
Paris Review editor Lorin Stein sat down alongside James Salter, Mona Simpson, and John Jeremiah Sullivan to discuss the magazine’s sixtieth anniversary with Charlie Rose. At one point Stein admits that, “If you wrote about sex the way Jim [Salter] writes about sex ... in nonfiction, you would be a sociopath.” (Bonus: Stein writes about John O’Hara for The New Yorker.)
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Boy Meets World, Boy Meets Girl
In a perfect mix of high and low art, Samuel L. Jackson performed a slam poem about Boy Meets World on The Tonight Show. "Daughter of hippies/Name of a gypsy/'Topanga,' Corey cries."
Aragorn’s Publishing Company
Viggo Mortenson, a.k.a. Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, also happens to have started a publishing company. Perceval Press is devoted to showcasing the talents of little-known authors and artists who might otherwise go undiscovered.