Anecdotal Evidence of Friendship

Almanac: Chekhov on writers of fiction and their characters

“I have read your story ‘On the Road.’ If I were the editor of an illustrated magazine, I should publish the story with great pleasure; but here is my advice as a reader: when you depict sad or unlucky people, and want to touch the reader’s heart, try to be colderrrr—it gives their grief as it were a background, against which it stands out in greater relief. As it is, your heroes weep and you sigh. Yes, you must be cold.”
Anton Chekhov, letter to Lidya Alexyevna Avilov, March 19, 1892 (trans. Constance Garnett) -  AC 

“West Side Story,” and Leonard Bernstein at 100

IT’S hard to think of a figure in American cultural history more complex and protean than Leonard Bernstein. For my generation, he was already in eclipse when we came of age in the ’70s ... read more

`Each One Has Been a Friend'

Eleven years ago I happened on a poem by a poet previously unknown to me that was so good I had to write about it.Maureen Jeffs’ “To My Daughter, My Books” distilled a lot of wisdom and generosity into a small package and it sounded earned, not an empty gesture made public to elicit admiration. Jeffs wrote to thank me and I was touched by her gratitude and the assumption that we belonged to the same tribe – parents and readers.

On Tuesday I picked up the anthology in which I found Jeffs’ poem, It’s Her Voice That Haunts Me Now (1996), and read it again. Then I looked online to see if she had continued writing and discovered that Maureen Jeffs had died in 2015. The internet, among its other gifts, makes it possible to feel guilty and sad over the death of someone on another continent whom we never met. Think about that for a moment. I experienced a pang of guilt for not staying in touch with someone who seemed remarkably thoughtful and interesting. And now we’ll never have that permanently deferred conversation.      

Her website, perhaps created by the daughter addressed in the poem, is a fine tribute and preserves some of her poems and stories. As Jeffs writes in the closing lines of “To My Daughter, My Books”:

“Take them and use

Them well, each one has been a friend,

And may the truths you find console.

In these, and in the books I’ve penned,

You’ll find the substance of my soul.”

`Just As My Bad Demons Do'

“My mother was born unfortunate, and she was pursued until her end by that evil genius, ill luck.  The Psalmist says, `No one can keep his own soul alive’—nor anybody else’s either. We despair because we are no better and are not consoled that we can be no worse. A life is a single folly, but two lives would be countless ones, for nobody profits by his mistakes.”

Kendrick Lamar Did The Pulitzer A Favor By Winning

 

What Kendrick Lamar’s Win Means For Hip Hop

"Lamar’s historic win figures in the grander, affected consecration of blackness within élite spaces—exemplified, I think, by the “thousand flowers of expectation” blooming in Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Barack Obama. It was Obama, with his caucuses of rappers in the White House, who accelerated the conclusion that hip-hop had earned a prestige as a great American art. In its long and perplexing lurch toward acclaim, did hip-hop sacrifice its edge? Lamar is a fascinating and brilliant non-answer." … Read More

From 2011, an image of a woman enjoying a walk in the southern Russian region of Dagestan (Photo courtesy of Andrea Bruce)

Award-winner finds a universal dignity and nobility in her images, far from home As a kid, Andrea Bruce’s folks uprooted every two years or so, from one small town to another across the United States. “I was kind of the new kid at every school I went to, and I was very shy. I paid attention to everything that was happening around me. I was very perceptive and quiet,” says the photographer. Her perceptive and dedicated work for National Geographic and the New York Times in some of the world’s starkest places has been recognized with the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award, named for the Pulitzer-winning AP photographer who was killed in 2014 in Afghanistan. “Andrea was selected for her empathy, her emotional connection with subjects, and for the dignity that shines through her portfolio,” said the jurors for the $20,000 Niedringhaus prize from the International Women’s Media Foundation. Bruce, who knew Niedringhaus, says she shares her drive to capture life in places far from the shifting hometowns of her youth. Bruce says she’s always “trying new approaches to get people to pay attention to the world outside of themselves. … It keeps you going, because it’s not an easy goal to accomplish.” She talks about several of those approaches in our story on three award-winning photographs she took after Hurricane Matthew devastated cholera-stricken rural Haiti in October 2016. Here’s the full look at Bruce and her mission, but first, here are a few stories you may need to know for your day ahead.

Quick hits LET THE PEOPLE KNOW: This 1980 decision persuaded a judge to reveal Sean Hannity’s secret conflict-of-interest with President Trump and his lawyer. The key part: “People in an open society do not demand infallibility from their institutions. But it is difficult for them to accept what they are prohibited from observing.” CJR’s Jonathan Peters interviews Rob Balin, the media lawyer who cited that particular case, prompting a devastating revelation for those who follow Hannity, Trump and Hannity’s employer, Fox News. PARKLAND, THE BOOK: David Hogg and his sister Lauren are writing “#NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line," out June 5 by Random House with an introduction by Emma Gonzalez. In a tweet, David Hogg said he and Lauren will be using the money from the book to “help heal the community.” In related news, Dick’s Sporting Goods, which changed its gun protests after the Feb. 14 Parkland killings, says it will destroy the assault-style rifles and accessories it didn’t sell by the time it stopped sales, the NYT’s Laura M. Holson reports. MORE ON 'BAR:' Barbara Bush was a political teacher to Laura Bush, who would fill her old spot as White House first lady. One lesson: Don’t be late. The rationale? “You can’t ask people for their vote and then keep them waiting,” Andrew H. Malcolm writes. In recent years, Mrs. Bush, who carried a deep sadness for decades, served as the voice for her husband, who has been stricken with vascular Parkinson’s disease. For years, she also showed her backbone, telling historian Timothy Naftali after one school shooting that she had banned the Bushes from bringing guns into the house. BEYOND STARBUCKS: Let’s not fool ourselves; this is an “America problem,” writes the Washington Post’s Karen Attiah — and journalists should cover it that way. Pool parties, knocking on a door for directions, walking down a street with Skittles, returning to your own front door or hanging in your own back yard — each situation has prompted white brutality. “Black people in America can be physically eliminated at any time,” Attiah writes, “in any place, for little reason — whether that means being kicked out of stores, suspended from school, priced out of their neighborhoods, locked up in jail or put in the grave.” She ends her essay with these words from Solange Knowles: “Where can we be free? Where can we be safe? Where can we be black?” SETTLEMENT: The former Playboy model who claims a 10-month sexual relationship with Donald Trump has settled her lawsuit with the parent company of the Trump-friendly National Enquirer, which paid her money for her story before the 2016 election, buried it and had sought to keep her quiet. The settlements means that Karen McDougal is free to tell her story. HOW NAVIGATING WIKIPEDIA GOT EASIER: Don’t worry, there are still plenty of opportunities to go down rabbit holes, but a “preview” feature activated by hovering gives a quick view of what’s down there. Related: Why Wikipedia did it, and how you’re on Wikipedia sometimes when you’re on another site. LAUNCHING: Business/tech and general news YouTube channels for the streaming video network Cheddar, dubbed the “CNBC for millennials.” By Sara Fischer of Axios. … Apple is launching a new news subscription service. FAREWELL: Tampa Bay Times movie critic Steve Persall writes his last star-studded column at the end of a 25-year run, and says " I want to declare how cool this job has been outside movie theaters, a professional life (well, most of the time) so packed with once-in-a-lifetime experiences that some happened twice, even five times, like covering the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. A perfect path for someone raised in the projection booths and concession stands of his father’s drive-in and single-screen theaters."

 
— DEAR F****-UP: I BEHAVED POORLY AND NOW I FEEL BAD — A NOTE REGARDING ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR