Новости за 14.11.2016

What is the new Tom Ford movie, “Nocturnal Animals,” meant to be about? I have seen it twice now, and am none the wiser second time around. At its core is Susan (Amy Adams), a gallery owner with an austere haircut and a savage dose of insomnia. Her makeup could have been done by a mortician. She lives in Los Angeles with her second husband (Armie Hammer), whom she occasionally meets at breakfast. The gates to their home are forged from polished steel, and a Jeff Koons balloon sculpture sits forlornly in the back yard. Читать дальше...

If you’re attending a bookstore reading, interviewing an author, or writing a book review, it’s a matter of tact and literary sophistication not to conflate the author with her fictional characters or the events of the novel with the events of the author’s life. A scene might draw closely on lived experience, but a reader can’t presume and the author doesn’t have to tell. The designation “fiction” offers a cover of privacy to any author who cares to make use of it. Most writers seem to, which... Читать дальше...

In 1910, the National Guard clear-cut a mountaintop in Rockland County for the purpose of establishing the “Finest Rifle Range in World,” as a Times headline put it. Soldiers would soon be refining their skills amid “ravishing scenery,” overlooking the Hudson. By 1911, significant problems were apparent. Overlooking the Hudson meant shooting east, into the rising sun. The shooters, having first exhausted themselves scaling the mountain, often missed their targets, sending stray bullets over a ridge... Читать дальше...

In the woods, someone had built a labyrinth, a maze edged with stones. It began where a spoked handwheel, rusted red, had been pressed into the dirt as if it were a sundial, a clock, stopped. The path was overgrown with ferns. It twisted and turned and snaked around in a coil until it ended at a murky well fed from a spring where a person, quiet of heart, is meant to meditate. That person is not me. Nearby, a stone Buddha the size of a small girl watched from the crooked stump of a fallen birch.

It has been half a century since Shmuel Yosef Agnon won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yet he is one of those laureates for whom the prize has not translated into universal fame. Like Claude Simon (France) or Camilo José Cela (Spain), Agnon remains largely the possession of his original audience. In his case, however, defining that original audience is a difficult matter. Agnon wrote in Hebrew—he is the only Hebrew writer to win the Nobel—and he lived in Israel, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot... Читать дальше...

On a recent Saturday morning, about two dozen small children and their parents gathered in the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library for a new reading series. There were pregnant women with tattoos, breast-feeding moms, and a little girl in pink ballerina gear climbing on the laps of her two dads. Many of the kids, who ranged in age from newborn to five years old, wore tiny T-shirts showcasing their parents’ favorite bands (Nirvana, David Bowie) or political views (one read, “The Future Is Female”). Читать дальше...

I knew he was the one on the first date. We went to this corny movie, and we laughed at all the same parts. Then, after we got out, he was, like, “Hey, do you want to see something really funny?” And I was, like, “Yes.” So he rolled up his sleeve and showed me this tattoo, on his arm, that said “11k.” And I’m, like, “Is that your salary? Ha ha.” And he’s, like, “No. That’s the number of Earth days our species has left, because we’ve raped this planet, and yet we go about our lives like we aren’t hurtling directly toward Hell.” And... Читать дальше...

Moscow Nights, by Nigel Cliff (Harper). This biography of the Texan pianist Van Cliburn is also a cultural history of the event that made his name: his win at the Tchaikovsky Competition, in Moscow, in 1958, after the launch of the first Sputnik set off the space race. Cliff portrays Cliburn as a musical savant, full of contradictions—gay, staunchly religious, a lifelong Republican and Russophile. He was adored both in Russia and in the U.S., where his following rivalled Elvis Presley’s. Being a cultural emblem ultimately took a toll... Читать дальше...

In town, they say my daddy been possessed by the spirit of King Saul—the simmering rage that makes him cuff me over Christian radio, curse me for his cirrhotic gut. He plays the game of uproar.Writes midnight checks to televangelists, smashes the homosexualtelevision, buys my mama a gold necklace & then rips it from her neck. The controlling spirit. The use you up & throw you away ghost.With a spear, he pins our household to the wall. My mama stopstelling what the neighbors done when he raises his fist, calls her thoseterrible names.

The Resistance

Sam Altman, the tech wunderkind profiled by Tad Friend, is quoted as saying, “Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail” (“Adding a Zero,” October 10th). Doomsday prediction aside, democracy is a tool that people use to make decisions together. You can find democracy at your local PTA, at community meetings and block parties—wherever people are free to decide among themselves what happens next. To suggest... Читать дальше...

The table was set for an old-fashioned Irish dinner party: white linen, cut-glass vases containing celery stalks and air-dried raisins. The meal, in a small tasting room in the West Village, was a rehearsal for an immersive re-creation of the holiday feast in James Joyce’s story “The Dead.” Beginning later this month, forty-two audience members a night will eat and drink along with the twelve cast members of “The Dead, 1904” as they take over the American Irish Historical Society, a nineteenth-century mansion overlooking Central Park... Читать дальше...

One of the many received notions shattered by last week’s election was the belief, among supporters of Hillary Clinton, that women of all creeds and colors would band together to elect the first female President. That didn’t happen. Fifty-three per cent of white women voters took a pass on Clinton and threw their support behind the self-proclaimed groper. (A few went further, coming to Trump rallies in T-shirts that said things like “Hillary Couldn’t Satisfy Her Husband / Can’t Satisfy Us.”)

In May, Rodrigo Duterte, the provincial mayor who had just been elected President of the Philippines after promising to rid the country of crime and drugs by killing thousands of criminals, vowed to stop swearing. He told reporters, “Don’t fuck with me.” He called political figures “gay.” When a reporter asked about his health, he replied, “How is your wife’s vagina? Is it smelly? Or not smelly? Give me a report.” In an overwhelmingly Catholic country, he swore at the Pope. At first, he defended his language as a gesture of radical populism.

The Jamaican-born poet Ishion Hutchinson’s second book, “House of Lords and Commons,” is a study of place and memory rendered in what used to be called “the grand style”: the timeless, high-literary idiom that nearly anyone who has ever learned the language would identify as “poetry,” based on its sound alone, and that nonplussed readers of contemporary poetry sometimes say they miss. Of course, the irony is that timelessness itself can seem dated; modernism emerged in part to change the acoustics within which lines of poetry were heard. Читать дальше...

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Let's get married—or not. Ashley Nicole Roberts didn't waste any time before getting down to business and planning her wedding to Philip Wheeler in Sunday's all-new...

And just like that, The Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion came to a close. Not with a whimper, but some yelling, accusations, drama rehashing and yes, a group hug. First, that accusation....

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Tucker Carlson Tonight The conservative pundit launches a new daily political program airing Mon. through Fri. at 4 and 11 p.m. Fox News Channel.

Things I know, and things I think I know:

Paleontologists have found there are many places around the country where fossil remains exist, but the best place to dig up bones just happens to be Nebraska.

UW falls 103-100 in its opener at the Kohl Center.

Donald Trump opened up about abortion laws during his new interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes. The 70-year-old President-elect reaffirmed his pro-life stance and said that he plans to appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices. As for Roe v. Wade, Trump said, “If it ever were overturned, it would go back to the states.” If some states [...]

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s biggest weakness last season looks like it could be a strength now.