Here is an interesting piece at the Atlantic explaining how restaurants got so loud: “According to Architectural Digest, mid-century modern and minimalism are both here to stay. That means sparse, modern decor; high, exposed ceilings; and almost no soft goods, such as curtains, upholstery, or carpets. These design features are a feast for the eyes, but a nightmare for the ears. No soft goods and tall ceilings mean nothing is absorbing sound energy, and a room full of hard surfaces serves as a big sonic mirror, reflecting sound around the room. The result is a loud space that renders speech unintelligible.”
I’d be interested in reading a follow-up piece on the jerk, whoever he is, who thought it was a good idea to put TVs in restaurants. One time my wife and I were at a relatively nice restaurant and a couple came in and sat down side by side at their table so they could eat while watching TV instead of looking at and talking to each other. I could hardly believe it. I wanted to go tell them that if they turned from their evil ways, they too might be saved.
What’s underneath Bruegel’s painting The Battle Between Carnival and Lent? Cadavers, bones.
Thomas Sowell remembers how his life changed following the election of Ronald Reagan and talks about race, education, and economics today with Reason: “I used to sit in my office at the Hoover Institution with the door open, and people, anyone who wanted to talk to me, they’d just drop by and stop in and we’d chew the fat. Sometimes with students and occasionally even with journalists. That all changed with the election of Ronald Reagan and this hysteria, in some quarters of the media, that I would be part of the Reagan administration and all my bad ideas would be tried out. That of course was some of the earliest of the fake news that I’m aware of. I had no intention of going into politics. But the attention was so great that we had to close my office door. And then later, we had to take my name off the directories. And then, in still later years, I simply worked at home. It wasn’t worth the bother.”
George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess has fallen out of style since it was first produced in 1935. Anne McElvoy reviews a rare contemporary performance at the English National Opera: “English National Opera has gambled on offsetting the losses of some productions with musical theatre offerings tempting enough to fill the cavernous interior of London’s second opera house. It’s an idea rich in potential — and jeopardy. Fortunately, this sprightly version (a co-production with the New York Met and Dutch National Opera) has the dynamism and commitment to rise above the story’s shortcomings. It’s usually a bad sign for a production if reviewers start talking about the set rather than the cast, but Michael Yeargan’s shanty town, revolving sets and a restrained use of computer-generated imagery bring us the Mississippi backdrop to Catfish Row. The work’s choral might (its great strength, beside the hits) gives us a sense of a community by turns hopeful and despairing as it contends with poverty, disaster and, just occasionally, something going right.”
Student evaluations of teaching are bad for teachers and students.
In Spectator, Daniel McCarthy writes that while conservatives have more kids than progressives, many of those kids will eventually leave conservatism because the left controls education, media, and technology—and kids who want to “make it” will have to conform: “The opinion elite, educators and the media, shape the environment in which business takes place, and in which business people themselves are formed. Cultural conservatives can home school, they can send their children to Hillsdale or Christendom or Grove City College — but where will they work when they graduate? Even pizza companies must follow the unwritten laws laid down by the opinion police. The insider left, in its new form, has strategies to win at the cultural, economic, and political levels, each of which reinforces the others. The right can barely hold its own in politics and is without any cultural leverage over economics.”
Former gangster shot after book launch.
Essay of the Day:
In The Times Literary Supplement, Kate Hext writes about the many faces of Oscar Wilde:
“Each critic sees him- or herself in Oscar Wilde. Saint Oscar; Wilde the Irishman; Wilde the wit. The classicist; the socialist; the martyr for gay rights. ‘To be premature is to be perfect’, Wilde wrote; ‘History lives through its anachronisms.’ It is in large part on this quality that the Wilde industry has been built. For an industry it certainly is. Books on Wilde are glamorous in a way that academic monographs seldom are. They come with beautiful artwork and endorsements by Stephen Fry. They lend themselves to the crossover market, eminently desirable to publishers as monograph sales dwindle. At their zenith, they beget publicity tours and a spot on a Waterstones table. In a world where most of us academics regularly spend weeks preparing a conference paper to deliver before an audience of a dozen, this is stardom.
“So if Oscar’s ultimate genius was to allow us to see ourselves in him, what do we see in 2018? And what is there left still to see in a life that ended prematurely and has been so closely scrutinized? Three fascinating books by Matthew Sturgis, Michèle Mendelssohn and Nicholas Frankel highlight a broader change of perspective in the field, showing that there is indeed new ground to cover. They also, perhaps, signal the dangers of getting too close to our literary heroes.”
Photo: Fall in Hallstatt
Poem: Hailey Leithauser, “Sweet Song”
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