21,643 stories from ArtsJournal
From 2016:
I remember quite a lot about my ten-year-old self and the town in which I lived"but not much about the rest of the world. Just the other day I looked up Wikipedia's timeline of ev…
"To have one's fortune told gratifies, after all, most of the superficial demands of egotism. There is no mystery about the eternal popularity of divination."
Anthony Powell, The Acceptan…
W.B. Yeats reads and talks about three of his poems on the BBC. These recordings were made in 1932, 1934, and 1937:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that …
"Anyone can squander money, and anyone can hoard it. But the most difficult thing in the world is to know how to spend it."
Emlyn Williams, The Corn Is Green
Continue reading Almanac: Eml…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review a production of Conor McPherson's St. Nicholas webcast from Dallas. Here's an excerpt.
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Prior to the coming of the pandemic, I trav…
André Previn and the Pittsburgh Symphony perform a suite from Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho at a 1979 concert:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and h…
"Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Continue reading Almanac: Emerson on light at About…
"There are two kinds of light"the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures."
James Thurber, Lanterns and Lances
Continue reading Almanac: James Thurber on light at About Last Night.
Erle Stanley Gardner and George Sanders appear separately as mystery guests on What's My Line? John Daly is the host and the panel consists of Jim Backus, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis …
"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."
James A. Michener, Space
Continue reading Almanac: James Michener on "dark ages" at Abou…
From 2003:
As anyone knows who's been in journalism for more than the past 20 minutes or so, fact checking is an increasingly lost art. Time was when many magazines"if not most"rigorously ch…
"Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but"I hope"into a better shape."
Charles Dicken…
An excerpt from "Emlyn Williams Plays Charles Dickens," performed in 1987 at the Swansea Festival. Williams reads Dickens' "Captain Murderer."
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and hi…
"It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up."
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Continue reading Almanac: Dickens on poverty at About Last Night.
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column, I write about the original 1954 live-TV version of Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men. Here's an excerpt.
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Most people kno…
Jack Teagarden sings and plays "Basin Street Blues" in a 1958 TV clip. He is introduced by John Cameron Swayze. The band includes Tony Parenti on clarinet, Ruby Braff on trumpet, Marty Napol…
"Justice is a machine that, when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself."
John Galsworthy, Justice
Continue reading Almanac: John Galsworthy on justice at About L…
In today's Wall Street Journal"Sightings" column, I write about the effect of the building of Lincoln Center on the Metropolitan Opera and the arts throughout America"and how its influenc…
"It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not…
Hilary and I were married thirteen years ago today. Back then I took it for granted that I would outlive her"she still had a life expectancy of two years"but it soon became clear, to my boun…
Jim Ferguson sings "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," accompanying himself on bass:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each …
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Pablo Neruda, "Poem 20" (trans. W.S. Merwin)
Continue reading Almanac: Pablo Neruda on love at About Last Night.
From 2005:
I expect a lot out of the books I read, and when they fail to deliver the goods, I toss them aside with a clear conscience and no second thoughts. Life is so very short"and so oft…
"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as …
Isaac Stern and Alexander Zakin perform Wieniawski's D Major Polonaise on a 1955 episode of The Jack Benny Program:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos th…
