Janet Malcolm’s Second Chance: Or How To Be a New Yorker New Yorker
By Scott Seward Smith
The article, in the September 24 edition of The New York Review of Books, clangs like a false note. I read it once and wondered what its point was? I read it again and wondered what its hook was? The article by long-time New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm begins with her recollection of visits in the spring of 1994 to a speech coach at his apartment on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. So far so King’s Speech. But Malcolm is different from her speech coach’s typical client: an actor cast to play “Prospero, say, or Creon, so that they did not sound as if they came from the Bronx or Akron, Ohio.” She was there to rehearse her part as a witness in a court case.
An Interview With Author Frank Luke
By Tamara Wilhite
Frank Luke is a prolific fantasy author. He writes both modern and medieval fantasy. He’s had short stories come out in several Planetary Anthology books by Tuscany Bay press. And I had the honor of interviewing him.
You Should Binge Watch Schitt’s Creek Now
The first 5 seasons are on Netflix
By David M. Swindle
I very much agree with my former PJM colleague Stephen Kruiser. The Canadian comedy show Schitt’s Creek is something special.
An Interview with Denton Salle
By Tamara Wilhite
Denton Salle is the pen name of a professional scientist. He has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, an MBA, and a few other degrees. In his professional capacity, he has over two hundred publications and presentations, including a best-selling technical book. He’s worked in oil and gas, polymers, aerospace, instrumentation, academia, and consulting. He has taught a wide range of classes, from graduate classes to industrial training. To separate his fiction writing from his professional life, he adopted the pen name Denton Salle. And I had the opportunity to interview him.
An Interview with Iscah
By Tamara Wilhite
“Iscah is too young to be called old and too old to be called young. It is rumored that Iscah was born, and it is prophesized that Iscah shall one day die. As yet the prophecy goes unfulfilled. When not lost in imaginary lands, Iscah lives in the city of music.”
Heck of a bio. So who is Iscah? Iscah is the author of several fantasy books, including the “Seventh Night” series. And I had the opportunity to interview her.
Deaf Composers, Silenced Writers, Fragile Violins, and the Late Quartets of our Times
By Scott Seward Smith
Because he was deaf when he wrote them, Beethoven never heard his “late quartets”. This is a remarkable anecdote; an inhuman feat of human creativity. I was reminded of a resonant anecdote while reading in the Spectator US of a meeting between British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his wife and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—bear with me. The article described that the Laborite couple later sent the laborious couple a book of poems by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a 17th century Mexican nun and poet. The Spectator describes her as “a poet known for her proto-feminism and early criticism of the Spanish empire.” She is also well known for having stopped writing her risqué poetry on the orders of the Church hierarchy. This is an interesting symmetry: Beethoven writing music for us that he would never hear; Sor Juana composing poems in her head that we would never read.
