Paul Birchall’s Got it Covered: Paris, Suddenly Don Shirley, Deaf West at the White House, More Snark About L.A. Intimate Theater

It’s been a week of hauntingly familiar trauma in the news. All of us must feel great compassion for the people of Paris following the appalling attacks that claimed 129 lives. That the targets were mostly entertainment and leisure activities — a rock concert, a Cambodian restaurant, a shopping mall, a football stadium — underscores that the attacks were deliberate aggressions against core Western values and freedoms. --BY PAUL BIRCHALL

Continue ReadingPaul Birchall’s Got it Covered: Paris, Suddenly Don Shirley, Deaf West at the White House, More Snark About L.A. Intimate Theater

A Whale, an Androgynous Adventuress, and a Chekhovian Professor

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the adventuress Isabelle Eberhardt has something of the qualities of a Great White Whale herself: a life of such convulsively original self-creation that she can be appropriated to accommodate any conceivable perception.-- BY MYRON MEISEL

Continue ReadingA Whale, an Androgynous Adventuress, and a Chekhovian Professor