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In Boston, in 1999, at a celebration of the centennial of Ernest Hemingway’s birth, I had the honor of sitting on a panel with Achebe, on the subject of writing about Africa… An evidently confused woman in the audience took the opportunity to ask “In what sense are you writers about Africa?” The other panelists—Nadine Gordimer and Kwame Anthony Appiah—were too baffled to respond. Not Achebe. He leaned into his microphone, and very slowly and melodically, with rolling “R”s and drawn out “O”s, roared: “Read. Our. Books.” The woman said, “But I’m asking you.” And Achebe said, “I’m telling you: Read. Our. Books.”
What better epitaph for the man, and what better way to remember him today: read his books.
"— Postscript: Chinua Achebe, 1930-2013: http://nyr.kr/ZSm6mm by Philip Gourevitch -
"Neither I, nor anyone else, could have envisioned that by the time he left office eight years later, he would have managed to transform his job into the most electrifying bully pulpit in medicine. And he did it in the most unexpected way: by telling the truth."
—Michael Specter reflects on the influence of C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general who died yesterday: http://nyr.kr/13elk8o
And here, a look at what the magazine had to say about Dr. Koop on the occasion of his retirement, in August, 1989: http://nyr.kr/XVlnRe
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Rosa Parks was born a hundred years ago yesterday, on February 4, 1913. In 2008, David Remnick wrote about her funeral, held in Detroit, where she lived for many years. Here’s a look: http://nyr.kr/XGHpGe
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Postscript: Ed Koch, 1924-2013
John Cassidy looks back at the career of former New York mayor Ed Koch, who died today at age eighty-eight: http://nyr.kr/TmhG7R
Photograph: Steve Eichner/WWD.
(Source: newyorker.com)
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While little appreciated by audiences beyond avant-garde-music cognoscenti, his influence upon contemporary improvisers of all disciplines is profound.
Taylor Ho Bynum reflects on the influence of Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, “a musical innovator of the first order,” who died yesterday at the age of sixty-five: http://nyr.kr/XSuAYh
Photograph: Michael Nagle/The New York Times/Redux
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“His best works are able to catch the viewer immediately but, at the same time, provoke the viewer to search for more information below the surface,” Ferdinand Brueggemann of Galerie Priska Pasquer, in Cologne, tells Jessie Wender of photographer Shomei Tomatsu, who died at age 82 in Okinawa this past December.
Continue reading about the artist: http://nyr.kr/11xQuGD
(Source: newyorker.com)
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Postscript: Robert Bork, 1927-2012
Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, was an unrepentant reactionary who was on the wrong side of every major legal controversy of the twentieth century.
- Jeffrey Toobin. Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/WsJ5XE
Photograph by CNP/Getty.
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"…sometimes reporters like me know things, or think we know things, and need someone in the know to hear them out, and perhaps provide some guidance or a sense of where to go next—and, above all, why it matters."
— Seymour Hersh on how Daniel Inouye, who died yesterday, reminded him why reporting matters: http://nyr.kr/SNIQVQ(Source: newyorker.com)
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Jeremy Denk remembers pianist Charles Rosen, author of “The Classical Style,” who recently passed away: http://nyr.kr/XEI6yK
Photograph from 1969 by Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive/Getty.
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Thanks to pioneers like Shankar, our ears are open to a diversity of sounds unimaginable to listeners sixty years ago…
Taylor Ho Bynum on the influence and legacy of Ravi Shankar, who died yesterday at age ninety-two: http://nyr.kr/SRqakK
Photograph by Bruce Fleming/AP.
