John Updike in 1960, pastel and digital, after a photo by Alfred Knopf. Knopf took the photo after cutting some objectionable passages from Rabbit, Run. 'I think what Alfred captured at that moment was the relaxed visage of a man who has decided to sell out,' Updike wrote later.

How absolutely wonderful to see Etel as today's Google doodle, with her beloved Mount Tamalpais peaking over her shoulder. ❤️❤️ #EtelAdnan

Joan Silber! Molly Giles! This looks fantastic.

I remember so much about TV coverage of the O. J. Simpson trial—my school class watched the highway chase and the verdict on the wheeled-in TV set, something hard to fathom now—but this is the writing on it I remember best, by Skip Gates. newyorker.com/magazine/1995/…

Here’s the smartest comprehensive piece I’ve read on the rise of Modi-ism and religious nationalism in India: the dream of a democratic pluralist India quietly fading in plain sight. foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/08/ind…

Wow!

Over the past several years I’ve watched life in California and New York grow closer together; the idea of NYC becoming earthquake terrain seems inevitable.

To state the very obvious, you can’t build an artistic standing through optimization.

For some time, the S.F. Symphony has been one of the preeminent in the world. Salonen is one of the world’s most important music directors. It is hugely embarrassing to lose both musical edges because the board wants to “cut costs” and “drive revenues.” nytimes.com/2024/03/14/art…

Sandy Frazier has written a Postscript to the late editor (and writer) William Whitworth. It’s extraordinary. newyorker.com/news/postscrip…

If you’re in or near NYC, try to find the time to see this new Peter Sacks exhibition downtown—both startling and tremendously moving in person. speronewestwater.com/exhibitions/pe…

Last year I wrote about the jazz vocalist Paula West and her first album, still astonishing all these years later. If you’re in NYC, she’s at Dizzy’s, the Jazz at Lincoln Center club, all this weekend and is sounding great. Highly recommended. newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

The only time I’ve ever truly experienced culture shock was on my first-ever visit to the U.K., in Shropshire, where every sandwich seemed to consist of: one deli slice of ham, one leaf of lettuce, and a quarter-inch slice of butter on each side of bread. Remarkable country.

Anyone who has heard and suffered as many “quick trip abroad with Rosencrantz” jokes as this captain surely has deserves to retire in style.

What we’re seeing at the moment is a real and strikingly widespread explosion of anti-institutionalism which is unlikely to end well.

This is well stated.

There’s an entire generation of media that got persuaded it had to translate its value into 2010s-style growth-business terms in order to be on the right side of the future. That’s increasingly looking like a lethally wrong turn.

In the time since, SF has only become more central to our culture and politics -- a political wishbone, a petri dish for new tech, a place where the extremes of wealth and poverty are on constant display. It's the biggest of stages and a bottomlessly target-rich environment.

Very good, very alarming investigation from HouseFresh.com.

Here we are living inside a high-postmodern novel.