Muriel Spark, Jean Brodie, Maggie Smith, and Downton Abbey feature in my most recent New York Times Magazine micro-column. Smith is best known now for her role as the Dowager Countess, but she won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Muriel Spark’s dramatic and overbearing schoolmistress in the 1969 adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It’s . . .
Twitter was so excited about William Faulkner’s mint julep yesterday that it seemed wrong, especially at the holidays, to withhold his cure for anything from “a bad spill from a horse to a bad cold, from a broken leg to a broken heart.” (So said Dean Faulkner Wells.) I’ll stick with Kate’s hot toddy, personally. But here, as told . . .
My most recent New York Times Magazine mini-column concerns Neal Stephenson’s — and NASA’s — efforts to encourage scientific and technological innovation through speculative fiction. See also Stephenson’s “Innovation Starvation” speech, NASA’s partnership with TOR Books, Arthur C. Clarke’s predictions for the future (made in 1964), Isaac Asimov’s Visions of the Future (he starts speaking at 6:45 of part . . .
The Crystal Cathedral of “Hour of Power” fame is the subject of my latest New York Times Magazine mini-column. Not so long ago the most lavish symbol of U.S. Protestantism, the building sold in bankruptcy last month to a Catholic diocese. Although the congregation has agreed under the terms of the deal to vacate the premises after three years, pastor . . .