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Boston Globe
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Experimental theater and fairy tales combine in ‘Flashout'
Advertisement 'It really did feel revolutionary,' says Soloski. 'It must've been just electric and you really felt like you were daring something.' The novel's experimental theater troupe works on a project based on the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm — 'the real stories, the unexpurgated stories,' Soloski adds. 'There's a lot more blood than the tales that I had read as a child, a lot more terrible things happen.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up From Soloski's perspective, looking at radical theater from a modern lens raises a lot of questions, particularly about power and consent and accountability. 'I wanted to explore that tension of young women, feeling that they have a kind of power because they are seen as desirable, and not having very much power at all, and being told that they are responsible for the things that happened to them,' she says, 'when actually that may really be out of their hands.' Advertisement In the novel's 1997 timeline, the young woman is now middle-aged, a drama teacher at a private high school, when she finds herself dragged back into the mysterious violence of the troupe's final, deadly, European tour, and her own complicity. 'I don't believe in perfect victims,' says Soloski. 'I thought it was interesting to have someone who we could reasonably describe as a victim, who was also a perpetrator. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and I think sometimes bad things happen to bad people, and they still deserve as much sympathy as we can afford.' Alexis Soloski will read at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 19, at And now for some recommendations…. Bill McKibben has written more than twenty books, including works about climate change that have helped focus our attention on the urgent need for change. In ' ' Advertisement Doug Most's 'Racing Underground' illuminated the fascinating history of the nation's subways. In ' Addie E. Critchens is a native of Mississippi who has explored her home state's histories and mythologies in both short fiction and journalism. In her debut novel, ' In ' Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's books section. Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at
Boston Globe
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Are you fluent in ‘Algospeak'? Social media has spawned its own vocabulary and syntax, and a new book argues that we should all pay attention
He began writing a blog called Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up For now he's a full-time content creator whose work has him on TikTok all day for research, and as of this week, a debut author. Aleksik's book, ' Advertisement 'I'm looking at other people's videos,' says Aleksik. 'I'm looking at my own videos. I'm thinking about how my language is being affected by these platforms. And the more I started thinking about that, the more I began to realize algorithms are really driving everything.' And the algorithms that decide which videos we see and which words we hear (and don't hear) remain obstinately opaque not only to those of us who consume content but also to its creators. All of which makes Aleksik's book both entertaining and somewhat worrying. 'It's happening faster than ever,' he adds, 'because these algorithms are here and because they amplify memes and trends, because they create in-groups that feel like they're speaking to their audience. And I'm hoping people look at this book and more critically think about the language that they're using and more critically think about Adam Aleksik will read at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 16, at And now for some recommendations…. In ' Advertisement ' If you follow every twist and turn of Southern true crime stories — looking at you, Murdaugh family murder fans! — you really should check out ' Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books coverage. Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at
Boston Globe
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Madonna's crosses, Scorcese's temptations: why did so much art in the 80s talk about God?
It was a hinge year. The previous decades' protest and countercultural movements left fertile ground for creativity, as artists from Warhol's associate Basquiat and musicians from U2 to Madonna to Leonard Cohen to the Smiths began to produce a flood of what Elie terms 'crypto-religious' art. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'Crypto-religious art, in my formulation, is work that uses [religious] imagery, motif, theme, and patterns but in a way that expresses something other than conventional religious belief,' Elie says. Encounters with this type of work tend to invite listeners and viewers and readers to question our own beliefs — particularly when the work also introduces tension between the spiritual and the sexual. 'The second Vatican council in the 1960s changed many things,' Elie says, 'and one was to empower ordinary Catholics to use their own consciences to make decisions,' especially about their own sexual lives. While the emerging freedom sought by the city's LGBTQ population was often at odds with religious establishments, regular lay Christians understood that when Prince sang 'I would die for U,' he was speaking as your lover and as your savior. Advertisement Not surprisingly, this work attracted anger from institutional religious forces, and far too many churches saw the devastating AIDS crisis burning through New York's artistic community as validation for their fear and hatred. And yet, the art created in New York in the 1980s, in all its messy duality of saints and sinners, has endured over the past four decades. Elie suggests that past is prologue. 'In the 80s you had a very worldly president making common cause with the religious right and exalting wide-open capitalism, and the media rushing to consecrate it as the age of Reagan,' he says. 'So now you have a very worldly president making common cause with a religious right, and a wide-open capitalism, and the media rushing to consecrate the age of Trump. But to speak of the variety and vigor and vitality and power of the work that was produced in those times is to know that it can happen now.' Paul Elie will read at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 29, at And now for some recommendations…. Ocean Vuong's ' Advertisement Stephen King writes too many books for so many of them to continue to be this good. In the witty and propulsive ' Caroline Fraser won big praise for her previous book, 'Prairie Fires,' which told the dual story of Laura Ingalls Wilder and the daughter whose behind-the-scenes work helped make her mother an icon. In ' Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books pages. Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at
Boston Globe
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A novel for kids tells the true story of a newspaper for dogs
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up When Lobestine decided to write a children's novel about their adventures, the real Sophie, now a student at Emerson, jumped right in. 'She's so creative,' says Lobestine. 'I talked to her a little bit about it, and then we decided to do an artist retreat — some friends of ours own a farm in Vermont and they invited us to come. I was working on the book and she was really into being a filmmaker in high school so she made these two short documentaries. She continues to be this amazingly creative person and I've seen her really come into her own.' Advertisement 'The Barking Puppy' is meant to entertain and delight, like any other middle-grade novel — Lobestine says she was 'just smitten with how fun the story could be' — but the author also hopes it inspires its readers, if not to start their own newspapers, to at least 'lean into their passions.' Advertisement 'I wanted the book to model a lot of different ways to be yourself,' she adds, 'and to show how a community can be a place where we have room for each other, where we hold each other up.' Lobi Lobestine will read at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 24, at the And now for some recommendations…. Lydia Millet is one of our finest fiction writers, a cool chronicler of an overheating planet and a master at melding history in humor in novels like 'Oh Pure and Radiant Heart' and 'A Children's Bible.' ' Tech-driven visions of the future have always had a high error rate (I am still looking around for the robot housemaid promised to me by the Jetsons). But as Silicon Valley grows in political influence, the fantastic plans promulgated by industry leaders have begun to influence policy and government budgets. This isn't great, as science journalist Adam Becker points out in ' Advertisement In ' Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section. Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at
Boston Globe
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Befuddled by ‘adulting'? Gretchen Rubin has some words of wisdom for you!
All are among the aphorisms collected in her latest book, ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Rubin's been writing aphorisms for years, she says, these distilled, potent portions of wisdom. Many are about big issues, from desire to creativity to persistence, while others are simpler life hacks ('If you don't like a pair of pants, don't pay to get them hemmed'). Advertisement She knows that not everyone will agree with all of them. 'There are some where I'm like, 'do I believe that?' Or I go back and forth.' Many come from folk wisdom expressed in Rubin's own words. 'A lot of big important truths are too important to be new,' Rubin adds, 'it's more about freshness and finding a new way to express an idea.' She especially loves when someone reads or hears an aphorism and says, 'I've had that feeling many times myself, but I just never quite stopped to put it into words. But now, that's exactly what I think, too!'' Ideally, Rubin adds, the book is 'a springboard. We're all just looking for a way to share what you've learned with other people, especially your children. Usually we have to learn [about life] the hard way. But sometimes, somebody can get you through it a little bit easier.' Gretchen Rubin will read 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, at the . Advertisement And now from some recommendations . . . In ' Ariel Courage's ' ' Rachel Phan's delightful new memoir, ' Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section. Kate Tuttle, a freelance writer and critic, can be reached at
