‘You can do something extraordinary’

‘… if you have the opportunity to work on your gifts, it seems like a crime not to.’

I’ve played the guitar, on and off, since age 14, when I first picked up a well-word acoustic with a bowed neck for $10 because I wanted to learn how to play the opening to Led Zeppelin’s classic, “Stairway to Heaven.” (This was in the mid-1970s, long before the ditty became labeled as the forbidden riff supposedly banned from guitar stores the world over.)

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‘American Fiction’ and what stories get told

Who gets to decide which novels are made accessible to the broader public?

Among the Academy Award nominees for best picture that got trampled by the Oppenheimer juggernaut was “American Fiction,” a movie about writers, writing and the publishing business. The movie has a lot to say about the state of publishing and its gatekeeping function. Who gets to decide which novels are made accessible to the broader public? By extension, the movie’s message also applies to other art forms, and to the business of marketing and promoting books, films, music, and other works of art.

“American Fiction” trailer
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