Andre Dubus III's essays in his new collection "Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin" read like deeply imagined short stories.
Dubus explores his rough childhood raised by a single mother after his parents' divorce, his efforts to overcome his violent past, his relationships with women and the joys and challenges of fatherhood.
Reflecting upon his early attempts at writing and his growth into a man of peace and compassion, Dubus impressively displays fictional techniques. His captivating first-person narrative voice reveals him as a sensitive, perceptive observer. His encounters with a series of finely portrayed characters unfold in story-like plots.
Revisiting the territory of his excellent memoir "Townie," Dubus looks back on his childhood, when his financially strapped single mother frequently moved Dubus and his brothers and sisters from apartment to apartment, each cheaper than the last, in a losing battle to find affordable rents.
Bullied as a child when he entered new schools, Dubus as a teen began working out and learning how to fight, eventually beating up those who had tormented him. He laments that most of those with whom he fought are now dead.
Recognizing the self-destructiveness of his violent behavior, and developing tolerance for others as he goes to his desk each morning to learn to write, he understands that true masculinity is defined by caring for others.
A frequent presence is his father, the noted short story writer Andre Dubus II, who spent his last years in a wheelchair after a horrible accident. Attempting to help a motorist whose vehicle had broken down on an interstate highway, the elder Dubus was struck by a car, crushing both of his legs, one of which was amputated below the knee.
Dubus III pictures his father as optimistic and joyful despite his agonizing disability. In a memorable piece, Dubus describes the meeting of his father and the terminally ill Raymond Carver at an American Society of Arts and Letters awards ceremony. Having never previously met, but admiring each other's work, the two master short story writers immediately reach a deep friendship.
Although he grew up in small Massachusetts towns in industrial decline, Dubus has deep Louisiana roots. Both his mother and father grew up in a small Louisiana community, moving to New England after eloping.
Dubus III in traveling with his mother back to Louisiana finds a sense of home among her family. He casts his Massachusetts upbringing as one of exile, although he knows it formed him.
The acclaimed author of novels like "House of Sand and Fog"and "Such Kindness," Dubus in "Ghost Dogs" shows that he's a deep spiritual thinker as well as one of America's finest writers.
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Scoring better than expected on George Will's annual baseball quiz raised my excitement over Opening Day.
Like many baby boomers who grew up loving the game, I'm always enthralled by the start of another season.
While I lamented the pitch clock for disrupting the game's timelessness, I welcomed the faster pace of play last year.
I'm chagrined by the decline of the starting pitcher, the too frequent changes of relievers, the proliferation of strikeouts and the bloated playoffs.
Despite all of its ills, I love the game, especially as a Braves fan.
Another new season arrives, full of hope and joy.
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The four new MARTA stations announced by Mayor Andre Dickens Monday will elevate Atlanta as a major city like New York, Boston or Paris.
Making more neighborhoods accessible to mass transit, the new stations will boost jobs, culture and community life.
One of the new stations will serve the planned Murphy Crossing development on the Beltline's Westside Trail, providing the first heavy-rail connection for the popular loop. The other three will be placed between existing stations, increasing the system's accessibility.
The Murphy Crossing rail connection will benefit the developers' plans to make 30 percent of its 1,100 housing units affordable to lower-income tenants. The project's 180,000 square feet of commercial space will offer special rates for small businesses.
While the new stations will bring Atlanta to a new level of urban life, Gwinnett, Cobb and other populous suburban counties reject rail expansion, Saporta Report publisher Maria Saporta in a recent column asserted that metro Atlanta must develop a regional rail system to handle its soaring population growth.
Suburban Republicans have long opposed rail transit in favor of bus transportation. Saporta made a winning case for a regional rail system.
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Sports Illustrated lives.
A new publishing deal will save the famed sports publication, which appeared near death when owner Authentic Brands Group laid off most of the SI staff in a dispute with the former publishing rights holder.
Authentic Brands several weeks ago shut down Sports Illustrated's operations after the Arena Group stopped paying publishing rights fees.
In a new beginning for the iconic brand, Minute Media this week acquired publishing rights to Sports Illustrated. Minute Media operates Derek Jeter's Players Tribune and other digital platforms.
While Minute Media plans to increase Sports Illustrated's digital operations, the company will continue publishing the print magazine, welcome news for longtime readers. The deal includes the kids' publication and the famous swimsuit issue.
With the deal, most of the staff will be brought back, the company said.
Along with March Madness, the Masters and baseball's opening day, sports fans will herald spring with Sports Illustrated's revival.
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Pianist Bill Charlap performs with his entire body, his interpretations of jazz standards a dramatic interplay of physical power and intricate chords flowing from his hands.
Charlap at times appeared in danger of falling off his bench as he and master bass player Peter Washington and dynamic drummer Kenny Washington took a deep dive into the American songbook in a concert at the Atlanta History Center's McElreath Hall, five years after playing at the same venue.
Again the star attraction of the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival, now known as Neranenah, Charlap and the two unrelated Washingtons performed familiar and more obscure numbers by composers ranging from popular songwriters Cole Porter, George and Ira Gerswhin, Jimmy Van Heusen and Michel Legrand to jazz masters Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker.
The arrangements suitable for intimate jazz clubs transferred well to the concert hall, its small stage giving a feeling of intimacy.
Ranging from exuberant power to the delicate playing of notes, Charlap wandered from the songs' melodic boundaries to improvise expansive musical landscapes.
Charlap's piano stylings and Peter Washington's bass progressions engaged in intense conversations. Kenny Washington's driving drum solos and interactions with Charlap mesmerized the audience. On Charlap's quiet performance of Van Heusen's "Here's That Rainy Day," the drummer's brushwork enhanced the intimate mood.
A child of Broadway and American popular music, Charlap gave entertaining commentary on the songs and their composition. Delivering an encyclopedic history lesson, Charlap told inside stories about such notables as Frank Sinatra, Irving Berlin, Les McCann and the lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, who collaborated with LeGrand on the movie number "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life," which Charlap expressively performed.
Acknowledging the major influence of Jewish composers, Charlap affirmed that American popular music is the product of many different cultures and voices, all "coming together to sing," as the word Neranenah proclaims.
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The commutes are getting even longer in metro Atlanta.
Adding nearly 70,000 new residents from 2022-2023, the 29-county Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell metropolitan area is now the sixth largest in the United States, overtaking Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., according to Census Bureau estimates.
Metro Atlanta now boasts a population of 6,307,261, which is projected to keep rising.
Only the Dallas and Houston metro areas, ahead of Atlanta in the national rankings, grew faster in the country, the Census Bureau said.
According to projections, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta will one day jump in tandem over longtime No. 3 Chicago. No. 1 New York and No. 2 Los Angeles appear out of reach of the burgeoning Sun Belt metropolises.
Atlanta's huge metropolitan area stretches to exurban counties like Meriwether, Morgan, Newton, Rockdale, Cherokee, Forsyth and Fayette.
Many who prefer a suburban lifestyle commute nearly 100 miles to jobs in the inner city and close-in counties, clogging the interstates.
Maybe those commuters will one day be driving electric vehicles. For the near future, all of those new residents will be spewing more carbon emissions into metro Atlanta's atmosphere.
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Shakespeare's "Othello" returns to Broadway in spring 2025, starring Denzel Washington in the lead role and Jake Gyllenhall as Iago.
Atlanta's Kenny Leon will direct the production at a not yet determined Shubert Theater.
Leon directed the 69-year-old Washington in smash Broadway productions of August Wilson's "Fences," co-starring Viola Davis, and Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." The acclaimed director recently led a Shakespeare in the Park production of "Hamlet."
Washington, lauded for his dynamic movie performances, has also appeared in "Julius Caesar" on Broadway, and portrayed MacBeth in a 2021 film.
A leading film star, the 44-year-old Gyllenhall has appeared in three Broadway plays, including "Sundays in the Park With George."
The actress who will play Desdemona, the falsely accused wife of Othello, has not been named.
"Othello" was last performed on Broadway in 1982, starring James Earl Jones as Othello, Christopher Plummer as Iago and Dianne Wiest as Desdemona.
The tragedy still shocks modern audiences, with its racial and sexual themes, Iago's duplicity, and Othello's mistaken jealousy leading to the sudden murder of the innocent Desdemona.
With Washington and Gyllenhall's starpower, Shakespeare's 400-year-old play will be Broadway's hottest ticket.
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Robert De Niro's sounding the alarm about the dangers of another Donald Trump presidency.
In interviews with Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel, the 80-year-old De Niro called Trump a narcissistic psychopath who would make America a dystopian totalitarian nightmare if elected again.
De Niro warned Maher that Trump would be "coming for me and for you."
The acclaimed actor denounced Republicans for their overwhelming support of Trump, whom de Niro branded as a criminal without any redeeming qualities.
Making clear that he believes Trump's authoritarian threats are real, De Niro urged voters to re-elect President Biden, whom he said would maintain "normalcy" in a second term.
After a 50-year career marked by a dazzling range of memorable film performances, De Niro remains active. The winner of two Academy Awards, he received a best supporting actor nomination this year for his performance as a villain in "Killers of the Flower Moon," his latest of a number of collaborations with the director Martin Scorsese.
De Niro has taken a valiant stand for American democracy in challenging Trump.
]]>William Whitworth stood tall among the Southern-born editors who revitalized American magazines.
Whitworth, a native of Little Rock, Ark. who rejuvenated the Atlantic Monthly as the venerated magazine's executive editor from 1980 through 1999, died March 8 at a special care home in Conway, Ark. after a series of falls. He was 87.
Following Mississippian Willie Morris' energizing of Harper's in the 1960s and North Carolinian Harold Hayes' transformation of Esquire during the same era, Whitworth rehabilitated the Atlantic after its purchase by Mortimer Zuckerman, bringing in new writers and brightening the magazine's graphic design.
Before leading the Atlantic, Whitworth gained recognition as a writer of Talk of the Town pieces and profiles for The New Yorker, before moving into editing as the chief lieutenant of William Shawn.
At the New Yorker, Whitwrth edited writers such as Pauline Kael and Frances Fitzgerald, and won the respect of Robert Caro, editing an excerpt of Caro's "The Power Broker" for the magazine.
A close friend of fellow Arkansas native Charles Portis, who wrote the novels "True Grit" and "The Dog of The South," Whitworth in 1963 followed Portis from the Arkansas Gazette to the New York Herald Tribune, where he worked as a reporter alongside Tom Wolfe, Dick Schapp and Jimmy Breslin. Shawn hired him for the New Yorker in 1966.
The courtly Whitworth, who never lost his Arkansas accent, was known for his exacting editing, upholding grammatical standards such as the proper usage of "lie" and "lay" and "persuade" and "convince." The Atlantic won nine National magazine awards during his reign.
Whitworth gave the Atlantic new life in the last days of print journalism's dominance, setting the stage for the magazine's recent resurgence in the digital era.
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The Alliance Theatre's "A Tale of Two Cities" almost sinks beneath the weight of its meta-theatrical effects, but succeeds in the end.
Playwright Brendan Pelsue opens his rendition of Charles Dickens' novel about the French Revolution with a long meditation on history, delivered by well-known Atlanta actress Tess Malis Kincaid, who gives a standout performance as the central character Madame Defarge.
Such exposition burdens the play's action, along with the distraction of actors commenting upon the artifice of their performances.
In another gimmicky device, the audience is asked to react to different scenes, such as murmuring during the trial of Charles Darnay, the idealistic French nobleman condemned to die despite renouncing his ancestry.
Audience members, who seemed to enjoy the interaction, are thus cast as a kind of chorus representing the Paris mob, the court of public opinion, and ordinary people caught in the tide of historical events.
Directed by Leora Morris, the production slowly gains its dramatic momentum as the focus shifts to Dickens' story and language.
The outstanding cast, all of whom play multiple roles, generate the full dramatic power from the story's Victorian conventions of love and sacrifice.
Grant Chapman stands out as the tormented Dr. Manette, mentally and physically ruined by years in Bastille Prison. Chapman displays a full emotional range in depicting Manette's extremes of anguish and his slow recovery of the joys of life under the care of his daughter, Lucie.
Along with Kincaid, Tiffany Denise Hobbs carries the show in her contrasting roles as Lucie and in a thrilling tour de force, the villainous Marquis de Evemonde.
Lee Osorio excels as the heroic Sydney Carton, ranging from vaudevillian comedy to poignant expressions of love for Lucie. Not quite making Carton's heroic transformation convincing, Osorio closes the show with a fine rendition of Dickens' famous "it's a far, far better thing that I do" monologue.
Louis Reyes McWilliams as the virtuous Darnay and Brad Raymond as a foppish King Louis XVI and other characters also stand out.
Pelsue and Morris said in the play's program that they wanted to give "Tale of Two Cities" contemporary relevance, citing Atlanta's extremes of wealth and poverty as similar to 18th century's Paris and London.
They succeed in demonstrating how individual action can make a difference in the onrush of history.
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