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      Pennsylvania School Board Reinstates Gay Author’s Speech Amid Backlash

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      The Cumberland Valley School Board reversed its decision to cancel Maulik Pancholy’s speech at a middle school next month after many community members said the actor had been discriminated against because of his sexuality.Less than two weeks after a Pennsylvania school board unanimously voted to cancel a gay author’s anti-bullying speech at a middle school, the board voted Wednesday night to reverse its decision and reinstate the event amid pressure from parents, students and administrators.The 5-to-4 vote by the Cumberland Valley School District’s board came in front of scores of community members who packed a high school auditorium and, for several hours, chastised the board for having canceled the event featuring the actor and author Maulik Pancholy over what they said were homophobic concerns.Many who spoke rejected the contention by some board members that Mr. Pancholy’s speech had been canceled over concerns about what they called his “political activism.”“To claim that Maulik Pancholy is a political activist and use that as a justification to cancel his event is an excuse that the public sees through,” one person told the board.Mr. Pauncholy, who acted on “30 Rock” and voiced Baljeet in the cartoon “Phineas and Ferb,” has written children’s books that include gay characters who confront bullying and discrimination and is often a speaker at school events. He had been scheduled to speak at an assembly on May 22 at Mountain View Middle School in Mechanicsburg, a community of about 9,000 people roughly 100 miles west of Philadelphia.On Wednesday night, two board members, Bud Shaffner and Kelly Potteiger, apologized in opening statements for their comments about Mr. Pancholy’s “lifestyle” but maintained that he is a political activist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rusty Foster Tracks Media Gossip From an Island in Maine

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      In a time when the headlines are dominated by wars and a divisive presidential campaign, the magazine-world rivalry between The Atlantic and The New Yorker doesn’t amount to much.So you might have missed it when, on April 2, The Atlantic beat The New Yorker in three big categories at the 2024 National Magazine Awards.But to Rusty Foster, who chronicles the media industry and internet culture in his daily newsletter, Today in Tabs, The Atlantic’s victory was big news.Shortly after the awards ceremony, which took place at Terminal 5 in Manhattan, Mr. Foster tapped out a fanciful report for his audience of media obsessives. Under the headline “Shutout at the TK Corral,” he wrote that David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, “solemnly folded up and ate each of his prepared speeches as he watched The Atlantic win every category.”Mr. Foster then turned his attention to Anna Wintour, the editorial director of Condé Nast, the publishing giant that owns The New Yorker, Vogue and other publications, writing that she “donned an emergency second pair of sunglasses” in reaction to the company’s poor showing.A surprising thing about Today in Tabs — which has a knowing, satirical tone that has made it an enduring hit among media insiders — is that Mr. Foster writes it from the bucolic setting of Peaks Island, Maine, which is where he was when the National Magazines Awards ceremony took place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Undeterred, Salman Rushdie Discusses His New Memoir, ‘Knife’

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      Last May, nine months after the knife attack that nearly killed him, Salman Rushdie made a surprise appearance at the 2023 PEN America literary gala. His voice was weak and he was noticeably thinner than usual; one of his eyeglass lenses was blacked out, because his right eye had been blinded in the assault. But anyone wondering whether the author was still his old exuberant self would have been immediately reassured by the way he began his remarks, with a racy impromptu joke.“I want to remind people in the room who might not remember that ‘Valley of the Dolls’ was published in the same publishing season as Philip Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint,’” he said, riffing on an earlier speaker’s mention of Jacqueline Susann’s potboiler. “And when Jacqueline Susann was asked what she thought about Philip Roth’s great novel” — with its enthusiastically self-pleasuring main character — “she said, ‘I think he’s very talented but I wouldn’t want to shake his hand.’”It was classic Rushdie, improvisational literary wit deployed during a solemn occasion, in this case his acceptance of the organization’s Centenary Courage Award. It was also a triumphant signal that his brush with death — more than three decades after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder over the novel “The Satanic Verses” — had dampened neither his spirit nor his determination to live life in the open.His new book, “Knife,” which will be published April 16, is a harrowing account of the attack and its aftermath, and a reminder of how gravely injured he was. It’s also a deeply moving love story that attributes much of his recovery and good spirits to the tender, brave support of his wife of three years, the poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. (They met at an event in 2017 and flirted over drinks at the after-party; he walked smack into a glass door as he attempted to follow her onto the roof deck. The rest is history.)“I wanted to write a book which was about both love and hatred — one overcoming the other,” Rushdie said in a recent interview. “And so it’s a book about both of us.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Christopher Durang, Playwright Who Mixed High Art and Low Humor, Dies at 75

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      In a career spanning more than 40 years, he established himself as a hyperliterate jester and an anarchic clown.Christopher Durang, a Tony Award-winning playwright and a master satirist, died Tuesday night at his home in Pipersville, Pa., in Bucks County. He was 75.His agent, Patrick Herold, said the cause was complications of aphasia. In 2016, Mr. Durang was found to have a rare form of dementia, logopenic primary progressive aphasia. The diagnosis was made public in 2022.An acid, impish writer, Mr. Durang never met a classic (“The Brothers Karamazov,” “The Glass Menagerie,” “Snow White”) that he couldn’t skewer. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he established himself as a hyperliterate jester and an anarchic clown. Regarding subject and theme, he pogoed from sex to metaphysics to serial killers to psychology, and he had a way of collapsing high art and jokes that aimed much lower.“He’s so scaldingly funny,” the actress Sigourney Weaver, a friend and collaborator since she met Mr. Durang at the Yale School of Drama, said in an interview. “You laugh with horror at what’s going on and your sheer inability to do anything about it.”But even in his most uproarious work — like his early play, the sex and psychoanalysis farce “Beyond Therapy,” or his late hit “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” a delirious homage to Chekhov — there was often a strong undertow of melancholy.Mark Alhadeff and Cynthia Darlow in a 2014 production of Mr. Durang’s “Beyond Therapy” at the Actors Company Theater in New York.Marielle SolanWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Laurent de Brunhoff, Artist Who Made Babar Famous, Dies at 98

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      After his father, who created the character, died, he continued the series of books about a modest elephant and his escapades in Paris for seven decades.Laurent de Brunhoff, the French artist who nurtured his father’s creation, a beloved, very Gallic and very civilized elephant named Babar, for nearly seven decades — sending him, among other places, into a haunted castle, to New York City and into outer space — died on Friday at his home in Key West, Fla. He was 98.The cause was complications of a stroke, said his wife, Phyllis Rose.Babar was born one night in 1930 in a leafy Paris suburb. Laurent, then 5, and his brother, Mathieu, 4, were having trouble sleeping. Their mother, Cécile de Brunhoff, a pianist and music teacher, began to spin a tale about an orphaned baby elephant who flees the jungle and runs to Paris, which is conveniently located nearby.The boys were enthralled by the story, and in the morning they raced off to tell their father, Jean de Brunhoff, an artist; he embraced the tale and began to sketch the little elephant, whom he named Babar, and flesh out his adventures.Laurent, right, and Mathieu du Brunhoff at about the time their mother first conjured a story about the baby elephant that became Babar.via de Brunhoff familyIn Paris, Jean imagined, Babar is rescued by a rich woman — simply referred to as the Old Lady — who introduces him to all sorts of modern delights. Armed with the Old Lady’s purse, Babar visits a department store, where he rides the elevator up and down, irritating the operator: “This is not a toy, Mr. Elephant.” He buys a suit in “a becoming shade of green” and, though the year is 1930, a pair of spats, the natty, gaitered footwear of a 19th-century gentleman.He drives the Old Lady’s automobile, enjoys a bubble bath and receives lessons in arithmetic and other subjects. But he misses his old life and weeps for his mother, and when his young cousins Arthur and Celeste track him down, he returns to the jungle with them — but not before outfitting Arthur and Celeste in fine clothes of their own.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lorrie Moore Is Among National Book Critics Circle Award Winners

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      The awards included a lifetime achievement honor given to Judy Blume.The novelist Lorrie Moore on Thursday won a National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for “I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home,” her novel that follows a devastated young teacher who goes on a road trip with the animated corpse of his ex-girlfriend, who has died by suicide.In a citation, one of the judges, David Varno, praised the novel as “a heartbreaking and hilarious ghost story” and “an unforgettable achievement from a landmark American author.”The awards, which were announced at a ceremony at the New School in New York City, are among the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States. Unlike other major awards, the recipients are chosen by book critics instead of committees made up of authors or academics.The critics organization, which was founded in 1974, is made up of more than 700 critics and review editors. Thursday’s awards recognized works published last year and were open to authors of books published in English in the United States.In addition to giving prizes in literary categories like biography, criticism, autobiography, fiction and poetry, the group also recognizes individuals and organizations for their contributions to literary culture.This year, Becca Rothfeld, the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post and the author of a forthcoming debut essay collection, “All Things Are Too Small,” received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. The award, named after a former New York Times Book Review editor, is given to an N.B.C.C. member for criticism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Bronx Teacher Asked. Tommy Orange Answered.

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      When the author received an impassioned email, he dropped everything to visit the students who inspired it.Tommy Orange sat at the front of a classroom in the Bronx, listening as a group of high school students discussed his novel “There There.”A boy wearing blue glasses raised his hand. “All the characters have some form of disconnection, even trauma,” Michael Almanzar, 19, said. “That’s the world we live in. That’s all around us. It’s not like it’s in some faraway land. That’s literally your next-door neighbor.”The class broke into a round of finger snaps, as if we were at an old-school poetry slam on the Lower East Side and not in an English class at Millennium Art Academy, on the corner of Lafayette and Pugsley Avenues.Orange took it all in with a mixture of gratitude and humility — the semicircle of earnest, engaged teenagers; the bulletin board decorated with words describing “There There” (“hope,” “struggle,” “mourning,” “discovery”); the shelf of well-thumbed copies wearing dust jackets in various stages of disintegration.When Orange spoke, students paid close attention. Many identified with the characters in Orange’s book “There There” and with the world it portrayed. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHis eyebrows shot up when a student wearing a sweatshirt that said “I Am My Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams” compared the book to “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy. When three consecutive students spoke about how they related to Orange’s work because of their own mental health struggles, he was on the verge of tears.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Guernica Magazine Retracts Essay by Israeli as Staffers Quit

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      An Israeli writer’s essay about seeking common ground with Palestinians led to the resignation of at least 10 staff members at Guernica.Guernica, a small but prestigious online literary magazine, was thrown into turmoil in recent days after publishing — and then retracting — a personal essay about coexistence and war in the Middle East by an Israeli writer, leading to multiple resignations by its volunteer staff members, who said that they objected to its publication.In an essay titled “From the Edges of a Broken World,” Joanna Chen, a translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetry and prose, had written about her experiences trying to bridge the divide with Palestinians, including by volunteering to drive Palestinian children from the West Bank to receive care at Israeli hospitals, and how her efforts to find common ground faltered after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent attacks on Gaza.It was replaced on Guernica’s webpage with a note, attributed to “admin,” stating: “Guernica regrets having published this piece, and has retracted it,” and promising further explanation. Since the essay was published, at least 10 members of the magazine’s all-volunteer staff have resigned, including its former co-publisher, Madhuri Sastry, who on social media wrote that the essay “attempts to soften the violence of colonialism and genocide” and called for a cultural boycott of Israeli institutions.Chen said in an email that she believed her critics had misunderstood “the meaning of my essay, which is about holding on to empathy when there is no human decency in sight.”“It is about the willingness to listen,” she said, “and the idea that remaining deaf to voices other than your own won’t bring the solution.”Michael Archer, the founder of Guernica, said that the magazine would publish a response in the coming days. “The time we are taking to draft this statement reflects both our understanding of the seriousness of the concerns raised and our commitment to engaging with them meaningfully,” he wrote in a text.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More