About
I decided to start a blog for three reasons:
1) People felt that there should be a part of the Threepenny website that was available only online, not in the printed magazine.
2) Some of the things I wanted to write about seemed as if they would benefit from a slightly more timely response than our usual quarterly publication permitted.
3) I was seeing and hearing so much interesting art — especially in the areas of dance and music, though also in literature, theater, and the visual arts — that I couldn't fit everything I wanted to say into The Threepenny Review without taking over the whole publication. And if you are not Diderot or Karl Kraus (and I am certainly neither), it is never a good idea to write the whole magazine yourself. But I figured the rules of blogs would allow me to monopolize one of those.
I struggled to come up with a good title for the blog and at first resisted using my own name, feeling (as those named Lesser are bound to feel) that diminishment is not necessarily a selling point. But then I figured that if people named Grudge or Drudge can use their names on websites, I should certainly not be abashed at calling this The Lesser Blog. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy it.
Wendy Lesser
Editor, The Threepenny Review-
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Author Archives: Wendy Lesser
Bad Theater
It’s hard to recall why I thought it was a good idea to buy tickets to Bruce Norris’s new play, A Parallelogram, at the Mark Taper Forum last Saturday night. I didn’t much like his previous play, the much-praised Clybourne Park, … Continue reading
Summer Reading
I’m not really too clear on the concept myself, since I tend to read the same kinds and quantities of books all year round. “Summer reading” seems to refer to what you might want to read on a beach, and … Continue reading
Under the Influence of Jane Jacobs
You can never predict, when you read them the first time, which are the books that will most enduringly affect your future behavior. I am and have always been an essentially literary person, and if you had asked me to … Continue reading
A New Blog Format
Those of you who have been following The Lesser Blog for the past few years may have noticed that my postings have been getting more and more infrequent. This is because I’ve been using a very unwieldy software linked to … Continue reading
A Month of Daily Blogging
In addition to my intermittent entries on this blog, I have had a sideline over the past few years writing for a multi-authored site, the National Arts Journalism Program’s ARTicles blog. About twenty-five arts journalists, including me, were drafted into … Continue reading
Operas and Productions
An opera and its production are so closely linked that it is sometimes impossible to judge them separately. You can try to assess the music alone by repeatedly listening to a recording in the comfort of your own home, but … Continue reading
All Hail the Pacificas!
I’ve been following the Pacifica Quartet for a few years now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that, despite some very fierce competition, they are my favorite string quartet. This is largely, of course, because of the way they play. … Continue reading
Art That Speaks to Us
On the first Thursday of October, I went to BAM to see the Berliner Ensemble production of The Threepenny Opera. Naturally my standards for this play are extremely high: the affinity I feel for it extends beyond its title to a number … Continue reading
Tetzlaff Times Three
In mid-March, as I was leaving the Carnegie Hall concert that Christian Tetzlaff had just given with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I ran into a couple of friends. “Oh, we should have known we’d see you at this!” they said … Continue reading
My Shostakovich Book
I don’t generally favor using blogs for self-promotional purposes, but I have been persuaded that it would be a good idea to let my regular readers know that a book I have been working on for four years is finally … Continue reading