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
Simon’s Band
I first came to love music, I mean really love music, by listening to the Berlin Philharmonic during a semester spent in Berlin. I was an avid fan that whole fall, not only attending every concert I could get tickets … Continue reading
Tetzlaff’s Triumph
David Hume says somewhere in his philosophical works that you can’t be proud of the Pacific Ocean—the idea being that you need to have some sense of relationship or ownership to warrant pride, and no one can own the Pacific … Continue reading
Glass and Reich
Perhaps the most interesting thing about hearing the music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich together—as last week’s three concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music allowed New Yorkers to do—is the discovery of how very different they are. It’s … Continue reading
Up Close
I have always loved the Pacifica Quartet, but I have never before listened to them play from five feet away. Last night, sitting in the front row of the Cosentino Winery’s barrel room, I was practically as close to the … Continue reading
Impromptu
I might be wrong, but I think it was Alan Ayckbourn who said that when he was very young and first going to the theater, he always hoped that something would go wrong, because that would lend any performance an … Continue reading
Four Nights of Music
The Bay Area has been a hotbed of concerts recently, and I’ve been out four nights in a row to something good. This would be a record of sorts even for New York, and in my part of California it’s … Continue reading