thursday, september 9, 2010
THE RELIABLE SOURCE
Solar power
from the past? An environmentalist wants President Obama to reinstall a Carter-era solar panel on the White House roof. C2
MEDIA NOTES A new blog
In his new Media Notes blog, Howard Kurtz says the media are inflaming things by trumpeting the Florida pastor who wants to burn Korans this weekend.
washingtonpost.com/medianotes.
Style ABCDE C S “ ART REVIEW
In my eyes, my journalistic pedigree is pretty strong.”— Piers Morgan, a judge on “America’s Got Talent” and chosen to replace Larry King on CNN. C6
STUMPED SPEECH
‘No silver bullet’ Maybe there isn’t, but it’s being fired off by lots of politicians. C10
3LIVE TODAY @
washingtonpost.com/discussions Got plans? The Going Out Gurus are here to help 1 p.m.
Did tense office play a role in U-Va. suicide?
Literary editor’s death spurs scrutiny and a community divided
by Daniel de Vise
The Charlottesville offices of the Virginia Quarterly Review are dark. The locks have been changed. Most of the staff have resigned or taken leave. There were two competing drafts of the fall issue, one assembled by the journal’s editor, the oth- er by members of his es- tranged staff. The win- ter issue has been can- celed. There are two diver-
gent accounts, as well, of why the managing edi- tor of the University of Virginia’s esteemed lit- erary journal walked to a lonely coal tower on a July morning and shot himself in the head. Surviving relatives and some co-workers portray Kevin Morris- sey, 52, as the target of a work- place bully. Their narrative has an unlikely villain: Ted Geno- ways, 38, a decorated poet who led a transformation of the Re- view from a low-budget black-
and-white journal into a colorful, edgy magazine that is cited among the best literary publica- tions in the country. According to Maria Morrissey, Kevin Morris- sey’s sister, a caustic e-mail from Genoways was on her brother’s computer screen when he died. Genoways and some of his sup-
Kevin Morrissey
porters say Morrissey’s death was simply a suicide: a man choosing to die and blaming no one, leav- ing a note that said, “I can’t bear things anymore.” The investigation has divided the literary community. Some have vilified Genoways as the archetypal bad boss, a symbol of the dysfunc- tional workplace. But a letter submitted to sev- eral publications last month and signed by 30 Review contributors de- fends the editor-poet as “professional, tactful,
and respectful.” After weeks of mounting scru-
tiny, the university is questioning its own role in the affair. Teresa A. Sullivan, who assumed the presi- dency of Virginia’s flagship pub- lic university two days after Mor- rissey’s death, said in an Aug. 19 statement that the suicide had
suicide continued on C4 RADIO
An Al Jazeera deal? Pacifica Radio may broadcast the Arabic news network locally. C3
MUSIC REVIEW
Gaga turns Verizon into a self-love camp meeting
by Chris Richards The most commanding mo- KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
FLYING HIGH: Staff discuss Spencer Finch’s “Passing Cloud,” 2010, a site-specific sculpture made for the Corcoran’s rotunda that alludes to the light and color of a day in 1863 when Walt Whitman watched Abraham Lincoln ride by.
Being on cloud nine
Spencer Finch’s ‘Business’ perceives the sky in wholly different ways by Blake Gopnik
ing today. No other adult would think of making work quite like what’s on view in “My Business, With the Cloud,” Finch’s new solo show at the Corcoran. It opens Saturday as the first in the mu- seum’s “NOW” series on contemporary art.
S
pencer Finch is a big baby. I mean that as a compliment. Finch is 47 and lives in a
loft in Brooklyn, N.Y., but it’s the baby in him that makes him one of the smartest, most original artists work-
New theories in psychology bill babies as in some ways smarter and more aware than the adults they become. Adults have learned to focus, laserlike, on just the things that matter — which means that they stay unaware of most of what’s around them. The very young, on the other hand, are open to everything that’s in their world, because they need to learn so much about it. They refuse to preconceive what matters and what doesn’t. That’s where Finch sits. His art, like so much art that’s come before, is about depicting the world —
landscape art you could call it, almost. But it takes a whole new tack on which parts of the landscape are worth de- picting and what it might mean to de- pict them. It’s as though Finch stays conscious of aspects of reality that the rest of us have grown up to ignore, then finds new ways to let us in on his expan- ded vision. “Passing Cloud,” the single, giant piece that he’s installed in the Corco- ran’s grand rotunda, gives a picture of
art review continued on C9
ment in Lady Gaga’s riveting Tuesday night concert at Verizon Center had nothing to do with the arsenal of angular, asymmet- rical frocks that aggrandized the superstar’s teeny-tiny frame. It came during the crescendo
of “Telephone” when she ordered her fans — she affectionately calls them “little monsters” — to tuck their camera phones back into their Levis and get in the moment. It was a retina-searing specta- cle — a two-hour pop bacchanal that utilized buckets of fake
What does Lady Gaga wear to yoga class? The Reliable Source, C2
blood, spark-spewing bustiers, head-banging harpists, a flaming piano and plenty of esteem- building speechifying. Lady Ga- ga didn’t bring her “Monster Ball” tour to Washington to be re- duced to a snapshot. She aspired to be that encour- aging little voice stuck in your head, and carpet-bombed her set with numerous micro-sermons about empowerment and accept- ance. (As if singing the songs that have been stuck in our head for the past three years wasn’t al- ready enough.) “Don’t leave loving me more,” she urged the capacity crowd, hundreds of whom came dressed as their idol. “Leave loving your- self more.” Having already altered the def- inition of pop stardom, the 24-
review continued on C2
TRACY A. WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST
ALL OUT: From Madonna’s bustier to Grace Jones’s growl to Prince’s stiletto-dancing, Lady Gaga used every tool in her arsenal.
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