Chris Brown Goes to Court, With Rihanna in the Front Row

Pool photo by David McNew Chris Brown appeared at a hearing at the Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

As Rihanna sat in the front row and blew him a kiss, Chris Brown went before a judge on Wednesday to answer allegations from prosecutors that he had failed to complete a sentence of community service after pleading guilty to assaulting her in 2009, The Associated Press reported.

The judge in Los Angeles County Court, James Brandlin, asked for more information about Mr. Brown’s community service and scheduled another hering in two months. He also ordered Mr. Brown to remain on probation, which means he will be able to attend the Grammys on Sunday in Los Angeles, where both he and Rihanna, his on-again-off-again girlfriend, are nominated for awards.

Mr. Brown badly beat and choked Rihanna, one of the most successful pop singers in the world, four years ago in a car after attending a party on the eve of the Grammys. He was later sentenced to five years of probation and six months of community service, which a judge agreed to let him do in his home state, Virginia.

Rihanna announced to the world in the current issue of Rolling Stone that she had reconciled with Mr. Brown and had forgiven him for beating her. On Wednesday, she accompanied him to court along with his mother and blew him a kiss as he went before the judge. They left together after the judge set the next hearing for April 5.

Prosecutors maintain that they found no evidence that Mr. Brown had completed the wo! rk he had been sentenced to, and they asked the judge to order him put in another 180 days of labor in Los Angeles County.

A lawyer for Mr. Brown, Mark Geragos, sharply disputed the allegations, accusing prosecutors of making “scurrilous, libelous and defamatory statements” against his client, The Los Angeles Times reported. He said he would seek sanctions against the district attorney’s office.

A motion filed on Tuesday by Deputy District Attorney Mary A. Murray said an investigation into Mr. Brown’s community service found “significant discrepancies indicating at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting.” Specifically, the motion cast doubt on whether police officers in Richmond, Va., had properly monitored Mr. Brown when he was supposed to be cleaning floors at a day care center where his mother was once a supervisor.

Tuesdayâ€s motion also outlined several violent incidents Mr. Brown has been involved in since his assault conviction in 2009, none of which have led to charges being filed against him. The most recent one it cited was a Jan. 27 fistfight between Mr. Brown and a fellow R&B singer, Frank Ocean, over a parking spot in Los Angeles. According to court papers filed with the motion on Tuesday, Mr. Ocean told investigators that Mr. Brown had threatened to shoot him during the melee, which involved other men as well. Mr. Ocean, who is also nominated for several Grammy awards this Sunday, has said he will not press charges.

Chris Brown Goes to Court, With Rihanna in the Front Row

Pool photo by David McNew Chris Brown appeared at a hearing at the Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

As Rihanna sat in the front row and blew him a kiss, Chris Brown went before a judge on Wednesday to answer allegations from prosecutors that he had failed to complete a sentence of community service after pleading guilty to assaulting her in 2009, The Associated Press reported.

The judge in Los Angeles County Court, James Brandlin, asked for more information about Mr. Brown’s community service and scheduled another hering in two months. He also ordered Mr. Brown to remain on probation, which means he will be able to attend the Grammys on Sunday in Los Angeles, where both he and Rihanna, his on-again-off-again girlfriend, are nominated for awards.

Mr. Brown badly beat and choked Rihanna, one of the most successful pop singers in the world, four years ago in a car after attending a party on the eve of the Grammys. He was later sentenced to five years of probation and six months of community service, which a judge agreed to let him do in his home state, Virginia.

Rihanna announced to the world in the current issue of Rolling Stone that she had reconciled with Mr. Brown and had forgiven him for beating her. On Wednesday, she accompanied him to court along with his mother and blew him a kiss as he went before the judge. They left together after the judge set the next hearing for April 5.

Prosecutors maintain that they found no evidence that Mr. Brown had completed the wo! rk he had been sentenced to, and they asked the judge to order him put in another 180 days of labor in Los Angeles County.

A lawyer for Mr. Brown, Mark Geragos, sharply disputed the allegations, accusing prosecutors of making “scurrilous, libelous and defamatory statements” against his client, The Los Angeles Times reported. He said he would seek sanctions against the district attorney’s office.

A motion filed on Tuesday by Deputy District Attorney Mary A. Murray said an investigation into Mr. Brown’s community service found “significant discrepancies indicating at best sloppy documentation and at worst fraudulent reporting.” Specifically, the motion cast doubt on whether police officers in Richmond, Va., had properly monitored Mr. Brown when he was supposed to be cleaning floors at a day care center where his mother was once a supervisor.

Tuesdayâ€s motion also outlined several violent incidents Mr. Brown has been involved in since his assault conviction in 2009, none of which have led to charges being filed against him. The most recent one it cited was a Jan. 27 fistfight between Mr. Brown and a fellow R&B singer, Frank Ocean, over a parking spot in Los Angeles. According to court papers filed with the motion on Tuesday, Mr. Ocean told investigators that Mr. Brown had threatened to shoot him during the melee, which involved other men as well. Mr. Ocean, who is also nominated for several Grammy awards this Sunday, has said he will not press charges.

Candidate Knows How to Get Action to Fix an Oft-Misspelled Name

Ken BIberaj via West Side Rag Something was wrong with this sign, as any Thelonious Monk fan could tell you.

A few weeks ago, Ken Biberaj, a candidate for City Council, was preparing for a town-hall meeting to be held in the Amsterdam Houses near a cul-de-sac on West 63rd Street.

The event, scheduled for next Tuesday, is to feature a jazz trio playing songs by Thelonious Monk, who lived for years in a round-floor apartment at 243 West 63rd.

But a volunteer for Mr. Biberaj’s campaign sensed something dissonant about the street sign on the cul-de-sac, which was named for Monk after his death in 1982.

The city named that part of West 63rd “Thelonious Sphere Monk Circle.” But on the sign last month, Monk’s first name was spelled “Thelonius” - without the second O.

Like any good representative, even a prospective one, Mr. Biberaj, a restaurateur whose family owns the Russian Tea Room, sprang to action.

“The Upper West Side is a community that honors both the arts and our cultural icons and no one symbolizes this better than Thelonious Monk,” he wrote on Jan. 15 to the city’s Department of Transportation, urging the agency to fix the sign “in order to properly recognize the legacy of this Jazz legend.”

But no action was taken by the agency by early this week, Mr. Biberaj said. So he notified a local blog, West Side Rag,! which published a post on Tuesday with a photograph of the misspelled sign.

Mr. Biberaj visited the location again on Wednesday around noon. Lo and behold, the sign had been replaced with a correctly spelled one.

Ken BIberaj via West Side Rag Hours after a blog ran an article about the misspelled sign, it was fixed.

“I’m thrilled the D.O.T. took action,” he said, adding, “As councilman, I plan to bring renewd energy to all issues on the West Side, large or small.”

Mr. Biberaj said he was not a big jazz fan - “I may have to become one, after this.” â€" but he used the sign issue to vow that “no issue will be too small” to address, should he win the Council seat.

A spokeswoman for the Transportation Department said that the incorrectly spelled sign was installed in 2011 and that workers replaced it Wednesday with a correctly spelled one. She had no other immediate information on the history of the sign.

Now that the name issue has come up for Monk, City Room e-mailed Phil Schaap, the notably voluble jazz historian who can riff endlessly on almost any jazz musician. He replied that Monk’s name has long been a contentious issue and - well, read the e-mail in its entirety here:

There is a birth record in Rocky Mo! unt, Nort! h Carolina. Monk’s first name is spelled quite differently. I have not seen this document but I have seen different spellings of his given name that cite it. I most trust John Chilton who states in print that this document says “Thellous Junior Monk.”

I further believe Monk, himself, who informs us that his father was Thelonious and that our Monk is, indeed, a Junior. The drumming son is the third (III). I don’t have total faith that “Sphere” was always in place as a family {middle for our Monk} name. Still, Junior as a middle name for a Junior seems unlikely. I would hazard a guess that our Monk’s name at birth was Thelonious Monk, Junior. Limited literacy and racism are likely to have contributed to a flawed birth record.

As to the street. The street sign has recently appeared with a misspelling: “T-h-e-l-o-n-i-u-s”. This was not always so. I was at the street naming and for many years it appeared correctly as “Thelonious Sphere Monk Circle.” It has become one of the moreoften stolen NYC official signs and a replacement eventually carried the misspelling of his given name.

Asked in a follow-up e-mail if Monk was often asked about the spelling of his first name, Mr. Schaap replied:

The dropping of the second “o” in his first name is more common than the correct spelling. It was stated in Monk’s presence that his having a nickel for each time his name was misspelled “Thelonius” would be worth more than the royalties to “Round Midnight.”

Theater World Friends Bring Ailing Playwright Closer To Home

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times María Irene Fornés, right, with Morgan Jenness, left, and Michelle Memran.

About a dozen friends and colleagues of the adventurous Cuban-born playwright and director María Irene Fornés gathered Wednesday morning near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to await her arrival at Amsterdam House, the nursing home to which she was transferred from another facility in upstate New York. Just before 1 p.m. the small throng waved and applauded as Ms. Fornés, 82 and gaunt but seeming to enjoy the attention, was wheeled into the home.

The group then waite in a sitting room, exchanging stories and memories about the writer, while the staff determined whether she was up to having visitors.

“This is a glorious day,” said Lorraine Llamas, a playwright who studied with Ms. Fornés, and who was one of the first to arrive. “She’ll be close to her peers and students. She’ll get the support she needs here.”

Ms. Fornés has lately been the subject of a petition campaign on change.org, started by her literary agent, Morgan Jenness, and Michelle Memran, who has spent the last decade writing and directing a documentary about her, called “The Rest I Make Up.”

The petition, which more than 2,700 people have signed, argued that Ms. Fornés, who has had Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade and has lived at nursing homes upstate since 2005, should be moved to New York so that her admirers in the theater community could visit her.

The petition argued that her nephew and guardian, David Lapin! el, was withholding permission for the move unreasonably. Mr. Lapinel did not return telephone calls; Stephen Lapinel, his brother, said in an interview the charge was not accurate, contending that the family had been carefully balancing the benefits and dangers of moving the playwright. He added that the family appreciated the petition because it led many of Ms. Fornés’s friends in the theater world to visit her.

“We recognize that our aunt is a public figure,” said Dr. Lapinel, a physician who lives in Virginia, “and that a large part of her persona has to do with her public life. And we’re proud of her accomplishments. But at the same time, she’s family, and there has to be a balance of what’s public and what’s a more appropriate and private process for someone at the end of her life.”

Ms. Fornés was born in Havana in 1930, and moved to the United States when she was 14, becoming an American citizen in 1951. She began her artistic life as a painter, but after seeing a Frenh production of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in Paris, her interest shifted to the theater, and particularly toward avant-garde drama, sometimes with feminist, gay, Hispanic and political themes. In 1959, she began a seven-year relationship with Susan Sontag, a tempestuous romance described in Sontag’s published journals. She never married and had no children.

Starting with “The Widow,” in 1961, she wrote 42 plays, and won nine Obie awards. Her “Manual for a Desperate Crossing” (1995) was recast as the libretto of Robert Ashley’s opera “Balseros” (1997). Her last completed work was “Letters from Cuba” (2000), which was presented as part of the Signature Theater Company’s season-long festival of her work, an honor bestowed on Edward Albee and Horton Foote among others.

Among those welcoming Ms. Fornes was Claire Lebowitz, who is at work on a play about Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is currently on trial for allegedly leaking classified intelligence documents.

“I didn’t know her, except as a fan,” said Ms. Lebowitz. “What I find inspiring in her work is the combination of its social and political aspects and her unique voice. She was a real innovator, and confrontational at a time when it was okay to be more political than it seems to be now.”

Ching Valdez-Aran, an actress, director and aspiring playwright, met Ms. Fornés in the early 1980’s, and attended a writing workshop that she gave in the late 1990’s.

“I never had the chance to work with her as an actress,” Ms. Valdez-Aran said, “but at the workshop, I began work on two plays, and I found her very inspiing.”

After about an hour, Ms. Jenness, who had accompanied Ms. Fornés to her temporary room, told the waiting group that she was about to be moved to another with a view of the Cathedral.

“She’s smiling and singing, and happy to be here,” she said.

Nannycam Video of Baby Being Slapped Leads to Arrest

Staten Island prosecutors have charged a 52-year-old nanny with endangering the welfare of a child after a hidden camera recorded her slapping the face of a 5-month-old girl.

The video, recorded on Jan. 28 in the Woodlawn Avenue home of the Mardakhaev family and posted to YouTube that same day, showed the nanny striking the baby, Sabrina, as she appears to cry in her baby seat.

She can be seen less than a minute later handling the baby roughly as she picks her up and walks from the room.

Prosecutors identified the nanny as Mamura Nasirova. She was arraigned Monday on the misdemeanor charges, which also include resisting arrest, and is due back in court on Friday. She is being held on $1,000 bail or bond at Rikers Island.

The authorities said that the camera had been secreted in a carbon monoxide detector by Sabrina’s parents, and that her other had watched the footage on a remote feed. It was not clear who posted the video to YouTube. Staten Island prosecutors who had seen the video said the version posted on YouTube was the same as they had been shown, a law enforcement official said.

Judge Asked to Settle Twombly Foundation Dispute

A Delaware judge has been asked to settle a feud among the directors of a foundation established by Cy Twombly, the American artist who died in 2011. The complaint, which was filed in the Chancery Court in Wilmington last week, asks the judge to appoint a custodian to “break an ongoing deadlock among the Foundation’s divided, four-person board of directors,’’ according to court papers.

Two of the board members â€" Nicola del Roscio, the foundation’s president, and Julie Sylvester, a museum curator â€" believe that the foundation’s treasurer, Thomas Saliba, has been paying himself unauthorized fees with the knowledge of Ralph Lerner, a lawyer who is also a board member. The court papers, filed by Mr. Lerner, asked that Twombly’s son, Alessandro, be asked to join the board. Mr. Lerner, who has sided with Mr. Saliba, claims that there is no one left t manage the foundation’s financial assets.

Mr. Lerner declined to comment on the case, referring all questions about it to Matt Neiderman, a Delaware-based lawyer he has hired to represent him. Mr. Neiderman, reached by telephone on Wednesday afternoon, also declined to comment.

David R. Baum, a lawyer who was hired by the foundation several months ago, said in an e-mail message on Wednesday, “The foundation recently discovered that its treasurer has been paying himself unauthorized investment fees. Mr. Lerner, who was apparently aware of the fees, is rushing to the court in an unwise and unfortunate attempt to obstruct disciplinary action. We will file the appropriate responsive papers in March.’’

Lens: Photos at El Museo del Barrio

L. Morales, Courtesy of El Museo del Barrio

Starting today, some 80 images will be on display in “superreal: alternative realities in photography and video,” a new show at El Museo del Barrio, in East Harlem. What’s on display is shot with a documentarian’s eye, but includes a dose of mystery and otherworldliness. A spare-looking installation is designed to address the short attention span of the viewer in the digital age, forcing one to stop and look a little longer at how the images were created.

Read more on the Lens blog Â'

Good News and Bad for Pompeii

ROME â€" Italy on Wednesday inaugurated a project financed by the European Union to restore the ancient city of Pompeii, a day after the police arrested a former restorer on charges of paying inflated fees for restoration work and placed several others under investigation. Two years after announcing that the union would commit more than $140 million to the restoration of Pompeii, where exposure to the elements and ill-fated interventions have led to routine collapses, the union’s regional affairs commissioner, Johannes Hahn, visited the city on Wednesday with three Italian government ministers.

The plan includes financing to shore up drainage and to hire and train restorers to take care of the vast site, left behind when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. It also includes measures intended to prevent the infiltration of organized crime in the awarding of contracts. On Tuesday the police arrested a former restorer, and placed uder investigation other restorers and a former special commissioner for Pompeii, saying they had overspent on public contracts and on nonessential projects in violation of the terms of the state of emergency declared by the government in 2008, Italian news media reported.

Rap Duo Wins the Week With \'Thrift Shop\'

Carlo Allegri/Invision, via Associated Press Ben Haggerty, known by his stage name, Macklemore, left, and Ryan Lewis.

Beyoncé sang for an estimated 104 million people at the Super Bowl on Sunday, and Justin Bieber has scored his fifth No. 1 album. But the biggest victory in the music industry is an independent rap duo from Seattle and their hit song about the pleasures of smelly secondhand clothes.

The duo, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, is No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart for the third time in a rowwith its song “Thrift Shop,” featuring Wanz, which had 381,000 downloads last week â€" far more than any other song â€" and continues to gain radio play on multiple formats, including pop. The track has had 2.7 million downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s self-released album, “The Heist,” is No. 16 this week with 21,000 sales. “The Heist,” which opened at No. 2 in October, has sold a total of 313,000 copies.

Sales of some of Beyoncé’s songs doubled and even tripled last week. But that did not translate to blockbuster numbers, given the sales levels of her tracks the week before â€" they were low, yet perfectly normal for catalog hits in an average week. “Halo,” for example, sold 19,000 copies last week, a weekly gain of more than 300 percent, but the song still landed at No. 105 on SoundScan’s ranking of digital track sales. (“Haloâ€!  and other Beyoncé songs might well see another gain next week, since SoundScan’s reporting week ended Sunday evening, the night of the Super Bowl.)

The top four titles on Billboard’s album chart this week are all new. Mr. Bieber’s “Believe Acoustic” (Schoolboy/RBMG/Island), featuring acoustic and live versions of songs from his most recent studio release, “Believe,” is on top with 211,000 sales. Behind it are Andrea Bocelli’s “Passione” (Sugar/Verve), at No. 2 with 94,000; the indie duo Tegan & Sara, who reached No. 3 with 49,000 sales of “Heartthrob” (Warner Brothers); and the R&B singer Charlie Wilson’s “Love, Charlie” (RCA), at No. 4 with 44,000 sales.

The “Pitch Perfect” soundtrack is No. 5 with 37,000 sales, and last week’s No. 1, “Set You Free” (MCA Nashville) by the country singer Gary Allan, fell to No. 8 with 34,000.

Late-Night Chills at South by Southwest

Taylor Glascock A scene from “You’re Next,” directed by Adam Wingard.

Vampires rise and so does Rob Zombie in this year’s Midnighters lineup at the South by Southwest film festival. The program will include nine after-dark films that either wallow in the creepy or bask in the crazy.

Haunter Abigail Breslin in “Haunter.”

Bloodsuckers are major characters in two of the offerings: “Haunter,” which stars Aigail Breslin as a teenage vampire, and “Kiss of the Damned,” about one who falls for a human screenwriter.

The lineup also includes the world premieres of “Plus One,” about a party that is disrupted by a supernatural phenomenon, and “Big Ass Spider!,” about, well, you know.

A few bloody selections from the Toronto International Film Festival will make their way to South By audiences, including Rob Zombie’s “Lords of Salem” (which heads to theaters April 19) and “You’re Next,” the Adam Wingard horror comedy.

South by Southwest also announced its full lineup of shorts, in narrative, documentary, animation, midnight and music categories. The festival’s full lineup of films can be found here.

Late-Night Chills at South by Southwest

Taylor Glascock A scene from “You’re Next,” directed by Adam Wingard.

Vampires rise and so does Rob Zombie in this year’s Midnighters lineup at the South by Southwest film festival. The program will include nine after-dark films that either wallow in the creepy or bask in the crazy.

Haunter Abigail Breslin in “Haunter.”

Bloodsuckers are major characters in two of the offerings: “Haunter,” which stars Aigail Breslin as a teenage vampire, and “Kiss of the Damned,” about one who falls for a human screenwriter.

The lineup also includes the world premieres of “Plus One,” about a party that is disrupted by a supernatural phenomenon, and “Big Ass Spider!,” about, well, you know.

A few bloody selections from the Toronto International Film Festival will make their way to South By audiences, including Rob Zombie’s “Lords of Salem” (which heads to theaters April 19) and “You’re Next,” the Adam Wingard horror comedy.

South by Southwest also announced its full lineup of shorts, in narrative, documentary, animation, midnight and music categories. The festival’s full lineup of films can be found here.

Desperate Dad: Amity Gaige Talks About \'Schroder\'

In “Schroder,” Amity Gaige’s third novel, an increasingly distressed father in the middle of a custody battle takes off on an unexpected road trip with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow. The novel takes the form of a long letter written by the father, Eric, to his wife, Laura, trying to explain his actions. In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Gaige discussed the slipperiness of identity, why this is her darkest novel yet and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

After moving to America from East Germany when he’s young, Eric changes his last name, from Schroder to Kennedy, and never tells anyone, including his father. Why can’t he admit what he’s done to the people he loves

A./div>

Eric claims that the gulf between his two identities - that of a German immigrant wearing unhip knee socks versus that of a distant Kennedy relation - is so wide that “no mortal boy” could bring them together. He’s right, but the enormity of that gulf is his own making. He has chosen a very ambitious new identity, and even as he chooses it, there’s an element of embarrassment. But he doesn’t tell his father because he doesn’t want his identity taken away â€" that is, he doesn’t want the pleasure of his secret life taken away.

Q.

Eric is partly based on Clark Rockefeller, a German who passed himself off as part of that illustrious family and then kidnapped his daughter for nearly a week. How much were the specifics of that story an inspiration

A.

Other than a short article I read in 2008 when the real story broke, I have not followed the Clark Rockef! eller case, and “Schroder” is not a novelization of that story. However, several elements of the real-life story were crucial as inspiration, most notably a quote from Rockefeller when he was apprehended, in which he said that the days on the run with his daughter were some of the best in his life. (In the book, I give this line to Eric, in German.) This wistful and sad statement made me wonder, was he actually a loving dad Can a fraud or a liar really love others All of this simply had personal resonance with me. I was a new parent to an observant child, and looking at him I occasionally thought what new parents think: Am I up to the task Am I worthy of you

Q.

Have you ever lied about your identity, even momentarily

A.

Does the occasional use of a false name in a college-era bar count, as a means of wriggling out of an awkward situation Otherwise, I’m a pretty honest person, though to my ear that statement now sets off alarms.

Q.

You once said your first two novels shared the theme of “how love gets â€" and needs to be â€" tested.” I’d say it’s more than tested in “Schroder.” Do you feel this novel is darker than your previous work

A.

Yes, it is darker. I could just say that the reason for this shift was my own parents’ separation, only years before my father’s death. Until then (and in my first two novels), I put a high premium on marital tenacity, the consolation of knowing that even if things were bad, at least you weren’t a quitter! Of course, if you look at “Schroder,” you see that Eric suffers greatly without his estranged wife. It’s still a pro-marriage book; a balled-up and then uncrumpled valentine.

Q.

Was the story always going to be structured as a confession written by Eric to his wife, Laura

A.

Y! es, it wa! s. I love writing letters. In order to write a novel in first person, I think I needed an addressee. I needed Laura as the addressee of the novel even though she barely appears in it. But the addressee is also central to the unrequited lover’s project. I mean, being shut out makes a person angrier, more passionate, and in Eric’s case, more talkative. Her silence inspires him.

Q.

Are there any confessional novels that you used as inspiration, or that you particularly admire

A.

Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” certainly was an influence on this book. The hero is doing many things at once â€" not least, explicating a poem â€" but you could also call it a confessional novel. It’s just that what the narrator is confessing is pure delusion. He says he’s a deposed king of a place called Zembla. But what he’s really confessing, to my mind, is his own loneliness, grief,and his author’s belief that exile is so disassociating as to make a person crazy.

Anita Licis-Ribak Amity Gaige

Q.

Did you intend the novel in any way as a commentary on the way the law treats child custody battles

A.

Maybe so. Probably. I researched children’s rights, divorce law and parental kidnapping. Millions of children and parents are touched by the inadequacy of the legal system to deal with the human heart.

Q.

What, if anything, is the most challenging thing about writing from a man’s perspective The most liberating

A.

Sometimes Eric’s observations sounded tinny, like, would he really notice what some rand! om person! was wearing But writing in a male voice was more liberating than it was confining, if only because as a fiction writer, you are already impersonating as soon as you start to write. Eric is a construction on several layers â€" mine, his own.

Q.

Is Eric better at being a father than he is at being a husband

A.

Yes. He’s a fun dad, at least initially. I also think he takes Meadow seriously, as a mind. He teaches her foreign languages, he addresses her philosophical questions; he’s invested, not absent.

Q.

What thing does Eric do that you find most unforgivable

A.

When he takes Meadow to a bar somewhere in Vermont because he really wants a drink, he gets into a conversation with a bartender. They basically start to make fun of Meadow, and to talk about inappropriate things. I think this is the rottenest thing he does, because he shows that he’s happy to shift loyalties if he feels lke it. Lying to Laura â€" giving her his own false name as a married name â€" is also uniquely cruel. O.K., now I’m mad at him.

Q.

You’ve written plays and poetry. Do you feel most comfortable as a novelist Why

A.

Oh, I’m a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others. I studied with [the playwright] Paula Vogel during college, and almost went on to write plays more seriously, and hope it’s not too late. But all my focus over the past decade has been on the novel. Mario Vargas Llosa says becoming a novelist is like swallowing a tapeworm; everything you eat, read, see or do is in the service of the hungry tapeworm. That doesn’t sound very pleasant. But I like the novelist’s appetite.

Sounds of the Road, in 17-Syllable Verse

Illustration: Michael Kolomatsky/The New York Times; Taxi: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

Well beeped, City Room readers. On the occasion of the city’s decision to take down those seemingly unavailing “No Honking” signs, we asked you to send us a Honku or two to mark the moment. You responded in droves, with extreme literary alacrity. Here is some of your work:

Stuck on Lexington
Man in front has stopped to text
Gonna use the horn
ScottFromNY, Brooklyn

Bumper sticker says,
“Honk if you loe Jesus!” But
What would Jesus do
Madine, Boston

Hey. all you drivers!
Will you play that phrase again
I’m transcribing this.
David, Somerville, MA

If I wanted loud
I would open my closet
See my old plaid suit
Ira Leviton, New York

@andylocal It is 6 a.m. / your pickup time everyday / don’t you have a phone

â€" Stephen (@EamesEra) 30 Jan 13

One hand clapping’s sound,
Is traffic honking madly
At a deaf person.

(Of course I’m honking
With crazed inaccuracy,
About hand clapping;

One hand clapping’s sound
Is five pigeons, taking wing,
Startled by car horns.)
Dan Stackhouse, New York City

HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK / HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK / HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK http://t.co/y851casO

â€" Stefan Becket (@stefanjbecket) 30 Jan 13

you honk from behind
makes my teeth grind edge to edge
I want to move too
eliza, ny

Canadian geese,
Thinking their relatives near,
Honky-tonk hello.
whimsicaljackson, jefferson, ny

Great job cab driver
They are going faster now!!
Actually…..nope.
Amber, Manhattan, NY

My impatience grows
Admiring the bright green glow
Firmly my horn blows.
RRK, Philadelphia

Gruesome hit and run // fatalities up ahead //
how awful â€" I’m late. #honku http://t.co/lXfACzm8

â€" Patrick Skahill (@ptskahill) 30 Jan 13

Honk your horn! she cried
Honk it yourself! he replied
A soundless union.
Lifeboat No. 6, Adrift in the Mid-Atlantic

“Varick St”

4p on Friday
You don’t get to honk, you jerks
I’m still at my desk
Brett, Brooklyn

The philosophy
“I honk therefore I am” was
never very sound.
Carol Weston, New York

Sweet sound of silence.
Traffic moving without prompts.
N Y.C. pipe dream
Marville, Gilboa

@andylocal None heeded before / the signs that told us DON’T HONK / now we will still HONK

â€" Anna Sanders (@AnnaESanders) 30 Jan 13

And here are a couple of honorable mentions that do not exactly obey the 5-7-5 syllable rule but moved us nonetheless:

two short - hello goodbye
two longer - wake up
one long - anger
horn talk
al arioli, woodstock, ny

@andylocal
Since no honk signs gone:
Sound your horn for your right
Or for honklessness

#honku

â€" D RY (@Dry1313) 30 Jan 13

Picasso Fetches $44.8 Million at Auction

Sotheby’s “Femme Assise Près D’Une Fenêtre,” a 1932 Picasso work.

A canvas Picasso painted of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter seated by a window that had sold for $7.5 million at a Christie’s auction in 1997, brought $44.8 million, including fees at Sotheby’s in London on Tuesday evening.

“Femme Assise Près D’Une Fenêtre,’’ a colorful canvas from 1932, was guaranteed to sell courtesy of a third party, or what the auction house calls an “irrevocable bid’’ (meaning that before the sale, a byer had already agreed to purchase the work for an undisclosed sum). It was in fact bought by the anonymous guarantor, who was on the telephone with Patti Wong, chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. The guarantor was the only party who could be seen bidding for the painting, which was estimated to bring $40 million to $56 million.

The Picasso was the most expensive work in an evening that also saw strong prices for artists including Monet and Schiele. The sales continue at Christie’s in London on Wednesday evening.

Old Friends Help New York Review Celebrate 50 Years

The eager crowd milling in the lobby of Town Hall on Tuesday night looked ready for the opening of an A-list movie. For one thing, Daniel Craig was present. “James Bond is standing over there,” a man said. A stranger next to him, a woman in a large furry hat, peered over. “Is he really How exciting!”

The occasion was brainier, if less glamorous, than a 007 premiere: the 50th anniversary of The New York Review of Books, the literary institution that began during a citywide newspaper strike in 1963. Robert Silvers, the publication’s 83-year-old editor and co-founder, emceed a night of readings and reflections by some of his longtime and more recent contributors.

Though charming and literate, a less visually dynamic public event is hard to imagine. Still, ticket holders were kept waiting outside for about 30 minutes after the scheduled start time while a handful of high-owered cameras were set up inside the auditorium. (Martin Scorsese and a crew have been filming the journal’s celebrations this week to help it commemorate the anniversary.)

Even knowing that Joan Didion was among the readers scheduled to appear, the crowd still let out a few audible gasps when Mr. Silvers announced that the writer would be the first to take the stage. Ms. Didion did so daintily, the rock-star essayist now visibly a lioness in winter at the age of 78. She sat at a table and read, with the aid of a magnifying glass, part of “New York: Sentimental Journeys,” her 1991 essay for The Review about the Central Park Five, the teenagers wrongly convic! ted of beating and raping a jogger.

While The Review played to its fans inside Town Hall, there was criticism of it in other circles. Joseph Epstein wrote on Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal that he had canceled his subscription to The Review last year after receiving it since its inception. “I felt no need to read any of its political articles, which came to constitute more and more of the journal, and whose conclusions held no surprises,” Mr. Epstein wrote. He bemoaned that it was always the case that The Review’s great literary critics (Edmund Wilson, Nabokov) existed alongside offerings like “a callow journalist named Andrew Kopkind [reminding] Martin Luther King Jr. that ‘morality, like politics, starts at the barrel of a gun.’ ”

The politics expressed at Tuesday night’s event were indeed unsurprising, like Daniel Mendelsohn’s skeptical analysi of movies that portray 9/11 and the war on terror and Mark Danner reading dispatches from the presidential campaign trail â€" hopeful ones from 2008 about candidate Barack Obama; deflated ones about the president from 2012.

But contributors also struck deeply personal notes. Michael Chabon described working on his first novel while precariously perched over an ancient computer in a crawl space of his parents’ home in Oakland, Calif.

Darryl Pinckney offered the night’s most stirring moments, speaking lyrically about his relationship to the work of James Baldwin, from his introduction to it as a child to his criticism of Mr. Baldwin’s novel “Just Above My Head” for The Review in 1979. “I’m embarrassed by the knowingness of that review,” Mr. Pinckney said Tuesday.

Mr. Baldwin’s landmark essay collection “The Fire Next Time” was reviewed by F. W. Dupee on the front cover of th! e magazin! e’s first issue in 1963. A facsimile of that inaugural edition was given to attendees on Tuesday night. Its list of contributors included W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Hardwick, Alfred Kazin, Robert Lowell, Norman Mailer and Mary McCarthy. If The Review’s writers have since become less towering figures in the culture at large, they were treated as titans by Tuesday’s crowd.

At the end of the night, the speakers took the stage and occupied a line of chairs that had sat oddly empty next to Mr. Silvers throughout the readings. The room was opened up to questions, and after one audience member shouted a friendly query about the next 50 years and Mr. Silvers gave a brief response, there was a deep silence. Mr. Silvers peered out, and with no takers, judged that the crowd was “satiated.” It was; but intimidated was another word that may have fit.

Russia and Stravinsky Are Themes for SummerScape Festival

The Bard SummerScape festival, which will run from July 6 to Aug. 18, will focus on Russia and explore the cultural impact of Igor Stravinsky, devoting its final two weekends to a broad survey of his music, organizers said in announcing the new season.

Other offerings include a rare presentation of Sergey Taneyev’s opera “Oresteia,” written toward the end of the 19th century and considered the Russian composer’s greatest work; a production of the play “The Master and Margarita,” by Mikhail Bulgakov; and what the organizers call a “fresh response” to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” a dance-theater work called “A Rite” based on a collaboration of Bill T. Jones, the choreographer, and Anne Bogart, the director.

Truck Driver Arrested in Fatal Hit and Run in Midtown

The police have arrested a 47-year-old New Jersey truck driver in Tuesday’s death of a pedestrian in a hit and run in a crowded intersection near Times Square.

The man, Jack Montelbano of Bayonne, was arrested on felony charges of leaving the scene of an incident without reporting. He was expected to be arraigned Wednesday in Manhattan Criminal Court.

The police said Mr. Montelbano had been making a right turn from Ninth Avenue onto 41st Street in a privately owned dump truck, registered to a company in New Jersey, when he struck Shu Ying Liu, 69, as she was crossing the side street shortly after 10 a.m.

At least one witness among the throngs around the scene of the crash told Mr. Montelbano that there had been an accident, the police said, but he continued driving west.

Ms. Liu, who lived nearby on West 54h Street, was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where she was pronounced dead.

City police detectives tracked the truck to New Jersey and located Mr. Montelbano there. The police then brought him back to New York for questioning and, after an investigation tied his truck to crash, they arrested him.

M.T.A. Adds Interactive Features to Online Subway Map

M.T.A. What’s up in this spaghetti tangle of subway lines The M.T.A.’s new online map makes it easier to get a closer look.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority released an interactive version of its online subway map on Wednesday, allowing riders to more easily zoom in on clusters of the map and quickly access route information for specific lines.

Previously, sections of the map could be enlarged only by opening a separate PDF file.

“The subway map is one of the most popular tools we provide on our Web site, and we ant to make it as easy and convenient as possible for visitors to the city and New Yorkers alike to get the most out of the map online,” Paul J. Fleuranges, a spokesman for the authority, said in a statement.

The map mirrors the most updated version of the printed subway map, which accounts for service gaps and other changes wrought by Hurricane Sandy. The line that typically connects the No. 1 train from Rector Street to South Ferry is faded. So is the A train in the Rockaways, replaced by a temporary H shuttle that has been offered for free along part of the peninsula.

Above the map, there are links to each of the system’s lines, which allow riders to call up full lists of stops on a given train and the hours during which trains travel to each.

Lens: Photos at El Museo del Bario

L. Morales, Courtesy of El Museo del Barrio

Starting today, some 80 images will be on display in “superreal: alternative realities in photography and video,” a new show at El Museo del Barrio, in East Harlem. What’s on display is shot with a documentarian’s eye, but includes a dose of mystery and otherworldliness. A spare-looking installation is designed to address the short attention span of the viewer in the digital age, forcing one to stop and look a little longer at how the images were created.

Read more on the Lens blog Â'

The Votes Are In, and the Iron Is Out

Courtesy of Hasbro The iron is no more.

Courtesy of Hasbro The cat is in.

A termination notice was issued on Wednesday, directed at a 78-year-old. After decades of silent service, the iron is out - out of Monopoly board games that is.

Hasbro, the manufacturer of the popular board game invented in the 1930s, announced that the iron, one of eight game pieces, wa to be replaced by the cat, following a vote on Facebook.

The iron was the odd piece out after it received the fewest number of votes among the original pieces. The cat got the highest number of votes among five possible new tokens, beating out a robot, guitar, helicopter and diamond ring.

But the iron won’t disappear right away. It will still be included in original Monopoly games that will be sold for most of the rest of this year.

A Silhouette in the Rain

Dear Diary:

Sara Felsenstein

It rained as I left work and moved mindlessly through Times Square. The city smelled of damp concrete and food-truck smoke. Colors, caught on raindrops, launched from billboards and splattered messily on the ground.

Rain is a commuter’s nightmare. Umbrellas can’t shield you from puddles of trash or the angry masses en route to Port Authority. They can’t really even shield you from rain.

I turned down 47th Street, a street I’ve passed hundreds of times going to and from the bus terminal. Tonight, though, I was meeting my family for dinner and a Broadway show.

The city must have known I would stay, because somewhere on 47th Street, it changed. I looked up to see a silhouetted manwalking briskly into the night like a character right out of an old film noir. All around him: glossy, reflected light.

The Barrymore Theater awning framed the whole intriguing scene.

My phone lit up with a message: Where are you

I should have walked faster but instead stopped and captured three images on my camera. In New York, moments that jolt you from the present are rare and tend to happen only when you’re alone.

I walked a few yards and opened the door to Trattoria Trecolori, where the maître d’ knew at once who I was, smiled almost surreally and then led me upstairs to my family’s table. Here, it was warm and dry and smelled of fresh garlic. I peered at the menu but my mind was still on that spot outside, on that shadowy, ageless man walking past the theater.

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