George Jones’s New York

Bill Welch/The Tennessean, via Associated Press George Jones in a 1996 photograph.

Hardly anybody would have looked for an “I ♥ NY” bumper sticker on George Jones’s tour bus. “The story of him and New York was he just didn’t want to come here,” said Jack Grace, a singer and songwriter who books performers for the Rodeo Bar in Manhattan.

Mr. Jones, the country singer with the plaintive voice and the complicated life who died on Friday at 81, told people he did not like Manhattan. But maybe he needed a geography lesson. He did not seem to understand that Manhattan is in New York or that, to many New Yorkers, Manhattan just is New York.

The club promoter Steve I. Weitzman remembers booking Mr. Jones for an appearance at Tramps on West 21st Street in 1992.

“He had a fabulous time,” Mr. Weitzman said, adding that at one point, Mr. Jones told the crowd, “I’m in New York” â€" with, as Mr. Weitzman describes it, an almost-giddy sense of excitement that one would not expect from a big-name star.

A year and a half later, Mr. Weitzman booked him again. Same place, same stage, same hopes.

“The agent called me a week or two later and said, ‘George is going to cancel. George didn’t like Manhattan,’” Mr. Weitzman said. “George didn’t know that Manhattan was in New York. The agent told me George would appear if I could find another venue that’s not Manhattan, but what place was there that was not booked? I tried upstate New York, but I couldn’t find anything that was not booked.”

By then Mr. Jones was known as No-Show Jones for the performances he skipped, often because of drinking and drugs. Allan Pepper, an owner of the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village, remembers no-show dates in the late 1970s. One was a two-night stand in September 1977 that coincided with a press party for Mr. Jones given by Epic Records.

“The only trouble was, Mr. Jones didn’t show up â€" at either the party or the performances,” The New York Times reported. “When last heard from, Mr. Jones’s Nashville office had no idea where he was.”

A story circulated about what had happened. “Somebody said he went out the bathroom window,” Mr. Pepper said.

Fans figured he had the jitters. “A lot of those people got freaky about New York,” Mort Cooperman, an owner of the Lone Star Café on Fifth Avenue, said, referring to famous performers. He said he had tried to sign Mr. Jones for the same dates but lost out to the Bottom Line. “Some of them loved it and turned into glowworms, like Johnny Paycheck. He was turned on by New York.”

But Mr. Jones stayed away. Mr. Pepper said the routine â€" agreeing on a date, signing a contract and canceling the gig â€" became all too familiar. “I would be upset,” he said, “but here’s the interesting thing: We would announce there was a cancellation and the fans would come up to the box office window and ask us, ‘What was it this time? He got sick? He got into an accident?’ They were prepared for this. They knew he was No-Show Jones. So I rebooked him, and again he canceled on me.”

Mr. Pepper booked him again, in 1980, and as if to prove the cliché about the third time being a charm, Mr. Jones not only appeared, but Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt â€" who had been in the audience â€" joined him onstage for several songs. Mr. Pepper said that Johnny Paycheck, who had been in Mr. Jones’s band, also appeared.

But back to the 1977 no-shows. Whose bathroom window Mr. Jones went out has been forgotten â€" if that detail was ever known.

“Not my bathroom window,” Mr. Pepper said. “He was long gone before the bus ever came to New York.”

Mayoral Candidates Quizzed on Use of Drones

Public safety has been a major issue in this year’s campaign for mayor of New York, and for weeks the candidates have talked at length about whether they would replace the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, whether they would continue to allow the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice, and whether the department should be monitored by an inspector general. But on Friday, during a forum on technology, the candidates got a question that posed a new test of their views on police practices: Should the department be allowed to use unmanned drones?

Only Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Bronx borough president running for mayor on the Independence Party line, refused to rule out using drones for surveillance. “I think the responsible answer is you use the tools that are available to you,” he said.

For Democrats, the idea was a nonstarter. “I don’t want drones peeking in people’s homes,” said William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller making his second bid for mayor.

John C. Liu, the current comptroller, compared drones to the cyborgs in “RoboCop.” Although he said that the movie was one of his favorites, he opposed having RoboCops - or drones - in New York City. And Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn said that, although she supported increased use of mobile cameras, “I don’t think drones are a safe security measure in New York City.”

The drone question highlighted an unusual candidates’ forum in which the moderator, Ben Smith, the editor of the Web site Buzzfeed, managed to catch the candidates off guard on a few occasions.

Mr. Smith noted that the venture capitalist Fred Wilson had complained about city laws that make Airbnb, a Web site that allows people to rent rooms or apartments cheaply by the night, technically illegal in New York. Mr. Smith asked the candidates if they thought that Airbnb should be allowed to operate in the city. He posed the question first to Mr. Liu, who seemed unfamiliar with the debate.

“Should whoâ€"?” he asked quizzically.

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, and Ms. Quinn then jumped in, both agreeing that Airbnb was potentially pernicious and should be illegal. Mr. de Blasio suggested that it exposed building residents to unwelcome comings-and-goings. Ms. Quinn said the conversion of buildings to rental units for tourists diminished the supply of affordable housing for full-time residents.

Other surprising areas of agreement emerged at the forum, which took place during a conference on technology organized by the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, at New York Law School. Mr. Stringer, a Democrat, is a candidate for comptroller.

After Mr. Liu said that as mayor he would lift the ban on students bringing cellphones to school, the other candidates onstage all quickly said that they would, too, prompting Mr. Smith to quip that “the under-18 vote” was now fully spoken for.

The candidates also all espoused interest in expanding Internet access to city residents and public school students. Mr. de Blasio, in particular, knocked Verizon several times for slowness in expanding its fiber optic service around the city, saying that the service was still unavailable in many low-income neighborhoods.

However, the moment most likely to be remembered from the forum was when Mr. de Blasio, picking up on a reference by Mr. Carrión to the city’s competition with Silicon Valley for tech companies, decided to try out his Arnold Schwarzenegger impression on the crowd.

“If Arnold Schwarzenegger were here, he would say, ‘Noh-thern Califoh-nia, your domination of the tech industry is being teh-minated,’” Mr. de Blasio said, to laughs from the crowd and some groans from the others onstage.

Mayoral Candidates Quizzed on Use of Drones

Public safety has been a major issue in this year’s campaign for mayor of New York, and for weeks the candidates have talked at length about whether they would replace the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, whether they would continue to allow the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice, and whether the department should be monitored by an inspector general. But on Friday, during a forum on technology, the candidates got a question that posed a new test of their views on police practices: Should the department be allowed to use unmanned drones?

Only Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Bronx borough president running for mayor on the Independence Party line, refused to rule out using drones for surveillance. “I think the responsible answer is you use the tools that are available to you,” he said.

For Democrats, the idea was a nonstarter. “I don’t want drones peeking in people’s homes,” said William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller making his second bid for mayor.

John C. Liu, the current comptroller, compared drones to the cyborgs in “RoboCop.” Although he said that the movie was one of his favorites, he opposed having RoboCops - or drones - in New York City. And Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn said that, although she supported increased use of mobile cameras, “I don’t think drones are a safe security measure in New York City.”

The drone question highlighted an unusual candidates’ forum in which the moderator, Ben Smith, the editor of the Web site Buzzfeed, managed to catch the candidates off guard on a few occasions.

Mr. Smith noted that the venture capitalist Fred Wilson had complained about city laws that make Airbnb, a Web site that allows people to rent rooms or apartments cheaply by the night, technically illegal in New York. Mr. Smith asked the candidates if they thought that Airbnb should be allowed to operate in the city. He posed the question first to Mr. Liu, who seemed unfamiliar with the debate.

“Should whoâ€"?” he asked quizzically.

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, and Ms. Quinn then jumped in, both agreeing that Airbnb was potentially pernicious and should be illegal. Mr. de Blasio suggested that it exposed building residents to unwelcome comings-and-goings. Ms. Quinn said the conversion of buildings to rental units for tourists diminished the supply of affordable housing for full-time residents.

Other surprising areas of agreement emerged at the forum, which took place during a conference on technology organized by the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, at New York Law School. Mr. Stringer, a Democrat, is a candidate for comptroller.

After Mr. Liu said that as mayor he would lift the ban on students bringing cellphones to school, the other candidates onstage all quickly said that they would, too, prompting Mr. Smith to quip that “the under-18 vote” was now fully spoken for.

The candidates also all espoused interest in expanding Internet access to city residents and public school students. Mr. de Blasio, in particular, knocked Verizon several times for slowness in expanding its fiber optic service around the city, saying that the service was still unavailable in many low-income neighborhoods.

However, the moment most likely to be remembered from the forum was when Mr. de Blasio, picking up on a reference by Mr. Carrión to the city’s competition with Silicon Valley for tech companies, decided to try out his Arnold Schwarzenegger impression on the crowd.

“If Arnold Schwarzenegger were here, he would say, ‘Noh-thern Califoh-nia, your domination of the tech industry is being teh-minated,’” Mr. de Blasio said, to laughs from the crowd and some groans from the others onstage.

Mayoral Candidates Quizzed on Use of Drones

Public safety has been a major issue in this year’s campaign for mayor of New York, and for weeks the candidates have talked at length about whether they would replace the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, whether they would continue to allow the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practice, and whether the department should be monitored by an inspector general. But on Friday, during a forum on technology, the candidates got a question that posed a new test of their views on police practices: Should the department be allowed to use unmanned drones?

Only Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Bronx borough president running for mayor on the Independence Party line, refused to rule out using drones for surveillance. “I think the responsible answer is you use the tools that are available to you,” he said.

For Democrats, the idea was a nonstarter. “I don’t want drones peeking in people’s homes,” said William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller making his second bid for mayor.

John C. Liu, the current comptroller, compared drones to the cyborgs in “RoboCop.” Although he said that the movie was one of his favorites, he opposed having RoboCops - or drones - in New York City. And Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn said that, although she supported increased use of mobile cameras, “I don’t think drones are a safe security measure in New York City.”

The drone question highlighted an unusual candidates’ forum in which the moderator, Ben Smith, the editor of the Web site Buzzfeed, managed to catch the candidates off guard on a few occasions.

Mr. Smith noted that the venture capitalist Fred Wilson had complained about city laws that make Airbnb, a Web site that allows people to rent rooms or apartments cheaply by the night, technically illegal in New York. Mr. Smith asked the candidates if they thought that Airbnb should be allowed to operate in the city. He posed the question first to Mr. Liu, who seemed unfamiliar with the debate.

“Should whoâ€"?” he asked quizzically.

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, and Ms. Quinn then jumped in, both agreeing that Airbnb was potentially pernicious and should be illegal. Mr. de Blasio suggested that it exposed building residents to unwelcome comings-and-goings. Ms. Quinn said the conversion of buildings to rental units for tourists diminished the supply of affordable housing for full-time residents.

Other surprising areas of agreement emerged at the forum, which took place during a conference on technology organized by the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, at New York Law School. Mr. Stringer, a Democrat, is a candidate for comptroller.

After Mr. Liu said that as mayor he would lift the ban on students bringing cellphones to school, the other candidates onstage all quickly said that they would, too, prompting Mr. Smith to quip that “the under-18 vote” was now fully spoken for.

The candidates also all espoused interest in expanding Internet access to city residents and public school students. Mr. de Blasio, in particular, knocked Verizon several times for slowness in expanding its fiber optic service around the city, saying that the service was still unavailable in many low-income neighborhoods.

However, the moment most likely to be remembered from the forum was when Mr. de Blasio, picking up on a reference by Mr. Carrión to the city’s competition with Silicon Valley for tech companies, decided to try out his Arnold Schwarzenegger impression on the crowd.

“If Arnold Schwarzenegger were here, he would say, ‘Noh-thern Califoh-nia, your domination of the tech industry is being teh-minated,’” Mr. de Blasio said, to laughs from the crowd and some groans from the others onstage.

The Week in Culture Pictures, April 26

Michael Lewis for The New York Times As a political crisis manager, Kerry Washington is the lead in the hit TV drama “Scandal.”

More photographs.

A slide show of photographs of cultural highlights from this week.

Sweet Deals as Strawberries Glut Market

Sophia Rosenbaum Strawberries were selling for two pints for $5 Thursday at a vendor’s cart in Midtown, where they normally sell for $4 or $5.

Good news for berry lovers is not so good news for berry farmers.

A strawberry surplus generated by erratic weather in California and Florida has dropped prices, so pint containers that usually go for up to $5 can be found for as little as $1 at some street-corner fruit stands in the city.

“They’re not real sweet,” said Alan Weinerman, who recently took advantage of a two-pints-for-two-dollars deal at a stand in Astoria, Queens. “But they’re better than you would expect for this time of year.”

The bumper crop is a product of a late start for Florida’s strawberry harvest and an early start to the California season. Both peaked at the end of March, around the time Florida’s season usually ends and California’s begins.

“Because strawberries are perishable, it’s very much supply and demand,” said Carolyn O’Donnell, spokeswoman for the California Strawberry Commission. “When the supply is great, the price goes small.”

Raymond Sepulveda, assistant produce manager at a Key Food supermarket in Astoria, said he bought 12 pounds of strawberries - or a flat - for an “awesome price” this week: $12.95.

A flat usually wholesales for about $15, and can run as high as $30 when Florida and California are not in their peak seasons, said Tom Linaris, the supervisor in the berry department at S. Katzman Produce in the Hunts Point produce terminal in the Bronx.

Strawberries are on sale at the Key Food where Mr. Sepulveda works, with three one-pint containers for going for $5. “We’ve got four months, even five, of low price-point berries,” he predicted.

Some fruit vendors in Midtown are selling two pints of strawberries for $5 - not quite an Astoria-like bargain, but about half the usual price charged at Manhattan stands. Ali Somser, who sells fruit on 39th Street and Avenue of the Americas, said he expected pints to fall to $1.50 in the weeks to come.

At Elly’s Market in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where strawberries usually sell for $2.99 a pint, “We’ve done two for $3,” said a store worker, Tae Lee.

California growers, which produce about 88 percent of the nation’s supply, normally ship between three million and four million flats in early April, Ms. O’Donnell said. This year, 6.6 million went out the first week of the month.

“We are a few weeks ahead of what would normally be our peak season,” Ms. O’Donnell said.

She explained that a January cold spell suppressed berry production, and then when a heat wave followed, “they all ripened at the same time.”

Florida’s strawberry season, which runs from December to April, got off to a similarly late start this year because of a cold spurt, then surged when temperatures spiked.

“When it did come on, it came on like gangbusters,” Mr. Linaris said. “We saw an unusually high amount of strawberries coming out of Florida in February.”

Mr. Linaris said he expected the California crop to continue to produce plentiful amounts of good-quality berries until November, even if the days of $1 pints may be numbered.

The strawberry farmers will be happy when prices rebound. Right now, said Ms. O’Donnell, many in California are not even breaking even.

“At the moment, it’s not ideal for farmers,” she said. “But at this time of year, it’s not unexpected to have a significant amount of fruit on the market and lower prices.”

An Appraisal: George Jones in Real Life and Real Time

Associated Press George Jones in an undated photo. The country singer died Friday in Nashville.

Early in 1977, a couple of years after he and Tammy Wynette had divorced, the country music star George Jones played a show at the Stardust Inn in Waldorf, Md., his first in the Washington area in several years. I was then a young pop music critic at The Washington Post, so it fell to me to write a profile of the notoriously hard-drinking singer.

What followed was an experience so intense, so remarkable for its raw emotional force, that I could not help but think of it on Friday, when it was announced that Mr. Jones had died in a Nashville hospital at the age of 81. That weekend I learned two important things about Mr. Jones: that there was very little distance between him and his songs, and that the same qualities that made him a great artist also made his life a torment.

In those days he was still unashamedly carrying a torch for Ms. Wynette, who had left him because, as she put it in legal papers she filed, he “drinks to such an extent that he becomes completely and absolutely unmanageable.” On stage that weekend, he reworked songs like “She Thinks I Still Care” and “Picture Me Without You” so that they included references to her, making them almost embarrassingly personal, as if she were in the audience and he was singing only to her.

But it was on his tour bus between sets that I saw George Jones more achingly and nakedly vulnerable than any performer I have ever encountered, before or since that night. He was dressed in a flashy leisure suit and wore a pair of glittering diamond rings on his left hand, including one with his initials, but as he talked about Ms. Wynette and how much he still loved her, he began to weep.

I don’t think he was drunk. He talked about how he was trying to stay dry for Tammy, who by that time had already re-married and divorced again. Within a year or two, he would develop a cocaine habit that would send his career off the rails, but there was no sign of that either. This was just George Jones in real life and real time.

It is hard today, in a time when irony has become a dominant cultural mode and artists are screened from reporters by phalanxes of handlers, to imagine so public a breakdown happening or a celebrity letting his pain be so visible. But Mr. Jones wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed by that display, and when he went back to the stage for a second set of what he described to me as “sad, sloppy tear-jerkers,” his singing was even more passionate and inspired, with his twangy, somewhat nasal voice cracking in all the right places with what had to be genuine feeling, not artifice.

Over a career that lasted nearly 60 years, Mr. Jones recorded more than 100 albums, and over and over again, he didn’t just sing the songs that were given to him. In the best of his recordings, as on that night, he also inhabited them, so that anyone listening to him could be sure: he really means it, he has really lived this song about heartbreak or hangovers and knows what it means, poor soul.

As someone who grew up in Chicago listening mostly to the blues, I had no special fondness for country music, whose only local outlet in those days was the radio station WJJD. But seeing George Jones live for the first time that cold night in southern Maryland was a revelation, because in his own highly idiosyncratic way he showed himself to be no less soulful a singer than Howlin’ Wolf on something like “How Many More Years” or Otis Redding on “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”

Despite all the drinking and drug binges that would dog his career, Mr. Jones never lost that gift. In 2009, assigned to write a profile of the Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen for this newspaper, I walked into Mr. Cohen’s New York hotel suite to find him playing one of Mr. Jones’ late-career gems, “Choices,” on his iPod. Mr. Cohen expressed great admiration for Mr. Jones and then recited one of the song’s most powerful verses:

I was tempted
By an early age I found
I liked drinkin’
Oh, and I never turned it down
There were loved ones
But I turned them all away
Now I’m living and dying
With the choices I made

In part because of his consistent “nipping,” as he called it, Mr. Jones never enjoyed the crossover success of his contemporaries Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, and so his passing will probably not have the broad cultural resonance that Mr. Cash’s did. But he was, hands down, a superior singer, a fact obvious to everyone in the country music field: as Waylon Jennings once sang, “If we all could sound like we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones.”

But even within the confines of “pure country,” whatever that term might mean today, Mr. Jones did not stand still. He began his career very much in the mold of his idol Hank Williams, singing tunes about honky-tonks and carousing. He never lost his affection for that genre, but over the years he also evolved into a master of ballad singing, especially on his duets with Melba Montgomery and Ms. Wynette, both before and after they were married.

And though a brief late ‘50s flirtation with rockabilly didn’t pan out, Mr. Jones also knew how to rock. It’s almost forgotten now, but he and Elvis Presley once were co-headliners on a Louisiana Hayride tour, and generations of rock ‘n’ roll bands, including ones I played in, have covered songs like “Why Baby Why,” “White Lightning” and “The Race Is On” and found them to be guaranteed crowd-pleasers.

Beginning in the 1980s, Mr. Jones, with the help of his fourth wife, Nancy Sepulvedo, pulled himself out of his tailspin. But by then the country music mainstream had begun to move on to more polished styles, and Mr. Jones’s visceral approach fell out of fashion. In recent years, Mr. Jones had thought of himself as a relic, and expressed bitterness at what he saw as the disregard for what he represented. All that may be true, but it can’t â€" and doesn’t â€" dim the magnificence of his achievements, anymore than his personal weaknesses and demons did.

Why ‘Community’s’ Low Ratings Don’t Necessarily Mean Cancellation

Could NBC’s “Community” be saved from cancellation once again?

The possibility seemed unlikely only a few months ago. Before the fourth season began, the show runner Dan Harmon was replaced, one of its stars abruptly exited and the premiere date was pushed back almost four months. Not even the most ardent fans dared dream of renewal for a fifth season. Then, when “Community” finally returned in February, the ratings provided little comfort.

The ratings have continued to disappoint. Last night’s episode drew only 2.4 million total viewers and matched a series low in the 18-to-49 ratings category, the one advertisers watch most closely.

And yet, “Community” still compares favorably to almost every other comedy that NBC could bring back next season. It has amassed a loyal audience and the number of episodes required for syndication, and at least the ratings have not been trending downward. “Parks and Recreation” is the only other NBC comedy that can make that claim.

“Go On,” which looked like a hit last fall, plummeted as it neared the end of this season, finishing with 2.7 million total viewers for its finale. The same applies to “Whitney,” which dropped to a series low of 2.9 million viewers for its finale, and “Guys With Kids,” with three million. “Community” also had higher 18-to-49 numbers than “1600 Penn” and “The New Normal” when the latter could not benefit from its “Voice” lead-in.

Add it all up, and “Community” has a fighting chance.

Why ‘Community’s’ Low Ratings Don’t Necessarily Mean Cancellation

Could NBC’s “Community” be saved from cancellation once again?

The possibility seemed unlikely only a few months ago. Before the fourth season began, the show runner Dan Harmon was replaced, one of its stars abruptly exited and the premiere date was pushed back almost four months. Not even the most ardent fans dared dream of renewal for a fifth season. Then, when “Community” finally returned in February, the ratings provided little comfort.

The ratings have continued to disappoint. Last night’s episode drew only 2.4 million total viewers and matched a series low in the 18-to-49 ratings category, the one advertisers watch most closely.

And yet, “Community” still compares favorably to almost every other comedy that NBC could bring back next season. It has amassed a loyal audience and the number of episodes required for syndication, and at least the ratings have not been trending downward. “Parks and Recreation” is the only other NBC comedy that can make that claim.

“Go On,” which looked like a hit last fall, plummeted as it neared the end of this season, finishing with 2.7 million total viewers for its finale. The same applies to “Whitney,” which dropped to a series low of 2.9 million viewers for its finale, and “Guys With Kids,” with three million. “Community” also had higher 18-to-49 numbers than “1600 Penn” and “The New Normal” when the latter could not benefit from its “Voice” lead-in.

Add it all up, and “Community” has a fighting chance.

Big Ticket | 25 Columbus Circle, Sold for $13 Million

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times The Time Warner Center is a favorite with the pied-à-terre population.

Perched high in the south tower of the Time Warner Center at 25 Columbus Circle, a glassy corner condominium with unobstructed northern and eastern views of Central Park and the cityscape from every room sold for $13 million, the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

This seven-room residence, No. 69B, sold for $12.25 million in 2008 and had bounced on and off the market since 2011. It had been listed for as much as $16.9 million, but sold quickly after its asking price was reduced by $1 million to $13.98 million. That, apparently, is the difference a million dollars makes at this juncture in an active market; though the 2,317-square-foot unit offered the option of buying the modernist furnishings along with the property, it was sold unfurnished.

The three-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath condo has 10-foot ceilings and impressive floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the views throughout. There is an eat-in Miele kitchen, and a master suite with a dressing room, a soaking tub and a glassed-in shower. The other bedrooms have en-suite baths. The carrying charges are $8,222 a month.

A favorite with the pied-à-terre population, condo ownership at Time Warner, where the amenities begin with a Whole Foods market downstairs and extend upward to a roof deck with dazzling vistas, also bestows the privilege of access to the over-the-top spa facilities at the Mandarin Oriental, its equally swank sister tower.

The seller used a limited-liability company, Kurth Columbus Circle, as did the buyer, apparently a minimalist listed in city records only as 69-B.

Caroline Holl, Wendy Sarasohn and Jamie Joseph of the Corcoran Group were the listing brokers. Deborah Grubman, also of Corcoran, represented the buyer.

Big Ticket includes closed sales from the previous week, ending Wednesday.

‘Matilda’ Quartet Will Get Special Tony But Won’t Be Eligible for Best Actress

The four child actresses who rotate in the title role of the Broadway musical “Matilda” will not be eligible for a joint Tony Award nomination for best actress in a musical this spring, the Tony administrative committee ruled on Friday. The decision, the most newsworthy result of a busy committee meeting, sets aside a controversial precedent from 2009 when the three teenage boys sharing the lead role in “Billy Elliot” were deemed eligible for a joint best actor nomination - and went on to win that June.

The producers of “Matilda,” itself a front-runner for the best musical Tony this year, had sought joint eligibility for the four girls - Sophia Gennusa, Oona Laurence, Bailey Ryon, and Milly Shapiro. Instead of granting that request, the Tony committee announced in a statement that the four actresses would receive a special award - Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater - “to recognize their outstanding performances this season.” As a result, none of the four girls will be eligible in the best actress category.

While the committee gave no reasons for its “Matilda” ruling, there had been discomfort among some theater producers and Tony Award voters with the “Billy Elliot” precedent, given that not all voters saw the three Billys - nor were likely to see all four Matildas. Tony voters - 868 this year - are expected to see all of the nominees in categories they vote on. In 2009, some Tony voters said they cast their ballots for the actors sharing the “Billy Elliot” role without seeing all three.

Other producers have said that Tonys should only go to actors who do a full slate of performances.

Asked for comment about the decision to deny eligibility, a spokeswoman for the musical said on Friday, “The ‘Matilda’ producers appreciate the decision of the Tony administration committee.”

In another consequential decision on Friday, the committee ruled that the British actor Bertie Carvel - who plays the sadistic headmistress Miss Trunchbull in “Matilda” - would be eligible for a best actor nomination, instead of best featured actor. The assessment of Miss Trunchbull could have gone either way; some producers have argued that the character is equivalent to the villainous Miss Hannigan in “Annie,” a role that was once deemed eligible for best actress but, for the current Broadway revival, has been judged as a featured role. (The producers of “Matilda” had asked that Mr. Carvel be deemed eligible as best actor; he won the Olivier Award, Britain’s Tony equivalent, as best actor in “Matilda” last year.)

With its decision, the Tony committee sets up a possible race for best actor in a musical between two men in drag: Mr. Carvel versus Billy Porter, who is playing the drag queen Lola in “Kinky Boots.” (Another actor who is also eligible for the same category is Mr. Porter’s co-star, Stark Sands, who is not doing drag.)

The Tony committee also placed Kristine Nielsen into contention for a best actress Tony nomination for the Christopher Durang play “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Ms. Nielsen, a veteran New York theater actress, plays the forlorn sister Sonia, a performance that has drawn strong praise from critics. She had been regarded as a front-runner for best featured actress; the best actress category, for which there will be five nominations, has many eligible powerhouse performers, including Jessica Hecht (“The Assembled Parties”), Laurie Metcalf (“The Other Place”), Amy Morton (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), Bette Midler (“I’ll Eat You Last”), Fiona Shaw (“The Testament of Mary”), Holland Taylor (“Ann”), and a href="http://theater.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/theater/cicely-tyson-at-horton-footes-home.html?pagewanted=all">Cicely Tyson (“The Trip to Bountiful”).

Another actress, Valisia LeKae, who plays Diana Ross in “Motown: The Musical,” was made eligible in the best actress in a musical category; some Tony-watchers had assumed she would be in the running for best featured actress. Yet without the four Matildas, that race is seen as wide open, with likely nominees including Patina Miller (“Pippin”) and Laura Osnes (“Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella”).

The Tony nominations will be announced on Tuesday morning, and the eventual awards will be chosen in balloting by the 868 eligible voters; they are a mix of theater producers, directors, designers, actors, writers, and tour presenters â€" some of whom have commercial interests or personal connections at stake in the nominees. The Tony Awards ceremony will be held on June 9 and broadcast live on CBS. The awards are administrated jointly by two theater organizations, the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing.

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Mud’

In Jeff Nichols’s latest film “Mud,” Matthew McConaughey plays the title character as a man who is always on the move. The character is discovered hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River by two Arkansas boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland). To capture a constantly moving character, Mr. Nichols and his crew used a Steadicam camera to create sense of fluidity. In this video, Mr. Nichols narrates a scene where the boys bring food to Mud on the island. He discusses his camera choices and how they supplement his narrative.

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Mud’

In Jeff Nichols’s latest film “Mud,” Matthew McConaughey plays the title character as a man who is always on the move. The character is discovered hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River by two Arkansas boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland). To capture a constantly moving character, Mr. Nichols and his crew used a Steadicam camera to create sense of fluidity. In this video, Mr. Nichols narrates a scene where the boys bring food to Mud on the island. He discusses his camera choices and how they supplement his narrative.

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Mud’

In Jeff Nichols’s latest film “Mud,” Matthew McConaughey plays the title character as a man who is always on the move. The character is discovered hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River by two Arkansas boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland). To capture a constantly moving character, Mr. Nichols and his crew used a Steadicam camera to create sense of fluidity. In this video, Mr. Nichols narrates a scene where the boys bring food to Mud on the island. He discusses his camera choices and how they supplement his narrative.

City’s Highest Subway Station Reopens

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times Some of the first passengers at the reopened Smith-Ninth Street subway station in Brooklyn waited to board the G train Friday morning.

The least “sub” station in the city subway system, Smith-Ninth Street in Brooklyn, which soars more than 80 feet above the scrapyards of Gowanus, surged back to life again Friday morning after a $300 million face-lift that left it shuttered for nearly two years.

The renovation includes rehabilitated stairs and platforms and a new metal panel escalator enclosure.

City Room salutes the Smith-Ninth Street station, its commanding views of the Kentile Floors sign, and the gentle roller-coaster thrill it provides as it plunges down toward the mouth of the tunnel at the Carroll Street station.

How an Arrest in Queens Led to the Public Safety Exception

No straight line connects Benjamin Quarles and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, or stretches from Bayside, Queens, to Copley Square in Boston, or links a largely forgotten gun charge against an accused rapist in 1980, to a horrific terrorist bombing that inflicted mass casualties and left three people dead this month.

But one knotty legal thread does tie them together: the “public safety exception” to the Miranda warning against self-incrimination that the police are supposed to issue before questioning a suspect.

The issue is not whether a suspect can be questioned before he is warned of his rights, but rather whether the answers are admissible in court. Prosecutors would have to prove that some imminent threat to public safety justified the failure to tell suspects of their right to remain silent and to consult a lawyer before being interrogated.

The public safety exception was carved out by Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge of New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, in 1982.

The Court of Appeals upheld lower court rulings that a gun seized by the police was not admissible as evidence because officers had failed to read Mr. Quarles his Miranda rights beforehand. Mr. Wachtler dissented. But the Queens district attorney at the time appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled that “overriding considerations of public safety’’ might warrant questioning suspects without first advising them of their rights.

“I wrote an opinion, later embraced by the Supreme Court, that created an ‘emergency exception’ to Miranda, allowing the police to defuse a dangerous situation before administering the warning,” Mr. Wachtler recalled in a 2010 Op-Ed essay in The New York Times. “But resolving immediate emergencies is about as far as we should go in delaying the Miranda reading or creating exceptions to it.”

The United States Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in the Quarles case is at the heart of any challenge to the admissibility of Mr. Tsarnaev’s acknowledgment to F.B.I. agents that he was involved in the Boston bombings before he was advised of his rights. (The link between the Quarles case and the Boston bombings case was reported by DNAinfo.com

The Quarles case began in 1980 when a woman flagged down a patrol car in Queens, and said an armed man had raped her and had then fled inside a supermarket on Francis Lewis Boulevard. He was cornered there by police officers who frisked him, handcuffed him and, spotting an empty shoulder holster, asked, “Where’s the gun?”

Mr. Quarles gestured toward a carton of Wisk liquid detergent, where a .38-caliber snub nose pistol was recovered. Then an officer pulled a card from his wallet and read Mr. Quarles his rights.

“From the point of view of a criminal law defense attorney you’re dealing with a complaint that says he was in possession of a loaded weapon and he had an empty holster and that he admitted to police that the gun was his and that he had bought it in Florida, so what’s left?” said Steven J. Hyman, who represented Mr. Quarles.

“Then I’m sitting at the hearing on whether the statements were voluntary and was the gun properly seized and an exceptionally honest police officer says they frisked him, handcuffed him, asked him where’s the gun and then gave him the Miranda warning,” Mr. Hyman recalled. “A case that was clearly a disaster from a defense point of view suddenly had issues.”

The rape charge was dropped because the woman never went to court. A State Supreme Court justice said that because the weapon was seized after the suspect was handcuffed and questioned about its whereabouts, it could not be admitted as evidence.

The prosecutor appealed. The ruling was unanimously upheld by the Appellate Division and then 4 to 3 by the state Court of Appeals, but, in effect, was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, 5 to 4, on the basis of Mr. Wachtler’s exception.

The Supreme Court said the exception would not apply if the suspect was subject to “actual coercion.” That was the finding later made by a Supreme Court justice in Queens who decided - “much to my amazement,” Mr. Hyman acknowledged - that a suspect could infer he was being coerced because he was surrounded at the time by a half-dozen police officers.

Mr. Hyman’s surprise was reflected in Mr. Quarles’s decision to a plea agreement, and he was eventually sentenced to probation.

“I haven’t seen him since,” Mr. Hyman said. (A Benjamin Quarles, who would have been 25 in 1980 and was from Bayside, is listed in official records as having died in 2003.)

Mr. Hyman suggested that the application of the public safety exception to the Boston bombing case might be vulnerable in court. “The whole thrust of the Quarles case is spontaneity, legitimate instinct, not interrogation,” he said.

“In Boston there could be some bombs still floating someplace, but it was no longer a situation of immediate danger,” Mr. Hyman added. “They ask him about accomplices, motives. That’s not public safety; that’s a criminal investigation. They have a right to ask. The question is, would it be admissible? I believe it is not.”

Joanna Wright, a law clerk to a judge on the United States Court of Appeals and the author of a 2011 Columbia Law Review article on the public safety exception, said, “I suspect the government would argue that to the extent that Tsarnaev worked in concert with others or had information about potential future attacks, an imminent threat still existed and therefore the exemption was justified.”

“The standard Quarles set,” Ms. Wright added, “was whether or not the suspect answered questions posed by law enforcement that were ‘reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety’ and later case law explained that there must be ‘immediate danger.’”

Times Square, 8:32 P.M.

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times

Graphic Books Best Sellers: A Gulf in Sales Numbers

There were not a lot of positives to take away from an analysis of the March 2013 sales numbers for DC Comics by Marc-Oliver Frisch over at The Beat, the news blog of comics culture. “Estimated sales of the average new DC Universe comic book fell to 31,000, the lowest since the big ‘New 52’ relaunch of September 2011.” The gulf between the best- and worst-selling titles is extreme: the March issue of Firestorm had estimated sales of 10,689 copies; the March issue of Batman had 137,893. Sometimes, low-selling monthly series continue because their collected editions sell well. The “New 52,” which refers to the reboot of the DC heroes that happened in 2011, have been appearing regularly as collected editions on our best-sellers list. This week, volume two of “Detective Comics,” written by Tony Daniel and illustrated by Mr. Daniel and others, lands at No. 1 on the hardcover list. Back whn the “New 52” began, I thought the final page of the first issue of “Detective Comics” was one of the most gruesome images I had seen. I caught up with the series recently and my reaction has pretty much remained the same: solid adventures and often beautifully illustrated, but nothing I feel compelled to read on a regular basis. (The March issue of “Detective” sold an estimated 76,237 copies.)

Over on the paperback list, volume two of “Swamp Thing” lands at No. 3, and volume one of “Worlds’ Finest” arrives at No. 6. These series are incredibly different and I am a fan of both. “Swamp Thing,” written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Yanick Paquette, is squarely in the horror camp. Mr. Snyder has breathed new life into the character and Mr. Paquette’s artwork is normally lush and, when called for, incredibly gruesome. I’m particularly fond of the more active role that Abigail Arcane, the love interest of Swamp Thing, has taken. (The March issue of “Swamp Thing” sold an estimated 30,716 copies.) “Worlds’ Finest,” written by Paul Levitz and illustrated by Kevin Maguire and George Perez, spotlights two fan-favorite alternate universe characters: Power Girl, who is the cousin of Superman, and the Huntress, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. In “Worlds’ Finest,” the heroines find themselves exiled from their world and forced to confront other versions of heroes tht were once familiar to them. This series has a winning formula: Mr. Levitz has always thoughtfully handled these alternate universe characters, the artwork of Mr. Maguire and Mr. Perez never disappoints, and the Huntress is one of my favorite characters. Power Girl isn’t shabby either. (The March issue of “Worlds’ Finest” sold an estimated 28,459 copies.)

As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.

Graphic Books Best Sellers: A Gulf in Sales Numbers

There were not a lot of positives to take away from an analysis of the March 2013 sales numbers for DC Comics by Marc-Oliver Frisch over at The Beat, the news blog of comics culture. “Estimated sales of the average new DC Universe comic book fell to 31,000, the lowest since the big ‘New 52’ relaunch of September 2011.” The gulf between the best- and worst-selling titles is extreme: the March issue of Firestorm had estimated sales of 10,689 copies; the March issue of Batman had 137,893. Sometimes, low-selling monthly series continue because their collected editions sell well. The “New 52,” which refers to the reboot of the DC heroes that happened in 2011, have been appearing regularly as collected editions on our best-sellers list. This week, volume two of “Detective Comics,” written by Tony Daniel and illustrated by Mr. Daniel and others, lands at No. 1 on the hardcover list. Back whn the “New 52” began, I thought the final page of the first issue of “Detective Comics” was one of the most gruesome images I had seen. I caught up with the series recently and my reaction has pretty much remained the same: solid adventures and often beautifully illustrated, but nothing I feel compelled to read on a regular basis. (The March issue of “Detective” sold an estimated 76,237 copies.)

Over on the paperback list, volume two of “Swamp Thing” lands at No. 3, and volume one of “Worlds’ Finest” arrives at No. 6. These series are incredibly different and I am a fan of both. “Swamp Thing,” written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Yanick Paquette, is squarely in the horror camp. Mr. Snyder has breathed new life into the character and Mr. Paquette’s artwork is normally lush and, when called for, incredibly gruesome. I’m particularly fond of the more active role that Abigail Arcane, the love interest of Swamp Thing, has taken. (The March issue of “Swamp Thing” sold an estimated 30,716 copies.) “Worlds’ Finest,” written by Paul Levitz and illustrated by Kevin Maguire and George Perez, spotlights two fan-favorite alternate universe characters: Power Girl, who is the cousin of Superman, and the Huntress, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. In “Worlds’ Finest,” the heroines find themselves exiled from their world and forced to confront other versions of heroes tht were once familiar to them. This series has a winning formula: Mr. Levitz has always thoughtfully handled these alternate universe characters, the artwork of Mr. Maguire and Mr. Perez never disappoints, and the Huntress is one of my favorite characters. Power Girl isn’t shabby either. (The March issue of “Worlds’ Finest” sold an estimated 28,459 copies.)

As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.

Graphic Books Best Sellers: A Gulf in Sales Numbers

There were not a lot of positives to take away from an analysis of the March 2013 sales numbers for DC Comics by Marc-Oliver Frisch over at The Beat, the news blog of comics culture. “Estimated sales of the average new DC Universe comic book fell to 31,000, the lowest since the big ‘New 52’ relaunch of September 2011.” The gulf between the best- and worst-selling titles is extreme: the March issue of Firestorm had estimated sales of 10,689 copies; the March issue of Batman had 137,893. Sometimes, low-selling monthly series continue because their collected editions sell well. The “New 52,” which refers to the reboot of the DC heroes that happened in 2011, have been appearing regularly as collected editions on our best-sellers list. This week, volume two of “Detective Comics,” written by Tony Daniel and illustrated by Mr. Daniel and others, lands at No. 1 on the hardcover list. Back whn the “New 52” began, I thought the final page of the first issue of “Detective Comics” was one of the most gruesome images I had seen. I caught up with the series recently and my reaction has pretty much remained the same: solid adventures and often beautifully illustrated, but nothing I feel compelled to read on a regular basis. (The March issue of “Detective” sold an estimated 76,237 copies.)

Over on the paperback list, volume two of “Swamp Thing” lands at No. 3, and volume one of “Worlds’ Finest” arrives at No. 6. These series are incredibly different and I am a fan of both. “Swamp Thing,” written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Yanick Paquette, is squarely in the horror camp. Mr. Snyder has breathed new life into the character and Mr. Paquette’s artwork is normally lush and, when called for, incredibly gruesome. I’m particularly fond of the more active role that Abigail Arcane, the love interest of Swamp Thing, has taken. (The March issue of “Swamp Thing” sold an estimated 30,716 copies.) “Worlds’ Finest,” written by Paul Levitz and illustrated by Kevin Maguire and George Perez, spotlights two fan-favorite alternate universe characters: Power Girl, who is the cousin of Superman, and the Huntress, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. In “Worlds’ Finest,” the heroines find themselves exiled from their world and forced to confront other versions of heroes tht were once familiar to them. This series has a winning formula: Mr. Levitz has always thoughtfully handled these alternate universe characters, the artwork of Mr. Maguire and Mr. Perez never disappoints, and the Huntress is one of my favorite characters. Power Girl isn’t shabby either. (The March issue of “Worlds’ Finest” sold an estimated 28,459 copies.)

As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.

Popcast: New Albums by Laura Mvula, Bassekou Kouyate and Savages

Josh Haner/The New York Times Laura Mvula performing at the South by Southwest festival in Austin last month.

This week, Jon Pareles, the chief pop critic for The Times, discusses albums he’s written about in this Sunday’s Playlist column,  including new recordings by these artists:

-The English singer and composer Laura Mvula, whose ambitious first album “Sing to the Moon” suggests, among other things, gospel, a cappella pop, Gil Evans, Nina Simone and Björk.

-The Malian ngoni (West African lute) player Bassekou Kouyate, whose driving new album “Jama ko,” recorded in Bamako during last year’s military coup in Mali, includes his four-ngoni band, Ngoni ba; his wife, the singer Amy Sacko; songs of tolerance and unity; and much display of string-bending, tone-distorting, fast-fingered technique.

-Savages, the all-female London band whose vigorous first album “Silence Yourself” descends from noisy, spindly, trebly late-70s post-punk, filling those forms with energy and provocation.

Listen above, download the MP3, or subscribe in iTunes.

RELATED

Jon Pareles’s Playlist column.

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
Tracks by artists discussed this week. (Spotify users can also find it here.)

A Filmmaker’s Rebellious Teenagers, Take 1

Tiziana Fabi/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Olivier Assayas at the Venice Film Festival in September.

Hitchcock and “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” DeMille and “The Ten Commandments”: filmmakers sometimes take a second run at their own material. For the French director Olivier Assayas, “Something in the Air,” which opens in New York next Friday, is a double look back, revisiting his 1994 film “Cold Water” and, like that earlier film, incorporating elements of his own early 1970s adolescence.

On Saturday night 92Y Tribeca is offering a double bill of the two films. It’s an opportunity to preview “Something in the Air,” but the most exciting thing about the program is simply the chance to see “Cold Water,” a beautiful, sad, enchanting film that’s out of print on DVD in the United States and not legally available online.

The new film is not a remake of “Cold Water” (“L’eau froide”), but the connections are overt. Both center on rebellious teenagers named Christine and Gilles; both begin with a title indicating that the setting is near Paris in 1972. But where “Something in the Air” is a wider look at post-1968 counterculture, “Cold Water” is resolutely close-up. The anger and violence of the times are implicit, the unseen backdrop for a tightly woven story of young love moving inexorably toward tragedy.

“Cold Water’s” tone and style combine intense romanticism with an almost classical reserve as we see Christine and Gilles in action â€" shoplifting records, zoning out in class or baiting a weary policeman â€" and learn about their broken families. The shoplifting starts a chain of events that ends with Christine locked in a clinic with the misleading name Beausoleil.

She escapes and meets Gilles at a rave-like party at an abandoned country house, and the ensuing half-hour scene, a complex and fantastical sequence of running, dancing and pillaging lighted by leaping bonfires and set to English-language pop songs â€" “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” â€" is the best-known thing about the movie, and perhaps a little overrated.

The party scene is a tour de force, but what you notice on repeat viewings is Mr. Assayas’s technique and ingenuity in quieter moments â€" the way institutional settings like jails, schools and clinics are seen through grimy windows or half-drawn shades that obscure and cut off adult authority figures; the way a scene in which a teacher reads aloud a seamy passage from Rousseau’s “Confessions” is echoed by a scene of Gilles walking through the woods chanting Allen Ginsberg’s “Wichita Vortex Sutra.”

As a final inducement, “Cold Water” offers an unaffected, touching performance by Virginie Ledoyen, 17 when the film was released, as Christine, whose disappointments â€" in her parents, in Gilles, in life â€" drive the story and whose obduracy leads to its cryptic yet devastating ending.

Mr. Assayas’s achievement is to get thoroughly inside the world of Christine and Gilles without surrendering to their point of view or caricaturing the adults around them. He makes palpable their fragility and frustration but doesn’t push us to agree with them or, worse, pity them. “Cold Water” accomplishes a feat that’s often tried but seldom attained: it’s completely intense and completely, omnisciently cool.

The Sweet Spot: Where Were You When …

During momentous events like the Boston Marathon bombings, how do you get your news? In this week’s video, David Carr and A. O. Scott discuss their media diet.

Book Review Podcast: Willa Cather’s Letters

Javier Jaén Benavides

This week in The New York Times Book Review, Tom Perrotta reviews “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather,” a look at some of the correspondence that the great American writer wanted to keep private. Mr. Perrotta writes:

In their introduction, the editors admit they’ve defied Cather’s will (in both the legal and personal senses), but assure us they’ve done so with the best of intentions, hoping to liberate Cather’s actual words from the shackles of scholarly paraphrase: “Now we will all be able to read and interpret her letters for ourselves.” They also suggest the statute of limitations on the author’s personal preference has expired: “Cather is now a part of our cultural history. Her works belong to something greater than herself. It is time to let the letters speak for ¬themselves.”

I don’t disagree with them, though I did find the reading experience uncomfortable, especially when I bumped up against one of Cather’s frequent declarations that she considers her letters “entirely personal and confidential,” or her request that a correspondent “just put them in the furnace, I shall be greatly obliged to you.” Ethics aside, Jewell and Stout have performed a valuable service with this book, from which Cather emerges as a strong and vivid presence, a woman at once surprisingly modern and touchingly â€" if not always sweetly â€" old-fashioned.

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Perrotta talks about Cather and her letters; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Alexandra Starr discusses T. D. Allman’s “Finding Florida”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. John Williams is the host, filling in for Pamela Paul.

Book Review Podcast: Willa Cather’s Letters

Javier Jaén Benavides

This week in The New York Times Book Review, Tom Perrotta reviews “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather,” a look at some of the correspondence that the great American writer wanted to keep private. Mr. Perrotta writes:

In their introduction, the editors admit they’ve defied Cather’s will (in both the legal and personal senses), but assure us they’ve done so with the best of intentions, hoping to liberate Cather’s actual words from the shackles of scholarly paraphrase: “Now we will all be able to read and interpret her letters for ourselves.” They also suggest the statute of limitations on the author’s personal preference has expired: “Cather is now a part of our cultural history. Her works belong to something greater than herself. It is time to let the letters speak for ¬themselves.”

I don’t disagree with them, though I did find the reading experience uncomfortable, especially when I bumped up against one of Cather’s frequent declarations that she considers her letters “entirely personal and confidential,” or her request that a correspondent “just put them in the furnace, I shall be greatly obliged to you.” Ethics aside, Jewell and Stout have performed a valuable service with this book, from which Cather emerges as a strong and vivid presence, a woman at once surprisingly modern and touchingly â€" if not always sweetly â€" old-fashioned.

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Perrotta talks about Cather and her letters; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Alexandra Starr discusses T. D. Allman’s “Finding Florida”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. John Williams is the host, filling in for Pamela Paul.

Book Review Podcast: Willa Cather’s Letters

Javier Jaén Benavides

This week in The New York Times Book Review, Tom Perrotta reviews “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather,” a look at some of the correspondence that the great American writer wanted to keep private. Mr. Perrotta writes:

In their introduction, the editors admit they’ve defied Cather’s will (in both the legal and personal senses), but assure us they’ve done so with the best of intentions, hoping to liberate Cather’s actual words from the shackles of scholarly paraphrase: “Now we will all be able to read and interpret her letters for ourselves.” They also suggest the statute of limitations on the author’s personal preference has expired: “Cather is now a part of our cultural history. Her works belong to something greater than herself. It is time to let the letters speak for ¬themselves.”

I don’t disagree with them, though I did find the reading experience uncomfortable, especially when I bumped up against one of Cather’s frequent declarations that she considers her letters “entirely personal and confidential,” or her request that a correspondent “just put them in the furnace, I shall be greatly obliged to you.” Ethics aside, Jewell and Stout have performed a valuable service with this book, from which Cather emerges as a strong and vivid presence, a woman at once surprisingly modern and touchingly â€" if not always sweetly â€" old-fashioned.

On this week’s podcast, Mr. Perrotta talks about Cather and her letters; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Alexandra Starr discusses T. D. Allman’s “Finding Florida”; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. John Williams is the host, filling in for Pamela Paul.

This Week’s Movies: ‘Pain & Gain,’ ‘Mud’ and ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’

In this week’s video, Times critics offer their thoughts on “Pain & Gain,” “Mud” and “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.” See all of this week’s reviews here.

Prize Winners Announced at Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival Sitthiphon Disamoe in a scene from “The Rocket.”

“The Rocket,” Kim Mordaunt’s feature about a 10-year-old Laotian boy who seeks refuge from his difficult life by participating in a rocket-building contest, won two top prizes at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, claiming the festival’s Founders Award for best narrative feature and its best actor award for Sitthiphon Disamoe, who plays the film’s young protagonist.

Awards for the Tribeca Film Festival were announced at a ceremony on Thursday night, where the prize for best actress went to Veerle Baetens, a co-star of Felix van Groeningen’s “Broken Circle Breakdown”; that film, about the unlikely love between a bluegrass musician and a tattoo-parlor operator, also won the festival’s best screenplay, written by Mr. Van Groeningen and Carl Joos.

Emanuel Hoss-Desmarais, the director of the dark comedy “Whitewash,” was named best new narrative director, and “The Kill Team,” Dan Krauss’s non-fiction film about U.S. soldiers accused of a war crime in Afghanistan, was named best documentary feature. Sean Dunne, whose documentary “Oxyana” tells the story of a West Virginia town blighted by OxyContin addiction, was named best new documentary director.

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival will conclude on Sunday.

‘Here Lies Love’ Adds Another Month to Public Theater Run

“Here Lies Love,” the new David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical about Imelda Marcos, which opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater to some of the best reviews of the season, has added four weeks of performances through June 30, the theater announced on Friday. The run of the musical, directed by Tony Award nominee Alex Timbers (“Peter and the Starcatcher”), had already been extended twice. The 90-minute production at the Public’s LuEsther Hall has quickly become a tight ticket, in part because the space - in which most audience members stand, move, and occasionally dance during the show - holds only 160 people.

Given the strong reviews, some New York theater producers have been predicting that the Public will run “Here Lies Love” through the summer and then try to move the musical to another, perhaps larger venue. A transfer to Broadway would be trickier, since the show’s 360-degree staging would not fit with the traditional proscenium layout of most Broadway theaters. A spokeswoman for the Public had no comment on the musical’s future beyond the latest extension.

Return to South Ferry

Craig Ruttle/Associated Press The South Ferry subway station in October 2012.

Dear Diary:

I never thought the words
“South Ferry”
would so move me. But when I saw them,
lit up overhead on the subway
time board, first time since Sandy,
I smiled. Rector Street had cried out
for rectification.
Now, the One train was once again
back on track. Still much to be done,
but what joy in seeing
restoration, when so much
had and can go wrong.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.