In Brief: See You at the Lake Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Via Maud Newton, Edmund White has an essay on French writer Marguerite Duras, in which he labels her "preposterous." Like so many of her generation in France, it turns out that Duras has a questionable past in the Pétain era, having worked as a government censor. [New York Review of Books]


• If we have ever quoted from or linked to the news organization that is doing this absurd thing, we apologize. [Boing Boing]


• David L. Stern has the story of the next hot kid conductor. Following the example of Gustavo Dudamel, the young German conductor Jan Moritz Onken has received high praise at the podium of the national youth orchestra of Kazahkstan. [International Herald Tribune]


• Another one bites the dust: the Kansas City Star has fired Paul Horsley and eliminated the position of classical music critic. [Detritus Review]


• By popular vote, Duke Ellington should be on the District of Columbia's [not a] state quarter, edging out Frederick Douglass. However, as nothing is determined by democracy in our nation's capital, Ronald Reagan will probably end up on our quarter. They named our airport after him, too. [DCist]


• Rolando Villazón has returned to the stage, in the Don Carlo at Covent Garden. George Loomis says it is lavishly cast, noting especially that Villazón "pours out handsome tone," but that "sometimes the sound turns grainy and the role seems a stretch for his lyrical instrument." [International Herald Tribune]


• Hugh Canning, much more candidly, says that Villazón "is not, never has been and never will be the 'new Domingo'." [The Times]


• Bruce tells us that concerts from the Aspen, Aix, and Verbier festivals will be made available as Webcasts. Must. Listen. To. All. Of. It. [Monotonous Forest]


• This made me laugh. The people making an awful movie based on an awful book, Angels and Demons, wanted to film some scenes in two churches in Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria. Denied! says the Vatican. [Hollywood News]


• 1,001 books to read before you die. Get to work! [Listology]