“Hoping to promote overlooked contemporary literary fiction, 20 literary bloggers have created Read This! Four times a year, the Litblog Co-op will share its pick with readers, with the first announcement coming May 15.” The idea is to see if coordinated focus on the same books will help promote them.
Month: April 2005
The Problem With Writing Too Much
Where many authors struggle to write 1000 words a day, others crank out full novels at a super-human rate. Steven King is so prolific he even invented another persona to take credit for the overflow. A dependable high-performer can help a publisher’s bottom line. But can writing too much saturate an author’s market?
MoMA Notches A Million Visitors
The Museum of Modern Art has had 1 million visitors since its new building opened in November. “If the current rate of visits continues, the museum expects to have twice as many visitors this year as the 1.5 million it received annually in the mid-1990s, prior to the revamp.”
US State Department, NEA, Agree On Biennale Selection Process
The National Endowment for the Arts and the US State Department have signed an agreement to create a new committee to choose American artists for international biennales. “The committee will comprise “up to seven people”, appointed by the NEA for terms of “no more than three years”. They will include curators, artists, museum directors, specialists in American contemporary art, and perhaps persons from outside the field as well. Important details remain uncertain, including the names of anyone who will serve on the newly established panel, precisely how the selection will take place, and how exhibitions will be administered and funded.”
A Lit Experiment
The new Lit Blog consortium is an experiment in literary sociology. “Can a group of people frustrated with prevailing trends in the publishing industry (which is constantly on the lookout for the next Da Vinci Code, as if one weren’t enough) and with mainstream media (where reviewing space shrinks constantly) win recognition for a worthy, but otherwise potentially overlooked, piece of fiction? Or, to put it another way: Do literary bloggers have any power? Considering how many novels and short story collections they now publish, university presses may well want to monitor the results.”
Claim: Australian Arts Funding Is Inefficient
A recent review of Australian orchestras was dumped on for its call for reductions. But the report also took to task some current government funding policies that work contrary to the interests of efficient arts funding. “The existing system is poor public policy because it encourages short-term, knee-jerk reactions rather than considered, long-term planning. It makes proper governance very difficult for the boards of the affected organisations, which find themselves in a constant state of siege. And it means that arts ministers are constantly put in a mendicant position in relation to their cabinet colleagues.”
Performers Warned Off Edinburgh Fringe Venue
Performers at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival are being warned not to use space in one of the Festival’s largest venues after the theatre failed to pay a third of the performers who had worked there. “As the second largest venue in the Cowgate, with a capacity to hold 36 shows, it is a big loss for the Fringe. The Underbelly, which can hold more than 60 shows, is the only larger venue in the area. City festival leaders last night said it was a great blow for the prestigious event and called on new venues to come forward to bridge the gap.”
English National Ballet On the Brink
The English National Ballet is on the verge of bankruptcy and needs emergency cash to survive. But “for the past 15 years, ENB has been the least settled of the nation’s three great ballet companies, not much loved by critics, and torn between its board’s desire for box office populism and the higher aspirations of an alarmingly brisk turnover of artistic directors.” Is giving ENB more money just throwing it away?
Hitler Film Will Show In Israel
An Israeli film distribution company has decided to show a controversial movie about Hitler after polling viewers. “The debate over whether to screen in Israel a movie, which has been criticised for its human portrayal of Hitler, led Lev Cinemas and Shani films, who had purchased the local rights, to conduct test screenings on members of the Lev Cinema subscribers’ club. The decision to poll moviegoers was taken in order not to offend Holocaust survivors and others who might find the film distasteful.”
Proving Martha Graham
There are problems with the current offering of the Martha Graham Company. But “to criticize certain aspects of its current season is not to dismiss the company’s achievement. It’s proved itself. Now we must hope that as it continues to expand its repertory—not with the specious products of Graham’s later years but with major works like Letter to the World and even Clytemnestra—it will grow even stronger and surer of itself. Major choreographers like Doris Humphrey who didn’t leave behind settled institutions can slip away from us. That mustn’t happen to Martha Graham—and it won’t, if the Martha Graham Dance Company holds its course.”