Best-selling German author Frank Schätzing has been accused of plagiarizing “large chunks of his latest blockbuster from the internet. The book, The Swarm, is an apocalyptic eco-thriller which tells the story of how a mysterious undersea being known as Yrr incites the natural world to revolt against humans. It has been an extraordinary success, selling more than 700,000 copies in Germany. It has even been credited with saving the lives of several German holidaymakers who fled to safety after reading its vivid description of how the tide goes out before a tsunami. Yesterday, however, a German biologist accused Schätzing of “plundering” much of the material used in the book from his scientific website.”
Month: April 2005
Kahlo Cache Discovered
A two-year renovation project at the home-turned-museum of legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo has uncovered a vast wardrobe of previously undiscovered clothing and other valuable artifacts.
Bellow Was Best
“The greatest of late-20th-century American novelists, Saul Bellow, who died Tuesday at 89, resembled his fellow immortals above in a way Americans especially trust. He won the stats game: three National Book Awards, one Pulitzer, and The Big One, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Yet like any cultural giant, Bellow bestowed more prestige on the prizes he received than they conferred on him.”
Lifestyle Of Fake Architecture
Forget malls. How 90s of you. Today’s temples to shopping aggregation are called “lifestyle centers” (we kiddeth thee not). “While these new malls may appear to be public space, they’re not public at all—at least if you want to do anything but shop. They represent a bait-and-switch routine on the part of developers, one that exchanges the public realm for the commercial one. They’re also enormously successful—by the most recent count, there are about 130 lifestyle centers scattered around the country.”
A Wedding Verse? (How To Make It Memorable) (You Can’t)
One of Andrew Motion’s jobs as British Poet Laureate is to compose a poem to comemorate Prince Charles’ Royal wedding. “Every single time, it’s an impossible job. One’s not entirely clear why anyone bothers to do it.”
LA County Museum In A Leadership Void
What does Andrea Rich’s sudden retirement running the LA County Museum mean? “Everybody is trying to put the best face on the sudden “retirement.” LACMA still has tens of millions of dollars to raise for construction and endowment in its multiphase expansion plan, and now there are two big jobs to be filled, not just one. (Perhaps the nascent deputy will be promoted.) For that, unfortunately, LACMA will have to go to the back of a lengthy line; major director searches are already underway at heavy-hitters such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum and the Minneapolis Art Institute. But what ended badly, started badly. The vacuum in professional conscience from both the boardroom (expected) and the director’s suite (unexpected) means LACMA has been a rudderless ship for longer than a decade.
Do Pulitzers Proclaim The Best In American Music?
What to think about Steven Stucky winning this year’s Pulitzer for music? Particularly after last year’s decision to broaden the definition of music eligible for the award? Frank Oteri chews on it: “I do think in some ways, we music folk are a little too obsessed with other people determining for us what the best is—residue from Beethoven and the gang, which is the same “masterpiece syndrome” that keeps so many in the classical community from ever paying attention to any new music in the first place. I sincerely wonder if novelists and poets scratch their heads in dismay every year when their favorite writer fails to win a Pulitzer. So then, what to make of the results of the 2005 Pulitzer jury?”
Kaiser Fires Back At GAO
Kennedy Center chairman Michael Kaiser defended his organization’s construction cost overruns and fire safety plans before a Congressional committee yesterday, taking issue with a General Accounting Office report which harshly criticized the performing arts complex. “Kaiser argued that the center overhauled its management of construction finances in 2003, after the GAO first found accounting problems.” The Kennedy Center is accountable to Congress rather than to a city entity, because Washington, D.C.’s civic budget is largely controlled by the federal government.
Architects, Pop Stars: Who Can Tell The Difference Anymore?
How do you know when the whole architect-as-superstar phenomenon has gotten completely out of control? When Frank Gehry shows up to play himself on an episode of The Simpsons…
Whatever Happened To Sondheim?
Stephen Sondheim is as legendary as it gets in theatre circles, yet he hasn’t had a bona fide hit in more than a decade. Yet “even as his own creative powers appear to dim, Sondheim is enjoying a golden age of revivals, reassessments, retrospectives and tributes.” In fact, many Sondheim shows now being revived to great acclaim were popular and critical failures the first time around (Assassins, for instance.) “Wise and mortality-haunted beyond his years, he’s made a career exploring themes that others on Broadway rarely touch — emotional ambiguity, moral ambivalence, the impermanence of love, the terrors of connection, death. But somehow now, more than ever, Sondheim seems a man out of joint with his time.”