“Three Muslim men were jailed today for an arson attack on the home of the publisher of a novel about Aisha, the child bride of the prophet Muhammad. The trio poured diesel on the front door of the house in Islington, north London, and set it on fire. The attack in September last year took place days before Martin Rynja’s company, Gibson Square, was scheduled to publish The Jewel of Medina, by the American author Sherry Jones.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Playboy To Publish First Excerpt Of Nabokov’s Last Novella
“Hugh Hefner’s Playboy has acquired the first serial rights to The Original of Laura, the final, unfinished novella of the late [Vladimir] Nabokov.” Also known as the book Nabokov wanted destroyed, a wish his son ultimately decided against.
Wall Street Journal Planning New York Culture Section
“Several Journal sources have confirmed to Off the Record that a weekly New York-only arts-and-culture section is in the planning stages up at The Journal‘s new Sixth Avenue headquarters. It’s early yet, but in the very near future, a budget will be drafted for the product, an indication that the effort is a serious one. The new section could be introduced into the newspaper early next year, according to our sources.”
Freight Container Is Stage For Human-Trafficking Play
“The container is not just the set, but the theatre itself; the audience of 28 will sit on boxes inside as the action goes on around them, and the only lighting will come from torches carried by the actors. A few extra ventilation holes will be drilled; the Young Vic doesn’t want the audience passing out. Recreating the smell of excrement would have been too overwhelming, says [director Tom Wright], but the heat, darkness, smell of sweaty bodies and claustrophobia will make the experience real enough.”
A Panoramic View Of The Foreclosure Crisis In NYC
Artist Damon Rich has used the Panorama of the City of New York, created for the 1964 World’s Fair, to map foreclosures’ impact on the city in 2008. “Each plastic triangle represents a block where there have been three or more home foreclosures. Visitors on the balcony walkway that surrounds the Panorama, at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, can see in a single glance precisely where subprime lenders wreaked the most havoc.”
Putting Italy’s ‘Hot Pot,’ And Illicit Market, Under Microscope
“Italy’s biggest prize in the war against looting antiquities went on view recently at the Villa Giulia in Rome. … Maybe overexposure explains why this didn’t strike Italians as particularly big news. The media mostly gave the event a pass. The gallery was empty the other afternoon. A new book may help revive interest.”
Will Obama Administration Walk The Walk On Arts Policy?
“During the campaign, Obama billed himself as a ‘champion for arts and culture,’ and now, a White House spokesman says that he is committed ‘to ensuring that the arts community has an open line to the White House.’ … [A]rts watchers are following Obama’s personnel and budgeting moves for clues as to how seriously he plans to showcase and support the arts on the policy front — and some say the early moves suggest that he won’t be taking any big, bold steps.”
Serial Break: Day By Day, Publishing Short Fiction Online
The website Five Chapters, started in 2006, each week “publishes a five-part story, serial-style, Monday through Friday. It’s Charles Dickens for the 21st century. And what’s more, [founder Dave Daley] has managed to attract some of the country’s hottest writers, including Stewart O’Nan, Arthur Phillips, Curtis Sittenfeld, John Wray, Wells Tower, Julia Glass, Darin Strauss, Jay McInerney and Kate Christensen. All for free.”
After Long Dispute, Agreement On Internet Radio Royalties
“The music won’t stop for Internet radio after a group of webcasters struck an agreement with SoundExchange, the organization that collects royalties for musicians and record companies, over payments for playing music online. … Tuesday’s settlement allows webcasters to avoid per-song royalty payments that were set in 2007 by a special federal court and that many Internet radio providers said would force them out of business.”
Drabinsky’s Sentencing Proposal: I’ll Go On Tour
Livent founder and former Broadway producer Garth Drabinsky, convicted of fraud and forgery, “would teach theater students ‘discipline in the craft,’ talk about honesty and ‘avoidance of unethical conduct’ in visits to 65 schools across the country, as part of a sentence in which he would avoid jail, his lawyer Edward Greenspan told a judge at a sentencing hearing in Toronto today.”