“Faulkner Literary Rights, the company that controls works by that Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, has filed a lawsuit over Mr. Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris and what it says is that movie’s unauthorized use of a line from Faulkner’s book Requiem for a Nun.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘I Was Ayn Rand’s Lover’ (The New Yorker Finds Its Inner Onion)
“I was a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old, she was a prominent international author – and we were lovers. By ‘lovers’ I mean: we were constantly raping each other. Well, first there’d be a long speech. Usually by her. Then we’d gaze deeply at one another, and our souls would begin speaking the only language a man and a woman ever need: the language of mutual self-benefit.”
Composer Hans Werner Henze, 86
“[He] was a major figure in the music of the past half-century and the leading German composer of the post-1945 era; but he was often at odds with his native country politically and aesthetically. … At one time a strict adherent to the serial technique of composition, he later abandoned it. Declaring his belief in melody, he was regarded by the avant-garde as a traitor to the cause.”
That Phoenix Frank Lloyd Wright House? Landmark Status May Not Save It
In Arizona, landmark status lasts only three years. If the developers who bought it can’t sell it, says one of them, “I’ll move in, invite everybody to come in and take their pictures, and I’m going to wait three years. Then I’m going to knock it down to recoup my losses. … [For] me to carry the cross for Frank Lloyd Wright, that’s not fair.”
Random House And Penguin Plan Merger
“Pearson, the British media conglomerate that owns Penguin, said Thursday that it was discussing a potential deal with Random House’s owner, Bertelsmann of Germany. The merger, if completed, would create a combined entity that would control nearly 25 percent of the United States book market.”
Jacques Barzun, 104, Cultural Historian
“[He was] a Columbia University historian and administrator whose sheer breadth of scholarship – culminating in a survey of 500 years of Western civilization [From Dawn to Decadence] – brought him renown as one of the foremost intellectuals of the 20th century.”
Gangnam Style? What Is Gangnam, Anyway?
“[W]hile the huge viral success of [Korean pop group] Psy’s hit has created a whole genre of jockey-based dance moves” – from dissident artist Ai Weiwei to London mayor Boris Johnson – “Gangnam is a place, too. It’s the Mayfair of Seoul, the high-rise district of the city just south of the river. Although it does feature one large and rather beautiful temple, Bongeun, for the most part, Gangnam is an upmarket shopping area.”
Ban This Filth! Rereading Letters From Britain’s Top Anti-Filth-In-Media Campaigner
“Here, the bottomless capacity for affront of morally upright, often evangelically Christian, middle England clashes repeatedly with the patrician disdain of those men (and they were overwhelmingly men) who ran the culture industries, be they telly, theatre, cinema, magazines or pornography.”
Anita Björk, Bergman Star And Sweden’s Top Stage Actress, Dead At 89
“Björk was considered the leading lady of Swedish theater, with a cool aura not unlike that of Greta Garbo. [Her] deep, self-restrained voice was impossible to confuse with anyone else’s. She appeared in more than 100 roles, many directed by Bergman. Björk’s international breakthrough came with the title role in Alf Sjöberg’s 1951 Strindberg adaptation Miss Julie.”
Amazon May Buy Brazil’s Largest Book Retailer
“Rumors of Amazon’s activity in Brazil have been circulating for years, with more and more coming each day. The fact is, you can’t really call them rumors any longer.” But rumors/reports are suggesting that Amazon is trying to acquire the Saraiva group, which owns a successful chain of bookstores and one of the country’s top publishers.