The James Joyce estate, headed by the author’s grandson Stephen, has gone so far as to get a program celebrating James Joyce banned from Irish radio and to forbid Kate Bush to use even a few lines of Ulysses in a song; Stephen even tried to prevent the National Library of Ireland from exhibiting some of its own Joyce manuscripts. James Joyce biographer Gordon Bowker explains the difficulties.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Sticker Shock: How Much Amazon Charges Authors To Deliver One E-Book
“Andrew Hyde wrote and self-published a great-looking travel book and put it up for sale on Amazon … but he got some sticker-shock when he found out that Amazon was charging very high ‘delivery fees’ for his books, even when the buyers were buying from WiFi.” The fee: “$2.58 per download + 30% of whatever you sell” – a markup Hyde calculates to be roughly 129,000%.”
Ancient Church At Rome’s Forum To Reopen To Visitors
“By the eighth century one of the earliest churches in Rome was considered quaint enough to be called Santa Maria Antiqua. … The church was adapted in the sixth century from first-century rooms that might have been the entryway to a palace. Layer after layer of saint murals were painted. The holy men and women in images from around A.D. 700 were believed to cure disease.”
Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Resigns
The other shoe has dropped at the Washington National Opera: Christina Scheppelmann, the company’s director of artistic operations … [who] has been largely, if not exclusively, responsible for WNO’s artistic profile in the past few years, particularly as Placido Domingo’s tenure drew to a close … will step down at the end of November.”
Whoops! Did The Colorado Symphony Leak The Name Of Its New Music Director?
“The CSO sent out an e-mail Wednesday for a June 25 event in which the media was ‘cordially invited to meet the new artistic leadership of the orchestra.’ No names were attached. But the subject line of the e-mail read: ‘You are invited to the Andrew Litton press conference’.”
Portrait Of Young Jane Austen Authenticated (And Why That Matters)
“Last week, researchers unveiled new evidence suggesting that a long-disputed portrait does, in fact, depict a thirteen-year-old Jane Austen. … Of all writers, she is one that we would like to visualize accurately, in the half-belief that if we could just get a good look at her, we would be able to see something more of her world.”
Does Reading Really Help Set Women Free? (Depends On What They Read)
“This is not a particularly revolutionary thesis, of course; reading is often seen as quintessentially empowering and freeing. But is it?” Well, it beats illiteracy, obviously. Yet, for one example, “Harlequin romances, Gothic romances, and soap operas addressed women’s anxieties and concerns – not in the interest of freedom, but rather in the interest of reconciling them to their lot in patriarchy.”
L.A. Company Finds More People Come To See Classical Plays In Pasadena (Who Knew?)
“A Noise Within has reported an upswing in audiences in its first season at its new location in Pasadena. The classical repertory theater company, which was located in Glendale for close to 20 years, began performances at its new venue in October.”
Hang On – Royal Ballet Choreographer Wayne McGregor Was Inspired To Go Into Dance By Whom?
John Travolta.
Forget ‘Crowd Curation’ – We Need ‘Standards Of Taste’
Surveying the “oddly disjointed results” of the new show at Baltimore’s Walters Arts Museum (curated entirely by the public) and the “embarrassing” results of the Pittsburgh Symphony’s YouTube competition for a concerto soloist (all four finalists were rejected, Eric Felten argues that we should leave the artistic choices to the professionals.