“David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion has been awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music. The award, for distinguished musical composition by an American that has had its first performance or recording in the United States during the year, comes with a $10,000 cash prize. In addition, a Special Citation was awarded to Bob Dylan for his profound impact on popular music and American culture.”
Author: sbergman
Rothko’s Family Sues To Move His Remains
The children of artist Mark Rothko are petitioning the New York Supreme Court to allow their father’s remains to be moved from the Long Island cemetery where they have lain for 38 years to a Jewish cemetery in Westchester County, north of New York City. There will be plenty of resistance to the petition.
The City That Spurned Spamalot
The Monty Python-inspired musical is a smash on Broadway. It’s a smash in London. The national US tour is a hit as well. So what in the name of Arthur went wrong in Australia?
Did Oscar Wilde Beget Paris Hilton?
“Oscar Wilde, it seems, is our contemporary. He died in Paris 108 years ago, a near-friendless exile, impoverished, shunned, disgraced. Today, he is world-famous and universally admired… He would not have quarrelled with the attention: he was a pioneer of celebrity culture.”
Beijing’s Remarkable (And Rapid) Transformation
“This is the new dawn chorus of Beijing – the peal of hit steel, the crump of the piston hammer, the high song of the drill… Right now, Beijing is probably the biggest building site on earth, with the possible exceptions of Shanghai and Dubai. Urban re-engineering has taken place on a greater scale, perhaps – Haussmann’s Paris, Lutyens’s New Delhi – but never so rapidly.”
Novelist Of The People (Not The Critics)
If you’re in the habit of skimming the bestseller lists, you’ve probably heard of Jodi Picoult. If you’re someone who shops for novels in the displays at the very front of bookstores, you’ve almost certainly read one of her books. And if you’re a book critic, you likely despise her. And she’s really perfectly fine with all of that.
Are eBooks Finally Starting To Catch On?
The eBook revolution has been an excruciatingly slow-developing matter, but Amazon’s Kindle reader is helping more readers dip a toe in the new technology. “Publishing officials are reluctant to discuss sales figures, but say that they have seen double digit increases in ebook sales since the Kindle’s release, and renewed interest in downloads for the Sony Reader.”
Proving That Women Are Profitable (And Readable)
Virago Modern Classics is a UK institution, a bastion of neglected female writers whose novels have delighted generations of women. “The story of Virago was not always a happy one. In the early 1990s, the company struggled financially… But in 1995, it was sold to the company that owns it still – Little, Brown – and its turnover is now £5 million.”
Rushdie’s Anti-Muse
“Among other things, Salman Rushdie’s latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, is a hymn to the creative and destructive power of female beauty.” And, um, not to be indelicate, but this wouldn’t have anything at all to do with the fact the Mr. Rushdie was recently divorced from the undeniably beautiful Padma Lakshmi, would it?
Radio Du Jour
One of the advantages of satellite radio is that its bandwidth is nearly unlimited, allowing providers to add and subtract new stations as often as they wish. Lately, both XM and Sirius have been experimenting with temporary channels, offering topical or seasonal content for only as long as it is suspected listeners will be interested.