Britain’s Channel 4 hopes to create great public art. “The Big Art Project is seeking nominations from communities, identifying sites where a piece of significant public art could be placed. Six sites will be shortlisted by a panel of experts in January, and the series will follow the progress of the communities working with artists to commission and create the pieces. The completed works are expected to be unveiled in October 2007.”
Blog
The Lolita Before The “Lolita”?
Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” is 50 years old this year. But a researcher has dug up “a 1916 short story by the aristocratic German writer Heinz von Eschwege (1890-1951), a German newspaper journalist (and descendant of the Grimm Brothers) who wrote under the pen name Heinz von Lichberg and later became a Nazi Party propagandist. The story involved a cultivated middle-aged man bewitched by a preteen beauty named Lolita. It appeared as one of a collection of 15 tales published by Falken Verlag in Darmstadt under the title, ‘The Accursed Giocanda’.”
Detroit Jazz – Benefactor Or Purchaser?
A Detroit philanthropist is offering to save the Detroit Jazz Festival with a $10 million commitment. “Here’s the rub: Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, which has produced the jazz festival since 1994, would have to give up control of the event.”
Shocking, Sure, But Will It Still Be Funny?
When Aaron McGruder’s blunt and unapologetic comic strip, The Boondocks, hit newspapers in the late 1990s, it sparked enough outrage to make even Garry Trudeau flinch. Now, the strip is migrating to TV (albeit late-night cable,) and McGruder has obviously refused to tone down his inflammatory style for wide distribution. The hope, of course, is that Boondocks will be an underground hit with the disenfranchised left. “But can underage conspiracy theories, racial paranoia and offensive stereotypes come across as funny on television? Can you really say the n-word so many times and still get laughs, shock or outrage?”
Museum Reopenings Spark A Bit Of American Self-Adulation
“To celebrate the reopening of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery next July, a coalition of cultural organizations is organizing a salute to America’s originality. The two museums, which share the historic Patent Office Building, will open July 1 after a six-year, multimillion-dollar renovation. A special 24-hour preview of the massive building, with 30,000 square feet of additional gallery space, will be held that day.”
A Forever-Distant Author Gets Personal
Joan Didion has always been known for her famously refined literary voice, her sentences so polished and buffed that they almost seem to come from another literary era. But when tragedy struck Didion’s family, writing became a way to deal with her grief, and to work through her conflicting emotions. As she puts it, “This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself.”
A Series Of Fortunate Career Moves
“As Daniel Handler and his editor, Susan Rich, laugh together and share anecdotes about how they launched A Series of Unfortunate Events, it’s apparent that they’re both still gobsmacked by their success. The Lemony Snicket books have sold 46 million copies, and the total is ballooning every day with the release this month of the 12th of a projected 13 in the series, The Penultimate Peril.” Handler actually didn’t start out with the intention of being a children’s author, but after several failed attempts at getting publishers interested in his adult fiction, he pitched his “terrible” idea for the Lemony Snicket series, and in no time, he was one of the hottest commodities in young adult literature.
Still, It Beats The Usual Political Memoir (zzzzz…)
Politicians do not generally make great novelists. (Heck, for most of them, getting through a speech without falling all over themselves constitutes a minor victory.) So one could be forgiven for sneering a bit at California Senator Barbara Boxer’s debut novel, which pits a liberal senator (surprise!) against an arch-conservative nominee to the Supreme Court. But wait – Boxer wrote the novel over a year ago, long before the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the subsequent death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The parallels to the current dust-up over Court nominee Harriet Miers are palpable, and make the book worth a look. Of course, Boxer is a blue-state pol first and foremost, so red-staters looking for a sympathetic (or realistic) portrayal will be sorely disappointed.
Cuban Choir Members On Tour Defect To Canada
Members of a Cuban choir on tour in Canada have defected. “In all, 11 of the 41-member choir managed to flee the hotel between 6 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, when Digna Guerra, the choir’s manager, discovered the absences. In an emergency meeting, she warned the remaining singers that the Cuban government would retaliate against their family members if they tried to seek asylum here.”
Siminovotch Award To Half Life Author
Playwright John Mighton has won Canada’s richest theatre prize for his entire body of work, which includes this year’s breakout hit, Half Life. The Elinore & Lou Siminovitch Prize, which pays CAN$100,000 to the winner, recognizes “a body of work by an artist in mid-career,” but there’s no question that the popularity of Mighton’s latest play was a factor in his win. “Last week, it was short-listed for the Governor-General’s Literary Awards, for English drama. Audiences have also embraced Mighton’s play, set in a nursing home and exploring memory loss as a natural and necessary part of human evolution.”