“In one of the biggest literary upsets for some years, a previously low-rated novel last night scooped the £30,000 Orange prize for fiction. After a hard-fought final round, judges gave the women-only award to Andrea Levy’s Small Island, a comedy about the punctured illusions, tribulations and spry adaptability of the pioneer Windrush generation of immigrants to Britain in the early 1950s.”
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Judging A Lit Prize – Exhausting
Judging a literary prize such as the Orange requires great feats of endurance from judges. “I left the meeting slightly hysterical, convinced that there was no way I would ever finish these novels – 46 in six weeks in the first batch, although I would read 71 in total – and certain that my swotty fellow judges would. So at 2am that night I realised I needed to make a schedule. Weekends were best – say, six novels – and then a couple in the week, in the odd spare evenings or on the bus. This was the exact opposite of the languorous pleasure I usually take from reading, and the intensity had consequences.”
German Orchestra Refuses To Play Anthem
“A German orchestra was threatened with dismissal after instrumentalists mutinied over having to play the communist anthem, the Internationale, for an audience of blue-collar car-assembly workers”
How An Ancient “Unreadable” Book Becomes A Bestseller
Two friends took “an unreadable book, written more than a half-millennium ago in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean” and rewrote it, modernizing the plot. Voila – the thriller turns into an instant bestseller…
The 24-Hour Play
“Furthering its interest in new writing, the Old Vic theatre in London has just staged Britain’s first 24-hour plays. Six playwrights, six directors and 24 actors wrote, cast, rehearsed and performed six new 10-minute plays in one day and night.”
Kimball: Pining For The Melting Pot
Roger Kimball writes that multiculturalism is destroying America. “Multiculturalism and ‘affirmative action’ are allies in the assault on the institution of American identity. As such, they oppose the traditional understanding of what it means to be an American. This crucible of American identity, this ‘melting pot,’ has two aspects. The negative aspect involves disassociating oneself from the cultural imperatives of one’s country of origin. One sheds a previous identity before assuming a new one. One might preserve certain local habits and tastes, but they are essentially window-dressing. In essence one has left the past behind in order to become an American citizen. The positive aspect of advancing the melting pot involves embracing the substance of American culture.”
LA To Save Animation Studio Buildings
The Los Angeles city council has decided to preserve all three of the buildings that once comprised the historic Hanna-Barbera animation studio, where such TV icons as the Flintstones, Barney Rubble, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Scooby-Doo came to life. “It was at the studio that Bill Hanna and his partner Joe Barbera perfected ‘limited animation,’ which is far cheaper than the traditional kind. It also involves far less movement of the animated characters, however, and thus is criticized by some purists. Hanna and Barbera perfected the cheap technique in the late 1950s, a time when the major studios were closing their labor-intensive animation departments, and thus some have credited them with helping save the cartooning industry.”
No Tony Winners For Republicans
Republicans won’t be seeing Broadway’s Tony winners at the convention this summer. “With thousands of Republicans set to descend on the Big Apple to nominate President Bush for re-election, convention organizers decided to treat delegates to the glitz of Broadway before they knuckled down to the business of politics. But Republican organizers, selling themselves as the family-values party, decided to buy tickets to tame shows like “42nd Street” and Disney productions like “Aida” and “The Lion King,” avoiding more offbeat fare.”
Trier Pulls Out Of Bayreuth Ring
“The Danish film-maker Lars von Trier has thrown Bayreuth into confusion. Not by his outrageous take on the operas of Richard Wagner, nor by spectacular fallouts with divas – but by admitting that he is not up to the job of directing the festival’s forthcoming Ring cycle.”
Retelling MoMA
Curators at the Museum of Modern Art struggles to retell the story of their collection in the new spaces of their new home. “It is a daunting task: to use the museum’s vast collection to tell the history of modern art in new and unfamiliar galleries. Not only has the museum’s collection grown and changed enormously since the institution’s founding in 1929, but so has the way that people look at art. We’re talking to a younger and in many ways better-educated audience but one that is not necessarily more sophisticated”