Azar Nafisi, 54, has a book on the bestseller list. Now she’s “learning the pitfalls and conundrums of playing the fame game in her adopted country as she contends with her corporate handlers, her book club fans and jealous former countrymen. “I thought I can live with the snide remarks: `Look at her wanting to become a celebrity, yada yada,’ ” she said. “That is not pleasant, but you can live with it. But one thing I can’t live with, which I would criticize, is to be in competition with my book. A writer should allow the work to speak for itself.”
Blog
Morris: Live Music Matters
“With dance companies often scrounging just to meet the electric bill or pay their staff, why opt for the expense and trouble of live music? To Mark Morris, the proof is in the performance. “That’s my own experience, dancing for other people. If the music is taped, your heart sinks when you’re doing the dance for the 150th time, and it doesn’t vary’.”
BookExpo: Publishing By The Numbers
How is the publishing industry doing? Take a look at the numbers: “During Expo, the Association of American Publishers announced that sales of consumer books were up 6.3 percent. Religious publishing rose a stunning 37 percent. E-books grew 45 percent, though, the Association noted, that was from a tiny beginning base. E-books are never returned, while mass-market books were returned at a rate of 41 percent of sales.”
Rashad Makes Tony History
“One year after Hollywood broke its colour barrier in the leading actress Oscar category, the Broadway theatre made its own history last night, giving three of four female acting Tony awards to black actresses in two plays set during the U.S. civil-rights movement.”
Are Record Stores About To Slip Into History?
A new report says that with the increasing popularity of music downloading and the availability of CDs in supermarkets, record stores in the UK are in danger of disappearing. “The pressure of new players competing for the record buyer’s pound could make music stores ‘irrelevant’, it stated.”
WTC Culture Groups To Be Named This Week?
“The field of arts organizations vying for space has also been narrowed to six from a group of 15 named in February, a source familiar with the decision told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity. They are the New York City Opera, the Joyce Theater, the Signature Theatre Company, the New York Hall of Science, the Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, the source said.”
New Music In Little Pieces
Greg Sandow observes that new music has difficulty widening its appeal. “New music in New York seems fragmented, right now, at least to me, and I’d like to see more going on that would bind us together. We talk as if we have common interests, and we have organizations that support us all. But how much do we even know about what we all are doing?”
Regretting The Pulitzer Changes
Josh Kosman doesn’t like the decision to open the Pulitzers to different genres of music. “In truth, the prize has now been thrown open to all musical comers — pop, classical, jazz, bluegrass, salsa, hip-hop, written and improvised, recorded and live and everything in between. Any musical utterance heard within the 50 states is now, in theory, eligible for a Pulitzer. Does that amount to inclusiveness, eclecticism, a postmodern abolition of restrictive conceptual categories, or any other warm and fuzzy gesture of goodwill? Not at all. It’s an attempt to be all things to all people, something that you and I know never works. The result will inevitably be to drive an already marginal accolade further down the path to insignificance.”
The End Of Seattle BookFest
Why did Seattle’s BookFest festival bite the dust? “The argument over what Bookfest could have done better is now hypothetical, but what no one seems exactly ready to admit is that if recent festivals had been better and more accessible (and more interesting), they would have drawn more paying vendors and more paying attendees, and the finances would likely have fallen into place. Financial instability, dwindling attendance, the remoteness of the Sand Point venue, and increasing criticism about the quality of the festival are among the problems that have plagued Bookfest in recent years.”
UK’s Most-Loved Contemporary Books
At the Hay Literary Festival, “the women-only Orange prize for fiction set out to discover the British public’s most cherished contemporary novels – and found that 58% were by men. But organisers said this margin was smaller than it would have been before the prize was founded to promote writing by women eight years ago.”