“The simple but profound problem with many novelists, as James Wood reads them, is that they have failed to realise the true nature of their chosen form; they are artists who have not yet learned how to reply to their calling. Stendhal once famously compared the novel to a mirror being carried down the road, innocently catching all the angles of life. By contrast, Wood argues, contemporary novelists too often treat their pages more like flypaper, ready to cling on to any randomly floating bits of cultural debris.”
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Roomful Of Turkey (Feathers)
“If you stick a quarter of a million turkey feathers dyed black on all four walls of a room in a major art gallery, you are bound to get some kind of reaction from visitors – if only splutterings about taxpayers’ money. Curators at Manchester Art Gallery said this week that they were delighted that the responses to Susie MacMurray’s installation, Flock, have been the most intense since the gallery reopened in 2002 after being extended and refurbished.”
Jansons Legacy At The Pittsburgh Symphony
This week Mariss Jansons leaves his post as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. “Jansons inherited an ensemble of first-rate musicians. And with that beaming smile and charming personality, he navigated them to warmer artistic waters. If they were choppy at times, it’s clear Pittsburgh and its orchestra ultimately benefited from him as captain, and he with them. The city that repaired his heart with a defibrillator and warmed it with a cordial writing campaign received in return the kind of passionate performances that result in the loftiest of musical standards.”
Who Will Succeed Jansons In Pittsburgh?
“With potential candidates streaming into the vacuum next season — including Marin Alsop, Martin Haselbock, Peter Oundjian and Mark Wigglesworth — it may take a year even to name a designate. Pinchas Zukerman comes often next year as a pseudo music director and Hans Graf will lead the PSO on an important European tour in 2005, but both appear to be far down the list. Candidates such as Donald Runnicles, Alan Gilbert, Leonard Slatkin and Antonio Pappano may now be in the running, though they need to get in front of the orchestra.”
The Curse Of The Big Advance
Hari Kunzru “received a sum approaching £1.25m for the UK, American and European rights to his first novel, The Impressionist, and, around the time of its publication, he was so predictably and so tediously hyped, there was every reason for assuming that he would soon disappear – yet another literary shout reduced to a whisper. For the truth is that however many long-haul air fares and pieces of groovy Sixties furniture an advance buys you (I gather he likes Verner Panton), such immensely fat deals are more a curse than a blessing. Even if, by some miracle, the first book is a hit, the second is doomed.”
Hollywood Jobs Disappearing
“Hollywood’s thousands of journeymen are losing ground, fast, as age-old presumptions and ways of doing business collide with new market forces. In the past few years, the cultural juggernaut known as reality TV and other factors have turned a difficult job market into an untenable one for many of the entertainment industry’s rank-and-file actors, artists and technicians. And those jobs that remain often pay less than they did years ago as studios are forced to surrender more of their films’ budgets to above-the-line talent, new technology reduces the length of shoots and nonunion shops grab ever bigger shares of the entertainment industry’s myriad professions.”
Dance’s Pop Attraction
“More and more, dance companies are turning to popular music — particularly rock ‘n’ roll — as a contemporary outlet for new work. Not that this is anything new. Ballet appears to be cutting to the quick in the drive to meet ticket-buyers at the turnstile. The collective reasoning is to attract new and younger audiences, and those who turned out for Joel and Springsteen ranged from teenagers to middle-aged fans.”
Tonys Signal Broadway Breadth
The range of nominations for this year’s Tonys give a good sense of the health of Broadway, writes Howard Kissel. “These nominations suggest that “mainstream” theater is now less easy to characterize than it was when, say, “Death of a Salesman” or “The Crucible” won Best Play or “Diary of Anne Frank” beat “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” for that award.”
The Enterainment Value Of Destroying New York
And now, another movie that manages to destroy New York City. Why do we seem to get so much pleasure wrecking one of America’s greatest cities? “Cities are meant to be civic, communal places, yet – looking at Piranesi’s panoramas of ruined Rome, or Bill Brandt’s photographs of a lunar London during the blitz – we take a perverse pleasure in imagining them emptied. Is this because we wish our obnoxious fellow citizens dead, or because we know that the city will outlive us?”
Animation – TV’s Next Big Ratings Breakthrough?
This is the time of year TV execs decide what’s going to make their schedules next season. “This year, however, a dark horse has charged onto the TV scene: animation, a genre that to date has provided some of the edgiest and most sophisticated shows on TV. NBC, Fox, the SciFi Channel, and Comedy Central – to name a few – plan to add animated fare to their menu next season. Just as “The Simpsons” essentially saved Fox Network 15 years ago, animated cartoons could become the small screen’s pinch hitters, even if they’ve been benched for a while.”