Independent bookstores as a group may be facing declining sales, but used bookstores are soing well. “The latest consumer book-purchase study shows that, nationally, used bookstores have increased their market share from 3% to 5% in recent years. The increasing retail prices for hardcover and paperbacks have encouraged consumers to seek out used books for better savings, according to the Book Industry Study Group. Some used-book sellers have found a way to make the Internet work for them, and most have garnered strong customer loyalty.”
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When Vandalism Is Art? Why?
Why shouldn’t Jake and Dinos Chapman’s much publicised modifications – or defacements, depending on your point of view – to a £25,000 set of prints of Goya’s ‘The Disasters’ be considered vandalism? “There’s no reason why they should work on the real thing apart from vanity on their part. I find it objectionable that they should, as they have consistently done, compare themselves to Goya, because he was a deeply serious artist and The Disasters of War is one of the most powerful commentaries on war ever created.”
In-House Orchestra Recording Riles Labels
As major recording labels backed off recording orchestras, some of the orchestras began producing their own discs. They’ve done okay, but “these homegrown labels are not a development that the majors’ classics division chiefs particularly welcome. EMI Classics, indeed, has become so riled by LSO Live that they have stopped hiring the London Symphony Orchestra for their own recording projects.”
Iraqi Libraries – Destruction Of History
The destruction of Iraq’s libraries is a disaster. “While the extent of the loss is not yet fully known, two great libraries, with priceless ancient collections, have been burned, and at least two others looted. In many respects, what has happened is the complete destruction of history. Manuscripts are the main materials we use to write history – it is the evidence. Books published in the last 30 years can be replaced. But rare manuscripts can never be replaced. The looting and burning of virtually all these collections is an incalculable and largely irreplaceable loss. Just imagine the Library of Congress and National Archive pillaged and burned.”
Language Police To The Rescue (Who Needs This Kind OF Saving?)
The language police have made it a crusade to expurgate language that could be offensive to some from American schoolbooks. “On the theory that a proper K-12 education should upset no one and affirm all, elaborate protocols now exist for the content of classroom materials. Anything even remotely sexist is verboten. Banished from respectable texts are such troublemakers as ‘babe,’ ‘chick’ and ‘co-ed,’ but so too are solid citizens like ‘actress,’ ‘brotherhood’ and ‘cattleman.’ Women are not to be portrayed as frightened, indecisive or vain; men as too assertive, analytical or violent. As for race and ethnicity, perish the stereotypical thought that Asians are studious and hardworking, that blacks excel in sports and music, or that Jews ever lived in tenements…” A new book reveals how far the rewriting goes.
Are European Schools Sanitizing History?
Is European history, as taught to Europe’s schoolchildren, being sanitized? Vikings, once referred to as “fierce raiders,” are now described as “Danes [who] besides being farmers, were much better at trading than Saxons”. Napoleon wasn’t an invader, he was “a reformer whose code of measurement was introduced throughout Europe.” “Vital pieces of history have been taken out of schoolbooks and the curriculum in the European-wide drive to pretend the union has a common identity and background.”
When The Arts Mattered On BBC – And How They Disappeared
How did the arts disappear on BBC? “First, expelling the arts from the main channels. We have seen the almost complete disappearance of the arts from BBC1. So, goodbye Omnibus, after 35 years. It was also decided that even BBC2, a “minority channel” for challenging programmes, shouldn’t be cluttered up with the arts. So, if they survived the culling of the mid-1990s-when long-running series like ‘The Late Show’ and ‘Bookmark’ were killed off—arts programmes were booted onto BBC4. The BBC does not even have a music and arts department any more. It is now part of specialist factual programming. Then there is the retreat from seriousness.”
Why Do We Fear Experts?
Just when did we become so distrustful of people who know things? “Unfortunately, this skepticism has metamorphosed over the decades into a determination that no one with special knowledge or experience is worth listening to. If Rembrandt were alive today, he’d be reviled by art students who don’t know how to prepare a canvas. Beethoven would be booed by experimental composers who couldn’t identify the key of C major on a bet, while Duke Ellington would be denigrated by rappers who couldn’t pick out a simple melody, much less aspire to the harmonic empyrean.”
NY Critics Insist On Seeing Sondheim Out-Of-Town
“The community of theater critics is turning itself inside out over whether to storm the barricades at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in late June and buy our own tickets to review ‘Bounce.’ This is the first collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince since their brilliant partnership imploded with the failure of “Merrily We Roll Along” in 1981. Sondheim and Prince don’t want national press. They claim we can review the show when a later edition plays the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in the fall. But this is a big deal. It is being offered as part of the Goodman’s regular nonprofit series, which should be open to national critics. It is not an out-of-town commercial tryout.”
San Francisco Area Arts Hurting For Money, Support
A bad economy is hurting Bay Area arts groups and artists. “The big four – the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet and American Conservatory Theater – are straining to cope with dwindling donations, volatile endowment funds, cuts in government grants and smaller, choosier audiences. ‘The arts have become a victim of the sour economy. Everybody’s ox is being gored. No one is exempt from the red ink’.”