No country is more haunted by the spirit of its dead writers than Russia. Yet the Russian image of the novelist is no longer that of reverent seer or even heroic dissident. If anyone embodies the new image of the writer in Russia it is the 38-year-old Victor Pelevin, a laconic semi-recluse with a shaved head, a fashionable interest in Zen meditation and an eccentric attachment to dark glasses. Pelevin has emerged as that unusual thing: a genuinely popular serious writer. – New York Times Magazine
Blog
BROADWAY ON TOUR
Touring Broadway shows make more money than even a record year on the Great White Way itself. But what are patrons of the road shows really getting for their money? Some of these shows are Broadway Lite. – San Francisco Chronicle
CONTRIBUTING TO THE SAUSAGE
New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater needs a new theater. The city’s mayor thinks it would be swell to locate it downtown to help rebuild the area. But there’s this big new mall coming near the present site… – Hartford Courant
PLAY INCUBATOR
Some of the UK’s best playwrights flock to London’s National Theatre Studio, next door to the Old Vic, to workshop their plays. – The Telegraph (UK)
EMI AND TIME WARNER TO MERGE
Music giant and multi-media behemoth to combine in latest media consolidation. – BBC 01/23/00
- Merger will create world’s largest record company. – Sydney Morning Herald 01/24/00
- Global music powerhouse – Wired 01/24/00
HISTORICAL SHOCK
New PBS series looks at the culture of shock in art. But, writes one critic, in choosing to focus on controversies from the past rather than recent issues, the show plays it safe – “safe in its choices of art to illustrate the never-ending conflict between artists and society, between freedom of expression and censorship, between what is conventional and what might lie ahead.” – New York Times 01/23/00
DREAD OF CLASSICS
The best novelists have read all the classics, right? Uh, uh. Here’s a survey of some of Britain’s top contemporary writers and their confessions about what parts of the literary canon they have skipped over. – The Telegraph (UK)
DVD HACKER SETBACK
Judge grants injunction against webhosts who have been distributing DVD decryption program that cracks the copy-protection code DVD makers included on their disks. – Wired 01/22/00
THE MOVIE BUSINESS IS BOOMING
There were record revenues last year. So why are movie theater companies leaking red ink and watching their share prices dive for the bottom? Not just too many theaters, but too many big theaters have been built in the past few years – and now there’s a glut. – The Economist 01/21/00
SAN FRANCISCO BALLET –
– nominated for two Olivier theatre awards after London debut. – San Francisco Chronicle