Since 2012, when it first became common to see people reading Karl Ove Knausgaard and Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet on the tube, sales of translated fiction have steadily increased. Overall sales in the UK were up last year by 5.5%, with more than 2.6m books sold, while sales of translated literary fiction shot up by 20%. – The Guardian
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The One-Man Publisher Who’s Found An Audience For Forgotten Classics
Rick Schober has published roughly four books per year, relying on “a loyal following” that shares his passion for rediscovered literary fiction and nonfiction of an offbeat and experimental variety. That loyal following translates into funding via a crowdfunding model. Those who fund the books each get a copy if they donate an amount totaling the book’s cover price or more, and books are sold via Amazon and B&N.com primarily but are also carried by some independent bookstores, “especially in the Boston area,” Schober said. The press is no moneymaker, but, he quipped, “it’s a small-gains hobby.” – Publishers Weekly
How The Art World Morphed Into The Art Industry
Consider that, in 1988, the Artnet Price Database tracked only 18 auction houses and about 8,300 artists. Over the next 24 years, those figures skyrocketed: By 2012, there were 632 auction houses and 90,275 artists. But, like any mature industry, it is now entering a period of consolidation after decades of expansion. Last year, Artnet recorded only 534 houses (a drop of around 16 percent from the high-water mark) and 71,621 artists (down 25 percent from the peak). Still, the scale and contours of today’s art world would have been largely inconceivable to dealers, auction-house professionals, and collectors 30 years ago. – Artnet
This Year’s Evening Standard Theatre Award Winners
Andrew Scott was awarded for his role in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter at the Old Vic, while Maggie Smith took the trophy for one-woman play A German Life at the Bridge. Lynn Nottage’s Sweat was named Best Play, following a successful run at the Donmar and in the West End. – London Evening Standard
Bad Form: Company That Commissioned “Fearless Girl” Sculpture On Wall Street Sues Artist, Others Making Replicas
The financial services firm that purchased the original, State Street Global Advisors, is calling them unauthorized copies and waging an aggressive legal campaign against them. Critics say the fight proves that the company’s embrace of the Fearless Girl was always less about promoting female empowerment than it was about promoting itself. – The New York Times
How Mike Nichols And Elaine May Met (An Oral History)
“[Paul] Sills, who directed the show, came up to him, and said, ‘Mike, I want you to meet the only other person on campus who’s as hostile as you are: Elaine May.’ She looked over Mike’s shoulder at the rave and went, ‘Ha!’ and walked off. It’s the beginning of a romantic comedy.” – Tablet
A Traditional ‘Straight Up’ Thanksgiving
Our Thanksgiving team of William S. Burroughs and Norman O. Mustill has been a longtime happy pairing. It still is. So here they are again, sweetened by Heathcote Williams’s words in a narration-cum-montage by Alan Cox. – Jan Herman
Why Netflix Bought New York’s Paris Theatre
Undoubtedly this will aid in the company’s recruitment of top shelf directors who yearn for that opening night vibe, especially at the spot where Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet played for an entire year back in the day. – The Guardian
Togo Has Opened Its First Major Contemporary Art Center
“Uniquely for Africa, Palais de Lomé, which is housed in a restored colonial-era palace, was fully financed by the state. … Set on the seafront in the Togolese capital of Lomé, the Palais de Lomé boasts several exhibition spaces, as well as an 11-hectare botanical park.” – The Art Newspaper
Wrestling With The Complicated Theatre Criticism Of John Simon
“It is saddening for me to say this, but I doubt that he ever wrote anything which could make a novice reader feel that the theatre (or film, or literature, or music) was an art worth pursuing, or worth attending to, as having some value for civilization. John published many books collecting his reviews, and I read through most of them, but I don’t recall them offering me any insight on why I should care about a given work, or about the art as a whole. I gave them away.” – American Theatre