Category: people

The author of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was 88 when she died this week. “In literary terms she was the last of a generation, just younger than Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene [all Catholic converts], who helped her and sent her money early in her career. She was one of the most original prose stylists ever.”

Ethan Stiefel has had a rough year. The company the American Ballet Theatre star was trying to build in California postponed its season for lack of funds. Then the company’s executive director quit. And, on the dancing front, Stiefel had knee problems that forced him to cancel several performances. Stiefel’s now had knee operations, and this week they were deemed successful. He should be back to performing this fall.

Novelist Martin Amis, never one to shy away from controversy, may be facing another round of public disgust when his new collection of short stories is published this fall. “Once feted as the voice of his generation with novels such as Money, critics and the public alike seem to have taken great delight when [Amis] has faltered since.” Clearly, controversy doesn’t phase the author: among the tales Amis spins in his newest book is a fictionalized account of “the final movements of Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker of the 11 September attacks.”

Esa-Pekka Salonen has risen through the conducting ranks to become one of the world’s most desired podium commodities. So why is he talking as if he’d like to scale back the stick-waving and concentrate full-time on his composing? (Here’s a hint: wildcat strikes at the Opera de Paris have been known to make lots of folks contemplate a career change…)

It is a modern reality of running an arts organization that one must not only be a good administrator and competent executive, but also an expert gladhander whose very presence in a room causes rich sorts to open their checkbooks. The Royal Ontario Museum’s William Thorsell could be the prototype for such an executive, and his success at ROM has largely hinged on his seemingly effortless ability to charm supporters.

Nearly everyone knows the name Samuel Beckett, whose centenary is being observed this year. But how many avid fans of Beckett’s plays remember the name Barney Rossett? “It was Mr. Rosset, alive and well at 83 and living on Fourth Avenue, who discovered the Irish novelist and playwright, for Americans, more than half a century ago.” Rossett, a publisher, paid Beckett a $150 advance for the American rights to Waiting For Godot, which quickly sold over a million copies in the 1950s. “Grove Press and Mr. Rosset became famous, not just for championing Beckett in this country but also for introducing Eugène Ionesco, Harold Pinter and Jean Genet to American readers.”

Leading a cultural institution is one of the more challenging jobs a person can take on, which is why many don’t last very long in the role. “Fifteen years ago, both Peter Simon and Robert Sirman took on jobs that probably only enemies would have wished on them, so daunting were the prospects for success. On paper, the jobs sounded prestigious, top-of-the-line — in Simon’s case, the presidency of the Royal Conservatory of Music, in Sirman’s the administrative directorship of the National Ballet School of Canada, each based in the heart of the country’s largest city. But beneath the fancy-pants titles were organizations in deep trouble.” Somehow, both men are still in place, and both organizations are now models of cultural success.

Welsh-born poet Leslie Norris, whose work focused on the power of nature, has died at his home in Utah, aged 84. “Mr. Norris was the first writer to be named a member of both the Welsh Academy and the Royal Society of Literature in England.”

“Gerard Reve, considered one of the Dutch postwar literary greats, has died, his partner announced on Sunday. He was 82. Mr. Reve, whose full name was Gerard Kornelis van het Reve, published his first novel, ‘De Avonden’ (‘The Evenings’), in 1947. An account of the staunch, oppressive environment of the lower-middle-class Dutch in the postwar years, it is considered a classic of modern Dutch literature.”

“Vilgot Sjoman, a Swedish filmmaker whose notoriously risqué I Am Curious (Yellow), made in 1967 for $160,000, sufficiently alarmed censors to generate millions at the box office and jump-start a new cinematic explicitness, died on Sunday at a Stockholm hospital. He was 81.”