Category: people

Ren Weschler, the author and self-described “oldest guy in the room” at the literary journal McSweeney’s, has been named as the first-ever artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Weschler, who won’t move to Chicago, will be part of a new five-person team running the fest, which is being reorganized following the departure of longtime president Eileen Mackevich.

“Known as ‘Wicked Pickett,’ he turned out a string of soul hits in the 1960s after signing a recording contract in Memphis with Atlantic.”

Chuck Lamb wanted to be famous. But “his dream was stalled until last month, when he realized that anybody could play dead. By posing as a corpse on the Internet, he thought, perhaps he could win a role as a lifeless extra on ‘CSI: Miami.’ He took two days to build the Web site, then waited for someone to notice. It was a short wait. Deadbodyguy.com received 300,000 hits in its first three weeks. There were 530 hits from Uruguay, 6 from Iran. In two hours, the site received 2,000 hits from Spain. ‘I’m huge in Spain,’ he said.”

Harvard faculty-member and Beethoven expert “was a great-grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, combined a Yankee sense of duty with an un-Yankee-like personal warmth. A daily attendee at morning prayers at Harvard’s Appleton Chapel, Mr. Forbes was a trustee of the New England Conservatory and board member of the Pro Arte and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (the museum’s piano is dedicated in Mr. Forbes’s name).”

Former NPR freelancer David D’Arcy has filed a $5 million suit against NPR and the Museum of Modern Art, claiming that he was “slandered for his report on a Nazi-looted painting once displayed at the museum. D’Arcy says MoMA retaliated against him for the piece — which questioned the museum’s role in a Jewish family’s fight to reclaim Egon Schiele’s ‘Portrait of Wally’ — by allegedly lying to NPR and saying he got his facts wrong.”

Novelist Arundhati Roy has turned down a national award from India’s academy of letters because she opposes the government’s policies.

There may be no composer whose life and work divide critics more than Dmitri Shostakovich. Was he a courageous rebel working against the Stalinist regime from within, or a Communist stooge too fond of his privileged place in Soviet Russia to worry about the politics of it all? Does his music represent a visionary advancing of the traditions established by Russia’s 19th-century compositional luminaries, or is it all “undercomposed” and second-rate stuff? “It is extraordinary how vitriolic such discussions… become, both inside and outside Russia.”

UN Secretary General Kofi “Annan met with Ma on Thursday and confirmed the cellist would become a “peace envoy,” joining a list of other notables such as environmentalist Jane Goodall, actor Michael Douglas, basketball player Magic Johnson, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti and Nobel laureate Elie Weisel.”

“Actress Shelley Winters, who went from blonde siren to respected double-Oscar winner during a distinguished Hollywood career, died yesterday at the age of 85.”

It used to be said of Nilsson that she had “dimples of iron.” She insisted upon being paid the highest fee an opera house could offer. Rudolf Bing, who was general manager of the Met from 1950 through 1972, was asked if Nilsson was difficult. “Not at all,” he replied. “You put enough money in, and a glorious voice comes out.”