Category: people

“I suppose the whole thing really is death. I think that the way that I deal with death is a bit Mexican. In England people hide or shy away from death and ideas about it, whereas Mexicans seem to walk hand in hand with it. In that way I feel a bit liberated here.”

Architect Norman Foster is at the top of his profession. “He has always wanted to create buildings informed by the structure, logic and beauty of bridges and machinery. One of the first architectural prizes he won was for a working drawing of a windmill. In designing an ultramodern building for a modernising China, he has no intention of drawing on that country’s antique design traditions, but on its young industrial crafts, technologies and engineering processes.”

Although Hunter S. Thompson is gone, his widow “is still surrounded by him, weighed down not only by his papers, which entirely fill the basement, and by his fans, who still turn up from time to time, but also by his stuff, which covers every surface, and which she will never be able to throw away.”

Neil MacGregor’s story is “of the rise of the public man at a time when that character’s obituary had been prematurely written. As a public servant, he has revivified the British Museum, making it appreciated anew as what he calls, in Ben Okri’s words, the “memory of mankind”. He has made a museum stuffed with artifacts plundered from less rapacious cultures (Benin, in particular, would like its bronzes back) feel good in our post-imperial age, which is no mean feat. Like the fictional occupant of another west wing, he has given the British Museum a renewed sense of principled mission.”

The jazz singer, who “died Thursday night at 71 after a long illness, could swing a tune with the best of them, and often surprised fans when she did, but that approach simply didn’t fit her temperament. Instead, Horn did ballads and cool, understated ruminations better than anyone except her first champion, mentor and lifelong friend, trumpeter Miles Davis.”

Shirley Horn was “a unique singer, with one of the slowest deliveries in jazz and a very unusual way of phrasing, putting stress on certain words and letting others slip away. She cherished her repertory, making audiences feel that she was cutting through to the stark truths of songs like ‘Here’s to Life’ and ‘You Won’t Forget Me.’ She wanted things just so.”

“Alma Lee is affectionately known as the ‘madwoman’ who built the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival from the ground up and kept it going for 18 years. When Lee steps down as artistic director at the end of December, she will undoubtedly be celebrated for her tenacious work ethic and many earnest deeds.” But those who know Lee say that the best way to understand her is through the endless stories told by anyone fortunate enough to have spent time in her inner circle.

A cottage where Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote some of his most famous works has burned down. “An official at the local fire department said the dacha burned down on Wednesday night. The newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets said it was being rented by a Georgian man and that faulty electrics had sparked the blaze. It was unclear how much of the writer’s old papers remained there, although the newspaper said there were rare photographs and writings about the writer’s life.”

A year and a half after his wife died, artist Steve Kurtz is still fighting American prosecutors who accused him of bio-terrorism. He says his persecutors “have to have something to show for the millions of dollars they’ve spent on this. They’re trying to create a kind of hysteria, a horrible kind of vigilantism. It’s right out of Hitler’s handbook. The final goal is to silence and intimidate voices of dissent.”

Noam Chomsky has been voted the world’s top public intellectual in a poll. “Chomsky, who was underwhelmed by the honour, beat off challenges from Umberto Eco, Richard Dawkins, Vaclav Havel and Christopher Hitchens to win the Prospect/Foreign Policy poll. More than 20,000 voters from around the world took part in selecting the winners from a list of 100. The most striking aspect of the list is the shortage of the young, the female and the French.”