Category: people

Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham is full of dissent these days, and seems energized by it. “It’s in our character to want to be nice. We get uneasy with sharp disagreement. We have nothing like the prime minister’s question period” in the British Parliament. Add nationalist fervor to fundamental niceness, he says, and you get something close to the view that America can do no wrong. ‘People want to feel that their presidents know what they’re doing, that our artists are capable of masterpieces, that our weapons are invincible. That we’re No. 1 in everything.’ To think otherwise, in this context, is to be perceived as somehow un-American.”

A suitcase bought in Australia and thought to be a long-lost trove of Beatles music, is definitely full of fakes. “Many of the items in the suitcase appeared to be fakes, including ticket stubs for the band’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night which were reproduced from images that appeared in a book.”

Film score composer Elmer Bernstein has died after a long illness. “Although he only won one Oscar during his 50-year career, for Thoroughly Modern Millie, he was nominated 14 times, most recently in 2002. As an accomplished pianist, Bernstein moved to Hollywood from New York in 1950 as his movie career took off. Among more than 200 film and TV credits were the scores for To Kill a Mockingbird, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Ten Commandments and The Age of Innocence.”

It wasn’t long ago that architect Daniel Libeskind was cool. “But a string of large projects – and wide popular acclaim – have dampened the enthusiasm with which some architects view him. Is there a tinge of jealousy? Or after the high-mindedness of his conceptual projects and the buzz of the Jewish Museum, is there disappointment about discovering that Libeskind is an ordinary architect after all? Could it be, some murmur, that he is just a form maker? A showman? Is there something just a little bit kitsch about his work?”

In an article in The New York Times last month Jessica Hendra accused her father Tony, author of the best-selling spiritual memoir Father Joe, of molesting her when she was a young girl. “Since July 1, when The Times first published Ms. Hendra’s claims in a carefully reported 2,400-word story by veteran reporter N. R. Kleinfield that ran on the front page of the Arts section, a strange radio silence has set in.” But the book continues to sell.

Gérard Souzay, who has died aged 83, sang mélodies for four decades after the second world war; for the first three of them, he was considered the leading exponent of the genre. His mellifluous and supple voice was allied to a bright intelligence in the treatment of texts that manifested itself in everything he tackled. He also had a successful career on the concert platform as a soloist in choral works, but his operatic appearances were restricted to three or four significant roles: he was no great actor. In his later years, he was a rather sad figure, living alone in the South of France, feeling forgotten and neglected.”

James Marcus was the 55th employee at Amazon.com. He came to review books. “He made $9 million on his share options, interviewed the biggest names in American literature and wielded such influence that he could change the fortunes of a little-known novelist or poet with a keystroke. But after the boom came the bust. It was no less dramatic. In months, the value of his shares plunged 95 per cent. Swingeing cuts saw colleagues sacked and escorted to the car park by security guards until, in a final ironic twist, the cutting-edge technology Marcus helped develop rendered him obsolete.”

Neal Fredericks, 35, who shot the low-budget 1999 hit, “The Blair Witch Project,” died in the crash of a single-engine plane while filming a new movie near Key West.

“Now 47 and the father of two, Lee has noticeable traces of gray in his hair, and his eyes look weary behind his glasses. He seems less angry than just hugely frustrated. With the state of his country. With how hard it is for him to get films made, despite being perhaps the most famous black director of all time. With how hard it is for him to find an audience, even within the black community.”

In 10 years, Joe Dowling has reinvented Minnesota’s Guthrie Theatre. Coming off the theatre’s most successful season yet, and still two seasons from moving into the theatre’s new home, Dowling has begun to think about what’s next.