Category: people

Actor Art Carney, forever famous as The Honeymooers’ Ed Norton, has died at the age of 85. “I love Ed Norton and what he did for my career. But the truth is that we couldn’t have been more different. Norton was the total extrovert, there was no way you could put down his infectious good humor. Me? I’m a loner and a worrier.”

“Space for a writer is sometimes the most precious of commodities. It’s possible, in fact, that if a certain government official in Tanzania hadn’t been so pig-headed, Moyez Vassanji would be practising electrical engineering in that country instead of having to deal with the emotional effects of winning this year’s Giller Prize.”

As a painter, DH Lawrence was a pretty good writer. “Many of Lawrence’s paintings are hilarious – awful and a bit weird. His attempts to draw the human body make you think of Jim Shaw’s collection of paintings bought in American thrift stores, or the bad bodies that populate John Currin’s deliberately kitsch daubs.”

“The Berlin Philharmonic has enjoyed a unique succession of chief conductors who were more like gods than people – celestial, aloof beings who knew the secrets to transcendent music-making and could convey them (as did Herbert von Karajan) with eyes closed. Simon Rattle on his best days conducts like a god, but isn’t known to act like one.

Toni Morrison has published her eighth book. “Morrison’s intellect can be intimidating; it takes over her persona sometimes. This is the woman who, when Oprah Winfrey commented on her show that she had to read Morrison’s books more than once to totally understand them, replied, ‘It’s called reading’.”

Louise Glück isn’t exactly a recluse. But not far from it. Just don’t expect her to be the kind of US Poet Laureate who evangelizes for her art. “Ms. Glück is an inspired choice because she excels in doing the kind of thing that only lyric poetry can do, which is among the most intimate, nonpublic things words can do: mimic the peculiar music of thought itself. Her appointment sheds interesting light on a private art’s public existence.”

Alberto Ibargüen, publisher of The Miami Herald, has been named chairman of the board at PBS, the governing body for the nation’s public broadcasting stations. As chairman, Ibargüen said, his challenge will be to draw on the PBS heritage while preparing for a rapidly changing future. ‘The issue is not so much PBS’ going out of business tomorrow, but, in a world of tightening budgets, finding ways to keep PBS as sharp as it needs to be.'”

Sarah Kane was not your average playwright. Her works, which appeared on various London stages in the 1990s, featured rape, torture, and a man gnawing on infant corpses. She was despised by the theatrical establishment, but defended by some of theater’s luminaries. She killed herself at age 28. Assessing a legacy like that is the type of exercise for which few in the theater world have the stomach, but one Montreal director is determiend to try.

Running New York’s most high-profile concert hall is no picnic. So Robert Harth is an unlikely figure as Carnegie Hall’s latest top man: he is, by all accounts, soft-spoken and generous with his time, “the type New York power brokers eat for breakfast.” In fact, when the ill-fated merger of Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic was announced this fall, many observers predicted that Harth would eventually be shunted aside by the Phil’s dynamic Zarin Mehta. Instead, Harth is now being celebrated for standing firm against the Phil’s desire to take over the primary programming responsibility for the hall, and for his commitment to broadening the scope of Carnegie Hall’s musical offerings.