Category: people

“Lucas said that he will be investing the bulk of the cash into an education foundation. Yes, he’s pretty much giving the fortune to charity.”

“Many of the best writers’ marriages are with people outside the literary profession, and in some cases with people who know not to talk about their spouse’s books at all.”

“Yuri Lyubimov, the well-known theater director and actor, has slipped into a coma in a Moscow hospital and his health is deteriorating. Lyubimov, who turned 95 on Sept. 30, was hospitalized on Oct. 12 after suffering a heart attack.”

“Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei said Wednesday that he has started returning money to his supporters after exhausting all legal channels to fight a massive tax bill that his backers saw as punishment for his activism.”

Says the screenwriter of Steven Spielberg’s new biopic, “I don’t understand that take on him at all. The incidences that people turn to as evidence of his depression, I think, can be interpreted in other ways. It was very hard for him to accept that he was going to assume [his historic role].”

“The last of the great paper architects, Woods achieved cult-idol status among architects for his post-apocalyptic landscapes of dense lines and plunging perspectives.”

“Pankaj Mishra’s eloquence is not in doubt. But what is it about the zeitgeist that explains his rise to secular sainthood in the Anglo-American literary establishment? What is it that makes him the West’s Orientalist-in-chief?”

Jafar Panahi, 52, is one of two winners of the 2012 Sakharov Prize For Freedom Of Thought. “[He] is well known for his humanist films on life in Iran [e.g., The White Balloon, The Circle], but in 2010 he was put under house arrest and banned from filmmaking for 20 years. His 2011 documentary This is Not a Film was smuggled out of the country on a USB stick hidden in a cake.”

Warsame Shire Awale, a popular poet, playwright and songwriter who was a fixture of Somali culture for three decades, was murdered by gunmen near his Mogadishu home. He had received a number of death threats following his radio plays criticizing and mocking the violent Islamist militia Al-Shabab.

“Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.”