Category: people

“The son of John Steinbeck has excoriated the state of Texas for using the mental disability of the Nobel prize-winning author’s fictional creation Lennie Small to define learning difficulties and thus to justify its execution of Marvin Wilson yesterday.”

“Almost eight years have passed since Stieg Larsson’s death. One would think it would be enough time to resolve the dispute. No, says 58-year-old Eva Gabrielsson, there is no peace in sight, nor is there a bridge between the parties or even a mediator.”

“In a field of measured criticism, Mrs. Crist was a howitzer. She sought to puncture the dull, the pretentious and the bloated – anything that squandered talented performers and directors and would waste moviegoers’ time and money.”

“There is a sizable Crist contingent working in journalism today – critics, essayists and writers who were driven to write savvier, and think bigger, by this professor’s blunt assessments. Nothing stung more than her red scrawl in the margins, but nothing was more rewarding than her appraisal that you had taken a commanding stance and argued your point persuasively.”

“Back when the English language was still young and impressionable, a London-born physician who took up the pen as a gentleman’s hobby made quite a dent, fathering a dictionary page’s worth of words we still use and tend to think of as ageless – ‘medical,’ ‘literary,’ ‘suicide,’ ‘exhaustion,’ ‘hallucination’ and ‘coma’ among them.”

‘Well before marketing executives came up with the term ‘crossover artist,’ Miss Piazza became a pop phenomenon via the opera stage. She moved easily from the Metropolitan Opera to Broadway to television variety shows.”

“So why is Mr. Hamlisch, who died on Monday at 68, routinely overlooked when people are invited to name the greatest Broadway composers? One reason may be that he embodied a kind of ultimate professionalism. Personal self-expression wasn’t at the top of his agenda. Solving problems and doing solid work were more important.”

“[He] won a Tony Award in 2003 as co-author of the book for the Broadway musical Hairspray and was nominated for another in 2008 for Cry-Baby.”

“If he was right, God help us all, for the conquest of art by money and the proliferation of celebrity artists that he condemned continues to multiply. The art world of today might be mistaken for an apocalyptic vision dredged from his darkest satirical imaginings.”

“Opera singer Evgeny Nikitin left this summer’s Bayreuth Festival in disgrace after the German media claimed he had a swastika tattooed on his chest. The body art was never intended to look that way, Nikitin tells SPIEGEL, and he is outraged over the media’s handling of the story.”