Category: people

Stephen King looks at the short story master, the appalling treatment he gave the wife who made his career possible, the appalling treatment axe-wielding editor Gordon Lish gave his prose, and the alcoholism underlying it all.

“A tooth and two fingers of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian astronomer, physicist, inventor and mathematician, have re-emerged from a lost wooden case, Florence’s authorities [have] announced.”

“His 19 ‘Above‘ books, each with about 150 photographs, include neighborhood-by-neighborhood overviews of Paris, London, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, San Diego and Seattle.” (He covered his hometown with four volumes of Above San Francisco.) “Then there are the volumes showing the natural wonders of places like Yosemite, Big Sur and Hawaii.”

He was readmitted when a “chronic infection” developed after his prostate cancer surgery. “His spokesmen said last month that the cancer was in its early stages and he hoped to return to work before the end of the year. But an update on his website said he now hoped to be back in the New Year.”

The longtime basketball star has made rap records, acted in film and TV, worked as a reserve police officer and earned an MBA. Now, “[m]oonlighting for the first time as a curator, O’Neal is overseeing ‘Size DOES Matter,’ an exhibition on the theme of scale in contemporary art coming in February to New York’s nonprofit Flag Art Foundation.”

“Planning your next vacation and don’t want to miss Lord Byron’s final resting place? Want to see Charles Baudelaire’s last stop? With this handy website [www.poetsgraves.co.uk] you can search by poet’s name or by location, get maps to the gravesite, read a sample of the deceased’s work or a brief but informative biographical note.”

The oral historian and radio host applied for a job with the FBI in the 1930s, but he looked like a communist to the bureau, which started a paper trail on him in 1945. “His file ends in 1990, when agents clipped a Wall Street Journal article quoting his reaction to financier Michael Milken’s junk-bond scandal.”

The British actor played Robert McCall, the title character of the CBS detective series, from 1985 to 1989. He also starred in the films The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant.

“Where hard-line Abstract Expressionists shunned figural elements in their work, Mr. Kriesberg used them lavishly. As a result, he was often called a Figurative Expressionist; the term applied to midcentury Expressionists whose work was not strictly abstract.”