Category: people

“The writer and novelist Gordon Burn, whose work explored the boundaries between fact and fiction, has died aged 61, his publisher announced today. … Burn examined the contemporary obsession with celebrity in a series of books spanning three decades, including an account of the Yorkshire Ripper, a study of Fred and Rosemary West and a Whitbread award-wininng novel which imagined an alternative life for the British singer Alma Cogan.”

“Until his mid-60s, Frank McCourt was known primarily around New York as a creative writing teacher and as a local character — the kind who might turn up in a New York novel — singing songs and telling stories with his younger brother Malachy and otherwise joining the crowds at the White Horse Tavern and other literary hangouts.”

“For someone who has been so remorselessly scrutinised, Heaney is still something of an enigma. He works hard to make “famous” seem normal. Unfailingly courteous and attentive, he can also be grave, remote and occasionally stern, always watching himself, like the king of a vulnerable monarchy.”

His “luminous photographs of homes and buildings brought fame to a number of mid-20th century modernist architects and made him a household name in the architectural world. Starting with Richard Neutra in 1936, Shulman’s roster of clients read like a who’s who of pioneering contemporary architecture.”

“[A] founding member, ballet master and former principal dancer for the Washington Ballet, whose career with the company spanned more than 30 years, … Mr. Goding was recruited to the company by its founder, Mary Day, and remained a central figure in the group as it transformed into one of the country’s best-known regional dance companies.”

Just last month, performances in Tel Aviv and Ramallah in September were added to the schedule for the singer-songwriter’s current world tour. Then the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel issued a statement saying that “Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel’s colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel.” So the hosts have withdrawn their invitation, saying the event had become too politicized.

“I got very interested in Magritte after my son died … when that happens to you, you focus on people whose lives had been influenced by suicide. Magritte’s mother walked into the sea when he was young and drowned herself. There was a big Magritte show at the Met shortly after Clark’s death – and I could see it. I could see it all.”

“In life, he was about as likely to get an audience with the Pope as Pontius Pilate. Now, more than a century after his death, Oscar Wilde,” who converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, “has been claimed by The Vatican as one of its own. … Moves to rehabilitate Wilde began two years ago when his aphorisms were included in a collection of maxims and witticisms for Christians published by Father Leonardo Sapienza, head of protocol at the Vatican.”

Katha Pollitt: “It is easy to see Byron as a cad, a narcissist and, at bottom, a misogynist. But that would be unfair. Byron’s great insight, in an era where women were expected to be placid and insipid (not that they were!), was to see that women were much like men: They wanted sex and went after it eagerly, if secretly. … He understood, too, how limited was women’s scope for action.”

“[E]ven among those who support decriminalizing assisted suicide, Sir Edward’s death raised troubling questions. Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said in a BBC interview that the growing numbers of Britons going abroad to die, and the manner of their deaths, made it more urgent to amend Britain’s laws. There are ‘no safeguards, no brakes on the process at all,’ she said.”