Category: people

Seeking to overturn conventional fiction, Robbe-Grillet attempted to write novels that avoided psychological or ideological commentary, as he explained in his 1963 book, “Pour un Nouveau Roman” (“Toward a New Novel”).

“As protesters protested and neo-Nazis scowled, Johannes Heesters performed in his home country for the first time in four decades. It’s not the windmills or tulips that kept the 104-year-old away, but instead some of his countrymen’s aversion to what Heesters was up to some seventy years ago: namely performing for Adolf Hitler and at the Dachau concentration camp.”

“After a disastrous attempt to climb K2, former US Army medic Greg Mortenson had to be nursed back to health by the inhabitants of a remote and impoverished Pakistani village. He vowed to repay them by building a local school, and has now built more than 60 in similar areas across south Asia.”

The exiled Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, who is accused of insulting Islam, will be allowed to stay in India it emerged today – but only if she remains in a government flat in a secret location in Delhi, unable to receive visitors or step outside her door.

More than 100 celebrities from the singer Shakira to soccer star David Beckham backed a Spanish pop star in a dispute with Venezuela after a concert was canceled following his criticism of President Hugo Chavez.

At an age when most people are well into retirement, Holbrook says he thrives on work. And the veteran performer is thrilled by an honor he thought he’d never receive: an Academy Award nomination for his performance in Sean Penn’s film, “Into the Wild.”

“US film director Steven Spielberg has withdrawn as an artistic adviser at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In a statement, he accused China of not doing enough to pressure its ally Sudan to end the ‘continuing human suffering’ in the troubled western Darfur region.”

“Kirk Browning, whose unusual career path took him from chicken farmer to television director of Live From Lincoln Center, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 86.”

Michael Govan “sits at the heart of the mainstream museum world, at an institution fraught with change — undergoing hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades to its disorganized and occasionally dilapidated campus, including a new building, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, opening this week; accused by some of giving one hardheaded board member, Eli Broad, undue influence; and needing to foster new philanthropists and art collectors in a city not known for either.”

“Dr. Robert Ferrell, a University of Pittsburgh geneticist, has been sentenced to a year of unsupervised release and fined $500 for providing Steven Kurtz, an artist friend, with bacteria to use in his biotech-theme artwork.”