Category: people

In the past week, the literary world has grappled with the meaning of Mailer. “He had radical notions about everything. And whether they were correct or not was not important: They were invigorating and life-enhancing and good for others to hear.”

He was playing a game in a virtual world. “The 17-year-old allegedly stole $5,800 worth of imaginary furniture. Real police arrested him. They suspect other teens of receiving the stolen goods.”

“Les Paul, the guitar innovator; Henry Ziegler Steinway, whose family handcrafted thousands of pianos; and Andrew Wyeth, the master painter of American scenes, will receive the National Medal of Arts today.”

“He was a slugger. He swung at everything, and when he missed he missed by a mile and sometimes ended up on his tush, but when he connected he usually knocked it out of the park. He was immodest about his failures and modest about his successes, which is a healthy trait for a writer and probably a healthy trait for life. He left a huge footprint on American letters.”

Stewart wanted to produce household items and trademark the town’s name to sell them. “Some residents of the tony hamlet in Westchester County, where Stewart has a 153-acre estate, objected to her using the name Katonah for commercial purposes and feared the trademark would harm existing businesses.”

Best-selling writer Ira Levin, whose novels included the occult-horror classic Rosemary’s Baby, the Nazi thriller The Boys From Brazil and the satirical fantasy The Stepford Wives, has died.

The Washington Post’s well-regarded classical music critic says he knew he had screwed up the moment he hit “send” on an email to a publicist for DC city councilman Marion Barry. “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve done in 30 years in journalism. I hope people won’t judge me on this one explosion.”

“We use our voices to be somebody else, to entertain. So why not recognize that? I don’t agree with this idea of ‘I sing for myself.’ Excuse me? Then you can sing in the bathroom. That’s not what the work is about.”

The Washington Post’s longtime classical music critic and Pulitzer-winner got one too many spam emails. Irritated, he fired back at a flack from city councilman Marion Barry, demanding to be taken off the councilman’s email list. “Must we hear about it every time this Crack Addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new – and typically half witted – political grandstanding?”

“In the late `60s, that personality made him the most vivid presence on the American literary scene, an outspoken, two-fisted, eloquent, occasionally profound commentator on an America shaken by war, riots and assassination. In later years his notoriety dimmed – he was a novelist destined never to write a great novel, an apocalyptic visionary whose apocalypse never arrived.”