Category: people

“Reports from Brazil say the 65-year-old singer will leave his post in 2008 because tests have unveiled a career-threatening polyp on his vocal cords.”

“In an age when authors inspire mostly indifference, Mailer evoked hostility and passion. Trailing in his wake were dozens of books, nine kids, six wives, two Pulitzer Prizes, one run for New York mayor and countless feuds.”

He wanted to “alter the nerves and marrow” of the nation with his work, to “change the consciousness” of his times. He wanted to write the Big Book, the Great American Novel. He wanted to hit the longest long ball of them all.

“He was the most transparently ambitious writer of his era, seeing himself in competition not just with his contemporaries but with the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. He was also the least shy and risk-averse of writers.”

“The Pulitzer-Prize winning Mailer, the eminent literary journalist, drama king and gentleman, eternal striver for the Great American Novel, seemed to embody in recent years not just one writer, but a generation for whom the printed word was a noble and endangered way of life.”

“Mailer died Saturday of acute renal failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Despite heart surgery, hearing loss and arthritic knees that forced him to walk with canes, Mailer retained his enthusiasm for writing.”

Alice Walton is the second richest person in the world. She’s spending $50 million on a museum in the American outback. “The art museum is, in many ways, her way of making peace with her home town and an attempt at personal redemption.”

The Cleveland Orchestra is on European tour. Orchestra members say on the way overseas, concertmaster William Preucil “got completely wasted and started screaming at the airline attendant. He was also overheard mumbling those laments of violinists everywhere: “**** the orchestra” and ” **** all this shit.”

Author Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize last month, and almost instantly found herself at the center of a media firestorm. But the press wasn’t talking about her award-winning novel. Instead, journalists zeroed in on a single line from a controversial essay Enright wrote earlier this fall.

“His lawyers have demanded that the three biggest unofficial websites dedicated to the singer, set up by his fans, remove all of the musician’s photographs, lyrics and album covers.”