Category: people

“Elvis shimmied his way back atop the seventh annual list of 13 top-earning legends that he had ruled since its inception, with estimated earnings of about $49-million (U.S.) in the year ending this month.”

The singer died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant.

Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer is nearly 100. “His flowing forms made a modernist statement of Brasilia, the government center that rose from the empty plains of central Brazil. He also helped design the United Nations headquarters in New York City, insisting on the grand curves of its General Assembly building. Now, as he nears his 100th birthday on Dec. 15, Niemeyer has a desk full of projects in his penthouse office overlooking Copacabana Beach.”

President George Bush will present her with the Medal of Freedom. “Her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which was a plea for racial tolerance, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. The award will be presented to Lee during a ceremony at the White House on 5 November.”

Playwright Morna Pearson is considered a rising star in the UK, and some see her as a beacon of hope for original Scottish voices in the performing arts. “Pearson will be announced tonight as the winner of this year’s prestigious Meyer-Whitworth award for new writing for her debut professional play, Distracted… Significantly, rather than naming any playwrights as influences, Pearson mentions comedy subversives such as Chris Morris and Steve Coogan.”

“A new film is to depict a gay love affair between Salvador Dali, the eccentric master of the avant-garde, and his fellow Spaniard Federico Garcia Lorca, the doomed dramatist and poet… The interpretation, by British screenwriter Philippa Goslett, is likely to cause controversy among biographers and historians. Although a physically intimate relationship between the men has long been rumoured, Dali told interviewers more than once that he rejected the homosexual Lorca’s attempts to seduce him.”

Esa-Pekka Salonen will leave his longtime podium post in Los Angeles in 2009, and will rededicate himself to his composing career, even as he becomes chief conductor of London’s Philharmonia. It’s an unusual career move, but Salonen says he planned it this way all along. “Many years ago, I made up my mind to leave when things were still good… This has been an amazing experience for me, the major journey in my life as a conductor. Whatever I do in the future will be different.”

Alice Sebold, who burst onto the literary scene with her dark and heart-wrenching debut novel, The Lovely Bones, is back with a second that may be even more grim. But a lot has changed since Sebold became a bona fide star – she learned how brutal the publishing world can be, and developed a thick skin that early reviews of her new book suggest she may need.

E.L. Doctorow is most famous for his classic novel, Ragtime, but to define him by that one masterful work would be to miss one of the most fascinating figures in American literary life. “To appreciate Doctorow, maybe you need to do what he did: Seek the astringency of distance, move to the furthermost edge and let the entirety blossom beneath your gaze. That’s perhaps the only sure way to grasp his achievement, to stretch your mind across it–until, like the author himself, you attain the clarifying perspective of withdrawal.”

Much has been written about the private and financial affairs of Luciano Pavarotti in the weeks since the legendary tenor’s death, and his widow is hitting back. “She denied being left in debt or that she was squabbling with his three adult daughters over his will… It has been reported in the Italian media that she was left £12.6m in debt and that their marriage had been on the rocks before he died.”