Category: today’s top story

“Now, as publishers enter discussions with the Web giant Google about its plan to sell digital versions of new books direct to consumers, they have a little more leverage than just a few weeks ago — at least when it comes to determining how Google will pay publishers for those e-books and how much consumers will pay for them.”

“While some other services, such as Google Books, offer out-of-copyright works to be downloaded for free, users of the British Library service will be able to read from pages in the original books in the library’s collection.”

“In a story of opera house intrigue with nationalist overtones, the Italian general music director of the Saxon State Opera and its celebrated orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, has abruptly resigned, leaving the house without a conductor for this month’s Wagner Ring cycle.”

“The letters came from Sri Lanka or the Netherlands or Arizona. They included deeply personal admissions–cancer diagnoses, bankruptcy, divorce–and were often written in Salinger’s own brash style or, at the very least, incorporated the slang of the period he chronicled. ‘Dear Jerry, you old bastard,’ they tended to start. ‘I gotta tell you.'”

The 131-seat venue, expected to open in 2011-12, will feature work by emerging artists, with all seats priced at $20. Preservationists argue that a building on the Beaumont’s roof will despoil architect Eero Saarinen’s original design; the new theater’s architect, Hugh Hardy – who worked with Saarinen in designing the Beaumont in the 1960s – says the worries are misplaced.

“Novels by National Book Award winners Pete Dexter, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx and William T. Vollmann have been banned in recent years. Award finalists Katherine Dunn and Barry Hannah are on the Texas no-read list, too, as are Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren and John Updike.”

“What’s proposed? Cut the Cultural Affairs Department almost in half, laying off 48% of staff. … What else? Terminate existing contracts for arts grants that have already been awarded but whose projects have not yet begun. Suspend the grant program for 2010-11. That’s right: Zero it out.”

“Macmillan’s success in bending Amazon to its will represents a tipping point in the book industry — a shift in power from online distributors to content owners, who after all, have an effective ‘monopoly’ on every product in their catalogs.”

“Should the Obama administration get its way, funding for the nation’s major arts and cultural institutions will stay largely flat, although a few organizations … will see increases over what the president requested last year. In general, arts organizations seemed grateful that things didn’t turn out worse.”

“The Pasadena Playhouse will close Feb. 7 after the final performance of its current show, Camelot, as leaders of the 90-year-old landmark theater search for ways out of serious financial difficulties. … [The] playhouse is essentially out of cash and faces more than $500,000 in immediate bills, as well as payments on more than $1.5 million in bank loans and other debts.”