The medieval studies professor who discovered and edited a lost manuscript by JRR Tolkien, says dealing with Tolkien’s fans was arduous over the six years it took to prepare the manuscript. “It was unfortunate that there were some obsessive fans who “whose attention one attracts by working on anything related to Tolkien. The sheer number of people who were trying to profit from Tolkien’s work was astonishing, and the problems with copyright violation and outright theft were like nothing I had ever encountered in medieval studies.”
Tag: 01.05.03
What Paperbacks Sold Last Year
What were 2002’s hottest UK paperback sellers? John Grisham leads the list, as expected. And there were an awful lot of manufactured celebrity books. Some 30 million paperbacks were sold in the UK in 2002, about the same as in 2001, but nearly three million down on 2001 (there was a new Harry Potter that year). Still, it’s estimated that fewer than 50 percent of Britons ever buy a book. Here’s the list of paperbacks most sold…
Salle Forth – David’s Back But Evasive As Ever
David Salle is back with a new show in New York, back at Mary Boone’s gallery, where he came to prominence in the 1980s. “Salle is right up there with Jasper Johns as one of contemporary art’s all-time great question dodgers. Although he was initially viewed as a cynical provocateur, that characterization is no longer useful or even accurate. With the gift of hindsight, he seems more like an art Sphinx. His pictures feed at least partly off Mr. Johns’s use of pop images, and their work is similarly confounding, a box of puzzle pieces that you keep trying to put together only to realize that six pieces are missing on the floor of your hall closet.
Readers Defend Baz Boheme
Readers take New York Times critic Anthony Tomassini to task for his piece criticizing Baz Luhrmann’s Broadway La Boheme. “Mr. Luhrmann has got me happy to stand in line again, and has made some of us (including all the twentysomethings who stood alongside me for three hours for tickets) excited about returning to the opera.”
Gehry Weighs In On The WTC
Why wasn’t Frank Gehry among the architects submitting plans for the World Trade Center site? He tells Deborah Solomon: “I was invited to be on one of the teams, but I found it demeaning that the agency paid only $40,000 for all that work. I can understand why the kids did it, but why would people my age do it?”
The Greatest Actor Of His Generation?
Is Simon Russell Beale the best English actor of his generation? “Ask London theatergoers, critics and his fellow actors, and they will say that he is the finest stage actor of his generation. (He turns 42 next Sunday). In role after role, he has shown a virtuosic range with a depth of feeling that few actors can match, playing kings and common men, Restoration fops and Shakespearean clowns, characters from Chekhov and Ibsen, and even singing in the Leonard Bernstein musical Candide.”
Dutoit Speaks – Of Martha And Montreal
On a visit to guest-conduct the Minnesota Orchestra, Charles Dutoit speaks for the first time about his tumultuous departure from the Montreal Symphony, and about his ex-wife, pianist Martha Argerich. “Basically, Martha doesn’t play in America, except when I ask her to. Otherwise, she wouldn’t play at all. I think there are only three pianists on this level,” he said, also citing Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Vladimir Horowitz.