“All books should be exactly as long as they need to be. There is no ideal length. But like mainstream Hollywood films, nonfiction books have shown a tendency to expand in recent years, for no particular reason. Directors cannot bring a film in at 90 minutes anymore. Likewise, my shelves are overloaded with nonfiction titles that, 30 years ago, would have been 225 or 250 pages. I’m not sure why. Fatter spines do look more imposing, and readers may feel, subconsciously, that $30 should buy them a thick, substantial volume. But time and again, I find, the extra weight comes from empty calories.”
Tag: 06.24.05
Classical Neglect…
Why is classical music shrinking, asks Julian Lloyd Webber? It’s our own faults. “Yes, we know that there are lots of other kinds of music apart from classical – and don’t we classical musicians fall over backwards to say how wonderful they all are – but while our children are continually being bombarded with pop music, they are also being denied a knowledge of some of mankind’s greatest creations and their adult lives will be much the poorer for it.”
Heppner: Reflecting On His Vocal Crisis
Tenor Ben Heppner reflects on the vocal crisis two years ago that kept him off the stage for eight months. “Those performances are seared on my memory. I had a panic attack. It was like my heart was beating 150 beats a minute. I was sweating in places I never knew I could sweat. Every inch of my body was running in sweat. I was thinking, ‘What are you doing here? You’ve never sung this publicly before.’ And when I sang, this squeaky voice came out… and I thought I was going to die. Somehow I got through it, but it was not my finest hour.”
UK Court Rules Hamilton Photos “Indecent”
A British court has ruled that photographer David Hamilton’s “multi-million-selling images of young, naked women and girls are officially branded as indecent in a landmark British ruling. Anyone owning one of his coffee-table books now risks being arrested for possession of indecent photographs, following a ruling at Guildford Crown Court.
Hamilton’s photographs have long been at the forefront of the ‘is it art or pornography?’ debate.