At the beginning of the summer John Twelve Hawks’ “The Traveler” seemed an obvious summer smash. The author is anonymous, but it has failed to take off and “the novel’s disappointing start illustrates the risks and advantages of having an unknown author. With luck and the right story, an anonymously written book can seem like a secret everyone is dying to learn, a book that sells itself. Otherwise, the publisher has to depend on the slow, uncertain process of reviews and word of mouth.”
Tag: 08.07.05
Edinburgh Fringe Opens
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival opens with a parade through the city watched by 170,000 people lining the streets. Some 16,000 performers are taking part in nearly 27,000 performances in 300 venues until the end of August.
The End Of Editors?
Increasingly, editors are MIA at publishing houses. Many publishers don’t even really employ traditional editors anymore. “If editing is in decline, that’s bad for literature. History suggests that while some authors work alone, more or less unaided, the majority benefit from editors – and that a few are utterly dependent on them.”
Why Only Books Will Do (Not Online)
“The internet is a library, a reference library, brilliantly adapted to looking something up, creating inventories, updating catalogues, adding new entries in a dictionary or an encyclopaedia, and consulting directories. The web serves magically to store knowledge that would be costly in paper, in volume, to print: references, appendices, original background sources, documentation of a detailed kind, extra apparatus in general. But I don’t think that writing and reading as acts of imagination can exist in cyberspace only; words don’t become flesh for me unless I print out and read the materialised text; but even so, the uniform, ugly look of the copies does not draw me into the mood of the work and its meaning or imprint its contents on my memory as deeply as reading it in a book.”
Why Do Movies With Minority Casts Have To Keep Proving Themselves?
“No studio would stop making action films when they fail. Yet, films with minority casts – or movies about race – constantly have to prove themselves. It’s the emotional investment by behind-the-scenes talent that will eventually make the difference.”
Cowley: A Vintage Year For Fiction
Former Booker judge Jason Cowley writes that after a post-9/11 funk, writers have roared back with some of their best work. “I think, perhaps the richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969, with most of our best novelists – Ian McEwan (Saturday), Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go), Zadie Smith (On Beauty), JM Coetzee (Slow Man), Julian Barnes (Arthur & George), Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown), Hilary Mantel (Beyond Black) – publishing exceptional new works.”
Verdict: We Hate The Scottish Parliament Building
“Less than a year after the Scottish Parliament building opened its doors, the public have delivered their verdict: knock it down. The £431 million flagship at the foot of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, already mired in controversy after running 10 times over budget and opening three years late, has suffered the final indignity of joining a list of eyesores including Gateshead Car Park, Northampton Bus Station and Rugby Cement Works on a list of Britain’s 12 ‘most vile’ buildings as voted by up to 8,000 viewers for a forthcoming Channel 4 series, Demolition.”
Chinese Pianist Wins Cleveland International
Chu-Fang Huang, a 23-year-old Chinese pianist who studied at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music, was named first-prize winner of the 2005 Cleveland International Piano Competition…
Christo – Covering a Colorado River
Christo and Jeanne-Claude come to Colorado to talk up their plans to cover a river. “The artists and their collaborators plan to stagger a total of 6.7 miles of fabric over 40 miles of the river, with interruptions ranging from 15 miles to a few hundred feet – the latter to accommodate trees, rocks and other encumbrances along the banks.The couple already has spent more than $2 million on the project, including a wind-tunnel test of the fabric and a simulated installation of several of the panels over a river running through a ranch near Grand Junction.”
The Bolshoi – Homeless And On The Road
“Still unsettled after a series of directorship changes, still reinventing itself as a successful Western-style enterprise, still reeling from the hostile reception that greeted last year’s radically modern presentation of “Romeo and Juliet,” the Bolshoi remains the Bolshoi — arguably the most majestic ballet company in the world — and the troupe is determined to remain a force even on its home turf here in Moscow, where it will be performing on secondary and borrowed stages for the next three years.”