Are Britain’s publishers failing their public? “The director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival has accused Britain’s publishing industry of being parochial and leaving readers largely ignorant of intellectual debate in the rest of the world.”
Tag: 08.09.03
A Life Wasted On The Fringe
Critic Dominic Papatola takes in an orgy of theatre at this year;s Minnesota Fringe Festival, and comes away disappointed. “Consider my batting average: In one 36-hour period, I saw 13 shows. Two of them were quite good — the kind of thing I would recommend to friends and readers. Three of them were so-so; flawed but with enough merit to make them worth $10 and an hour of my life. But fully seven of those shows — nearly 60 percent, for those of you who like statistics — resided in the oozy quagmire between not-so-good and positively rancid: odious, smarmy, meandering exercises in precious self-indulgence that, even by the somewhat lower standards of the Fringe, were experiences that, at the end of my theater-going life, I will mourn as time utterly squandered.”
Remembering Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh would have been 100 this year. “His boisterously playful satires of London life between the wars remain unmatched for their technical accomplishment and wicked skewerings of the smart set. Perhaps most famous for his 1945 novel, the sadly over-rated Brideshead Revisited, Waugh had one of the longest and most prolific literary careers of any English writer of the last century, penning some 12 novels, half-a-dozen travel books, several biographies, and scores of essays and reviews.”
Scotland Outside Itself
Is a play set is Scotland a Scottish play? And if it is a Scottish play, does that mean it doesn’t travel well outside the region? “Scottish theatre, unlike Irish, is seen as regional. The London establishment think that we should have our own plays, but they don’t think that they should have to listen to them. They think they won’t be relevant to them.”
So Caligula Really Was Mad…
“British and American archaeologists digging in the Roman Forum said yesterday they had uncovered evidence to suggest that the emperor Caligula really was a self-deifying megalomaniac, and not the misunderstood, if eccentric, ruler that modern scholars have striven to create.”
Is Edinburgh The Next Literature Capital?
“Edinburgh is making an audacious – and as some see it, a bare-faced grab – to become the world’s first official City of Literature.
The town in which Miss Jean Brodie admonished her “gerls” on how “one’s prime is elusive”, and where the heroin addict Renton shoplifted to feed his habit in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, is plotting to steal the honour from under the noses of London, New York, Paris, Dublin and Prague.”
Will Toronto Literary Fest Survive?
Will Toronto’s Harbourfront Reading Series survive the departure of impressario Greg Gatenby, who’s now decamped for Berlin? “It is a sad departure for the man who built Toronto’s Harbourfront Reading Series and the International Festival of Authors into the premier stop on the North American literary circuit. This is not the first time Gatenby has embarked on a dangerous game of chicken with government funding agencies, publishers and his own employers, but it may well be the last.”
I Pronounce Thee…
More and more products (movies, cars, perfumes…) are being launched with odd, hard-to-pronounce names. “A name that’s different, that’s unfamiliar can be a plus because it sparks some memory code in people’s brains. They remember it, if only to ask someone else if they’ve ever heard of that word and what it means. Another factor driving the weird-word name trend is the difference between older and younger consumers. For the generations coming-of-age with the Internet, all this media access and interactivity have transformed pop culture into a global playground – what was once foreign and remote is now cool and exotic.”
Broadway – Where Are All The Plays?
When “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and “Enchanted April” close on Broadway at the end of this month, there will be only one play left running on Broadway. “Nineteen musicals will be around in September, but plays are never very plentiful on Broadway. Last season, though, was particularly dire for new work, and the coming drought is unusual.”
Who Is Adam Weinberg?
The new director of the Whitney Museum is well-regarded as a curator. “What the Whitney needs to do is define its terrain. It must set itself apart from the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and a host of other smaller museums in New York, all competing for the same audience. The idea is for the Whitney to help shape the dialogue about what American art is and will be.”