The nudity of Cosimo Cavallaro’s 6-foot-tall chocolate Jesus provoked the Lenten outrage of some Catholics — but whose tradition is it, anyway? “At least with respect to the nudity of his Christ, Cavallaro is in good company. The marble statue that Michelangelo delivered in 1525 to his patrons in Rome followed the stipulation in the contract, which specified ‘a marble figure of Christ as large as life, naked’.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
The Upside To The French Riots: Book Contracts
In France, “The tumult of October and November 2005 — three weeks of car burnings, street clashes and arrests sparked by the accidental deaths of two youths — have piqued interest in ‘les banlieues,’ or metropolitan suburbs, and helped some young French-Arab authors to get their works in print.”
New Novel Written By Tolkein, Put Together By Son
“Nearly 34 years after the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, his publisher has set a big U.S. press run of 250,000 copies for a new novel.” Coming out Tuesday, “The Children of Húrin” has been assembled by Christopher Tolkien from his father’s work. “The result is entirely in the elder Mr. Tolkien’s words, with only minor grammatical changes in things such as verb tense….”
Roth, Atwood, McEwan Among Booker Int’l Nominees
“Novelists Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan were among 15 nominees announced Thursday for the second Booker International Prize for fiction. … While the original Booker is given for a novel, the international prize recognizes a body of work.”
National Symphony Names Fischer Interim Conductor
“Ivan Fischer will become the principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 2008-2009 season, the NSO announced yesterday. It is an interim appointment, slated to last two years while the search continues for a full-time music director to replace Leonard Slatkin, who will step down at the end of the 2007-2008 season. Fischer will not serve as music director.”
Estate Seeks To Pay For Right To Not Publish O.J.
“The estate of Nicole Brown Simpson is seeking a court order for permission to bid on the book rights to O.J. Simpson’s ‘If I Did It’ at a sheriff’s auction Tuesday in Sacramento. … (T)he estate wants the judge in the case to allow it to take a portion of the $33.5-million civil judgment won from O.J. Simpson and use it as a ‘credit bid’ on the book,” the goal being “to ‘make sure this book is never published.’ “
In Biography, Where Does Emotion Come In?
Steven Bach, biographer of Leni Riefenstahl, says strict “objectivity and detachment” were not his guidelines in writing about the filmmaker’s life. “To deny that my subject aroused intellectual or emotional responses that were considerably less (or more) than neutral would have been as false as the avalanche of denials she herself trotted out to justify her life of great achievements and appalling transgressions of humanity in the name of Art.”
Why David Sedaris Doesn’t Deserve A Pass
“When Alex Heard tenderly busted David Sedaris in the New Republic last month for adulterating his nonfiction with many imagined settings, scenes, and dialogue, I expected journalists and others to rebuke the best-selling humorist. As for Sedaris, I expected him to acknowledge that he had erred by making up stuff, but those days were behind him. I was wrong.”
Banned By School, Play Finds Friends Off-Broadway
“Students at a Connecticut high school whose principal canceled a play they were preparing on the Iraq war are now planning to perform the work in June in New York, at the Public Theater, a venerable Off Broadway institution, and at the Culture Project, which is known for staging politically provocative work. A third show at a Connecticut theater is also being discussed.”
Mellon Centenary Brings Flurry Of Exhibitions, Events
In the 1960s, philanthropist and Yale alum Paul Mellon donated “to his alma mater the largest collection of British paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, rare books and manuscripts outside the UK along with funds for a building by Louis Kahn–gifts today worth more than $1 billion.” Little wonder, then, that the resulting museum, the Yale Center for British Art, leads the charge among American and British museums celebrating Mellon’s centennial this year.