Category: people

Over three decades, the unconventional Boyle family of artists has developed a growing reputation for sculpting ravishing facsimile wall reliefs, “ranging from the surface of a road to a beach or snow” of random sites around the globe. “Most projects involve six-week field trips as far afield as the Australian desert or to the Vesteralen Islands in the Arctic Ocean. Destinations are determined by sending out invitations with a dart enclosed; at the ensuing party blindfolded guests throw darts at a map.” – London Evening Standard

Margaret Atwood found life on the film set to be very different than her solitary life as a writer; the group dynamics, the realization that the director has Alzheimer’s and the lead actress, whose breasts were becoming increasingly larger, was pregnant. “‘You don’t have those problems when you’re a novelist. If the person’s breasts in the novel get bigger and bigger, it’s because you’ve made that happen.”” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

An mysterious Australian woman who died in a nursing home without any of her fellow residents knowing she was wealthy, has left $12 million to artists – included in the bequests were a $60,000 fellowship for a pianist to study abroad and $6 million to Australia’s National Gallery to buy art. – Sydney Morning Herald

Pierre Boulez turns 75 this year, and the fuss and attention celebrating him in the musical world is astonishing. But the man is dogmatic and a propagandist of the first order, writes Norman Lebrecht. And while we’re at it, he adds, Boulez has been in a major creative slump for decades. What, exactly, are we celebrating? – The Telegraph (UK)

Twenty years ago a farmer in Suffolk decided to build a model of the famed Second Temple of Jerusalem. “He began at a leisurely pace, immersing himself in the necessary books and fitting the handiwork in around the long hours demanded by his farm near Fressingfield.” But the model has evolved well beyond its original ambitions, and archaeological experts say the farmer, working from historical records, has made some fascinating discoveries. – The Telegraph (UK)

“Susan Sontag’s recovery from her second bout with cancer has been dramatic. You will find few with a stronger will to live than this extraordinary American writer, though not of course without aid: medicine, not any wishful or literary thinking about illness (TB, remember, was once considered a romantic disease), is what her celebrated 1973 essay, Illness as Metaphor, advocates.” – National Post (Canada)

Salman Rushdie is still officially under a death threat. But, “his conduct, however, suggests that he’s trying to play two sides of the most famous death threat in the history of English letters. On the one hand, the literary apparatus that built Rushdie’s fame does not hesitate to stage rock-star events at which audiences are all but frisked before hearing the endangered master read. On the other, the man himself is finding that it’s tough to bask in the limelight from behind a scrum of bodyguards.” – Feed

W. Michael Blumenthal, curator of Berlin’s Jewish Museum and former U.S. Treasury Secretary, will be made an honorary citizen of Oranienburg, the small German town where he was born. Blumenthal, whose family fled to the U.S. in 1939, became an American citizen in 1952. Oranienburg’s mayor said the aim of the honor was “to show there was no place for anti-Semitism there.” – Die Welt

Author Salman Rushdie has found a reason to stop hiding from the death warrant that was issued against him ten years ago: love. Rushdie, who is still married, has a new 29 year-old girlfriend with whom he has been publicly cavorting. He has also reportedly started working out and had cosmetic surgery performed on his “drooping eyelids.” – Sydney Morning Herald

“For two years, Nina Kotova was a hired clothes horse, pictured in Cosmopolitan and Glamour. A musician by training and vocation, she strutted the fashion shoots until she had enough money to buy a decent cello. Then she returned to the serenity of music where, by the perverse logic of modern times, she is being marketed as the gorgeous ex-model who plays the cello.” She’s good – but will the real critics listen beyond the hype? – The Telegraph (UK)