“It remains to be seen whether anyone will read Poe in the distant future. As we approach the bicentennial of his birth on Jan. 19, however, it’s obvious that Poe is far from ‘nameless here for evermore.'”
Tag: 01.15.09
Jazz Was A Midwife To The Civil-Rights Movement
Nat Hentoff argues that a Kennedy Center inauguration celebration’s “focus on jazz as well as President-elect Barack Obama (who, I’m told, has John Coltrane on his iPod) should help make Americans, including our historians, aware of the largely untold story of the key role of jazz in helping to shape and quicken the arrival of the civil-rights movement.”
Dancer & Ballet Mistress Gage Bush Englund Dies At 77
“Gage Bush Englund, ballet mistress of ABT II, and a former dancer with American Ballet Theater and the Joffrey Ballet, and former ballet mistress of the Joffrey II Dancers, died on Monday at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.”
London Auctions To Be A Shadow Of Their 2008 Selves
“Works by Lucio Fontana, Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons will fail to lift the total estimate of London’s contemporary-art sales next month above a quarter of 2008’s level. The evening auctions by Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury carry a total low estimate of 38.4 million pounds ($55.9 million), according to Bloomberg calculations. This is 23 percent of the 164.3 million pounds in equivalent sales estimates in 2008.”
Pulitzer-Winning Poet W.D. Snodgrass Dies At 83
“W. D. Snodgrass, who found the stuff of poetry in the raw material of his emotional life and from it helped forge a bold, self-analytical poetic style in postwar America, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his debut book, died on Tuesday at his home in Erieville, N.Y., in rural Madison County.”
Fiction Writer Hortense Calisher Dies At 97
“Hortense Calisher, the novelist and short-story writer whose unpredictable turns of phrase, intellectually challenging fictional situations and complex plots captivated and puzzled readers for a half-century, died on Tuesday in Manhattan.”
Madoff Kosher Cookbook Wasn’t What It Seemed, Either
“Karen MacNeil, a food and wine expert who was given the title of editor of the project, beneath the two executive editors — Mrs. Madoff and her friend Idee Schoenheimer — disclosed in an interview with The New York Times that she was paid to write the cookbook in its entirety. She said Mrs. Madoff ‘was interested in having her name on something that would allow for some sort of fun.'”
In Australia, New Legal Protection For Aboriginal Artists
“Australia has launched a draft code regulating the sale of Aboriginal art, worth as much as A$500 million ($330 million) per year. It aims to outlaw so-called carpetbagging, when dealers exploit artists and buy their work cheaply for alcohol or drugs.”
Helen Mirren To Star As UK’s National Theatre Begins Big-Screen Simulcasts
The Oscar-winning Dame’s first stage performance in six years – in Nicholas Hytner’s staging of Racine’s Phèdre – will be the first of four National Theatre productions broadcast live to movie theaters. The program includes 50 independent cinemas in Britain and a further 100 around the world.
Ricardo Montalban, 88
He was a “suave leading man who was one of the first Mexican-born actors to make it big in Hollywood.” But he’s best remembered by Boomers and Gen-Xers as a preternaturally smooth TV pitchman for Chrysler, Capt. Kirk’s most bitter enemy in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and as the presiding spirit on the series Fantasy Island.