The Original of Laura, whose manuscript consists of 138 handwritten index cards, will be released as a Penguin Classics hardback in November. Penguin “will publish all the cards in the book, with a transcript of text [of each card] on the opposite page.” The company plans to republish all of Nabokov’s backlist as well.
Tag: 04.18.09
The Government That Helps Its Citizens Buy Art
Some 12,500 people have bought works of art using interest-free loans since the Own Art scheme was set up five years ago. The Government-funded Arts Council, which runs the scheme, said it had given a “significant boost to galleries and artists around the country”.
NY City Opera Spends Two Thirds Of Endowment
“The New York City Opera said on Friday that it had raided its endowment of a total of $23.5 million to pay off debts and right the troubled company’s finances, leaving little left in its coffers. … [T]he company’s endowment now stands at $10.4 million.”
Oh, For The Books We’ve Lost
“The main fun of [Stuart Kelly’s} The Book of Lost Books is deciding which text you would have back from oblivion if you could pick only one.” Let’s see: Shakespeare’s Love’s Labors Won, Lord Byron’s memoirs, the Hemingway stories in his wife’s lost suitcase, Confucius’s Book of Music, and who-knows-what-treasures from the ancient library at Alexandria …
Antique Art Market Suffering From Lack Of Supply
“In the art market as in war, the worst danger is often unexpected. Professionals dreaded the decline of demand in the current recessionary gloom and it did not happen. The market is as bullish as ever. It is the drying up of supplies that is threatening to cause havoc.”
Director John McTiernan Indicted For Perjury
“A Hollywood film director who pleaded guilty three years ago to lying to the FBI in connection with the Anthony Pellicano investigation, then withdrew his plea, was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.”
California Chronicler James D. Houston, 75
He “captured the promise, the harshness and the sheer beauty of California in novels like Continental Drift and Snow Mountain Passage and in nonfiction works like Farewell to Manzanar, about a World War II internment camp for the Japanese.”