“Invaluable though innovation may be, our relentless focus on it may be obscuring the value of its much-maligned relative, imitation. Imitation has always had a faintly disreputable ring to it — presidents do not normally give speeches extolling the virtues of the copycat. But where innovation brings new things into the world, imitation spreads them.”
Tag: 04.18.10
The Most Powerful Man In Publishing?
“In a business environment where many of the principal publishers, booksellers and rival literary agents are reeling from the remorseless depredations of recession and digitisation (the IT revolution), he can make a good claim to be the most powerfully composed and uniquely global writers’ representative on either side of the Atlantic, a king of the book publishing jungle.”
Just How Russian Was Stravinsky?
“So was the good Stravinsky a Russian Stravinsky? Well, what makes a Russian a Russian? By citizenship Stravinsky was not Russian after 1918. By cultural orientation, it could be argued, he stopped being Russian in 1922.”
Think Globalization Is Homogenizing Global Culture? Au Contraire!
“The integration of markets and the Internet have certainly brought billions of people into closer contact. Everybody has access to the same American movies and music now, and not just American, also Indian, Romanian, South African and Chinese. … [M]ore and more people [have] the technological resources to decide for themselves, culturally speaking, who they are and how they choose to be known, seen, distinguished from others.”