Tag: 04.22.05

Unpublished Jack Karouac Discovered

“Beat Generation, written in the autumn of 1957, the same year as the publication of Kerouac’s breakthrough work On the Road, was unearthed in a New Jersey warehouse six months ago. An excerpt will appear in the July issue of Best Life magazine. The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fuelled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac’s alter-ego.”

A School For Values-Based Movie-Making

“Two years ago, the Rev. Robert B. Lawton, the new Jesuit president of Loyola Marymount University, began an ambitious, and costly, effort to turn the small Roman Catholic school, located in a staid, middle-class neighborhood northwest of Los Angeles International Airport, into a haven for aspiring filmmakers. ‘I looked at the landscape, and I thought there should be one values-based institution in the world that’s strong in teaching how to make images that shape and reflect us’.”

This Year’s Tonys – Triumph Of The Little Guys?

It’s easy to think that the big musical wins all the Tonys. But sometimes the little guy wins too. “The most intriguing possibility – and the one most discussed by voters who were interviewed for this article – is a showdown between the blockbuster “Spamalot” and another little Off Broadway musical that made its way to the big time: “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

Are Girls Who Read Fairy Tales More Likely To End Up In Abusive Relationships?

“A study of both parents of primary school children and women who have been involved in domestic abuse claims than those who grew up reading fairy tales are likely to be more submissive as adults. Susan Darker-Smith, a graduate student who wrote the academic paper, said she found many abuse victims identified with characters in famous children’s literature and claimed the stories provide “templates” of dominated women.”

Against Good Books

“Today’s corporate weather-makers hate “book-lovers”, as they sneeringly refer to them. They despise curious readers committed to the range and quality of what they buy, such as those who bother with books coverage in intelligent magazines or newspapers. Instead, extra resources will now go into snaring the fitful attention of affluent but apathetic semi-readers who, deep down, believe that, in the deathless words of Philip Larkin’s “A Study of Reading Habits”, “Books are a load of crap.” Ah, but those non-readers made an exception for The Da Vinci Code. So let’s have much more of the same brain-shrinking junk.”

Dealer Massively Overcharged Sheikh For Art

Why did Oliver Hoare, a leading London art dealer, invoice the world’s biggest collector Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar for massive overcharges? “On one occasion Mr Hoare invoiced Sheikh Saud £5.5 million for a jade pendant originally made for Shah Jahan. Ten months earlier the same object had sold at Sotheby’s for £454,500. Mr Hoare’s invoices are now being examined by Qatari authorities as part of the investigation into Sheikh Saud’s spending.”

Barnes Doubles Admission Price

The Barnes Collection is doubling its admission price to $10 in June. “The increase, the Barnes’ first since 1995, puts its ticket prices at or below those of other major art institutions in Philadelphia and nationally. The Barnes said the price increase was necessary because of its ‘precarious financial situation, inflation, and the rising costs associated with operating our facilities and maintaining the collection’…”

Brian Eno On A Definition Of Culture:

“Culture is everything we don’t have to do. Eating is necessary, but cuisine is culture. Clothes must be worn, but couture is culture. Haircuts and Shakespeare and early Saxon burial poetry all pose some kind of unnecessary order, he said, that we accept because it stimulates our most distinctive faculty. Imagination is the only thing we’re really good at. What we’re doing [when we’re engaging with cultural objects] is exercising that part of our mind that makes it possible to imagine things being ordered differently, and most importantly, to imagine what’s in other people’s minds. . . . If something is possible in art, it’s thinkable in life.”

New Beat For Corporation For Public Broadcasting

“Typically one of the quietest bureaucracies in Washington, the quasi-governmental Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been unusually active in recent weeks. CPB this month appointed a pair of veteran journalists to review public TV and radio programming for evidence of bias, the first time in CPB’s 38-year history that it has established such positions. PBS officials were unaware that the corporation intended to review its news and public affairs programs, such as “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” and “Frontline,” until the appointments were publicly announced.”