Sales of 100 favorite books chosen by the BBC in its Big Read program have soared, as people check out what’s on the list. Bookseller “WH Smith, however, has taken a different tack. It has launched a set of ‘Little Reads’, flimsy little paperbacks priced at £1 apiece, reprinting just the first chapter of a book from the Big Read 100 as a ‘sampler’.” David Sexton writes that it’s a “potty” idea.
Tag: 06.02.03
Damien Hirst In Space
There is a flurry of spacecraft from earth on its way to Mars and beyond. “For now, Beagle 2 has stolen the limelight. It goes into space with a spot painting by the British artist Damien Hirst – which also acts as a colour calibration chart for its cameras – and a callsign composed by the Britpop band Blur.”
Canada’s Classic (Controversial) Artwork (They Took It Down After 8 Days)
Canada’s most controversial artwork? It’s got to be “Greg Curnoe’s notorious magnum opus of 1968, the 170-metre-long Homage to the R-34 (the title refers to the first dirigible to cross the Atlantic to North America from Britain), otherwise known as the Dorval Mural, a spectacular, Technicolor work that existed at its intended site – the arrivals area of the Montreal airport – for just eight days before being packed up and stored. The mural was deemed by the federal Department of Transport that commissioned it to be too controversial, too provocatively antiwar and anti-American, to greet our Vietnam-weary visitors from south of the 49th parallel. Since its fiery demise, Homage to the R-34 has remained sequestered in storage crates, briefly coming up for air at the National Gallery of Canada in 1998, when the mural was finally officially transferred to its collection.”
Canadian Musicians – The Road To Success Is Through Europe
Canadian music acts have a tough time getting recognition at home. So they try to make it big in the US. But though many Canadian musicians have hit it big there, it’s getting tougher. “Smartening up, many underground acts have been looking elsewhere for international record deals. Like the jazz greats in post-First World War Paris or the ignored-at-home Detroit techno DJs in 1980s Europe, Canadian artists are discovering the Old World can provide a more receptive audience than the new. Ironically, that transatlantic success is often enough to garner American attention.”
A New Gehry On The Skyline
LA’s new Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall is turning heads (and it hasn’t even opened yet). “The city centre more in need than even Bilbao of something worth looking at has got a shimmering pile of twisting metal. Yet this isn’t ‘me too’ urbanism, more ‘hey buddy, we were here first’. The $274m (£150m) Walt Disney Concert Hall was designed before Bilbao (in the late 1980s) but was held back by funding and other problems, which makes it the prototype architectural regenerator, a pivotal, if tardy, building. The hall is an exuberant pile of twisting steel encasing public spaces of generosity and wit, finished internally in Douglas fir, light streaming in where the external structure peels away from the façade – this is a building with no windows but plenty of light. It could exert a major impact on the city’s feeble downtown, its contorted, lumpy profile looming impressively over the skyline.”
FCC Seems Determined To Deregulate Media Ownership
“Despite massive opposition, it looks like the Federal Communications Commission will approve relaxing regulations on media ownership. “The proposed changes are such a threat to First Amendment freedoms that even some Republicans on Capitol Hill have been brave enough to oppose them. And yet, a fat lot of good it does. FCC Chairman Michael Powell wants to plow ahead with his deregulation scheme no matter what. It appears he is trying to do more damage than any other chairman in FCC history.”
Pining For The Days Of Greater Media Regulation?
“Recently, even at the biggest conglomerates, where deregulation is an article of faith, some executives have professed a certain nostalgia for a more restrictive era. From the libertarian-minded media investor John C. Malone to Donald E. Graham of the Washington Post Company, executives in television, radio, music, newspapers and cable TV have started to talk about the unintended consequences of two decades of deregulation and to ask for new rules, setting the stage for battles in Congress and the courts.”
Can Cultural Development Rejuvenate A City?
There’s an idea that culture can be used to “revive declining places, and the idea of urban living in general.” But does it really work? “The origins of this vigorous, commercially-driven view of culture in cities are in the wider free-market revolution of the 70s and 80s. Large, abandoned city buildings have been converted into cultural facilities at least since the French Revolution, when artists took over empty churches and mansions. But the idea that such conversions should be centrepieces of urban renewal only took root, in Britain at least, with the discovery of the ‘inner city’ as a political issue in the late 70s and the growing official reluctance to address its problems through more traditional, and expensive, social reforms.”
Scholastic Lays Off 400 – Just Before Harry Comes Out
The publisher Scholastic is laying off 400 employees on the eve of publishing the new Harry Potter. “Scholastic has been steadily tightening its financial belt since the beginning of the calendar year, following a terrible January when sales were particularly weak in the company’s trade and school book club divisions. In March, it announced for the second time in two months that sales and earnings in fiscal 2003 would not meet expectations. Scholastic has been hurt by the sluggish general economy and state budget pressures that have cut back school and library funding.”
Scholastic Lays Off 400 – Just Before Harry Comes Out
The publisher Scholastic is laying off 400 employees on the eve of publishing the new Harry Potter. “Scholastic has been steadily tightening its financial belt since the beginning of the calendar year, following a terrible January when sales were particularly weak in the company’s trade and school book club divisions. In March, it announced for the second time in two months that sales and earnings in fiscal 2003 would not meet expectations. Scholastic has been hurt by the sluggish general economy and state budget pressures that have cut back school and library funding.”