“The Orange Prize was founded when no female writers made the shortlist for the prestigious Booker Prize in 1991.” It was needed then. But things have improved – currently 15 of 25 best-sellers in the UK were written by women. Is the Orange still necessary?
Tag: 06.04.03
Madonna Book To Set Publishing Record?
Madonna’s new children’s book is being published simultaneously “around the world on 15 September, translated into 42 languages. It is the first of five children’s morality tales planned by the singer, based on Hebrew texts she is studying from the Kabbalah religion. US publisher Callaway Editions said it would become the ‘widest simultaneous multi-language release in publishing history’.”
Royal Mail: Hands Off Queenie
Britain’s postal service is protesting an artist’s use of a picture of the Queen on stamps. The Queen’s face has been hidden by the addition of a gas mask. “A spokesman for the Royal Mail said: ‘We do take any breach of copyright very seriously especially in relation to the Queen’s image. We produce over three billion of these stamps every year and the images belong to the Royal Mail’.”
Davidson: Carnegie Move Good For NY Phil
So why is the New York Philharmonic walking away from Lincoln Center? “Because it has spent the last 40 years in a hall widely — but certainly not unanimously — held to be an acoustical failure, one that has undergone more than its share of tweaks and massive renovations. The prospect of fixing up Avery Fisher Hall again, launching yet another capital campaign to fund yet another overhaul with uncertain results, seemed daunting and horribly expensive. What if — after getting and spending enough hundreds of millions of dollars to do the job, after vacating Avery Fisher and scrounging dates at other places for the years of construction, trying to patch together residencies, extended tours and temporary locations — after all that, the new auditorium still appalled?”
Odd Hall Out – Don’t Disparage Lincoln Center Because It’s Not Carnegie Hall
“Avery Fisher is a misunderstood treasure. Concert halls — indeed, all places where people gather — should not be measured by their iconic status. They should be measured by the service they perform for their communities. In that regard, Avery Fisher has done a yeoman’s job. Its ultimate shortcoming may be that it’s not Carnegie, but that’s also its saving grace. While the out-of-town orchestras rush to perform at the grand old hall on 57th Street, Avery Fisher plays a different — and sometimes more vibrant — role in the city’s musical life.”
Artistic Success…On The Backs Of…
An arts organization’s biggest asset? Its volunteers. “Anyone who believed the media coverage of the arts might end up thinking that they were a haven for fat cats on inflated salaries, cushioned by state subsidy and Lottery grants. Talk to anyone who actually works for your local theatre, art gallery or stately home and you begin to see a more heartening picture of goodwill and altruistic dedication to the play, the music, the paintings. Every volunteer is a romantic at heart, hoping to be brushed by stardust.”
Why Movie-goers Are Staying Away From Foreign Films
“There’s still an audience for good foreign films, but it isn’t getting any younger, or bigger. On the other hand, Hollywood’s favorite customers, heavy movie users in their mid-teens to their mid- or late 20s, have been turning away from subtitled films in droves, and not just because their mothers warned them about reading in the dark.”
Publisher Withdraws Book After Plagiarism Charges
Publisher Little, Brown has taken the unusual step of withdrawing a book – a history of the creation of the atomic bomb, after four wurthors complained that the book contained passages drawn from their work, uncredited.The author, Brian VanDeMark, 42, said yesterday that he had no comment. In a telephone interview on Friday he said that he was confident that ‘detached readers would find a majority’ of the passages in question to be ‘reasonable paraphrases.’ But he added then that “a minority should and will be reworded or credited in a footnote.”
Vienna Philharmonic – Stuck In The Old Culture
It’s been six years since the Vienna Philharmonic first let a woman play as a member of the orchestra. But women are still scarce in the orchestra, and a long established culture stubbornly resistant to change is difficult to move…
Surprise Winner For Orange Prize
A longshot has won this year’s Orange Fiction Prize. “What was billed as a race between two million-selling authors, the American Donna Tartt and Zadie Smith from England, went instead to the relatively little-known Valerie Martin for Property, a novel of exceptional power about slavery in 19th century Louisiana.”