“O stalwart Sussex postman, who is / Delivering the post from Lewes, / Cycle apace to Charlton Firle / While knitting at your plain and purl / Deliver there to good Clive Bell / (You know the man, you know him well / He plays the virginals and spinet) / This note – there’s… nothing in it.” That’s T.S. Eliot in a 1948 postcard to Clive Bell, two of the many boldface names in Swiss lawyer Albin Schram’s soon-to-be-auctioned collection of letters.
Tag: 06.27.07
15th-Century Manuscript To Stay In Britain
“The British Library has raised £635,000 to save a rare 15th Century manuscript from being exported. The manuscript, called The Wardington Hours, was sold to a German dealer at auction in December. But culture minister David Lammy placed an export ban on the book to give the library a chance to match the price.”
Orchestra League Trades ASOL For LAO
“The American Symphony Orchestra League has for years struggled with its unfortunate acronym. And while in recent times its administrators have valiantly tried have it be known as, simply, ‘the League,’ rather than ‘ASOL,’ the latter has never left parlance within the industry. Yesterday, a long overdue change was unveiled, effective in the fall, to the ‘League of American Orchestras….'”
Librarian Drill Teams: Geeky, Sure. But Stodgy? Nope.
“The librarian from Ohio popped a wheelie on his book cart, and the audience went wild. The team of librarians from Texas wore red, white, and blue feather boas as they danced the boogie-woogie while pushing their book carts in pinwheel formation. The Delaware team outfitted their performance vehicles in silver lamé and dressed in rhinestones, as they executed their signature ‘wave-canon’ maneuver. Welcome to the Third Annual Bookcart Drill Team World Championships….”
Play Banned At Conn. School Gets Another Run In NYC
“A play about the Iraq war that was banned from performance by officials at a Wilton, Conn., high school will enjoy a three-performance run at the Vineyard Theater…. ‘Voices in Conflict,’ created by theater students at Wilton High School and based on books and other material produced by American soldiers who have served in Iraq, was preempted from performance at the school by its principal. The production subsequently received single-evening runs at the Vineyard, the Public Theater, and the Culture Project.”
FBI Finds Pearl Buck’s Missing Manuscript
“The FBI’s Philadelphia office has recovered the ‘priceless’ lost manuscript of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, the novel that won the Bucks County resident the Pulitzer Prize and was instrumental in her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.” The manuscript, which the FBI said had been “missing since at least 1966,” contains annotations in Buck’s hand.
Former Orsay Head: Free Admission Is Dangerous
“President Nicolas Sarkozy’s idea of abolishing entrance fees for French museums is dangerous, said Francoise Cachin, former head of the Musee d’Orsay and of the country’s state-run museums. ‘He has not weighed the consequences of free admission, and will regret it if he goes ahead,’ Cachin said in an interview in Paris. ‘There will be a huge gap that the state will either have to fill directly or by renting out works in exchange for cash.””
Mania For Austen Embraces Style, Not Her Substance
In books, film and television, Jane Austen is hot. “But this year’s wave of books and biopics is tinged with something different. Instead of acknowledging the enduring pleasures of Austen’s satire, or demonstrating how smoothly her centuries-old observations apply to contemporary society, this round of fanaticism is more interested in going back in time — or perhaps simply backward — to play dress-up in empire-waisted gowns with suitably dashing suitors to swoon over.”
Iraqi Poet Nazik al-Malaika, 83
“Nazik al-Malaika, one of the Arab world’s most famous poets, an early exponent of the free verse movement in Arabic, died last Wednesday in Cairo. … In a country riven by sectarian strife, her life and work as a poet and a literary critic were poignant reminders of Iraq’s cultural renaissance in the mid-20th century. Baghdad was then considered the Paris of the Middle East, and poets and artists flocked here to work.”
Feinstein To Smithsonian: Hire New Chief, Pronto
“Citing a harsh report on missteps at the Smithsonian Institution, Senator Dianne Feinstein declared at a hearing on Tuesday that the museum complex should move quickly to replace its ousted top executive rather than take an estimated six months to a year. … Responding to Ms. Feinstein, Roger W. Sant, the chairman of the Smithsonian Board of Regents executive committee, testified that choosing a new secretary was ‘the most important job that we have to do right now, and I believe we need to take the time to do it right.'”