Fans of JK Rowling have started a campaign to get her nominated for a Nobel Prize for Literature. They “yesterday launched a global internet campaign to have the Scottish writer nominated for the prestigious award founded 103 years ago by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite.” Spporters of the idea believe that “in creating Harry Potter, one of the most popular characters in the history of fiction, Ms Rowling has done enough to become a Nobel laureate.”
Tag: 08.20.03
Downloaders: What Constitutes “Light” Use?
The recording industry says it will only prosecute “light” users of music file-trading services. But what does that mean? “Because the RIAA has refused to quantify what constitutes a ‘substantial’ amount of file sharing, file sharers are left to wonder whether they are vulnerable to litigation.”
Can The Whitney Be Saved?
Hilton Kramer writes that the Whitney Museum was founded with high ideals but has sunk to “parlous condition.” Kramer wishes new director Adam Weinberg good luck – “he returns to a museum that many artists now despise—for the right reasons, too—and the public has every reason to distrust. I wish him luck. He will certainly need it, if the recent track record of the Whitney’s board of trustees is any guide.”
New Thinking About Musicals
Can the musical be reinvented? That’s a question for the Edinburgh Fringe. “Although it remains astoundingly popular, the musical suffers a strange reputation. Revered by the likes of Trevor Nunn, the classic American works of the 1930s-50s are seen as blue-rinse fodder, kitsch nonsense that has little appeal for young theatregoers. The 1990s saw a new trend for musicals tackling social problems – Rent dealt with Aids, and Ragtime was about racism in the US – but often these felt horribly glib. There is something about the form, about the way it forces characters to ignore the plot and break into song, that seems to demand silliness, irreverence and tongue-in-cheek charm.”
Opera House In The Maine
A couple from the big city moves up to Maine, buy a dilapidated old opera house and set about restoring it. “While residents here are typically skeptical of newcomers, this village has welcomed the restoration. Last year contributions and revenues totaled more than $200,000, nearly double the income in the first year. Almost all the performances have been sellouts this summer.”
Writer Writes Her Revenge
Ten years ago mystery writer Martha Grimes was dumped by Knopf, her publisher at the time. “Knopf dropped her, she said, probably because at that time she wasn’t earning back her advances.” Now – after a string of successful books, Grimes has written a story about the publishing industry that “may” bear a resemblance to real people in publishing.
Taking Sides Over Harry
“In a farcical way, the row over Prince Harry’s art embodies a fundamental worldwide conflict between modernity and religion, the secular and the spiritual. It’s a struggle in which the devil – modernity – could do with some better tunes. The case against Harry is not simply that his pictures are a pastiche, in their banally decorative way, of Aboriginal art, but that he has appropriated symbols with specific cultural meanings.”
New Without Experiment
Opera Australia’s new director in Melbourne is comitted to new opera. But the commissions he’s interested in won’t be “experimental”… “We can’t afford trial and error. It is very expensive and often nothing comes of it.”
Why Nothing’s Wright In Baghdad
Why were Frank Lloyd Wright’s plans for Baghdad not accepted in the 1950s when he drew them up for the King of Iraq? “Wright’s plans were deemed ‘rather grandiose’ by the revolutionary government and were not built. The simpler and cheaper university plan conceived by Gropius was built, as was Gio Ponti’s design for a Ministry of Development building. In 1981, a portion of Le Corbusier’s design for a sports complex was completed. The building was dedicated as Saddam Hussein Gymnasium.”