“To promote its new star title, Doubleday launched a Defcon-1 publicity blitzkrieg. It printed a surfeit of galleys and put them into the grasping hands of underpaid booksellers, and sprayed copies all over the Internet. … It hired six actors, dressed them in tails, top hats, and long red scarves — in Morgenstern’s novel, die-hard circus fans wear red scarves to signal their devotion — and had them pass out beribboned bags of promotional caramel corn.”
Tag: 09.16.11
Author Who Dumped Publisher At Launch Explains All
“Don’t get me wrong; chick-lit is a worthy sub-genre and there is absolutely a place for it on the shelves. Some publishers, mine included, are very successful at marketing this genre to women. The problem comes when non-chick lit content is shoe-horned into a frilly ‘chick-lit’ package.”
Secret Agreement Bails Out Vancouver Arts Institutions
“The City of Vancouver secretly approved a bailout of more than $1-million for the struggling Vancouver Playhouse Theatre and the Museum Of Vancouver (MOV), and will provide an annual operating grant to the theatre company, which had been facing bankruptcy without the emergency help.”
Novelists: Don’t Think, Just Write — Or Give Up Your Spot In Culture
“Suddenly our important writers seem less like color commentators, sifting through the emotional, sexual and intellectual detritus of how we live today, and more like a mountaintop Moses, handing down the granite tablets every decade or so to a bemused and stooped populace.”
David Lui, 66, Who Brought “Dance Boom” To Vancouver
Once known as the Boy Impresario, “he introduced Vancouver audiences to some of the world’s great dance companies, and inspired a generation of artists and viewers.”
Yes, Despite The Cliches, Kenyans Read
“As a young Kenyan, I often find that the question of Kenyan identity is being hotly debated in bars, around dining tables and online. I see a real hunger in our generation to forge a new identity for ourselves – to redefine what it means to be be Kenyan. We are tired of the ignorant view that associataes Kenya only with wildlife, starving children and traditional dances.”
20 Years After Nirvana Hit Big – Does Music Matter In Seattle?
“The anniversary events are canonizing — and continuing to commercialize — the moment when, some people say, alternative music fully broke through to the mainstream. Yet many of the dark clubs where Nirvana and bands like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and the Melvins built followings are gone.”
Writers Protest Writers’ Program Rankings
A ranking of the US’s creative writing programmes by the magazine Poets & Writers has infuriated a group of 190 authors and teachers, who slammed the results as “bad: methodologically specious in the extreme and quite misleading”.
Cancellation Of Canadian Dance Show Is “Assault On Culture”
“A pattern emerges and the pattern is that of an assault on the culture. Broadcasting in Canada is not a right, it is a privilege. Giving back to the culture is a requirement of doing business. In this case it’s a matter of crunch the numbers with an agenda and crush the culture.”
Architecture-As-Art (Should It Be?)
“Ours is a time when art looks more and more like architecture, and architecture looks quite like art.”