“Writer Colleen Dunn Bates … thought she had a good idea: to put together an upscale guidebook about her city — a kind of travel book for people who live there. And given the intensely local focus of the project, rather than dealing with a big New York publisher, she decided to publish it herself…. Almost a year later, ‘Hometown Pasadena’ has not only sold 10,000 copies, it has also turned into a small empire….”
Tag: 10.02.07
50 Years On, Kerouac’s Joy Looks Like Disillusion
“A few decades ago, before TV commercials became obsessively concerned with prostate problems, Jack Kerouac wrote a book called ‘On the Road.’ It was greeted rapturously by many as a burst of rollicking, joyous American energy. … ‘On the Road’ turned 50 last month, and over the past few weeks a line of critics have taken another look at the book, and this time their descriptions of it, whether they like it or not, are very different.”
Here’s The Album. The Price Is Up To You.
“Radiohead, the respected British rock act, said that the band would sell its new album, at least initially, exclusively as a digital download and allow fans to decide how much to pay for it, if anything.” The album, “In Rainbows,” is to “be sold as a download without copy restriction software, known as digital-rights management. In effect, the band is asking fans to establish a monetary value for music, even when widespread piracy means that it would be available free.”
In Dance, Even Recent History Can Be Mythology
“The ephemeral nature of dance often leads to clichés about its being the art of the present. Would that it were. In some ways, the very fact that dance is fleeting makes it the least fully present of all the arts. Whether immediate or distant, the past intrudes, filtered through a most unreliable sieve: memory, which simultaneously augments and distorts every performance we see.”
Another College To Sell Art To Raise Money
Randolph College has decided “to sell the prized Bellows canvas and three other paintings from its art collection this fall at Christie’s in New York. The auction house estimates that the Bellows alone, which goes on the block on Nov. 29, could bring in $25 million to $35 million — at least 10,000 times what the students paid in 1920. The college’s goal is to raise at least $32 million over all to shore up its endowment and reduce a steep operating deficit.”
Broadway’s Teen Movement (A Dead End?)
“Teenage and tween girls have become the demographic of the moment, wooed by marketing campaigns and featured as central characters in a flurry of shows in development. Increasingly, though, some worry that the sugar-and-spice enthusiasm may be misplaced, because while teenagers and tweens may be helpful in creating a hit, they are far from enough to ensure one.”