“In the summer of 1962, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was scanning his morning Washington Post when an item on Page A15 caught his eye. Norman Mailer’s most recent article in Esquire magazine had mocked Jacqueline Kennedy for, among other things, being excessively soft-spoken for a first lady. Hoover scribbled a note: ‘Let me have memo on Norman Mailer.'”
Tag: 11.11.08
Irony Lives: Kennedy Center Bleeps Carlin At Twain Prize
“The late George Carlin, whose sense of irony was world class, would have appreciated last night’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony at the Kennedy Center, though it’s not clear which rich irony he would have liked most. Surely, he would have gotten a kick about being too dead to pick up the prize himself, as more than one presenter noted.”
A Philanthropy Plays Matchmaker For Artists And Donors
“United States Artists’ Fellowships have been compared with the MacArthur Foundation’s ‘genius’ awards, which this year gave 25 artists $500,000 each, and the Guggenheim Fellowships, which this year gave out 190 grants in the United States and Canada, with an average award of $43,200. But what sets these fellowships apart from these larger, more established award programs is the way the group plays matchmaker between donors and artists.”
As Holidays Near, Publishing Industry Grows Anxious
“Like many businesses across the retail sector, the publishing industry has been hit by a raft of doom and gloom in the past few weeks”: layoffs, decreased earnings, predictions of a bad holiday season. And even if books turn out to be a popular holiday gift this year, what happens in January?
Australian Writer Wins Dylan Thomas Prize
“Nam Le, who was raised in Melbourne, is the second winner of the award, which is designed to encourage creative talent in writers under the age of 30 whose work has been published in the English language. Le is working in New York, where he is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review, and next year he will do a residency at the East Anglia University in the UK where he plans to work on his next book.”
Art Sale Prices Plunge
“The extent of the downturn, from $800 million to a final count of $470 million by Friday night, looked bad. Seven lots estimated to fetch more than $10 million each did not sell, and the total accumulated was the equivalent to the amount fetched in New York two and a half years ago. Nothing can obscure the fact that only 60 per cent of approximately 900 lots were sold, and the vast majority of these sold below their estimates – often by as much as 30 per cent.”
Autopsying NY City Opera’s Mortier Mess
“In the end, the whole affair was a remarkable act of hubris. To summarily jettison an opera company’s history, completely alter its artistic and audience profile, and redesign its funding structure without having identified sources of capital beforehand seems like an exercise in wishful thinking and a highly irresponsible act. City Opera is an essential public institution with a valuable history; boards are supposed to take that trust seriously, but this one was blinded by a shiny new toy.”