A team of statisticians developed a model to predict books that would hit big. Trouble is, books like “The Da Vinci Code” didn’t rate high in the model. “This year’s runaway bestseller should have had only a 36% chance of reaching the charts, according to Alvai Winkler and his team. Their model fits work by some topselling authors but gives only middling marks to the Harry Potter titles and rules out almost everything by Charles Dickens except for his lesser-known Christmas story The Battle of Life.”
Tag: 12.28.05
Has Book Reviewing Gotten Creepy?
“For those of us who are serious about book-reviewing, here are a few of the questions that nobody—not even the New York Times—has yet been able to answer: In the world of serious literary criticism, where do newspapers belong? The credentials of their editors are often more journalistic than literary, an interesting conundrum assuming that literary merit is the stated goal. Regarding the visual and performing arts, newspapers are mostly event-oriented, with a dominant focus on what’s commercially viable (rock music, blockbuster museum shows). Yet book sections often feature books that will sell a relative handful of copies compared to those they overlook.”
Detroit Listeners Sue Radio Station
Detroit isteners angry over recent programming changes have gone to court, charging the city’s NPR station with fraud. “The fury in Detroit over program changes at WDET-FM has listeners claiming they were tricked into contributing money to the station during a pledge drive while station operators were secretly planning to junk locally produced programming and replace it with national talk and public affairs shows. In a public radio world known for lowered voices and reasonable behavior, the class-action lawsuit filed in Wayne County Circuit Court last week is nothing short of incendiary.”
The Producers: A Flop That Shows Why Theatre Works
“The Producers has a litany of things that are wrong with it as long as Elton John’s wedding guest list. But the faults are instructive in the ways that they demonstrate why theatre has survived the onslaught of cinema and TV and why movies can be turned into great musicals, but seldom the other way round. The flaws flap around the film like munchkins in the Wizard of Oz.”
You Just Can’t Find Good Help These Days
“In the face of a national shortage of skilled technical staff, one leading regional [UK] theatre has launched a more traditional apprenticeship scheme to train the wig makers and lighting designers of the future. The Birmingham Repertory Theatre is giving six people, aged 16 to 21, training for 18 months in many departments including sound, lighting, make-up, wardrobe and stage management.”
Rats Die In The Name Of Art
An anti-animal cruelty group in Northern Ireland is up in arms over the suffocation of 90 white rats in a supposed piece of performance art in Belfast, and a decision by authorities not to prosecute the perpetrator. “Blood stains indicated that the animals had turned on each other after being dropped [into a see-through but airtight case.] The design made escape impossible.” Prosecutors announced this week that they lacked sufficient evidence for a prosecution.
Japan’s Impact On Euro Art
Japan has a long and glorious artistic tradition, of course, but you wouldn’t necessarily expect the country to come up when discussing the sources of influence in European art. But in fact, Western art reveals plenty of “modern manifestations of the classical Japanese aesthetic.”
Portrait Of An Illegal Antiquities Trade
Much of the classical ancient art sold in recent decades is believed to have passed through the hands of three men – Giacomo Medici, Robert E. Hecht Jr. and Robin Symes. They “acquired items that had been illegally removed from Italian tombs and used fake ownership histories, rigged auctions and relied on frontmen to sell the objects with a veneer of legitimacy. Italians say they have traced more than a hundred looted artifacts handled by the dealers to the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a dozen other major museums and private collections in the U.S., Europe and Asia.”
Tales Of Trouble At NY City Ballet?
A prominent board member resigns, complaining about the company’s direction. “Over the past few years, my escalating concerns over serious issues of governance made it impossible for me to continue. I am no longer willing to support an institution that increasingly bears so little resemblance to the one that George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein bequeathed to their successors, and to which I have been committed for over twenty years since my Chairmanship of the 50th Anniversary campaign in 1984.”
Critic Joseph McClellan, 76
McClellan was a music critic for the Washington Post over three decades. “Joe was a gentle, inquisitive and compassionate man, and those qualities were reflected in his criticism. ‘I’ve never attended a concert without reminding myself that at least one person in the room knows more about that music than I do.’ Sharply negative reviews were rare, and Joe was aware that he was sometimes viewed as a cheerleader. (He dismissed that charge with a laugh: ‘I don’t know how to twirl a baton and would look dreadful in a skirt.’) Instead, he likened his role to that of a gardener.”