Francisco Ayala, Spain's Literary Lion, Dead At 103 "Considered one of 20th-century Spain's most distinguished intellectuals, Mr. Ayala was routinely mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Besides being a novelist, he was a poet, critic, essayist, lawyer and academic sociologist. Much of his work was banned in Spain during the Franco era."

New York Times 11/05/09

email this story | Posted 11/05/09@10:19PM

George Zoritch, 92, Ballet Russe Leading Man He was "an international star in the rival Ballet Russe companies who stood out for his matinee-idol looks and bold stage presence and who later became one of American ballet's respected teachers."

New York Times 11/06/09

email this story | Posted 11/05/09@10:05PM

Susan Graham In Bed With Renée Fleming (With Her Ex-Boyfriend Watching) "[With] Renée and me, there's no barrier … We can do anything with each other and we don't care. … One of the reviews said we seemed giddy in bed together, and we really were." (She's talking about playing Octavian to Fleming's Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at the Met; the ex-boyfriend is conductor Edo de Waart.)

San Francisco Chronicle 11/04/09

email this story | Posted 11/05/09@09:56PM

'Ayn Rand Is One Of America's Great Mysteries' "She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. … So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon?"

Slate 11/02/09

email this story | Posted 11/04/09@10:27PM

Woody's Account Of His Dinner With Ingmar "With mild exasperation, Mr. Allen said, 'This has been documented a million times.' He and Bergman, he said, 'have met, we've had dinner, we've spoken on the phone. I've had dinner with him, with Liv Ullmann …" Is it true that, throughout that dinner, the men never spoke?

New York Times 11/04/09

email this story | Posted 11/04/09@10:08PM

Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, 'The Father Of Modern Anthropology' "Part philosopher, part sociologist and entirely humanist, he studied tribes in Brazil and North America, concluding that virtually all societies shared powerful commonalities of behavior and thought, often expressing them in myths." Lévi-Strauss called those commonalities "structures," and his insight was the basis of the school of thought known as "structuralism."

Los Angeles Times 11/04/09

email this story | Posted 11/03/09@10:27PM

Van Gogh's Correspondence Now Available Online In English "In what is perhaps the first project of its kind, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has put English-language translations of 902 of Vincent van Gogh's personal letters on line." Vangoghletters.org "allows you to search them by keyword, correspondent, city and more."

Los Angeles Times 11/03/09

email this story | Posted 11/03/09@10:25PM

Impresario John Kenley, Who Brought Big Stars To Little Cities, Dies At 103 He was "renowned for taking large-scale productions to small towns and cities and festooning the shows with headliners like Mae West, Gloria Swanson and Burt Reynolds."

New York Times 10/31/09

email this story | Posted 11/03/09@10:15PM

Richard Burton's 'Economy Of Motion' Dick Cavett, in an epilogue to a series of online columns remembering the late actor, reveals that the widely praised slow-motion actions Burton employed in his 1980 Broadway run of Camelot "were in part bred of pain." He needed, and subsequently had, a gruesome operation called a laminectomy.

New York Times 10/30/09

email this story | Posted 11/03/09@10:07PM

Leonard Slatkin Suffers Heart Attack After Performance The veteran conductor, currently music director of the Detroit Symphony, experienced chest pains while leading the Rotterdam Philharmonic on Sunday and collapsed in his dressing room afterwards. He is now recovering in a Dutch hospital following an emergency angioplasty.

Detroit Free Press 11/03/09

email this story | Posted 11/03/09@07:48PM

Stieg Larsson's Partner, Family Battle Over His Estate Swedish writer Stieg Larsson, who was "largely unknown before his sudden death at 50, has become one of the most successful writers in the world," with an estate estimated to exceed £20 million. "But because he and the architect Eva Gabrielsson, his partner of 32 years, never married and he died without making a will, the proceeds have defaulted to his blood relations...."

The Guardian (UK) 11/02/09

email this story | Posted 11/02/09@07:47PM

Tony Kushner At The Top "His long-prodigious intellect and his perennial ability to combine dramatic political agitation with a deep sense of emotional need has deepened into an acute awareness of human frailty. Many of those close to him say he is now doing his very best work."

Chicago Tribune 11/01/09

email this story | Posted 11/02/09@12:33AM

Gershwin Heirs Fight Over Royalties "The dispute -- over how to divide foreign royalties -- is spelled out in lawsuits in separate Los Angeles courts. In a Superior Court case that could be titled "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," the trust that controls lyricist Ira Gershwin's estate is suing Warner/Chappell Music, one of the giants of song publishing."

Los Angeles Times 11/01/09

email this story | Posted 11/01/09@08:52AM

Landscape Artist Lawrence Halprin, 93 "As postwar America sprouted suburban malls, urban parks, corporate compounds and federal urban renewal projects, Mr. Halprin helped forge a new, sharper style of landscape architecture, often as dependent on concrete as on vegetation. Places he shaped include Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco; Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis; a sequence of urban spaces with dazzling fountains in Portland, Ore.; a park atop a freeway in Seattle; and large plazas in Los Angeles."

The New York Times 10/30/09

email this story | Posted 10/30/09@07:59AM

United Airlines Loses The "United-Breaks-Guitars" Guy's Luggage "The video nabbed nearly 6 million views on YouTube and prompted the airline to promise it would do better. But when Carroll flew into Denver International Airport on Sunday, he learned that United had lost his bag. What's worse, Carroll was in Colorado to do a keynote speech for a group of hundreds of customer-service executives."

Toronto Star 10/29/09

email this story | Posted 10/30/09@07:16AM

Louisa May Alcott's Lifelong Craving For Goodness "At age 11, she wrote in her journal, … 'I made good resolutions, and felt better in my heart. If I only kept all I make, I should be the best girl in the world. But I don't, and so am very bad.' Decades later, she returned to the journal and attached a note to the entry: 'Poor little sinner! She says the same at fifty'."

Double X 10/29/09

email this story | Posted 10/29/09@09:58PM

García Lorca's Grave Opened As Spain Confronts Its History "On Wednesday ... under pressure from human rights activists and with the acquiescence of [Federico] García Lorca's family, Spanish authorities began exhuming six mass graves in Alfacar. The opening of García Lorca's grave is the latest and most high profile effort by Spain to come to terms with its ugly past."

Washington Post 10/29/09

email this story | Posted 10/29/09@04:53AM

Photographer Roy DeCarava, Who Chronicled Harlem, Dead At 89 "[He] photographed Harlem during the 1940s, '50s and '60s with an insider's view of the subway stations, restaurants, apartments and especially the people who lived [there] … He also was well known for his candid shots of jazz musicians - many of them taken in smoky clubs using only available light."

Los Angeles Times 10/29/09

email this story | Posted 10/28/09@10:05PM

When Woody Met Ingmar Liv Ullmann: "We sat down at the table [in Bergman's New York hotel suite] - and this is the honest to God truth, Ingrid was sitting there, I was sitting there, Ingmar there, and Woody Allen there - and they did not talk. They just looked at each other, almost lovingly."

New York Times 10/27/09

email this story | Posted 10/28/09@09:32PM

Lighting Designer Michael Philippi Dies At 58 "Michael Philippi, a gifted lighting designer whose roots went to the very core of the Chicago theater and who collaborated with Goodman artistic director Robert Falls on his most important projects, collapsed and died Tuesday afternoon on a sidewalk in downtown Chicago."

Chicago Tribune 10/27/09

email this story | Posted 10/28/09@07:19AM

Cecilia Bartoli Compares Michael Jackson To The Castrati Says the mezzo (who is promoting her new album of arias written for 18th-century eunuchs) of The King of Pop: "He was an amazing, amazing musician and talent and genius really of music. He was really also a victim of this, in a way. Mutilating himself - what he did for his body, for the skin, for the nose."

Los Angeles Times 10/27/09

email this story | Posted 10/27/09@09:48PM

The Complicated Friendship Of Auden And Britten The late-life meeting between estranged geniuses W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten in Alan Bennett's new play, "The Habit of Art," never took place in real life. Nonetheless, "Bennett's brilliant conjecture ... leads us straight to the heart of one of the most gripping and symbolic relationships in 20th-century culture."

The Times (UK) 10/27/09

email this story | Posted 10/27/09@07:25AM

Landscape Architect Lawrence Halprin Dies At 93 "He left his mark at all scales, from the crafting of San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square in the 1960s to the transformation of the 52-acre base of Yosemite Falls that was completed in 2005." Charles Birnbaum, president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, called him "the single most influential landscape architect of the postwar years."

San Francisco Chronicle 10/27/09

email this story | Posted 10/27/09@06:26AM

Ian McKellen Says Coming Out Was Key To His Success "The belief among some in his field that opportunities automatically get narrower after such candor is to him mythology. 'I'm living proof the opposite is true. You get more self-confidence. You don't have that bit of dishonesty,' he says, adding that acting 'is about disguise. But it's not about lying.'"

Washington Post 10/27/09

email this story | Posted 10/27/09@05:11AM

Walt Whitman, Levi's Pitchman "Whitman is an involuntary spokes-celebrity here, and perhaps you deem this ad a desecration of all he stood for. I can't say I blame you. But were you forced to choose a clothing line for our favorite barbaric yawper to rep, you might choose this one."

Slate 10/26/09

email this story | Posted 10/26/09@07:03PM

How Malcolm Gladwell Writes "There's a constant issue of tone: who do you want to read these pieces, and how do you want them to be read? I can write them in a way that is deeply satisfying to a professor of philosophy at Princeton, but we all know if I do that I'll lose everybody else, and I can do it at the other end of the spectrum for a 10-year-old. You have to pick where you want to be, which for me is somewhere around the middle. Maybe a little to one side of the middle."

The Guardian (UK) 10/26/09

email this story | Posted 10/26/09@08:13AM

Andrew Lloyd Webber Diagnosed With Cancer His spokesman said in a statement that the condition was currently in its very early stages.

BBC 10/25/09

email this story | Posted 10/25/09@11:00AM

Vanessa Redgrave Talks About Revisiting Magical Thinking Keeping a promise to Unicef, Vanessa Redgrave will give a benefit performance of "The Year of Magical Thinking," Joan Didion's play about the grief of losing her husband and daughter. Redgrave lost her own daughter, Natasha Richardson, last spring, shortly before the performance was originally to have taken place.

Wall Street Journal 10/23/09

email this story | Posted 10/23/09@05:41AM

Philip Roth On Acting, His New Book And Shopping Online "I buy from FreshDirect," Roth says. "I also use Amazon, and I buy a lot of used books from AbeBooks and Alibris. It's wonderful when you want to find something obscure and there it is for $3.98. It's the greatest book bazaar that has ever existed."

Wall Street Journal 10/23/09

email this story | Posted 10/23/09@05:33AM

Margaret Atwood, Her Novels Notwithstanding, Says She's An 'Optimist' "For a speculative-fiction visionary who writes about bioengineered catastrophe, commodified humanity and environmental devastation, Margaret Atwood is one seriously sunny personality."

Wired 10/20/09

email this story | Posted 10/22/09@09:58PM

'So What Is Lars Von Trier's Problem, Anyway?' (Maybe Not Misogyny) "Glancing over the evidence, it's easy to dismiss him as a sexist purveyor of art-house torture porn … Yet a strong case can be made that von Trier's patented brand of female trouble is more richly complicated - or, at least, more compelling in its pathologies - than his detractors might admit."

Slate 10/22/09

email this story | Posted 10/22/09@09:42PM

Mexican Intelligence Spied On Gabriel García Márquez "The defunct DFS agency bugged the Nobel laureate's phone and monitored his movements from 1967 after he moved to Mexico with his family. The authorities suspected the Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude because of his leftist sympathies and friendship with Fidel Castro."

The Guardian (UK) 10/21/09

email this story | Posted 10/22/09@07:03AM

Alice Munro Says She Has Fought Cancer "I've been lucky with my health," the 78-year-old author said. "Also, I think we are lucky now in our medical intervention that keeps us going. I have a heart bypass and I've just had cancer and things like that are just dealt with now."

The Globe and Mail (Canada) 10/22/09

email this story | Posted 10/22/09@06:43AM

Bill Murray: Zen Master, Off-The-Grid Actor, Comedic God "You don't meet Bill Murray. You spend some time in his presence, and then try to figure him out when he's gone." For instance, he "has no agent or publicist and is contactable only through friends or a freephone answering service. … [And] an entire genus of movie gossip has sprung up around his supposedly cruel behaviour on sets."

The Times (UK) 10/16/09

email this story | Posted 10/21/09@10:05PM

The Priceless Peggy Guggenheim "It was said that she had a thousand lovers in her life, and that she received her most thorough grounding in modern art when she spent a night and a day in bed with Samuel Beckett."

The Independent (UK) 10/21/09

email this story | Posted 10/21/09@09:54PM

José Saramago Says We'd Be Better Off Without The Bible Speaking at the launch of his new novel, Cain (which retells the story of Adam and Eve's ne'er-do-well son), the Nobel laureate called the Good Book "a manual of bad morals" with "a cruel, jealous and unbearable God." (Fortunately, he observed, "Catholics do not read the Bible.")

Agence France-Presse 10/19/09

email this story | Posted 10/20/09@10:20PM

On The Bus With Philip Roth, Touring His Hometown "Philip Roth came home again Saturday, which is not so unusual because he's been a frequent visitor in recent years." The twist to this visit? Roth was "the surprise guest on a bus tour of Newark" -- "Philip Roth's Newark," as it was called.

Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.) 10/18/09

email this story | Posted 10/20/09@06:53AM

Feminist Artist Nancy Spero Dies At 83 "Ms. Spero, who always viewed art as inseparable from life, developed a distinctive kind of political work. Polemical but symbolic, it combined drawing and painting as well as craft-based techniques like collage and printmaking seldom associated with traditional Western notions of high art and mastery."

The New York Times 10/20/09

email this story | Posted 10/19/09@08:17PM

The Mercurial, Meteorological Jane Campion "A warm breeze, at play." So actor Harvey Keitel once described his director in The Piano. An interviewer finds that "[t]he breeze derives from her quirky humour and the mercurial play of expression on her face; her greying hair and her black clothes suggest severity, but the woman herself is a riot of frank, flushed emotion."

The Observer (UK) 10/18/09

email this story | Posted 10/18/09@09:38PM

Paul Taylor Reveals The Secret Of Choreography "'How do you make a dance?' Well, I get asked that so often that I just make up completely different answers each time. There are so many made-up answers, and they're all lies."

New York Times Magazine 10/18/09

email this story | Posted 10/18/09@10:08AM