[contextly_auto_sidebar id="862z7etB0M2rQ0o5trkD8bwrkhOQ67rT"] THE Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbo is being read and discussed on our shores these days, with a new novel, The Son, out earlier this month. (The book, set in Oslo, is not one of those built around troubled detective Harry Hole. I spoke to Nesbo when he and his publisher were making a big push into the U.S. market in the wake of … [Read more...]
Memories of the Elusive Eric Dolphy
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="gWxP2UlWmS5c3mIiMDSg5QhfQpx7pxO7"] OFTEN I wonder how the pressure on today's musicians and artists to constantly promote themselves would allow a musician like Eric Dolphy -- an introvert dedicated to his craft and someone who remains a kind of enigma -- to have a career and achieve even the low level of fame he had in the '60s. I'm still wondering, but I'm glad to … [Read more...]
Amazon’s Fight With Publisher Heats Up
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="KtshLQL3I8V52FO3GDD8ottfgo4Dzh5b"] THE battle between the online bookselling giant and the Hachette publishers has taken a nasty turn: Amazon has removed the pre-order button for some books, has removed the discount it usually offers for others, and is fighting with publishers over profits on ebooks. Bestselling writers like James Patterson, J.K. Rowling (pictured) … [Read more...]
Jaron Lanier on Moore’s Law
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="aip73amsvg3xUNYYXf6tSsLWbr1Rp29w"] I'M going back to the work of the dreadlocked writer/musician/digital skeptic this week because of a conversation that will appear soon. He's got a great few lines near the beginning of Who Owns the Future? -- recently out in paperback -- that sums up Moore's Law, as well as what's called Baumol's Curse, about as succinctly as I can … [Read more...]
Offshoring Hollywood Musicians
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="nyU3WlOOWJ6AtWo9GPWNXOReGdrv3jlA"] WHAT could be the first skirmish in a larger war is shaping up in Hollywood, where L.A. musicians are protesting a studio's hiring of foreign musicians. The protestors are telling the Lionsgate studio, which distributes the Hunger Games movies, to "stop sending musicians' jobs overseas." It comes after a protest by the American … [Read more...]
Art Critic Kenneth Clark: Savior or Snob?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="2JRpGl1G6WEGCmBeZpJ8hGQwTyo0KCNg"] IT'S always easy to look back at cultural figures from earlier eras and denounce them as "elitists," and that's clearly what's happened to the great British art critic and interpreter Kenneth Clark. Through books on landscape and the nude, and his BBC television documentary series from 1969, Civilisation, Clark exposed an enormous … [Read more...]
Just How Bad is Amazon? A New Backlash
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9ZV3e0kcKq8CTDdht2tTpvL5mUJdBAL3"] LAURA Miller is one of our day's most lively and credible writers on books and authors. In her latest Salon piece, she says goodbye to Amazon, and documents her frustration over the Hachette mess, in which the online service deliberately slows delivery of some publishers' books. The company's predatory, near monopolistic style … [Read more...]
Will Kickstarter Save Culture? And, Curvy Divas
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="OipGQdl5st5HpgJ16uvOZV10yHar99su"] WE'RE now five years past the launch of Kickstarter, and some culture hounds, a new Telegraph article says, refer to the eras "BK" and "AK" -- Before and After Kickstarter. What has it done for arts and culture projects? The story takes stock of the good and bad, and comes down mostly on the good the crowdfunding has done. It's been … [Read more...]
What Literature and Rock n Roll Have to Say to Each Other
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="8lG1gx076ac8sMEbh9E4fK0epPYBWHeb"] THERE is a great new-ish journal out of San Franscisco that not only has the right idea, it has the follow-through. Radio Silence includes work by established elders (peerless short story writer Tobias Wolff), an interview with Lucinda Williams, and appearances by Carrie Brownstein, Rick Moody, even F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's all … [Read more...]
If Culture Isn’t Quantified, Does it Exist? And, Tech News
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9uyV3uaURenHexrSfUw92h6J4J7iuLD6"] ONE of the most important stories of the week ran below the fold in New York Times Styles. "Statisticians 10, Poets 0" got at the relentless quantifying that digital technology has made possible. And the things that can't be counted are fading from view. That would be fine, if so many of the things that matter, especially for the … [Read more...]