archive

Literature, art and music

From Prospect, Beyond good and evil: For 60 years, Nicholas Mosley has written novels that are widely admired but not always understood. Rejecting realism, his work addresses symbolic truths—notably the idea that good and evil are inseparable. It's an approach that has put him at odds with the literary establishment. Outing an Unfinished Novel: Edmund White takes liberties with a Stephen Crane fragment. Comic versions of books need a novel angle: There's no point in turning books into pictures if the pictures add nothing to the words.  The dirty snobbery about smutty books: The vast amount of shameless smut in 'highbrow' books doesn't stop them being respected. The rules change when the fun is aimed at the mass market. 

From The American Spectator, a review of Counterpoints: Twenty-Five Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts, ed. Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer; and Roger Scruton on Art, Beauty, and Judgment. The introduction to Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art by Olav Velthuis. The artless branding of Frida Kahlo: The centennial of the artist's birth is being marked by exhibits, merchandise, and family dissension. The Jailhouse Jackson Pollock: Donny Johnson is a convicted murderer who has been kept in complete solitary confinement for the past 18 years. He started painting in order to stay sane, using dyes extracted from M&Ms and a home-made brush. Now his paintings sell for $500 each. 

Time and again pop impresarios demonstrate that individuals rather than corporations do best in the music business. Svengalis marry art and commerce much more effectively than faceless organisations. They are classic lone entrepreneurs, willing to back hunches, take risks and bet against the crowd. Ebony and Imus: Cornel West hangs with Prince and challenges—not denounces—hip-hop. A review of Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies by Pamela Des Barres. A triumph of style over substances: A review of W Axl Rose: the Unauthorised Biography by Mick Wall. An interview with Brad Warner, author of Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, and Death.