Comments on: David Kipen: A True American

By: Conversations In the Book Trade : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

Conversations In the Book Trade : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:48:52 +0000

[...] as the most popular genre. Well, considering that Kipen and company were actively pushing The Maltese Falcon as one of the Big Read choices last year, it seems to me that the NEA is eating a cold bowl of [...]

By: Revive the Federal Writers Project : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

Revive the Federal Writers Project : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:46:24 +0000

[...] after I personally proposed the idea directly to David Kipen, Mark Pinsky suggests the same in the New Republic. (via [...]

By: Market Watch : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

Market Watch : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:08:27 +0000

[...] David Kipen refused to consider my Federal Writers Project [...]

By: Confessions of a 21st Century Book Reviewer : Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:04:30 +0000

[...] support. But by who? Grants? Crazed philanthropists? You certainly won’t find it from the NEA or its puppet spokesman David Kipen, who viewed my WPA-style solution as something vaguely Communist. At the present time, you [...]

By: Fred Bender

Fred Bender — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:30:12 +0000

David Kipen was a “classmate” of mine when we both studied to become docents for the reopening of the LA Central Library. This would have been around 1992 and he was perhaps a little older than college-age.

The course, about of ten sessions, was fairly comprehensive, requiring a great deal of time and effort on the part of our volunteer instructors.

At the end of the course David disappeared and he made it perfectly obvious that he never had any intention of following through and helping to conduct tours. He scammed the system.

Ever since, I have considered him to be a conniver and a certified phony. Amazingly, he continues to dupe people that should know better.

By: Frank Wilson

Frank Wilson — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:27:45 +0000

Hi Ed,
There are some problems with government funding of the arts and they start with the institutionalization and conventional outlook that would necessarily follow from such – in fact, does follow from it. Next time you’re in DC, pay a visit to the Phillips Collection. The main part of it, the really interesting part, is Duncan Phillips’s house and the true Phillips collection is what Duncan Phillips himself collected. As with all great collections, it is informed by a unifying sense of personality. Once you enter the new wing, where what is hanging on the walls has been collected mostly by curators and other “experts,” the magic disappears. The last people in the world you want to patronize the arts are bureaucrats. It is also worth remembering that the government doesn’t make anything and it doesn’t sell anything. It’s income is whatever share of our income it chooses to confiscate. The inability of the arts to support themselves reflects primarily on the arts and artists.

By: Peter L. Winkler

Peter L. Winkler — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:36:28 +0000

To give you a sense of how little this idea would cost, $104,000 could pay for five reviews a week, 52 weeks a year, with each writer paid $400 per piece.

Have a consortium of publishers fund it. To avoid the taint of influence, they woud put their monies nto something like a blind trust that would dole out payments to reviewers.

Failing that, approach Buffett, Gates, Soros or Turner. It’s pocket change for any of them.

By: Not that we want to save literature or anything… « Charlottesville Words

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:26:39 +0000

[...] we want to save literature or anything… Posted on April 10, 2008 by Elizabeth I read this and thought, Wouldn’t it be loverly? If newspapers were dying and reading was “at risk,” [...]