"The quest to undercut fashion’s standards of perfection, and to find beauty in the disdained, overlooked or overripe, runs throughout Mr. Penn’s career. In an otherwise pristine still life of food, he included a house fly, and in a 1959 close-up, he placed a beetle in a model’s ear." So long, Irving Penn.
posted by flapjax at midnite on Oct 7, 2009 - 20 comments

Master of the hoax finally goes straight. Clifford Irving, author of the now infamous Autobiography of Howard Hughes, publishes his own autobiography, Phantom Rosebuds. Irving has already covered the story of that Hughes forgery pretty thoroughly in his earlier book, The Hoax, and Lasse Hallstrom retold the story in a film starring Richard Gere. Phantom Rosebuds though makes a case for the rest of Irving’s life - f for fake, the subsequent novels, the jail time and the dramatic consequences of the hoax which draw him into a world of espionage, renegade presidents, and rogue hitmen.
posted by blimp77 on Jul 11, 2008 - 5 comments

[Newsfilter] In mid-November last year, David Irving, arguably the world's foremost holocaust-denier (Mel Gibson's dad comes a close second), was arrested in Austria for doing exactly that (previously discussed here). Today he was jailed for it. Should we (read; Austria) be jailing people for their views, however reprehensible or otherwise incorrect they might be? Or is it justifiable in some cases?
posted by Effigy2000 on Feb 20, 2006 - 315 comments

[NewsFilter] Lipstadt: Let Irving Go. Infamous "historian" David Irving was arrested in mid-November in Austria for Holocaust denial, violating section 3g of the Verbotsgesetz [in german]. Deborah Lipstadt, whom Irving once sued for libel, argues, "I don't find these laws efficacious. I think they turn Holocaust denial into forbidden fruit, and make it more attractive to people who want to toy with the system or challenge the system." Perhaps Irving hasn't had time to update his dossier on Lipstadt -- who is, in turn, keeping up with events on her blog.
posted by milquetoast on Jan 4, 2006 - 74 comments