Word: scottie
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...morning of Aug. 21, 1911, Mona Lisa - arguably the world's most famous picture - was stolen from the Louvre. Who took her, how and why, is all part of the story told in two new books this spring. Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti (Knopf; 239 pages) sticks closely to the case and relates it luxuriously. In places it reads like a prose poem with narrative gallop. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler (Little, Brown; 376 pages) embeds the theft within more workmanlike prose...
...What Scotti does with the story is no better. She opens Vanished Smile with the Marqués arriving in the U.S. to peddle his forgeries, a gimmick that will lead unsuspecting readers to suppose that this imaginary character will somehow turn out to be the real man behind the crime. But the Marqués disappears from her book until the final chapter, where Scotti lays out Decker's account and then details the reasons why it's probably hooey...
...Scotti is right about one thing. The huge publicity surrounding the theft helped to launch Leonardo's great painting into the stratosphere of fame. "Mona Lisa left the Louvre a work of art," Scotti writes. "She returned an icon." Truer to say she returned a pop-culture celebrity, the kind who's helpless to stop the world from spreading loose talk about her. That's a temptation neither of these books was able to resist...
...Joan Baez—served its first beer last Friday. Managers said that the decision took into consideration both the organization’s current financial straits and the repeated requests by customers for a wider range of beverages. According to Passim’s public relations coordinator Susan Scotti, the owners’ desire to preserve the intimate, sedate culture of the venue led Passim to limit its beverage options to non-alcoholic teas, coffee, and sodas. But recently, Passim’s budget difficulties have led its owners to reconsider the dry policy in the hopes that serving...
...unknown artists while also attracting established musicians. “The ability to get really big names is not only because of the reputation, but because they remember the fact that when nobody else would listen to them, people at Club 47 or Passim would,” Susan Scotti, the club’s gallery coordinator, says. “I think there’s no other club in the country like that that has that kind of history.” The plans for the year-long celebration of the club’s 50th Anniversary?...