Talk:Sean O'Hagan (journalist)

Down Cyprus Avenue

A bit of duckduckgoing shows:

1. Down Cyprus Avenue: A Journey with Van Morrison. Phoenix, 1999. ISBN 1-86159-005-9.
2. Freddie Mercury, the great pretender: A life in pictures. Insight Editions, 2012. ISBN 1608871789. / Freddie Mercury. Fotografie di una vita. 2012. / Freddie Mercury, the great pretender : Une vie en images. 2012.

However, when I look further I see no sign that Down Cyprus Avenue was ever published. Promised, yes; published, I think not. And the book on Mercury seems to be a recycling of the literature provided within an earlier CD set; although it indubitably exists, I'm not at all sure that it amounts to a book by O'Hagan. -- Hoary (talk) 09:44, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

For Down Cyprus Avenue, I have found: 224 pages. Hardback published by Orion Publishing Group, 1997 (ISBN 978-1-861590-05-3). Paperback published by Phoenix House / Phoenix Books, 2000 (ISBN 978-1-861590-06-0). (Phoenix House is an imprint of Orion Publishing Group, which is owned by Hachette Livre UK, which is owned by Lagardère Publishing - these pointless details are merely for my own amusement). -Lopifalko (talk)

Um, yes. Let's concentrate on what look as if they might be the key points within this: Hardback published by Orion Publishing Group, 1997 [...]. Paperback published by Phoenix House / Phoenix Books [...] (my emphases). Well, was it actually published? I have no evidence that it was, and good reason to think that it wasn't. Consider:

1. Van Morrison had/has many fans. The Phoenix/Orion/Weidenfeld 'n' Nicolson company (only later absorbed within a larger conglomerate, I think; let's call it "POWN") had clout with book retailers. Any book on Morrison from POWN would be expected to sell in the thousands, if not higher.
2. "O'Hagan" has a minor typographic complexity and potentially also traps for searches. But luckily "Cyprus Avenue" is an unusual collocation. So let's skip the author and concentrate on the title. Abebooks.com currently has no copies. Amazon.co.uk currently has none (e.g. from dealers of used books). Worldcat has no entry for it.
3. Here's the entry for it within a fan site. Within a bibliography updated as recently as 2005, the author presents no evidence for the existence of the book. (And remember, this is by a fan, one who's sufficiently dedicated to create a multipage bibliography. Surely he'd ask around about/for the actual book.)

Inference: the book was planned; it was announced; the plans fell through. (Maybe the author became busier than he'd expected; maybe an excellent competitor came out from another publisher.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:07, 22 January 2014 (UTC) .... PS and yes I checked for Cypress Avenue as well. -- Hoary (talk) 01:59, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Perhaps through the publishing company takeovers, the top tier company came out holding the rights to more than one new Van Morrison book and only wanted to release one. -Lopifalko (talk)

Phoenix Books

Phoenix Books (strikeout above).
That page now conflates at least two entities. (Its cleanup-in-progress proceeds largely by using other linknames and/or targets. And same for Phoenix Press.)

I doubt that either 'Phoenix Books' or 'Phoenix Press' was at any time the official name of the POWN phoenix (Weidenfeld & Nicolson imprint, and descendant/s) --discussed above, where one evidently knowing editor uses 'Phoenix House' primarily. Does anyone here know?

(By the way I doubt that 'Phoenix Books' was the whole official name of the Beverly Hills publisher that evidently survives as Phoenix Books and Audio http://phoenixbooksandaudio.com --but that webpage is "Copyright (c) 2011 Phoenix Books Inc" and its banner title is (P) Phoenix Books.)

At another page --same website, also "c. 2011 Phoenix Books Inc"-- that entity uses 'Phoenix Books, Inc.' in prose. titles:

• Phoenix Books & Audio - About Phoenix Books, Inc.
• (P) Phoenix Books: ABOUT PHOENIX BOOKS, INC

--P64 (talk) 20:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

--P64 (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Other book contributions

Should we include these or are they scraping the barrel?

• The Landscape of Murder by Antonio Olmos includes an essay by O'Hagan.

• Cardiff After Dark by Maciej Dakowicz includes an essay by O'Hagan.

• Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s. Photographs by Bruce Davidson, William Eggleston, David Goldblatt, Graciela Iturbide, Boris Mikhailov, Sigmar Polke, Malick Sidibé, Shomei Tomatsu, and Li Zhensheng, Ernest Cole, Raghubir Singh and Larry Burrows. Essays by Kate Bush (curator), Gerry Badger(?), Sean O'Hagan, Tanya Barson, T.J Demos, Helen Potrovsky, Boris Mikhailov, Ian Jeffrey, Julian Stallabrass, Robert Pledge, Manthia Diwara, Shanay Jhaveri and Raghubir Singh.

• Damien Hirst: New Religion by Damien Hirst and Sean O'Hagan. Paul Stolper, 2007). ISBN 978-0-955215-43-8. Presumably an essay again. "This catalogue is published to accompany the exhibition 'New Religion', a major new project by Damien Hirst, and the artist's first to be shown in an active church."

• Photoworks magazine issue 15. Transcription of a panel discussion with Martin Parr, Charlotte Cotton, Paul Reas, Sean O’Hagan, Gordon MacDonald and Ben Burbridge. Pages 14-25.

• Nick Cave: A Little History. Photographs by Bleddyn Butcher, foreward by Nick Cave, introduction by Sean O'Hagan. ISBN 978-0-992657-80-2. Perhaps published by First Third Books in 2013, but unavailable and appears it will be published by Allen & Unwin in 2014.

posted at 08:24, 22 January 2014‎ by Lopifalko

Scraping the barrel is perhaps a harsh way of putting it -- but yes. I was about to say that I had provided just such a list for Mark Haworth-Booth but DGG had then persuaded me to remove it (and to add that somebody has added mumbo jumbo about his coat of arms, surely one of the least noteworthy things about him); but then I checked that article's history and found that I'd contributed very little indeed to that article. So it must have been somebody else. (Or perhaps it never happened at all. My memory's going. Uh, I need another beer.) If an introduction (or similar) is exceptionally substantial or has generated commentary, let's add mention of it; if not, better skip it (even if it's good). Incidentally, I've never seen Everything was moving, no library within reach has a copy, used copies go for high prices, and I'd guess that most of the photos inside it are in other books to which I do have access and so I'm not willing to pay a high price. If you do have access to a copy, please take a look. -- Hoary (talk) 09:13, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

So expensive on Amazon here. I missed seeing mention of that exhibition at the time. -Lopifalko (talk)

Oh well, in partial compensation . . . one of the best photographers whose work was shown in that show (which I couldn't see) was Ernest Cole, the recent Steidl book on him is excellent (even if you already have House of Bondage), and there are plenty of cheap copies available on the internets. -- Hoary (talk) 09:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of him before. You're right I did find it cheap. It's on its way. Thank you Hoary. -Lopifalko (talk)

The variety in Everything was Moving reminds me of an earlier show at the Barbican, In the Face of History. I can't imagine how that exhibition (which I also didn't see) could have cohered; but most of the ingredients were excellent, and again, cheap copies of the handsome catalogue (ISBN 9781904772576) are plentiful: I'm happy that I bought one. -- Hoary (talk) 00:10, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• As I understand it: In general, except for the most famous authors, we include their major works--these can include essays if a person is known primarily as an essayist, but usually not otherwise. For a journalist or critic, who normally will have written any dozens or hundreds of short pieces, we would normally expect some sort of evidence that a particular contribution was in some way relevant to their notability-the best example is when a particular piece wins an award, or is specifically listed in an award. DGG ( talk ) 10:38, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Good gracious, deus ex wikipedia. How unexpected and pleasant to encounter you on this talk page, Sir. (You were on my mind thanks to yesterday's reading of an essay within The Way the World Works.) But small-talk aside, yes, you've said well what I'd been clumsily trying to articulate. ¶ Oh, if your library happens to have Everything was Moving, and if this book has a potted bio for S O'H that says anything beyond the little that's in the current article, do please add it. -- Hoary (talk) 11:14, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Other non-sources

Disappointingly (and surprisingly), our man isn't written up in either Who's Who or Contemporary Authors. Any other ideas? -- Hoary (talk) 01:07, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Name variant

Here his name is given as "Seán O’Hagan". I wonder if this appears anywhere else. -- Hoary (talk) 05:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)