The Errant Æsthete

Nostalgiaphobes beware. The 1980s are back, and celebrated in the London musical “Desperately Seeking Susan.” If you want to forget that elephantine shoulder-pads and electric blue eyeshadow ever existed, run for your life. If you feel like enjoying a piece of fun-but-flawed theatrical candyfloss, run to the Novello Theatre.

In an arresting, nimbly executed biography by Andrew Lycett, “Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes,’‘ we learn that Doyle grew to resent the legendary sleuth he created whose fame eclipsed his own. It was for Holmes that the fan mail poured in and for Holmes’s death that London clerks wore black armbands. Doyle had “no more mystery about him than a pumpkin,” recalled a fan who met him.

Twelve years after Congress ended most funding to individual artists, the National Endowment for the Arts may reopen the flow of money to poets, musicians, writers and painters through artist colonies. Colonies give artists the freedom to explore works that otherwise might be imperiled by public criticism.

Don McLean Keeps Serving Up `American Pie’ That Made His Career, Fortune. At some point after Don McLean takes the stage in Manhattan or London or Sydney, he’ll croon those five little words that have sustained his pop-music career, made him wealthy and sparked countless sing-alongs:

“A long, long time ago …”