tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41558618184520547472024-02-20T10:19:41.947-08:00In the Front Row, On the Dole The only NYC readings blog that tells authors when they have droned on too long by use of our exclusive Drone-On-Meter. Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-28915207935847284792019-10-20T10:56:00.001-07:002019-10-20T10:56:31.429-07:00 Wow, New McSweeney's IT Book Kinda Like Cover of This Blog !<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-17329039400691771182019-09-20T10:50:00.000-07:002019-09-21T11:55:35.663-07:00How Not to Run A Panel on How Not to Run A Reading Series: A Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: left;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPmwFsp7IJwrQ2HZueHSxc8XZd1Q-K2sCO4FrwiOl4fwR5abcjaIbnbB_e290i0ysV3IDBYqzesBFhsfNuQsjPXXnJ3PSzcdioEfetnHzVNj2nkQ5scSzsAB7-gA0_qsAsP8R6y8ULOSVq/s1600/6cb106c7909ddb4c-hownottorunaseries%255B1%255D.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPmwFsp7IJwrQ2HZueHSxc8XZd1Q-K2sCO4FrwiOl4fwR5abcjaIbnbB_e290i0ysV3IDBYqzesBFhsfNuQsjPXXnJ3PSzcdioEfetnHzVNj2nkQ5scSzsAB7-gA0_qsAsP8R6y8ULOSVq/s320/6cb106c7909ddb4c-hownottorunaseries%255B1%255D.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">The first and only odd thing that happened at Tuesday night’s “How Not to Run A Reading Series” panel discussion at the KGB bar was when moderator Andrew Lloyd-Jones, in his opening remarks, said he’d rather be at one of the other Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend events that were taking place that evening. By the end of this sparsely-attended event, most of the ten audience members probably agreed with him. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">But on a positive note, only one person walked out in the middle. In the interest of accuracy, I can’t count the poet who sat next to me and who said she found the program dull among the determined stayers because she was on crutches and could hardly skip out unobtrusively. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Lloyd-Jones runs KGB’s Liar’s League reading series, which is one of these readings series that employ actors to read or perform selected stories. He is a member of the book festival’s Bookends Committee. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">His guests were Suzanne Dottino, who until recently ran KGB’s Sunday Night Fiction series. She said she’s still going to involved in some parts of it, although the bar has named a new curator. (see previous post). </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">The other Manhattan-based readings director was Katie Rainey of the Dead Rabbits series on the upper Upper East Side. Repping the city’s primary literary borough, Brooklyn, were Rachel Lyon of the Ditmas Lit series and Raquel Penzo, who runs the New Voices readings in Crown Heights.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">The format consisted of Lloyd-Jones asking a series of perfectly appropriate questions and the readings directors responding. Rainey said that you should have at least one partner. Dottino said that she’d run her readings for as long as she had because, at least until recently, she felt that she was getting satisfaction from presenting the writers.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">I was really impressed by the long-range planning that goes into running these readings, which in the case of Dead Rabbits and Ditmas Lit take place in bars. Indeed, Lyon said one necessary tool for her readings, which she runs with a partner, was her spreadsheet. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Penzo, who said she was handing off her curatorial duties soon, was the most amazingly organized of all the directors. She said she planned her events, had the printing of brochures set up and about a thousand other administrative details ironed out one year in advance. She also tries to suss out which of her scheduled readers for a given night might be able to pinch hit for her if she couldn’t make it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Lloyd-Jones asked his guests what the worst thing that happened at one of their events was. Penzo said it was the writer who went on for 32 minutes, despite being told the limit was 15 minutes tops. Uptown at the Dead Rabbits reading, Rainey said that a couple breaking up loudly and close to the stage during somebody’s reading was a low point. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">It’s always struck me that readings really are a form of improvisational theatre. I saw one writer breast-feed her child at the podium and another pass out. When you mix bars, or even bookstores, writers, booze and tight spaces, it’s no wonder the cops aren’t called in more often. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Other recommendations the directors noted were the importance of having the open mike section at the end and learning how to pronounce the names of the writers they’d be presenting. Although the second item seems self-evident, it generated the biggest laughs of session because Lloyd-Jones had mangled one of his guest’s names. The rationale for the first recommendation was that you don’t want the open mike readers and whatever friends they bring to leave as soon as their bit is over. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Beyond the interesting, but rather nuts and bolts aspects of running readings that Lloyd-Jones led his guests through, Penzo’s take on what she tries to accomplish at “Other Voices” stood out. She said she sees her role as giving other writers access to the kind of opportunities she has had. In particular, having paid $50,000 for an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, she said she tries to share what she learned there with many of her writers who don’t have access to the benefits of getting a MFA. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">One topic that didn’t come up was the role of readings blogs in what, for all its informality, can be described as the author event section of the publishing industry. The English Kills Review, a blog run by Ian MacAllen, is an excellent source of information about NYC readings. MacAllen also runs the Notable in New York readings listings in the Rumpus. That section is a must-read for the avid readings attendee. It’s not comprehensive and it tends to be Brooklyn-centric, but it’s one place to find out where the cool kids will be hanging.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Another good source I use is the Club Free Time listings, for some reason if you put 100 free poetry readings in New York into your browser, this site comes up. It’s fun because they list the author events, but they don’t say where they are. You’re supposed to pay a fee to get that information, but it is simple enough once you know the event exists to just find the address elsewhere. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Another site I use is Thought Gallery, which lists a lot of events that don’t turn up on MacAllen’s sites or Club Free Time. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">A special shout out goes to Unnamable Books in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, which has great readings and I think a punk rock ethos about listings, i.e., they can’t be bothered. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">The thing about all these scattered readings listings is that none of them are comprehensive. Maybe the super-organized Penzo could tackle this project when she retires from running her reading series. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">I’ve always thought that never mind just listings, some kind of literary mafia, like the Brooklyn Literary Council, the parent organization of the Brooklyn Book Festival, or Lit Hub or Electric Literature, should do a roll-up of all the city’s reading venues. I’d like to see them walk into a bookstore like Books are Magic and say to its gifted events director, Michael, “That’s a nice podium you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Lloyd-Jones didn’t take any questions from the audience, but if he had, I wanted to ask about what I think is the cardinal sin of readings directors, which is reading your own work. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">Nearly all readings directors are writers and they get into the field to promote their own work, but as my writing teacher, the novelist Nelly Reifler told me before my short foray into MC’ing, “Don’t read your own work. People will invite you to read at their events and that’s how you do it.” Attendees of other Bookend Events would have stumbled upon this faux pas the night before Lloyd-Jones’ event. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">So, while “How Not to Run A Reading Series” wasn’t a total success, organizers of the Brooklyn Book Festival can take comfort from the fact that only one able bodied person and not a single poet on crutches left in the middle. </span></div>
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Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-9671604640610980312019-09-02T10:37:00.000-07:002019-09-02T10:43:49.638-07:00Changing of the Guard in the Red Room<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">After 10-plus
years, one of Manhattan’s leading readings directors has stepped down. Suzanne Dottino,
who has helmed the readings at downtown Manhattan’s KGB bar for at least a
decade, has passed her director’s baton to new talent, as yet unnamed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Dottino’s
tenure saw the little-known reading series grow into a must-appear booking for
fiction writers from newbies to literary institutions such as the Irish author
and three-time Booker Prize nominee Colm Toiben. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The
community of writers who presented their work under Dotino’s guidance stretches
from Europe to the West Coast at least. This reporter recalls a chat with novelist Sarah Shun-lien Bynum in Los Angeles in which she said her KGB appearance in Dottino’s
series was a highlight of the book tour for her first novel, "Madeleine is Sleeping."</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Dottino, a
fiction writer and playwright, who teaches at CUNY, will presumably spend more
time on writing and teaching now that she has shed the administrative duties of
her gig as one of New York’s most respected readings
directors. Patrons will still be able to guzzle the authentic, if nasty, Baltica beer at the Russian-themed nightspot, but Dottino's curatorial touch will be missed. </span></span><br />
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<br />Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-79673554632481461422019-08-06T10:08:00.000-07:002019-08-06T10:08:43.714-07:00There are no Sams on Italian Trains<br />
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Date: July 30, 2019</div>
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Venue: Books Are Magic</div>
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Authors: Emily Nussbam, Willa Paskin</div>
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Free Drinks: No</div>
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DroneoMeter Readings: Negative</div>
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Benefits: expired </div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">On the train last week going to the Emily Nussbaum
reading at the Books Are Magic bookstore in Brooklyn, I found myself standing
over a young woman who had resting on her knees six or seven books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The top one whose title I couldn’t make out looked
new. The books were held in a bag from the Green Light Bookstore in Fort
Greene, Brooklyn. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">There are some summer nights in the city, when
everybody is off at posh writers’ retreats in Italy, when because of a certain
electrical current in the heavy air, the inevitable meetings among those left
behind, those of us stuck in town, hum along pleasantly with a felicity wholly
lacking in the colder months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Before getting on the train, as I stood at the
turnstile fumbling with various expired Metrocards, a young man who had just
paid and gone through the turnstile ahead of me, noticed I was having trouble.
He said, “Here” and opened the gate so I could go through. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">After I did, and we were both standing on the
platform, I said, “If this was a movie, you’d be a cop and I’d be busted for
fare beating.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">My new accomplice in crime laughed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I continued. “The first thing I’d do is try to act
like a tourist and pretend I didn’t know anything. But then you’d check my
license and see that I live about two blocks away so that wouldn’t work.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">As I walked away from my benefactor toward the back of
the platform, I said, “Finish the script by the end of the week and we can take
it from there.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">It was cooler that my free pass was handed out by a
citizen who’d just paid his fare than if I was assisted by somebody who’d just jumped
the turnstile himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">So, buoyed by the delightful anarchy of having been
given this favor, I was emboldened to ask the young woman if she could guess
which independent bookstore in Brooklyn I was on my way to a reading at. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">For understandable reasons, often women don’t
appreciate strange men talking to them on the subway. But Sam, who works in
publicity at Grove/Atlantic, didn’t seem to mind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">She said, “Books Are Magic.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">You may argue that to attribute her correct guess
about which bookstore I was headed for to some midsummer’s night’s dream vibe
that all the book people at all the Italian retreats, and even the relative
plodders who were finishing their sessions upstate at Saratoga Springs and or
who will be going to Broadleaf in August, would be kicking themselves for
having missed out on is a bit fanciful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">It could more simply be explained by the fact that Sam
is smart and correlated the train we were on to the independent bookstore I was
headed for. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Well, obviously Sam is smart, they don’t hire dummies
in the publicity department at Grove/Atlantic. But putting this obvious fact
aside, how do the non-midsummer’s night dream believers account for the sign that
accompanies this story? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Duh, we know Italy’s not only coming, it’s already here.
That’s why bloggers who post pictures of Italian castles and swimming pools and
who write, “At the most wonderful dinner party in the Italian countryside where
everyone summarized the plot of their favorite . . . “ are more to be pitied
than scolded. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Always the know-it-all, as soon as Sam said she worked
at Grove/Atlantic, I mentioned Morgan Entriken’s name as if he and I went way
back, which is only true in as much we both could have gone to Woodstock. (OK,
I don’t know how many 13 year olds were wandering around Woodstock, but there
must have been a few.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">Sam
was probably relieved when her stop in Brooklyn finally came and she could get
away from even a harmless gentleman like myself who wanted to gossip about
books and writing, but she was gracious all the way from Chambers Street to Brooklyn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">When
I got to Books Are Magic, I found the store packed. You could get in the front
door, but just barely. Nussbaum covers TV for the New Yorker and before that
she wrote for New York magazine. She was promoting her new book “I Like To
Watch.” The overflow crowd was evidence of why publishers like authors to have
a plattform, which means a pre-publication following from somewhere, magazines,
TV, social media, stadiums, theaters or this blog.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">It
is, of course, ironic that what ammounted to a sell-out crowd, had there been
tickets, was for a book about TV. I’d gone to another reading at the store two
weeks ago for a novelist, a fairly, well-known writer and the turn-out had been
respectable, but nothing like the numbers drawn by Nussbaum. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">Books
are magic and so’s TV, but the TV magic results in standing room only author
events. Yeah, that’s another joke I inflicted on Sam. Within the publishing
industry, I think you call readings author events so I had to show off that I
was aware of that distinction if it’s even true. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">I
went around to the store’s backdoor where it was also full of people who were
content to be sitting behind the stage, not able to see Nussbaum and her
interviewer, the Slate TV critic Willa Paskin. I kidded around with the store’s
readings, no, author events director, Michael, and asked him if I could get
credit for showing up even though I was about to duck out because it was so
crowded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">Michael,
another person who has tolerently listened to me opine about bookish topics,
said that I could and assured me my brief stay wouldn’t be held against me when
the summer school semester’s grades were tabulated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">I
was sorry to miss the program, but I’ll definitely buy the book at an
independent bookstore and read it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had
our train ride been longer, I would have pulled out one of my readings joke
staples to entertain Sam about how important independent bookstores are, how
they preserve a multiplicity of voices, how they give small presses equal
footing with the bigger outfits and how they are much easier to shoplift from. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">I
found myself out on Smith Street in a jiffy, ready for whatever chance
encounter might come next. Suck on that, Pasolini. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">I
went to Catholic school in New Jersey. The Italian kids used to punch me in the
bicep. I never really got the hang of that game and I did not enjoy it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: -0.1pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ll
read the new Natalia Ginzburg when it gets colder. For now, my brothers and
sisters in the stuck in town community, remember to listen respectfully when
everybody gets back from Vermont, Tuscany or Newark. They’ll never know what
they missed. There are no Sams on Italian trains. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJjsAwwLzZQvHx3svlA_sSetpezjLthyheYQI9GVTwZPbwU9JC6JNLLGadjNM6rXSztYcIUa7ebMCdYW2xakGCr_tK_txx7ZYNUfZTzGej29k8JL1ElnSQ6g8-q0sCXR7rjC1i3BHw3Nj5/s1600/IMG_1770.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> </div>
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Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-58670742968875402692019-05-10T11:56:00.000-07:002019-05-10T12:16:06.869-07:00No Bridge Between Cultures for you, Funny Man! <div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCC7xGYzKfiy0cIloR-cOTeXRXDoGPugxy6w_Mcj8LP-zvhSeg4vZHqIi2mFsfTyyxw64XyI81yzykGgCMqVIpQ9B6iJjEAXq7gSM8MHn85F4Tx4VhM5u0eP0bJwKHC9M6Wml5XniK_DPg/s1600/joke_kundera_book_cover%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="312" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCC7xGYzKfiy0cIloR-cOTeXRXDoGPugxy6w_Mcj8LP-zvhSeg4vZHqIi2mFsfTyyxw64XyI81yzykGgCMqVIpQ9B6iJjEAXq7gSM8MHn85F4Tx4VhM5u0eP0bJwKHC9M6Wml5XniK_DPg/s320/joke_kundera_book_cover%255B1%255D.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<div>
Date: April 24, 2019<br />
Venue: Italian Cultural Institute<br />
Program: Fernanda Pivano: A Bridge Between Cultures<br />
Writers: Erica Jong, Francesca Pellas, Gini Alhadeff<br />
Free Drinks: Unknown<br />
DroneoMeter Reading: Unknown<br />
<br />
In the Milan Kundera novel "The Joke" that my visit to the Italian Cultural Institute brought to mind, the narrator is sentenced to prison labor as a miner because he made a joke about Stalin. My experience at the Italian Cultural Institute was more benign: I made a joke and the staff member vetting attendees merely wouldn't let me into the event.<br />
<br />
My appeal to the head of the institution, Giorgio Van Straten, went unanswered even though it included not a single joke because now I understand the seriousness and importance of the officials at this arm of the Italian government. <br />
</div>
<div>
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<div>
Dear Mr. Van Straten,</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am an American writer and blogger. I have a blog "In the Front Row, On the Dole" about my experiences going to literary readings. What happened to me at your institution last month was unprecedented. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
I walked up to the guy manning the desk and I said, "I'm here for the Fernanda Pivano event." Ms. Pivano was an Italian writer who facilitated US-Italy cultural events. <br />
<br />
He pulled out a list and asked me if I'd RSVP'ed. I said, "No, I'm a VIP, they usually just roll out the red carpet for me when I show up at these things."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
He then asked me stand with about six others who hadn't RSVP'ed. Ten minutes passed and he told everybody else they could go in. He said I couldn't. He said he didn't like what I said. I said, "but it was a joke." <br />
<br />
He acted polite and said I'll have to wait a while. After I waited ten more minutes and he let in a few more people, I realized, he wasn't going to let me in. So not only did he not let me in, but he toyed with me until I figured things out. Quite an exercise of power.<br />
</div>
<div>
I guess I might have sounded arrogant, but it wasn't an insulting joke. The irony, of course, is that the event was in honor of Fernanda Pivano who facilitated cultural exchange between US writers and Italian ones. I'm pretty sure she must have had more of a sense of humor than this staffer displayed. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Brent Shearer VIP<br />
<br />
Mr. Van Straten didn't respond to this letter. Of course, this rude treatment has constrained my reporting on the event. Should any of my readers decide to attend an event at the Italian Cultural Institute, I suggest they don't make any jokes on the way in. </div>
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Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-59148025164732917382018-06-09T12:38:00.000-07:002018-06-09T12:38:05.047-07:00Listening to Some Dope Shit, Sitting Between Raluca and Peter <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicR5-n237iijfwJiWFCEVtYIJmBeUV2jTqgTOiUKCLDxs4RjH-Idn2a3vyUclRFE26OAm3LymIDC_n34NOJoPwhJMtcnmcPhitnQy_xES0g4y36BGLKYygpwt_faOTKOobxk2YQE4Cc5-n/s1600/ch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicR5-n237iijfwJiWFCEVtYIJmBeUV2jTqgTOiUKCLDxs4RjH-Idn2a3vyUclRFE26OAm3LymIDC_n34NOJoPwhJMtcnmcPhitnQy_xES0g4y36BGLKYygpwt_faOTKOobxk2YQE4Cc5-n/s320/ch.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Date:
June 5, 2018</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Authors:
Chelsea Hodson with Leopoldine Core</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Venue:
Greenlight Books, Brooklyn</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Free
Drinks: Yes</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Q
& A: Yes</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Drone-O-Meter
reading: negative </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">UE
Check Number: benefits expired <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When
you are a professional audience member at NYC readings, never mind my
responsibility to note when authors drone on, it can be tough gig. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I
probably would have gone to Chelsea Hodson’s reading at Greenlight Books in Ft.
Greene Tuesday night even if I hadn’t seen her tweet that morning. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It
summed up the whole philosphy of this blog, which I started a few years ago when
the writer Brando Skyhorse told me I should write a blog about all the readings
I was going to. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Chelsea
tweeted: Life Lesson: go to readings, talk to strangers. Well, that’s what Brando
told me to do. He added, then write up the results and post them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
Tuesday's reading was the kick-off event for Chelsea's new book, “Tonight I’m Someone Else.”
She was joined by the author Leopoldine Core. Neither writer droned on. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Chelsea
read a short, fascinating piece about her pre-teen crush on a member of the
band Hanson. When a different member of the band turned up on the radio, she
called in and talked to him, trusting that cosmic forces would communicate her
love for his bandmate without her having to say it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">While
it wasn’t quite the debut of “The Rites of Spring,” the bookstore was filled
with an overflow crowd of Brooklyn readers and writers. There must have been
some youngish-Brooklyn writers, agents and publicists who didn’t turn out, but
not many.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">At
some readings, oddly, nobody talks to each other. But I was lucky to be
squeezed in between the writer and editor Raluca Albu to my right and the
writer Peter von Ziegesar to my left who turned out to be chatterboxes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I
mentioned to Raluca that I go to so many readings, I’m able to identify a lot
of Brooklyn writers and publishing industry people on sight. Raluca, an editor
at Bomb and Guernica among other gigs, knows even more. We played the fun game,
while waiting for the reading to start, of trying to identify people in the
audience. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We
both sat up a little straighter in our seats when we saw the gifted Lynne
Tillman, not a Brooklynite, come in. Raluca pointed out a few Public Space
editors who must have arrived too late to get seats. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We
saw the writer Deirdre Coyle join the standing-room only crowd behind us. Chelsea’s
publicist Lauren Cerand came in a few minutes after the reading started and
stood by the bookstore’s door. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Raluca
and I really had fun identifying Chelsea’s agent, who was sitting in the front
row. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Raluca
said this young woman’s name started with an M. I agreed, adding that I heard
her speak at last summer’s Catapult writing conference. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“With
an M, but with a funny spelling,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">A
few minutes later Raluca won that round of our game by identifying Chelsea’s
agent as Mo Knee Ca Woods. Her pinned tweet says, “My clients are dope and they
write dope shit.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In
fact, Chelsea is so dope that I’m always a little disappointed when I go to one
of her readings and she just walks onto the stage, or up to the mike, and
starts reading.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This
is because when Chelsea, who is also a performance artist and a musician, read
at Dixon Place a few years ago, she enlisted a bulky guy in a suit to carry her
onto the stage and to hold her up during the reading. Then he carried her off. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Neither
performer broke character when the reading was over. I think the guy just
carried Chelsea out the door.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As
a result, I think of Chelsea as the writer most likely to someday fly onto the
stage or podium perhaps by use of one of those wire harnesses that elevate
Broadway actors around above the stage and the audience.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But
whether the authors stride up to the microphone or parachute in through the
roof of the independent bookstore, it is important to support these retail
outlets that are so vital to presenting new and overlooked voices. Plus, they’re
much easier to shoplift from.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Joking
aside, I talked to Peter after the reading. He told me he is the author of the
memoir “My Mirror Image Brother.” After he described the book I was struck by
his seriousness and figured it was probably a pretty good book. For some reason
the Michael Greenberg classic memoir “Hurry Sundown” popped into my mind and I
mentioned it to Peter. He said that when his book came out, he and Michael did
a reading together at Greenlight. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The
next reading I go to will probably be one where the audience members don’t talk
to each other. That’s fine, too. Brando didn’t tell how to write this blog, but
I’m sure he would agree that all conversations aside, it’s the work that matters. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Tonight
I’m Someone Else” is a must-read for this professional audience member. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-79839173667734153282018-02-02T21:28:00.002-08:002018-02-03T11:18:53.834-08:00Novelist Lauren Stahl Shocks Grizzled Strand Vets, Other Audience Members w/ Really Short Reading<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcFQSWhalP2QEc6yrcsxf292hr6L_shS69Cdk5waYOOR4H3YKBAHbySFSCUzUY7hkU6tA4bHD-JotD_wtHUH3srOWZ39L8RIZkwh64wy2p67PWp0cYZvOG5e0zIJosQUVTllcActw9aa_b/s1600/DTmbCwvUMAAkzt_%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcFQSWhalP2QEc6yrcsxf292hr6L_shS69Cdk5waYOOR4H3YKBAHbySFSCUzUY7hkU6tA4bHD-JotD_wtHUH3srOWZ39L8RIZkwh64wy2p67PWp0cYZvOG5e0zIJosQUVTllcActw9aa_b/s320/DTmbCwvUMAAkzt_%255B1%255D.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Date:
February 2, 2018</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Author:
Lauren Stahl</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Venue: Mysterious Bookstore, Tribeca</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Free Drinks: white and red</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Q & A: no</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Drone-On-Meter Reading: event too short</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Email: </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="mailto:diordream@gmail.com"><span style="color: #0563c1; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">diordream@gmail.com</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">"The fingernails of the corpse were
intact" is the passage I remember from Lauren Stahl’s reading from her first
novel., "The Devil's Song." No sooner had I taken that in, than the reading was over. The Kaylie
Jones Books author had said she would only read two paragraphs and she did. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">It might not have been the debut of
Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring in 1913 or Bob Dylan going electric in the early
60s, but in its own modest way, the brevity of her performance was
revolutionary. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">It was handy for my new pal,
George, because he had to get to his job as a legal proofreader. He told me he
was friends with Stahl’s publisher, Ms. Jones. Apparently, they studied martial
arts together. “We got the same belt,” he said.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">A publisher who can kick ass is a scary
thought. Part of her job, no doubt, is to deal with her writers’ egocentric
demands and the martial arts training means she has an option that, presumably,
more conventional publishers like Johnny Temple or Jonathan Galassi lack. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Stahl’s quickie reading also meant that
what I intend as the primary civilizing mission of “In the Front Row, On the
Dole,” namely, telling authors when they have droned on too long
was moot. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Luckily, it turned out that George and I
both worked at the Strand bookstore in the early 80s. We talked about the
former Strand owner, Fred Bass, who died last month. George lasted longer at
the store than I did. It sounded like he had worked in every department.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Bass was a generous man and someone who
helped support legions of young writers and artists by hiring them. I used to
fetch his lunch every day from the First Avenue Deli. Some young people arrive
in New York from places like Kansas and understandably everything seems
strange. I had counted myself a relative sophisticate. But every afternoon,
when I had to yell Fred's order to the counterman, tongue sandwich on rye, I
realized I had a lot to learn.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Anyway, at the Mysterious Bookshop last
night people mingled and bought books. I’m looking forward to reading "The Devil's Song." Employees at the Strand nowadays really like Maggie Nelson. Watch for the
super-short reading coming to an independent bookstore near you soon. George
left for work. I put the Drone-On-Meter back in its case and headed for home.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I still haven’t tried tongue. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
</div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span></o:p> </div>
Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-91015908092167193192017-11-17T11:55:00.002-08:002017-11-18T08:23:19.023-08:00Pen Parentis Gift Bags Spark Lit World Controversy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsxl5aac9W7lF75vP0rAvY1ug-x1OIwcQAU1qe2aGBdXuHjVI7UzyPQjQvfK7GoeRMYdp03DIqaW2uPq-VgP8ES799cRkdPSDzC0FmJjwemi17iGmKhW4ew0N8jt5YeNRlfL_IJmO2DvPr/s1600/pp17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsxl5aac9W7lF75vP0rAvY1ug-x1OIwcQAU1qe2aGBdXuHjVI7UzyPQjQvfK7GoeRMYdp03DIqaW2uPq-VgP8ES799cRkdPSDzC0FmJjwemi17iGmKhW4ew0N8jt5YeNRlfL_IJmO2DvPr/s320/pp17.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Michael Greenberg at the Mic</div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Date</strong>: November 14,
2017</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Authors</strong>: Michael
Greenberg, Joanne Jacobson and Diana Geffner-Ventura</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Venue:</strong> Andaz Hotel,
Wall Street</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Free Drinks</strong>: yes (self-serve
white wine, red wine)</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Q & A</strong> - yes</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Book signed</strong> - no</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>UE Check Number</strong> – benefits
over</span></span><span class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-none"><span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The only
thing I can find to complain about at last night’s Pen Parentis reading at the
Andaz Wall Street Hotel that featured memoirists Michael Greenberg, Joanne
Jacobsen and Diana Geffner-Ventura was that there was no chance of being
electrocuted at it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As the
proprietor of New York City’s only readings blog that tells authors when they
have droned on too long, I’ve learned to dismiss concerns about my physical
well-being. I’ve come to enjoy the frisson of danger that often pops up on my
daring expeditions into the far-flung corners of Brooklyn to attend readings. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">But I didn’t
need that bravado last night. Pen Parentis is a reading series and networking
organization for parents who write. Founder M.M. De Voe moderated the reading
at the posh hotel at the corner of Wall and Water streets. The lighting was
subtle, the furnishings were tasteful, and it was, overall, a classy place. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">This made
the Pen Parentis event a different experience from the reading I went to in the
basement of Unnameable Books in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of the city’s
primary literary borough, Brooklyn. There were puddles on the floor and a lot
of wires hanging out of the wall, some of them nearly touching the puddles. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">So it was an
adjustment to attend an event in such a sophisticated setting. It reminded me
of the time I went to the Russian Tea Room though the Andaz management didn’t
supply me with a jacket.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The evening’s
theme was Health Matters and it was a consideration of how illnesses affect
creative careers. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Greenberg
read from his book about his daughter’s mental illness “Hurry Down Sunshine.”
Geffner-Ventura’s material was about dealing with her husband’s brain cancer,
while Jacobson’s presentation was the only one about becoming sick herself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">All three
readings were well-received. In the discussion that followed, the authors were
asked if they felt the grimness of their material might limit its audience. But
they agreed that the universality of such afflictions compensated for its potentially
depressing subject matter.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Greenberg
said that he wrote “Hurry Down Sunshine” because there weren’t any other books that
discussed the exact sequence of events he and his family went through. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Jacobson,
the author of the memoir “Hunger Artist: A Suburban Childhood,” talked about
how she was set to help her mother deal with aging and sickness, but was surprised
to find herself confronted with her own mortality when she got sick.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Gefffner-Ventura’s
selection described what happened when she tried to take a break from her everyday attendance
at her husband’s bedside, only to have to run back to the city to deal with a
crisis in his care. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">One of the
points that came up in the discussion after the authors read, skillfully
moderated by De Voe, was about how great it is that with social media everybody
who wants an audience can have one. Maybe I’m just bitter because I’ve been
stuck at thirty-nine followers on Twitter for so long, but I noticed that
Jacobson and Greenberg, the two most established writers on the program agreed
that this was the case. I don’t recall Geffner-Ventura, the less established
writer presenting at the salon, agreeing with this sentiment.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I don’t mean
to speak for her, but for myself, I don’t think this is true. If you want to
publish literary fiction or perhaps get anybody to read your memoir, you can
tweet all you want, start a blog about your adventures going to readings and
Snapchat your butt off, but I don’t think it will necessarily get you into the
cool kids’ table in the cafeteria. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The other thing
is that Twitter has rotted my brain, but that’s a topic for another post. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As Doubleday’s
senior editor Gerry Howard said in a piece he wrote for the Millions, there aren’t
too many manuscripts that arrive unannounced and make a dent in the industry. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“Over the past
70 years there has arisen, for reasons too complex to unpack here, an
increasingly widespread and professionalized creative-writing industry, and
just as the major college athletic programs groom and showcase top-tier talent
for drafting by the National Football League and the National Basketball
Association, so do the MFA programs groom and showcase top-tier literary talent
for the New York publishing houses. There are these days about as many uncredentialled
walk-ons in our literary fiction as there are walk-ons in major league
baseball.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Here Howard is
talking about fiction, but I wonder if the same thing isn’t true for memoirs. I’d
add that you need something more than social media to attract attention. Maybe
it doesn’t have to come from an MFA program, but how important was Cheryl
Stayed’s Rumpus column to the launching of her successful memoir “Wild?”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Since I liked
the Pen Parentis event so much, I’m going to try to use it as the jumping off
point for the next big lit world mystery to replace the question of who the
Italian novelist Elena Ferrante is, now that she’s been outed. The new burning
question should be, what are the contents of the gift bags authors receive at
Pen Parentis salons?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I’d never been
to a reading where the authors get gift bags before. I think the idea is you
get to sell some books and you should be happy with that. But Pen Parentis
honcho De Voe says </span><span style="color: #555555; font-size: 14pt;">“My gift bags are a closely guarded secret! We
started the practice because I didn’t think it was fair that authors—who
frankly work years to get where they are—usually get treated like marketing
tools instead of like celebrities.” </span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It’s possible
the authors have been sworn to silence because I’ve never heard any alums of
the Pen Parentis readings like Darin Strauss or Jennifer Egan mention what
their gift bags contained. Maybe these writers are hiding the value of the
gifts from the IRS. C’mon, Darin, what’d you get? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">But getting back
to the contribution Pen Parentis and groups like it make to the city’s cultural
scene, it is a noble goal to foster reading and support those readers who are
writers in various stages of their careers. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">When it
comes to creating these communities of writers, it doesn’t really matter what
the organizing principle is. For Pen Parentis, it is parents who write though
you don’t have to be a parent to participate. Other groups like the identically
initialed IAWA groups, that is, the Irish-American and the Italian-American writers’
organizations, also create this kind of network. So does the HIP Lit group in Bushwick
(see post below w/ the good picture and witty caption). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">I’m grateful
to be a member of one of the IAWAs and that Pen Parentis does the work it does.
It’s worth the outer borough physical risks and facing agonizing choices like whether to go with the free red wine or
the free white wine at luxury hotels on Wall Street to participate in these
communities. <o:p></o:p></span></span>Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-46527247629202056252017-11-17T11:52:00.002-08:002017-11-18T07:56:04.125-08:00MFA or NYC? - Post-Mortem MFA To Have Scribes Knock Knock Knocking at Gate of Heaven <div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD4pj1LMYat-IOu_sxeYDUMGYfRAgsnakeaCK3-u-vQuvx9WgmGNsVoR-Nttx0zQ_3MaauIz_chBfqRbw2Z-nToRjWL6HhUARaDQNPWwQGH5Wp-NRigxlgjwii6ugb2s-GmIjIBNjamu9M/s1600/ny-westchester%2528gate_of_heaven_sign%2529%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="720" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD4pj1LMYat-IOu_sxeYDUMGYfRAgsnakeaCK3-u-vQuvx9WgmGNsVoR-Nttx0zQ_3MaauIz_chBfqRbw2Z-nToRjWL6HhUARaDQNPWwQGH5Wp-NRigxlgjwii6ugb2s-GmIjIBNjamu9M/s320/ny-westchester%2528gate_of_heaven_sign%2529%255B1%255D.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span></span><br />
<div class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-body" style="margin: 6pt 49.5pt 6pt 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Date: October 14,
2017<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span></span><div class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-body" style="margin: 6pt 49.5pt 6pt 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Authors: myself, others <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span><div class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-body" style="margin: 6pt 49.5pt 6pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Venue: Cell Theatre</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span><div class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-body" style="margin: 6pt 49.5pt 6pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Free Drinks: </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span><div class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-body" style="margin: 6pt 49.5pt 6pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Q & A: no </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span><div class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-body" style="margin: 6pt 49.5pt 6pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Book signed - no<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span><div class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-body" style="margin: 6pt 49.5pt 6pt 0in;">
<span style="color: #632035; font-family: "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">UE Check Number – benefits
over</span></span><span class="m-4529573825544736684gmail-none"><span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
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<div style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Gate of Heaven Mortuary Services Inc.
and the Writers’ Institute at CUNY are proud to offer the first graduate-level
writing degree combined with long-term, high residency internment. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The Gate of Heaven-Writers Institute
MFA (post-mortem) program constitutes an intimate creative apprenticeship that
extends beyond traditional classroom and burial options. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Even writers who have enrolled in
traditional MFA programs in New York have found that academic demands and
late-night drinking sessions after readings have been hard to balance. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Now, for the first time, writers at all
stages of their careers upon croaking will be able to take advantage of New
York’s multifaceted literary community and networking opportunities. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Our campus is a paradise under and
above the earth. The views of the Metro North train station and the surrounding
Westchester suburbs are breathtaking. To be dead in this environment in what
amounts to a lovely, private work station is simply a unique and memorable
privilege. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Our jewel-like setting is close enough
for your biographers to visit, but far enough, 15 miles, from the bustle of the
city so consultations with your Muse will be undisturbed.</span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">With our unique holistic approach, the
Gate of Heaven – Writers’ Institute MFA (post-mortem) will offer an on-going,
intensive reconsideration of your career up to the point of your death with
yearly certificates of completion and priceless insights that belie commonly
held notions that death need be the end of your writing career. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Like an anthology that uses a few
big-name writers to attract readers, our logistics team will see that your
final resting place will be curated so you can benefit from foot traffic that
comes and goes from better-known writers’ graves. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Gate of Heaven’s 178-acre campus with its
rich cultural history and literary attractions provides a four-season
opportunity for students to learn the art and craft of being dead while faculty
members, other staff and administrators endeavor to keep their work alive.</span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">We guarantee that by enrollment in our
MFA program, writers will be able to fulfill every artist’s obligation to their
work to ensure its continued relevancy. Prior to our program, it wasn’t
uncommon for deceased writers to find their work out of style and forgotten by
readers and critics. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In fact, we expect to announce a deal
with the <i>New York Review of Books</i> classics reissue program, which will
reward students who complete our program with re-publication in the series.</span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">While enrolled, students will
participate in a calm community engaged in all aspects of decay, putrification
and nasty gas production guided by workshops, craft talks, manuscript
consultations, lectures and anniversary graveside memorial ceremonies if
on-site staff are available or if we can get anybody else to come. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Degree requirements in the program
stipulate that students complete five, year-long residencies and submit a
Masters Thesis related to their personal impact on the grave-site environment
that is the equivalent of 75 pages of fiction or 25 pages of poetry. Grass
quality and nearby shrub growth will be among the metrics used in evaluating
the Masters Thesis. It also requires the approval of the student’s faculty
advisor, the program director and the head groundskeeper. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Gate of Heaven – CUNY Writers’ Institute
MFA Post-Mortem Year Abroad </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Qualified students may apply for a
competitive slot in our Post-Mortem Reburial Abroad option. In collaboration
with the Cimetiere Montparnasse in Paris, we are pleased to offer a select
group of our students, not only a two-semester interment in this famous
cemetery, but also a funeral service that is based on Susan Sontag’s noted
ceremony there.</span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Yes, the whole package including
someone playing the Debussy Flute Sonata “Sphinx” and mourners who are members
of the Académie Francaise or passers-by is exclusively available to Gate of
Heaven – Writers’ Institute MFA (post-mortem) participants. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Please note that the other famous
Parisian burial ground, Pere Lachaise, with its tacky Jim Morrison grave
attracts only low-brow tourists who wouldn’t know the Times Literary Supplement
if they tripped over a pile of them. Despite its recently announced reburial
abroad deal with the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, we are confident that writers will
eschew this down-market option. By the way, good luck getting visitors to your
grave if its home site is in Nowheresville City, Iowa. </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Prospective student comment: “I’ve been
to all the writing “spas.” McDowell in New Hampshire, Yaddo in upstate New York
and a couple of the Italian ones and none of them will hold a mortuary candle
to what Gate of Heaven is offering.” </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: rgb(255, 241, 168); line-height: normal; margin: 0in 23.25pt 8pt 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Prospective student comment: “Even if
we could, I can’t imagine any writer not completing their degree, dropping out
or transferring to another school, once they’ve experienced the Gate of Heaven
program.” </span></b><b><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-17232732117797999492017-04-28T09:17:00.000-07:002017-04-28T10:29:29.773-07:00Gerard and Febos Sparkle, Caldwell MIA, BookCourt Closing Bad Vibes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3XmnCSfs39SOVuyGqlJ7p-XbMlIBsY5k7zPIuKL9FRbAB8XZWkxK2uLNBaSkTcqpao2-Ym0Ud0qvk4syLLmOV5yCQC8eMD3dsU85_54dV-cAErFJ1wAxP82sA02AWkN_poiEdl3d7pR0v/s1600/17991831_10100879529248296_3554359420168274574_n%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3XmnCSfs39SOVuyGqlJ7p-XbMlIBsY5k7zPIuKL9FRbAB8XZWkxK2uLNBaSkTcqpao2-Ym0Ud0qvk4syLLmOV5yCQC8eMD3dsU85_54dV-cAErFJ1wAxP82sA02AWkN_poiEdl3d7pR0v/s320/17991831_10100879529248296_3554359420168274574_n%255B1%255D.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Date: April 20, 2017</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Venue: Pete’s Candy Store</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Authors: Melissa Febos, Chole Caldwell, Sarah Gerard</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Lit Celebs Present: Molly Prentiss</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Free Drinks: Yes, I got there before the register opened</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Drone-On-Meter : negative</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">UE check : N/A <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">It took me forever to write this because I’d planned to mash
up a million things. At first, I was going to lead with the brilliant memoirist
Chole Caldwell not showing up for her second straight booking in the Pete’s
Candy Store Thursday night reading series. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">But then I thought that since the other two writers on the
bill, Sarah Gerard and Melissa Febos, gave such great performances, why not
concentrate on that? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">So, yeah, someday Caldwell will be booked again for the Pete’s
Thursday reading and she’ll probably show up. Why make myself sound like a jerk
complaining about how I rode my bike over the Willy B Bridge twice to hear her
with no success?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Before the event started, co-curator Jill Capewell was
talking to the sound guy as they were setting up the audio and he said, “Our
microphones don’t use any hormones.” Sound guys are the coolest. Jill is no
slouch, either. She not only helped set up the
sound, she showed co-curator Brian Gresko how to adjust the microphone. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Brian gave a nice intro about how we may be living in a golden age of memoir. He said that the form is being used in new ways and that the two writers reading that night are examples of this blossoming. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I sat next to Schlmo from Seattle. He's a copywriter who might start writing non fiction. We had a nice chat, which is an example of the admirably high congeniality factor that you get at Pete's. It's not one of those reading venues who nobody talks to anybody and just files out like robots when the reading is over. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I tried out
my joke with him about how, since I’m so much older than anyone at these readings, if only I took the trouble to dress better and didn’t talk to
anyone, people might think I was someone important, a sort of Jonathan Galassi
trolling the Brooklyn writing scene. I love the image of FSG head
Galassi going to a reading deeper into the borough than Pete’s, say in the basement of Unnamable
Books, to visit one of the Manhattanville readings.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I think Schlmo laughed. I've had to retire the "I'm the Harry Dean Stanton of" joke cause nobody knows who the actor is. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The first reader was Sarah Gerard, touring and giving a lot
of readings, in support of her new book “Sunshine State.” She said that parts of the
book are memoirs, but that it includes other forms including poetry. One
passage she read at Pete’s was addressed to a lover or former lover with whom
she got complementary hip tattoos. She
skipped around in the book and all the selections sounded good. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Melissa Febos read from her second book “Abandon Me.” She
mentioned that before a reading in Portland, she and a friend set up a
classification system for audiences in which they are either “hickeys” or “criers,”
depending on whether they respond to the hickeys or the crying sections in the
book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">She pegged those of us in the Pete’s audience as criers and
read a section of the book that would appeal to us. Some of the passages she
read were lyrical and touching and just as a reading is supposed to do, her
performance at Pete’s insured that I’m going to read “Abandon Me.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">In other readings news, somebody told me the closing of the
Cobble Hill bookstore “BookCourt” pissed off a lot of authors and publicists
because there was no advance notice. The closing of the store last December
resulted in a lot of cancelled events early this year. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">It’s always a terrible, terrible thing when an independent
bookstore closes. Importance of presenting alternate voices, loss to the
community, and they’re easier to shoplift from. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">One of the blurbs on the Pete's web site says it is the KGB of Brooklyn. While that is true as far as it goes, it overlooks the central role of Lou, KGB's superb bartender, in the LES bar's event schedule. For a readings venue to really rock you need a bartender who has just finished all of "Remembrance of Things Past." But keep trying, Pete's Candy Store, curators Brian and Jill are running a great series even without their version of the sublime Lou. </span></div>
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Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-44061745038569863202017-03-25T09:06:00.000-07:002017-04-28T09:23:45.048-07:00Smitten With Jimmy Breslin<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvPrAnFmih0qKGIgP6FUc3QN-dLD5nwzvLz0fbvQqU7mowgr92KcoJ4KCS0nmFDWD-TOczTX3ovxN9ADOdUWv3317RPkKDYsfPdsMyB6rNydyw833zIznZ_yHmI92-zEvsdpnht2sbv2BQ/s1600/mailer-feature%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvPrAnFmih0qKGIgP6FUc3QN-dLD5nwzvLz0fbvQqU7mowgr92KcoJ4KCS0nmFDWD-TOczTX3ovxN9ADOdUWv3317RPkKDYsfPdsMyB6rNydyw833zIznZ_yHmI92-zEvsdpnht2sbv2BQ/s320/mailer-feature%255B1%255D.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Date: April 22, 2008<br />
Venue: McNally Jackson Books<br />
Author: Jimmy Breslin<br />
Lit Celebs Present: Ronnie Eldridge, spouse, host of public access TV show <br />
Free Drinks: No<br />
Drone-On-Meter : negative<br />
UE check collect: #276534<br />
<br />
<span>I was new in the Bergen Record’s
Wayne, N.J. newsroom in 1988. A part-timer working nights, covering meetings
mostly, I wrote my stories at the day shift reporters’ desks. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
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<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>Some nights I landed at Jim
Dao’s desk and I briefly registered that it was a shrine to Jimmy Breslin. No
votive candles, just Breslin’s books strewn around in the causal disorder that
characterized the bureau. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>Working on deadline at 10 or 11
pm, trying to parse the details of the Butler Planning Board meeting I’d just
attended, I didn’t give Dao’s décor much notice except that as I struggled to
sort out which commissioner had said what in my reporter’s notebook, I felt that
I was in the right place, doing the right grunt work, and this dayside guy got
it too. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>A few years later, I’d gone to
journalism school and come back to the city to keep working as a reporter, our
trade at which Jimmy was the best. I was working for the Chemical Marketing
Reporter, writing about price increases in polyethylene. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>There was a young guy from
Douglaston covering some other kind of chemical. Because he also wrote for a
weekly in Queens, he’d somehow wrangled a meeting with Breslin. They had
breakfast at a dinner on the Upper West Side. He told me Breslin gave him a lot
of advice and that his table manners weren’t the greatest. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>My chemical reporting colleague
was lucky to score his one on one with Jimmy but like Jim Dao at the Record and
so many other reporters, we are all Jimmy’s acolytes. Maybe we couldn’t all be
Jimmy, but we could try. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one faced with the problem
of finding my own Marvin the Torch or Klein the Lawyer and sticking him into a
story about the ’94 autumn increase in polyethylene prices.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>To put it mildly, the newspaper
business has changed since Jimmy got his start at the Long Island Press. I got
caned at a corporate finance magazine in that recession thing of ’08. Even as I
suffered the indignity of having to buy my reporter’s notebooks at the Columbia
University bookstore, it was still Jimmy’s voice I wanted to emulate.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>And even on the mundane topic of
where to get your notebooks, the Master had some advice to the rest of us. I
remember him being quoted someplace saying that whenever the paper he was
working at was about to fold, or he was jumping to another outlet, he made a
point of loading up on notebooks from the stockroom of his soon to be former
employer. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>After I got fired, I started
going to a lot of literary readings. Eventually, I figured out that this was my
new beat. I try to write for my little-read blog, “In the Front Row, On the
Dole,” with the same Breslin voice, Breslin values, that all of us
Irish-American columnists employ. In fact, a masterpiece like Jim Dwyer’s story
about 9/11 and Inwood must have been inspired by Jimmy.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>When Jimmy’s book, “The Good
Rat,’ came out, he gave a reading at the McNally Jackson bookstore on Prince
Street in Soho back in 2008.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<span>When my hero popped up on my
beat, of course I showed up to review his reading. That’s what my stupid blog
is all about. While I don’t have a Marvin the Torch, I do have a Lou the
Bartender. He works at the KGB bar where there’s a reading most nights. Lou told
me he can tell when a reading is going to have an older audience because he
gets all these calls about how steep and how long the stairs are. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>Jimmy’s crowd that night at the
bookstore on Prince Street might have had trouble with the bar’s stairs, but
they turned out in force for his street-level gig. Half the small
audience seemed to go back decades with him. He read an excerpt from the book
and then sat around talking to his fans. I knew this was my moment to talk to
my hero, to get a quote for my blog, which although it is missing a classified
section, a sports section and a lot of other sections, is informed by the work
of our Master, this guy from Ozone Park.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>I approached my hero and knowing
that cheeky was preferable to solicitous, asked him, “If you’re such a big deal
writer, how come it’s your wife that has the TV show? He laughed and said,
“That’s a good question.” </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<span>Podcasts may blossom, papers
will continue to fold. Reporters may have switched from the bar to the gym, a
development that he lamented. But we will never touch a keyboard without trying
to match you, Jimmy. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">
</span></o:p> </span> </span> </div>
<br />Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-27751219501483762432016-12-19T11:38:00.001-08:002016-12-20T06:01:05.750-08:00Madame Realism and Monsieur Lower East Side <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
Date: November 22, 2016<br />
Venue: 192 Books<br />
Author: Lynne Tillman<br />
Free Drinks: No<br />
Drone-On-Meter : negative<br />
Lit Celebs in Attendance: Fran Leibowitz, Ron Kolm<br />
UE check collect: n/a, benefits long gone</div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">One of the things I look for in setting my readings schedule
is whether the event will be crowded. Sorry Salman and nearly anybody else that
gets booked at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. So Lynne Tillman’s reading
in support of the publication of her latest book “The Complete Madame Realism
and Other Stories” at 192 Books two nights before Thanksgiving was ideal. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">It was the perfect storm of a well-known author reading on a
night when a lot people would be out of town. Plus, I thought the audience
would be hard-core readers for whom a performance by Lynne Tillman might well
be their main holiday event. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">192 is a small space and Tillman’s fans filled both sides of
the room. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tillman’s Madame Realism is an alter ego she has been using
for decades to comment on a number of subjects, most of them visual
arts-related. The first appearance of the character was in a collaboration Tillman
did with the artist Kiki Smith back when, as the author said, “you could get
grants for that kind of thing.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The engrossing piece she read at 192 was based on her
reaction to an installation by the artist Jessica Stockholder. It demonstrated
the way that Tillman is rightfully considered a predecessor of writers like
Maggie Nelson and Chris Krauss who also use the fine arts as jumping off points
for personal investigations.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Tillman’s latest also features stories written in the voice
of another fictional mouthpiece, Paige Turner. These stories cover the
waterfront from mediations on love to the work of Cindy Sherman. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">One of my favorite Lynne Tillman stories I’ve gathered from
attending her events, and which is “live only” as far as I know, is her
recollection of doing a book tour with Colm Toiben in the north of England.
Apparently, Toiben camped out in the back seat and serenaded the driver and
Tillman with Joni Mitchell songs. I’d stack that scene up against anything in
the David Lipsky and David Foster Wallace movie about a book tour. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Apparently, Tillman’s Madame Realism pieces have been
published in different books and magazines over the years, some of the first
appearances so long ago that the author had some trouble piecing together the
chronology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Fortunately, Tillman had a live “aide memoire” present in
the form of a friend of hers, the poet and fiction writer Ron Kolm. He knew
when the early Madame Realism pieces came out, either as magazine articles or
anthology pieces. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Whether as a writer, editor, bookseller or publisher, Kolm
has been a fixture of the Lower East Side literary scene since he moved to New
York in 1970. I found talking with Kolm about books to be a pleasure, not only
because he knows everybody and everything, but also because of his unique focus
on the physical aspect of books. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">He talked about how much he’s enjoyed Tillman’s work over
the years. He tried to goose his memory about aspects of her output by
remembering whether a particular work was perfect-bound or not. (Perfect bound
is when a layer of adhesive holds the pages and cover together.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">Kolm said the best reading he’d been to was one in which he,
Tillman, and novelist Patrick McGrath performed at the Ear Inn on Spring
Street. He offered the following tip for readings attendees, “You should buy
the book and get it signed because it might be worth something someday.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">There was another man in the audience who Tillman knew. He
might have been a painter because she showed him the newly published collection
of Donald Judd’s writings that I doubt would be featured at the Union Square
Barnes & Noble.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">I guess I’m a readings snob because I prefer events at independent
bookstores. It’s important that we all support independent bookstores because
they play a vital role in ensuring that readers have access to a diverse
selection of voices, which is so vital to maintaining a vigorous literary
culture. Plus, it's easier to shoplift from them. </span><br />
<br />
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<o:p><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span></o:p><br />
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Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-54705232678218679942016-10-07T10:18:00.002-07:002016-11-26T09:15:39.476-08:00Vita Brevis, Ars Unemergis<br />
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<br />
<strong>Brent Shearer’s Reign as City’s Oldest Unemerged Writer Celebrated at AG’s Brooklyn event</strong><o:p></o:p><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><br />
Date: October 7, 2016</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
Venue: Powerhouse Arena<br />
Hosts: Kathleen Alcott, Megan
Lynch, Kirby Kim and Katie Kitamura<br />
Free Drinks: yes<br />
Lit Celebs in Attendance: Paul
Morris (PEN), Maris Kreizman (writer, tastemaker)<br />
UE check collected: n/a,
benefits long gone<o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
Brooklyn, N.Y. (October 8, 2016)
– New York City’s oldest unemerged writer, Brent Shearer, gave a short
presentation at last night’s Authors’ Guild event in Dumbo. <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
The downtown writer explained
his career arc to a spellbound audience of about 200 writers, publicists,
agents and editors. <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
Shearer addressed such topics as what it’s like to be an unemerged writer in
one’s sixties and for the first time, spelled out the details of his plan to
“do a Lampedusa,” the specifics of which have become the New York publishing
industry’s No. 1 topic of gossip and mystery now that Elena Ferrante appears to
have been outed. <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
“Doing a Lampedusa” refers to
the process by which a writer emerges late in life. Named after the Sicilian
novelist Giuseppe Lampedusa, author of “The Leopard,” the phrase has come to
mean a writer who produces a masterpiece and promptly dies as the Prince did
(Lampedusa was a member of the Sicilian nobility). <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
Heinz Gault in Austria, Rene
Swoon in France, and Shearer are usually considered the major adherents of this
career strategy. Compared to Shearer and his European colleagues (Swoon is 67, Gault, 66) a supposed late bloomer like the novelist Nell Zink, who published her first book around 50, is practically a prodigy. <br />
<br />
Lampedusa’s biographer David Gilmour
wrote, ““The tragedy of Giuseppe Lampedusa was that his period of artistic
creativity coincided with his physical decline and death.” For Shearer and his
European colleagues, the idea is to match or outdo the Prince by leaving
as little time between the publication of their masterpieces and their
deaths. <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
In his remarks, Shearer also
touched on some of the lighter aspects of being the city’s oldest unemerged
writer. He mentioned the way that in conversations with younger editors and
writers, he is often the beneficiary of the advice to ‘keep on writing,” which
makes sense when doled out to students and younger writers, but has a different
resonance when applied to the 64-year old Shearer.<o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
Shearer is often, despite his
unemerged status, asked to weigh in on such career strategies as the
often-discussed question of “MFA or Brooklyn.” In another recent public appearance,
Shearer addressed the members of St. Catherine’s Classics, a social group for senior
citizen parishioners at St. Catherine’s Church, Spring Lake, N.J., on a similar
topic, which he called “MFA, Brooklyn, or Assisted Living.” For the record,
though he receives no financial consideration from the institution, Shearer
recommends the Book Thug Nation Assisted Living Facility in Williamsburg. <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
One challenge for the geezer
ingénue, as Shearer refers to himself and Gault and Swoon, is to keep up with
the conversation of the generally much younger writers he meets at events hosted by Word bookstore in Greenpoint,
Mellow Pages in Bushwick and H.I.P. Lit in Bushwick (see below).<o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
There are occasional rough
patches as when Shearer stumbled into a conversation with one pierced, cropped
female readings organizer at a Manhattan performance space. She was wearing a
ripped Sleater-Kinney t-shirt. His comment that the band was “more punk than he expected,
really like the Clash or something,” exposed two things the would-be Lampedusa
would rather have kept hidden: a. how little he knows about the iconic
trio and b. his eagerness to brag and show off his questionable hipness. <br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
Another embarrassing moment for
the Social Security recipient was the time he dove into a conversation with a
group of young music writers and didn’t realize that apparently, one pronounces
Dr. Dre with the last letter sounding like “a.” <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
In fact, Shearer often feels almost
like an erudite perv (Swoon’s phrase which touches on one possible motivation for
mature writers making the scene at cafes in Buttes Chamont or Bushwick) when he
enters conversations with young writers about the novelist Michelle Tea’s work
by saying, “I loved Valencia.” <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
However, Shearer has learned to
draw the line at striking up conversations with younger readers on the subway
just because they’re carrying a New Inquiry tote bag. He no longer uses the
claim that he wants to be the Mallory Ortberg or the Chloe Caldwell of the boomers in his Twitter
profile. His colleagues Gault and Swoon say they have learned to edit
themselves in similar ways.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
One compensation for the geezer ingénue
on the literary circuit occurs when writers bring their mothers to their
readings. This offers Shearer a chance to have <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a conversation like the one he had with one
young author.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p>Shearer:
“I’m hitting on your Mom.<o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
Author: “Go for it, she’s
single.” <o:p></o:p><br />
<o:p></o:p>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<o:p> </o:p></div>
</div>
Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-27446981631279754712015-12-27T04:46:00.003-08:002015-12-27T04:46:54.055-08:00Read, Talk, Dance, Repeat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnvV06eLdPh6FaFHt7EjPkwyzC2GfrdgB05bumVzxjY0wI-hGg6z0lrirQ_DftLsK6qA7MmIYewkzEYnggS9ReTPdjkMB9Fz9IkybSMo-RlnYCmnLwO9buoHSLdP0jruucM3G6HhoEBffp/s1600/gals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnvV06eLdPh6FaFHt7EjPkwyzC2GfrdgB05bumVzxjY0wI-hGg6z0lrirQ_DftLsK6qA7MmIYewkzEYnggS9ReTPdjkMB9Fz9IkybSMo-RlnYCmnLwO9buoHSLdP0jruucM3G6HhoEBffp/s320/gals.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(H.I.P. Lit principals reflect on the state of the novel in
a relatively subdued moment) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Date: December 17, 2015<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Authors: Adam Wilson, Amanda Petrusich, Tim Kreider,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Venue:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hideaway
Lounge, Be Electric Studio, Bushwick<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Free Drinks: yes<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Q & A – no<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unemployment check # -- benefits long gone<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I went to a reading in Bushwick last week and a party broke
out. Or was it a party at which novelist Adam Wilson, music writer Amanda
Petrusich and humorist Tim Kreider read their work?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If it was a party, it was a good one. Most of 30 or so people
there knew each other, but even people like me, who on the face of it don’t
have a ton in common with these Bushwickers, were made to feel welcome. Full disclosure:
I don’t even live in Brooklyn. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Novelist and Wyckoff Star coffee shop manager Paul Rome
curated the event. The writers are all friends of his and he introduced them by
reading passages from their work. I talked with Paul after the reading and we
agreed that the MC at a reading shouldn’t read their own writing. If you want
to promote your own work, start a magazine, but it looks shoddy at a reading. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The reading was sponsored by H.I.P. Lit, which is Erin
Harris, Brittney Inman Canty and Kim Perel. Erin and Kim are literary agents
and Brittney is also a publishing industry veteran. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">As is the case when any three readers or writers come
together, there is no denying that H.I.P. Lit has a strong theoretical base. I
was able to track the influence of Derrida, Barthes, Bloom, the nouveau roman,
the new criticism, the new journalism and Cyndi Lauper (“Young Professional
Women Just Want to Have Fun”) in the presentation of their event last Thursday
in the Hideaway Lounge, a small room in an upstairs corner of the cavernous Be
Electric video production studio. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Erin stated this last theme, fun, before handing the event
over to Paul. “It always seemed strange that when other readings end, the
people just stand up and leave without talking to each other,” she said. Indeed,
part of the H.I.P. Lit manifesto reads “We’re making Lit Parties fun again
because reading and dancing are not mutually exclusive.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The first person I talked with was Tony, Brittney’s husband.
He said he wanted to write children’s’ books. I think he struck up a conversation
with me cause I was sitting there looking, in the poet Frank O’Hara’s phrase
“as ill at ease as seafood.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In truth,
I’d had groupie-like conversations with Amanda and Adam at previous readings,
but I hadn’t been out to Bushwick for ages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Later on, one of the H.I.P. principals said Tony had done
all the carpentry work on the Hideway Lounge. She said the wood that he
hammered together to give the space its hunting lodge look was all collected on
the neighborhood’s streets. My conclusion: the H.I.P. Lit reading series is so
good it features not only superb writers, but also locally scavenged fixtures.
Match that, McNally Jackson. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">To introduce the first reader, Amanda Petrusich, Paul read a
passage from her book “Do Not Sell At Any Price.” If a worshipful reader like
me had to blurb Amanda’s book, he might say it is about her journey into the
world of ’78 record collectors. But the depth and range of the topics it
tackles goes way beyond that. Suffice it to say that it belongs on your
bookshelf next to classics like “Mystery Train.” And even that book’s iconic
author, Greil Marcus, never pursued a story by going skin diving in a frozen
Wisconsin river as Amanda did. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">At the Hideaway, Amanda read her essay from the
NewYorker.com about “The River,” Bruce Springsteen’s fifth album. The fact that
the “Boss” still has some relevance to Bushwick writers and readers speaks for
itself, I suppose. As a performer and an interpreter of early 60s AM radio,
he’s great. And there’s no doubt that as Amanda describes him, he is “the
chocolate lab” of the crop of new Dylans. Probably it is best to leave my Bruce
Springsteen issues, my ambivalence, for another place, but my point here is
Amanda killed.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Next up was Tim Kreider, who wore a suit and managed the
difficult reading feat of punctuating his reading by sipping whisky and making
it seem un-stagey. He gave the audience, seated not in a grid, but in chairs
and sofas around the small room, the choice of hearing an unfinished piece or
something he was more confident was good. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We chose the new piece and Tim drew a lot of laughs with his
story about a professor who struggles to balance his lechery with his
professional duties as a teacher at a womens’ college. One line of his was “I
believe you should have as much sex as possible while you’re alive.” As funny
as his reading was, it also talked about the more serious topic of how someone
can be a nice guy and a prick at the same time. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Adam Wilson continued the trend of reading new work as he
read a passage from an upcoming novel, which he said he’d been writing for four
years. Once again, the Hideaway crowd was in stiches as he read what he
described as a prequel to his characters’ divorce story. In what was, in a way,
a nod to the intimacy of the H.I.P. Lit event, Adam said he’d named his rapper
character, Web MD, after Amanda’s husband’s workplace. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">After the reading, I heard there were plans to play some
Bruce Springsteen. I left, considerately, before the dancing broke out. Whether
they celebrated ’57 Chevys and Madam Marie or Hotline Bling, novelists or
Pitchfork’s finest, H.I.P. Lit made a convert out of me. I want to be their
Harry Dean Stanton. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Read, Talk, Dance, Repeat</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
</div>
Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-25672629634730516742015-01-10T10:32:00.003-08:002016-05-19T09:03:22.635-07:00Sam-Sam Takes Literary New York By Storm <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgCRLQbTgVCnQOZ-35M75SK48ZZSoo1IyrbmoSXiPjfIjMPOqTvks1r-gs4lkCn-KCnO0PIpa9yKaEzOqFLoWnOcHEHbzmCMvpIlUfKnypWbeCr9VTIxlI02FdARefYeeUrz-fqfZxL4pK/s1600/Z-JON-JON-P1-1-articleLarge.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgCRLQbTgVCnQOZ-35M75SK48ZZSoo1IyrbmoSXiPjfIjMPOqTvks1r-gs4lkCn-KCnO0PIpa9yKaEzOqFLoWnOcHEHbzmCMvpIlUfKnypWbeCr9VTIxlI02FdARefYeeUrz-fqfZxL4pK/s320/Z-JON-JON-P1-1-articleLarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Date: February 14, 2013</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Author: Jon-Jon Guillian<br />
Venue: Idlewild Books<br />
Neighborhood: Chelsea<br />
Free Drinks -- no<br />
Q & A -- yes<br />
Book signed -- no<br />
UE Check Number -- 1245673</div>
<br /></div>
<br />
“And
here’s this super cool, tattooed, 3 percent body fat guy who wants to
be your friend and talk about books” – NY Times – profile
of literary sensation Jon-Jon Goulian<br />
<br />
<br />
Wylie said he’d give
me one more chance. I don’t want the shots. The skirts aren’t so bad, I
just hope no one from my cell in the French Resistance sees me in this
get-up. There’s no point in going on, in going on to the tattoo shop.
Yet I must, I must go on to the tattoo shop.<br />
<br />
Super-cool, me, Sam
Beckett, sorry, Sam-Sam, well, New York City is the place where, no, no,
the Lou Reed line Wylie told me to use is “I wish I was handsome and
straight.” Is that from “Walk on the Wild Side” or did I pick it up when
I was wearing trousers, maybe, at the Durr mantelpiece in Dresden when
Sam-Sam was so much older, I’m younger than that now. Wylie said to
only use that one on geezers. Also told me my Geezer Ingenue schtick
would be too subtle, go with Sam-Sam.<br />
<br />
Lady Gaga still hasn’t
friended me. Good picture of Lila kissing me in the Times. Note to self:
more kisses received when you actually buy the author’s book at
readings. Goren Whine, still chilly. Was it the joke about his skinny
tie? All these publications with Paris or New York
in the title, no wonder Sam-Sam gets muddled. Or maybe it was the E. If
this plan of Wylie’s to finally get me over the top works, my next
project is going to be making some drone-y, repetitive music to go with
that E stuff.<br />
<br />
Went to the Sunday night fiction
series at KGB. Wylie says that Sunday nights there, for
Sam-Sam, between the end of the reading and the start of Chris
Jacobsen’s movie series is like the era between the invention of the
pill and the onset of Aids for the straights. Whatever that means. Do
know there were only three New Yorker writers there so all that verbal
diarrhea and spasmodic dancing in the corner under the pictures of the
Ukrainian nationalists was wasted. Wylie says you have to have at least
five for a dickwad or some other Yiddish word that means, more or less,
quorum.<br />
<br />
Bit where somebody asks me what I’ve been up to and I use
the hand signals Wylie showed me, up and down motion for masturbation,
which is apparently endlessly fascinating to these Yanks, and the pen in
the hand motion that describes all the writing Joyce has been doing for
me. Trouble is, when I do the pen in hand motion, am always handed the
check.<br />
<br />
Wylie keeps pushing me to use steroids, to take the shots,
to tackle my percentage of body fat problem. Says it’s OK, because the
readers are all on the stuff, too. I dunno. Maybe this Sam-Sam routine
is my last shot. I’m down with the skirts and heels, even these annoying
sunglasses that make me look like a matron from Boca Raton, but Sam -
Sam draws the line at these shots in the ass .Wylie says all the other
writers who started out with the name Samuel used them to break through.
Ask Lipsyte when he friends me back. When I was just Sam Beckett, I
hung out with Lance Armstrong, you know when the Tour de France meant
just a bike race, not our underground railway stations to outrun the
Gestapo. Lance - Lance, sorry, Armstrong told me he wished he hadn’t
used the stuff, gave him a big boil on the butt. Does Lady Gaga use? Did
Sam - Sam Johnson?Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-8699497968937480302015-01-07T13:02:00.004-08:002016-05-19T09:04:26.749-07:00Nutcracker Yes, Sodomy No !<br />
<br />
Date: February 9, 2010<br />
Author: Tony Bentley<br />
Venue: KGB bar<br />
Neighborhood: East Village<br />
Free Drinks -- no<br />
Q & A -- yes<br />
Book signed -- no<br />
UE Check Number -- 1245673<br />
<br />
On my way to Toni Bentley's reading at KGB , I stopped at the McNally Jackson bookstore to buy a book of hers for my daughter's sixteenth birthday. Nicole, my daughter, is a ballet dancer.<br />
I was looking for Bentley's first book, "Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal." It is an account of Bentley's time as a dancer with the New York City Ballet. I told the clerk I needed a copy of "Winter Season" for my daughter's sixteenth birthday. He looked it up and then said, they didn't have it, but perhaps I'd like to substitute another book of Bentley's called "The Surrender." The subtitle of "The Surrender" is "A Erotic Memoir," but maybe that didn't come up on the clerk's screen. What I knew, but that he presumably didn't, was that "The Surrender" is a book-length paean to the pleasures of anal sex for women.<br />
<br />
I did an impromptu routine at the bookstore's counter for the two employees and a few customers behind me in the cash register line on the inappropriateness of buying a book about the pleasures of anal sex for my daughter on her sixteenth birthday.<br />
<br />
Then I went to KGB. When Bentley finished reading from a collection of her more recent work, I told her the story. She laughed and said it might not be too long before my daughter might be interested in "The Surrender" as well as "Winter Season." Maybe so, but the less I know about that, the better. I found a copy of "Winter Season" for Nicole's birthday present at another independent bookstore.Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-87697828689329333542013-02-07T09:20:00.000-08:002016-05-19T15:57:35.781-07:00Bikes, Books, Broads: Skyhorse, Aciman, Rushdie<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu0QjJr7tb42Oa74MrRbR8IXC_6_GIPi66dGQBrnc_1ks9NsViiWQ13b37unNXRzJFzLT5v_21r8vKHqpqPvyOxxQQx9-wtcX-krMi7NLXQFXs2fF4ZYq59uATyp2hOs5_VgqxE1V8cuSP/s1600/th%255B8%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu0QjJr7tb42Oa74MrRbR8IXC_6_GIPi66dGQBrnc_1ks9NsViiWQ13b37unNXRzJFzLT5v_21r8vKHqpqPvyOxxQQx9-wtcX-krMi7NLXQFXs2fF4ZYq59uATyp2hOs5_VgqxE1V8cuSP/s1600/th%255B8%255D.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Date: February 9, 2012<br />
Authors: Granta "Exit Strategy" issue launch with Judy Chicurel, Vanessa Manko, Alexsander Hermon and Susan Minot <br />
Venue: 192 Books<br />
Neighborhood: Chelsea<br />
Free Drinks -- yes<br />
Lit Celebs Sighted: Brando Skyhorse, Andre Aciman, Salman Rushdie<br />
Q & A -- no<br />
Book signed -- no<br />
UE Check Number -- 1245673<br />
<br />
Poor
Andre Aciman, I'm always accosting him at these things. I went to his
panel discussion on long-form journalism two nights ago and it was
deadly boring. When I talked to him after tonight's reading, he said he
thought the long-form thing had gone well and I didn't have the heart
to contradict him. <br />
<br />
If
my skills as a pedestrian suck-up are good, I'm even better when
armed with a bike. This is a problem for the object of my attention as
Andre learned.<br />
<br />
Having successfully dislodged himself from me
inside the bookstore, he must have thought he was home-free. Andre was at the reading
in his capacity as head of the CUNY Writers Institute, their
non-MFA program, so I'm sure there were other people he was fleeing as
well.<br />
<br />
Whatever its academic
merits, the CUNY program did put Andre in the position of having the
director of his publishing house, FSG's Jonathan Galassi, on his
payroll. Plus, Andre told me that Galassi and the other notable editors
that work in the Writer's Institute make significantly more than the
city's average creative writing professors. Eat your heart out, all you
novelists at Columbia and NYU, the big paychecks are at the Writers
Institute.<br />
<br />
Anyway, Andre, a small man carrying a big backpack
finally freed himself from the throng inside the store. He must have
thought he was safe when he hit the sidewalk. He was walking quickly, but the heavy backpack made him sway a bit as he strode uptown. He didn't have a chance.<br />
<br />
I
was unlocking my bike from the pole in front of the store when I
spotted him. Seeing my prey about 10 strides away from me and heading
north on 10th Avenue, I pushed off with one foot while the other was on
the pedal. I didn't even have to actually ride the bike to catch him.<br />
<br />
I
was by his side in a flash and telling about the nice rejection letter
his friend Sven Bikerts at the journal Agni had sent me. Bikerts
wrote me a note saying that although my story wasn't right for
the magazine, he had enjoyed reading it. Even though Bikerts' note was
just two or three sentences, I don't think I'm spinning it
optimistically to myself when I interpret his few words as saying, in
effect, "We're both writers. As a reader, your work gave me pleasure.
What fits in this magazine I edit, that's a lesser consideration."<br />
<br />
But
Andre was lucky in a way because if there's one thing that trumps a
bike pursuit and entrapment by one's groupie, it's the arrival of a bus.
In this case, the crosstown bus on 23rd Street, which screeched into
the stop just around the corner from where I was walking my bike and
expounding on various topics to my poor, harried hero.
<br />
<br />
I've always wanted to go into one
of those snotty bike stores and announce to the tattooed employees,
"Hi,, boys, there's two things I've never done, rode a fix and had it
in the ass. Guess which one I want you to help me with?<br />
<br />
But with
the loss of Brando as an audience member, I had to make the best of the
people who'd gotten seats. So after the reading ended, I said hello to
Salman Rushdie who had been sitting just in front of me. During the
reading I thought about some consequences of sitting so close to the
Indian writer.<br />
While its true the fatwa has been largely forgotten, I
looked at things from the Iranians point of view for a moment and
wondered if it was safe to be sitting practically next to Rushdie. The
world is giving Iran all this grief about its nuclear program. They
are always threatening to block the Straits of Hormuz, but according to
some reports, the U.S. Navy could put an end to that with like a
rubber dinghy and seven or eight Seals. Maybe in Tehran, some ayatollah
is giving the order, let's take out Rushdie.<br />
<br />
So
just as we were standing up to leave, although you really couldn't go
anywhere, Vanessa Manko, one of the writers who read, said to Rushdie
that she had some people she wanted to introduce him to. When I heard
that, I said to him, "Well, you might as well start with me. I'm writing
a book about a guy who goes to readings so you're on my turf here, I
hope you're having a good time."<br />
<br />
Rushdie said, "Yeah, I am. Thanks."<br />
<br />
"You
don't have to worry about me interviewing you or anything. I overheard
what you said about the Beatles being a band that started out doing
Motown songs aimed at girls. This, compared to the way the Rolling
Stones when they started out at least, were doing blues songs for boys.
Not a bad theory, though there are exceptions." I said.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, I know. It's just a lark, really." Rushdie said.<br />
<br />
"Anyway, I can use that for some Rushdie material." I said. Then Rushdie moved on to meet other people.<br />
<br />
If
you have to settle for an quick interview with somebody when Brando
Skyhorse doesn't quite make it into the store, Rushdie was an adequate
fill-in, I suppose.<br />
<br />
As for the reading itself, it was
conducted by Granta assistant editor Patrick Ryan to celebrate the
launch of Granta 118: Exit Strategies. Vanessa Manko and Andre's student
, Judy Chicurel, read from their Granta stories. Vanessa Manko
was Rushie's assistant and is, I think, the reason he was there. Both
woman's stories were instantly forgettable so I can't say much about
them.<br />
Susan Minot went on third and read a short story about the
Ugandan genocide that was quite gripping. Rounding out the bill,
Alexsander Hermon did his slice of life from Bosnia during their
war. Well, to be fair, he also does stories about being a Bosnian
immigrant in Chicago. The best story of his that I've read or heard,
which I took the opportunity to repeat to him after reading, was
something he said at a PEN conference event.<br />
<br />
During the that war
, a group of six people were trapped in their apartment with
nothing to eat. All they had was one potato. You really can't split one
potato six ways. So all they could do was put the potato on the table
and everybody just sat around looking at it. <br />
<br />
So, anyway,
after Andre bolted to catch the bus, I got on my boring mountain bike
and rode home, still not having had it in the ass, still not having
rode fix, and still not having bagged Skyhorse for this column. <br />
<br />Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-45373125691278068172013-01-09T14:36:00.000-08:002013-01-09T14:36:35.065-08:00When the Kill Fee Curdles, Bklyn Writer Not Amused As Harper's Pulled Plug on Comic's Profile Date: January 3, 2013<br />
Authors: Adam Wilson, Teddy Wayne, Justin Taylor, Sal Pane<br />
Venue: KGB<br />
Neighborhood: East Village<br />
Free Drinks: not even a buyback<br />
UE check #: benefits ended <br />
<br />
<br />
Brooklyn novelist Adam "Flatscreen" Wilson was overheard last week telling an admirer about his less than fun experience working on a Harper's assignment to profile the comedian Louis C.K.<br /><br />Wilson said the magazine didn't cancel his story until late in the game, going so far as to keep the writer up all night making changes as if the story was going to live. But well-past the eleventh hour, like the 11:50-ish hour, Harper's aborted the story.<br /><br />Maybe the thought among Harper's editors was that Louis C.K., in the course of Wilson's and their staffers' labors, had become overexposed. <br /><br />Wilson said the Harper's kill fee was higher than most magazines pay for an accepted story. He found a home for the piece at the <i>Los Angeles Review of Books</i>, see link here. Oh, never mind, this is a blog that disdains links, graphic design, and occasionally spell-checking because if it isn't an editorial tool that the original Samuel Pepys had access to, the current Samuel Pepys of the New York City readings scene, me, eschews it. <br />
Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-22212900490960481292012-10-14T10:21:00.004-07:002016-05-19T15:29:31.117-07:00My Crime Against the Seward Park NYPL Branch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjroGGr1ordKksuVnDi_s1wUEwv19LyvtIyrStUQwxkNJldBBdgH9pJlhMN_QirKnJms1rUgxYJXzvPMyZcaZgfQ1StcDIUKlAXoUCQhA2uhrS4qll7KlaxqTD6_nWjD8m5ds8BUwu-rKM_/s1600/madonnas.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjroGGr1ordKksuVnDi_s1wUEwv19LyvtIyrStUQwxkNJldBBdgH9pJlhMN_QirKnJms1rUgxYJXzvPMyZcaZgfQ1StcDIUKlAXoUCQhA2uhrS4qll7KlaxqTD6_nWjD8m5ds8BUwu-rKM_/s320/madonnas.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Date: March 15, 2010</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Author: David Rakoff</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Venue: KGB</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Neighborhood: East Village</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Free Drinks -- no</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Q & A -- yes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Book signed -- yes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">UE Check Number -- 890765<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">(David Rakoff died in August 2012)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> As my readings project went
on, I got more and more broke. In 2008 when I was still relatively flush, I
sometimes bought authors' hardcover books. I couldn't get them all because I
was going to three or four readings a week, but sometimes, I splurged. When I
did buy a hardcover, I sometimes got the author to sign it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">When my re-entry into the job
market didn't happen, I switched to buying galleys. Galleys are like pre-books
that publishers put out in advance of the real book's publication so reviewers
and others can sample them. They fit nicely with my readings project
because their distribution and readings are both usually part of a book's
launch. I found that by knowing which authors were scheduled to read at local venues,
I could often pick up their galleys at the Housing Works bookstore or the
Strand in advance of their readings.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">At first I was a little hesitant
about asking authors to sign their galleys. An author could look at it like I'd
gypped them out of some of their income by buying a three-dollar galley instead
of a full-price hardback. One author, Brando Skyhorse, who I'd gotten to know a
little, signed the galley of his brilliant book "The Madonnas of Echo
Park" "To Brent, quit being a cheap bastard." I think he was
joking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">What I did next with David Rakoff
really pushed the boundaries of author-event propriety. I asked him to
sign one of the New York Public Library’s copies of his latest book, the
Thurber Prize winning “Half-Empty.” I had seen the copy of
"Half-Empty" in the Seward Park branch on the day I was planning to
go to Rakoff's reading. I checked it out. As I did, I thought that unless I
chickened out, I could ask him to sign the library copy.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">It always amazes me how much chance
and the layout of a room can affect who you meet at readings. I had the Seward
Park branch's copy of "Half-Empty" with me, but if somebody other
than Sarah had been sitting next to me at the bar, I might not have pulled off
the sign the library book move. Sarah, affectionately nicknamed "Blind
Justice," at the bar because she is legally blind and is a lawyer, was
sitting to my right at the bar during Rakoff's reading. After he finished, she
told me she was a big fan of his and said she'd love to meet him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I said, "Oh, I'll introduce you
to him."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">As we made our way through the crowd
toward Rakoff, she asked me, "Do you know him?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I said, "Well, not
personally."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Fortunately, and again this is the
kind of thing that depends totally on luck, Rakoff was between well-wishers
when we reached him. After double checking that Sarah's name was Sarah, I
introduced her to Rakoff. Then I introduced myself. I might have been chicken
to thrust myself on Rakoff alone, but under the guise of doing Sarah a favor,
it worked.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Toward the end of our conversation
with Rakoff, I told him that I wanted to make a slight addition to literary
history by having him sign a library copy of his book. He hesitated and said,
"But won't you get in trouble?" I said, "No, it will be OK,
because I've taped an index card into the front of the book. I'll just take it
out when I return it."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rakoff was game and he signed my
copy of his book, adding, "Good Luck. Brent." I took the book back
when it was due after I peeled the index card out of it. If you check the right
copy the book out, you’ll notice the slight mark left by the scotch tape. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">When I talked to Rakoff about this
at a later reading, he said he didn't remember anything that happened the night
he read at KGB because he'd had an MRI earlier that day. Apparently, they'd
given him a drug that caused him to not be able to remember what happened the
evening of the procedure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">But after I filled him in on his
part in my project he said the signing of library books thing sounded like
familiar. He asked me if I knew who Joe Orton was?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I replied, "The British
playwright?" He said, "Yeah," and told me that Orton and his
lover had gotten a first brush of public notice when they were
arrested for defacing library books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-6539249295485324422012-07-31T13:39:00.000-07:002012-07-31T13:39:02.097-07:00My Dates With Hannah TintiDate: February 22, 2011<br />Author: Hannah Tinti<br />
Venue: The Stone<br />Neighborhood: East Village<br />
Celebs Present: Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Amy Hempel, A.M. Homes<br />Free Drinks -- none<br />Q & A -- none <br />UE Check Number -- benefits expired<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I met Hannah Tinti about three years ago when she sat down next to me at the KGB bar. I asked her if she was a writer and she said she was. She told me her first name and I told her mine. We started chatting. Because of her youth and because on a given night, the fourteen-seat bar at KGB may well have eight or nine writers in the chairs, I figured she was some MFA student with maybe a half-finished novel on her computer. So I breezily started pontificating on some writing related topic or another. She had come to hear her friend Said Sayrafiezadeh read, so we probably talked about how great his "When Skateboards Will Be Free" is.<br />
But then the reading started and a writer, not Said, took the podium. I remembered hearing Hannah read from her novel "The Good Thief" at McNally Jackson a few weeks before. I was talking to Ren's mom!<br />
At the next intermission, I tapped her on the shoulder and said, "I know your last name."<br />
"No, you don't," she said.<br />
"Yes, I do."<br />
"What is it then?"<br />
"Look, we're two people who've just met in a bar. No sense dragging our resumes into it," I said. <br />
Hannah was fine with that and we talked a little more before she excused herself to go say hello to Said.<br />
Meeting Hannah was like I'd sat down at a bar next to a young, black man with a bandana around his head and upon learning we were both guitar players, started telling him how I like to play my solos. But then I realize, half-way into the conversation, that I'm talking to Jimmy Hendrix. <br />
I've gone to a lot of Hannah's readings since that first meeting when I'd just started this going to readings project and she's always been pleasant and gracious. Well, I am a One Story subscriber, but even beyond that, it is fitting that as this "In the Front Row, On the Dole" thing winds down, I do a post about Hannah.<br />
She's probably been wondering why I haven't. I've got the "My Date with Jonathan Galassi" and the "My Date with Andre Aciman" posts so Hannah's is overdue. Maybe it took a while, Hannah, but your post is the first with a poem. <br />
<br />
<br />
Hannah Writes All Night <br />
<br />
Hannah writes all night.<br />
At the Stone<br />
the new kid, shot in the back.<br />
Oh, for testosterone’s tumult<br />
she has the knack.<br />
<br />
Hannah writes all night.<br />
Sure, we were getting bored<br />
us boys, stuck with a dick.<br />
Filling bottles at crazy angles,<br />
changing size like an accordion’s <br />
a neat enough trick,<br />
but Ren makes it fun<br />
to have a prick.<br />
<br />
<br />
Watch out, Lou Reed.<br />
Step back, Laurie Anderson.<br />
Hannah’s breaking out the uke.<br />
The loveliest thing in a gal<br />
makes Hannah the best kind of pal<br />
before we perish in a ring of desire<br />
Hannah writes all night<br />
and her boys take us higher.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-40184108764859617082012-07-02T16:28:00.000-07:002012-07-02T16:28:13.148-07:00Upswing in Police Beatings Key to New Optimism in UkraineDate: June 28, 2012<br />Authors: "Voices of the Financial Times" featuring Simon Kuper and Emily Stokes <br />Venue: Book Thug Nation<br />Neighborhood: Williamsburg<br />Free Drinks -- Six-Point in cans<br />Q & A -- none <br />UE Check Number -- benefits expired<br /><br /><br />"A good way to get despondent is to look at Ukrainian statistics."<br /><br />"It's an excellent sign that Ukrainians continue to report police beatings." <br /><br /><br /> --- Financial Times, Simon Kuper's "Opening Shot" column, June 23/24 <br /><br />Was feeling blue again. Tossed newpaper with report on grain output into trash. Headed to bar to get loaded. Saw cop beating old lady. Saw cop steal old lady's loaf of black bread. Drank two quick vodka shots. Found dime in dust under bar. Dropped dime into Soviet-era pay phone to report attack. Lost dime. Drank two more vodka shots. Stumbled out of bar to go to police station to report beating of old lady. <br /><br />Cop car pulled over as I crossed Taras Shevchenko Square. Cops broke four of my fingers in attack. Other injuries.<br /><br />Pulled myself up out of gutter. Spirits soared. Had second attack to report. Stopped at next bar. Used bar coasters to staunch bleeding from head. Didn't use newspaper lying on bar because feature story was about increased productivity of Black Sea fisheries. Must keep spirits up. <br /><br />Left bar to drag ass to police station. Saw police attack neo-Nazi skateboarders with trucheons. Be still my joyous heart. <br /><br />Cops saw me, beat me. Ambulence medics said to leave bar coasters on head. Important not to rip off scabs from first atttack to ensure quicker healing from second beating. <br /><br />Saw Hordiy at next bar. Hordiy said coasters imbedded in my head will make excellent resting place for his Baltica beer bottle once he has a few vodka shots. Buys two for me.<br /><br />Half-crawled out of bar with three police attacks to report, two on me and old lady's. Between free vodka shots, Hordiy's half-full Baltica beer bottle sticking to my head on coasters with drying blood from second attack, if sober, would have jumped for joy. Staggered, instead. Am estatic to have Hordiy's Baltica bottle stuck in head as evidence of second police atttack. Broken fingers will prove first attack. Missing loaf of black bread, wounds, will prove attack on crone, probably lived through Great Patriotic War. <br /><br />Difficulty walking, but heart swollen with happiness. Head swollen, too. Glad Hordiy's Baltica bottle not sticking out of heart. Plan to burst into police station just as cops are eating old lady's loaf of black bread. Will immediately issue drunken denunciation of police for stealing old lady's bread. Will not forget to report attack on her. <br /><br />Excellent opportuntiy to witness, and report, likely third police attack as result of reporting other attacks. Picture vodka shots to be consumed upon release from hospital after wounds heal from third (police station) attack. Though recent Ukraine law requires hospitals to post mortality rates at each bedside, plan to not read them. Must keep spirits up.<br /><br />Wondered about stats citing high rates of despondency among fellow citizens despite having so many attacks to report. Will ask hospital to save Hroidy's beer bottle and contents in case new tractor factory report issued or police attacks decline. Must keep spirits up. <br /><br />Plan to maintain good mood even when government releases latest reported police attack totals. Proud to have contributed to likely upswing, as repeat beating victim and witness. Surviving Great Patriotic War no joke. Won't sweat police report stats. Won't sweat coaster residue in hair. Hospital will probably lose Hordiy's Baltica bottle and contents. Must keep spirits up.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-26365985934931657232012-07-01T11:44:00.001-07:002012-07-01T11:44:07.439-07:00Gideon's Mom Has Got It Goin' OnKeith Gessen Preps For Artic Trip, Scribe to Forego Sauna, Gym, Locally Sourced Produce: Former Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side, Marco's cousin, Emily Carter, now in New Haven.<br />
<br />
Row, Dole covers N+1 Lollapalooza like a pilgrim on his knees except for bike part and #6 train ride.<br />
<br />
Date: June 26, 2012<br />
Authors: Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Marco Roth, N+1 lauch event for the summer issue #14, "The Arkward Age" with Dushan Petrovich,Yelena Akhtiorskaaya and editor Keith Gessen.<br />
Venues: 192 Books, KGB<br />
Neighborhoods: Chelsea, East Village<br />
Free Drinks -- beers distributed to friends and family by Marco, but not enough for entire audiece. One Baltica buy-back from Lou at KGB. <br />
Q & A -- no, mill-around substituted by 192 Books event authors<br />
Book signed -- no <br />
UE Check Number -- benefits expired<br />
<br />
<br />
"Jews and culture,<br />
Jews and culture,<br />
Any time or weather,<br />
You can't have one <br />
without the other."<br />
<br />
-- tune of "Love and Marriage"<br />
<br />
<br />
At 192 Books last Tuesday night, after I'd been talking with Ellen Lewis, the mother of one of the authors, Gideon Lewis-KrausS, I introduced myself to her son and said, "I'm hitting on your mom."<br />
"Go for it," he said. "She's single." <br />
<br />
It was all glib, of course, but I'd always wanted to chat with someone who knew where Elberon, N.J. is. Ellen's grandparents lived there. <br />
<br />
I joked that after I'd been hanging out at her house in Bernardsville, N.J., Gideon would walk through the living room and say, "Mom, who's that guy that's been sleeping on the couch the last few months?" <br />
"I thought he was a friend of yours?" Ellen would say. <br />
<br />
So many threads of my going to readings project combined Tuesday night that I felt like my head was going to explode. Way back, say 6 pm, before the 35 instances of kismet occurred, I just wanted to run into the novelist Josh Cohen at Gideon's reading at 192 Books. I'd met both young writers when Josh read at KGB a few months ago. <br />
<br />
Josh and I are both from cities in New Jersey with boardwalks and have family members who were in the Shoah. Me, by marriage, Josh, by parentage. He was a great audience for my stories about being a gentile son-in-law in a family of surviors.<br />
<br />
Example One: "Selling communications devices to survivors and their families is like selling candy-flavored liquour to kids. Both tap into primordial urges."<br />
<br />
Example Two: "I told the writer Andre Aciman, author of the brillant memoir, "Out of Egypt," how handy this book of his is in maintaining my status as the preferred gentile son-in-law. Maybe preferred is too strong, let's say equally tolerated. My competition, my brother-in-law, is younger, richer and better-looking. The only way I can keep up with this guy is by repeating a performance based on the final chapter of Andre's memoir, "The Last Seder." <br />
This bit, if slightly scripted by now, repeats what happened the first time I read the first few paragraphs of the section. I cried. Andre's book is about his family's expulsion from Alexandria in the early 1960s. Anti-semitism had something to do with it. My brother-in-law is a Harvard law grad. I also started bawling when the father in Andre's novel "Call Me By Your Name" discusses his son's gayness with him. If Raun gets appointed to the Supreme Court, I'll have to add the part from the novel to my reportiore. <br />
<br />
I'd enjoyed talking with Ellen before the reading. After Gideon's hilarious and profound 12-minute recitation from his new book, "A Sense of Direction," I wanted to talk to her even more. Gay husband, gifted writer son, Elberon, the UK, the Ukraine, that is, this is a lady I could dig a chin wag with.<br />
<br />
Beyond that, although Josh was absent, the whole audience at 192 Books, made up mostly of friends and family members of the authors was just the kind of listeners and readers I'm trying to reach. I felt like I'd been invited to Ellen's house for Thansgiving dinner and it had been a good party. <br />
<br />
There are two things you need to grow and to mature as an artist. People who expose you to works of art and people who are an appropriate audience for your own work, who get your jokes. The people who have performed both of these vital roles in my life have always been predominently, though not exclusively, Jewish. I want to say thank you.<br />
<br />
When I was sixteen and hanging out at my doubles partner's house in Elberon, I asked his friend, a jazz flute player, "Who should I listen to if I want to get into jazz?" He said, "There's this trumpet player, Miles Davis. Check out this record of his "Kind of Blue." Thank you, Nathan. <br />
<br />
I don't mean to idealize the 192 Books audience. They did scarf up all the beers, but Marco was giving them out so I can't blame the audience members.<br />
<br />
I'm not bitter about Marco overlooking me in the beer distribution part of his reading. I'm sure if he could have, he would have done a "loaves and fishes" thing, but he couldn't turn two six-packs into a case. <br />
<br />
If Josh had been there, Marco would probably have given him a beer. But that would have been OK with me. Talent has its prerogatives. I would as much object to Marco giving Josh a beer instead of me as I would have raised a fuss that time Susan Sontag cut the line to get into the Mary McCathy memorial.<br />
<br />
At the 192 Books reading, Marco said that instead of an arkward question and answer session, people could just hang out after he read (he went second) and ask the authors whatever they wanted. The excerpt from his soon-to-be-published memoir, "Misimpressions," like Gideon's, was partially about a trip and having a dad who might have been gay. Both writers killed. <br />
<br />
I don't remember the last line Marco read, but it was a perfect conclusion. Patti Smith said a rock concert should be like a prizefight; it should end with a knockout. That's a good rule for readings, too. Whatever that last line of Marco's was, it rang in the momentary silence of the bookstore like a perfect last note. <br />
<br />
Ditching the questions and answers at readings isn't a bad idea though when I went to Marco's cousin's reading at Word bookstore a few months ago, I asked a good one. Marco's cousin is the writer Emily Carter, who read that night from her reissued classic "Glory Goes and Gets Some." <br />
I loved Emily's fictional stories of Lower East Side depravity, so familiar a mise en scene as to be practically Currier & Ives. Who hasn't stolen tips off the bar to buy drugs? Anybody ever heard of punk rock? "Why don't you learn to dance, you limey bastards" and so on. I wonder if Johnny Thunders was Jewish? <br />
<br />
I asked Emily in her post-reading questions and answers period if she was sad about the Mars Bar closing. She said she was, though I think she added that most of the Mars Bar era was after her down and out on the Lower East Side period. <br />
<br />
We chatted in front of the store when she went out for a smoke. I was going to try to stay in touch with her, but she was living in Minneapolis and even though the St. Paul writer Trish Hampl is my artistic goddess, the Twin Cities seem far away. Well, if I can't get adopted by Gideon's family, I can always try Marco's. Maybe I'll even get a beer at Marco's next reading when his book comes out in the fall. It will probably be at Housing Works or McNally Jackson. If I sit next to Emily, I bet I could get one. <br />
<br />
<b>N+1 Lollapalooza Tour Stop #2 -- KGB</b><br />
<br />
After I left 192, I went to KGB to catch the tail end of the other N+1 event that night, the launch of its latest issue. I got there too late for the reading itself, but I did run into Keith Gessen, like Marco, an N+1 founder. <br />
<br />
The coincidences, or cosmic concurrences, continued at KGB because I first met Keith at Emily's reading. Of course, I pitched him about my Row, Dole thing to no particular avail. You don't ever want to have a conversation with an editor in which it seems you want something. I used to do that, before I met Ellen, my new Trojan Horse. <br />
<br />
The only time I ever got this right was with my acquaintance, Cheston, the managing editor at Tin House. I told him about a story I wrote, "Passing for 62" that is about a topic of mutal interest (tennis, sort of). I said it was already published on somebody else's site (Mr. Beller's Neighborhood) and that he should check it out. <br />
<br />
This is the way to go, as opposed to groveling and begging, because the story is already published so whatever editor you're blabbing about it to, doesn't have to do anything. He can just check it out or not. It is a much easier email to send saying, "looked at it, liked it" than "pretty good, not right for us." Plus, the editor doesn't even have to send the first email, though he might feel sending the second one is the least he can do for the poor schmuck with the going to readings project.<br />
<br />
Keith told me about his upcoming trip across the lower, recently melted, Artic. He pointed out that his trip would be less work than Ian Frazier's trip across Russia by a lot. <br />
<br />
The funny thing that happened when I was talking to Keith was <br />
I quoted the story about Joseph Brodsky's poem addressed to Ukrainians on the eve of their independence to him without realizing that I learned it from a New Yorker story he wrote. <br />
<br />
Well, I hope you were flattered, bro, because Lore Segal (see earlier post) told me I was a good reader. And even though my main connection to Russia and the Ukraine is that my paunch is from drinking Baltica at KGB, it was a good story and I remembered it. <br />
<br />
Incidentally, Segal is a writer who escaped Hitler in the kinder transport thing. She played AAA hockey in Massachusetts and said "If Gessen could skate better, he could be more than an enforcer." She is a special lady, a gifted writer, and was a pal of the writer Alfred Kazin, who, like Ellen's kid, Gideon, was one of these writer-walker dudes.<br />
<br />
Not too many people know it, but Segal also played drums on the early Heartbreakers' records so Emily's "Glory Goes and Gets Some" milieu is familiar to her, too. <br />
<br />
Last Tuesday night I was "In the Front Row, On the Dole" and things just clicked. Sorry you missed it, Josh. And I hope KEITH GESSEN ticks off your Google Alert, bro.Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-46541040792206985482012-06-04T11:16:00.000-07:002012-06-04T11:16:40.488-07:00Genre or Respectable?Date: May 31, 2012<br />Authors: “Laughter in the Dark: The Comedy of Noir” with Brian Evenson, Tim Horvath and Bradford Morrow<br />Venue: McNally Jackson<br />Neighborhood: Soho<br />Free Drinks -- no<br />Q & A -- yes<br />Book signed -- yes, albeit a galley<br />UE Check Number -- benefits long gone, how you supposed to monetize these blog things? <br /><br />While the extremely gracious Brian Evenson was signing my galley after this reading, I asked him and the other two authors as well because they were in earshot, whether their stuff, this comic noir category, was genre or was it respectable? <br />"Neither" answered Tim Horvath right away and I was happy to have amused the authors because, in a way, they are a key audience for my going to readings project.<br />I'll be breaking some new ground in this post because in addition to a review of the reading, I'm going to include a sample of a comic noir story. Hey, maybe I'm a comic noir writer and not as I've come to suspect, an editorial cartoonist who can't draw. <br />But, first, the trouble with this otherwise excellent reading was that it went on too long. <br />Evenson started off by reading a snippet from one of his older books and the title story of his new book "Windeye." I'd heard him read this story at KGB the previous Sunday night and it only got better the second time around. Everything in the piece is kind of spare and innocent on the surface with about 15 kinds of dread lurking underneath.<br />The second reader was Tim Horvath. He read the last half or two-thirds of a story from his new collection “Understories.” He is an engaging reader, the story was compelling for most of its 20-minute or more length, though I thought it did bog down toward the end, but it lasted too long. <br />The beginning of the story mentioned riots in three cities, one of them, Hoboken. I seem to have missed that riot during the reading. But to be fair to Horvath, the fun and the limitation of hearing an author read his work is that you're probably going to miss some stuff, so while I think it's OK to review the reading as a reading, any final, critical pronouncement should include access to the text, which Row, Dole doesn't have. I am a big fan of riots in Hoboken.<br />By the time this comic noir evening's entertainment ended, I was squirming in my chair. And I loved these authors and their presentation and material were really good.<br />The night's third reader was Bradford Morrow. He read a duet story from his new book "The Uninnocents." Evenson helped out by reading the second voice in the story.<br />It is an excellent story and Row, Dole is mildly proud to be the only audience member to have sat through the thing twice, having heard Morrow read it a few months ago at 192 Books with novelist Benjamin Hale helping out with the second voice.<br />During the questions and answers period, Morrow and the other authors took turns saying things about who this second voice is and their comments were really illuminating as, along with those of us in the audience, they tried to describe Morrow's shifting, Trickster-like, second fiddle. <br /><br /><br /><br />Not Ready For It<br /><br /><br />I don’t know what kind of hair will have grown under my doormat until I check every morning. Most often, it is brown hair. That is the way of the world. But I don’t mean to not give brown hair, its due. There are so many different kinds of brown hair that it is almost like brown hair itself, without even getting any help from blonde hair, black hair and red hair, contains the entire, laughably broad spectrum of hair color, though, of course, some mornings these other colors can also be found on the underside of the mat.<br /><br />I hope it doesn’t sound unenlightened to say that as far as the eyeballs that float to the surface of the pool every morning, swaying like a carpet in the breeze, I prefer those mornings when they are blue. Just as with the hair that grows under the doormat every evening, there can be so many varieties of brown eyeballs bobbing in the pool that if there were only brown eyeballs, I would never get tired of them. But to come upon a pool full of blue eyeballs, I don’t know, blue eyeballs just go better with the chlorine smell. Just as red hair and blonde hair are less common, so, too, is blue the rarest eye color.<br /><br />If I were a man who preferred blonde hair having grown during the night on the underside of my doormat and who preferred to find only blue eyeballs bobbing in his pool, I might not have a leg to stand on. <br /><br />But because only one of these things is true you must believe me when I say that my preference for blue eyeballs is only an aesthetic choice.<br /><br />I have an old-fashioned milk box that sits just to the side of my doormat. I don’t know why there is a kidney in it every morning. The growth of the hair, the floating of the eyeballs, these are normal, organic things compared to the way the kidneys appear. <br /><br />The hair grows each night. The eyeballs bob to the surface by morning. These are natural processes that I can somewhat understand, not that our science is can explain every part of how they appear. <br /><br />The kidneys are something else. Someone puts them there. Milk boxes after the demise of milkmen or even when they were around, do not grow a kidney every night by themselves. I don’t know if these are starter kidneys meant to make sure there is a new kidney every morning until the milk box can grow its own. I’ve only lived in this house for four years. Maybe someone had to seed the underlining of the doormat or the bottom of the pool, or wherever the eyeballs germinate from, until the process became self-sustaining. <br /><br />I hope that is what is going on with the kidneys I find every morning in the purely decorative milk box. I wish I knew where to lodge a request that if and when the kidney appearance program starts to run on its own, it produces kidneys that don’t come with the messy entry points for the renal vein and the renal artery. Even if I could get used to finding a kidney in my milk box every morning, these dripping openings would still gross me out. <br /><br />The kidneys disturb me. I don’t get the kidneys the way I get the hair and the eyeballs. Maybe it’s a generational thing. The people from the World War II era didn’t like rock and roll. The rock and roll people don’t like hip-hop. <br /><br />There’s no sense worrying about who will live in this house when I’m gone or what kind of body part they will have to adjust to the appearance of every morning.<br /><br />Whatever organ or tissue it is, it will probably be difficult for them. To them, it will probably seem silly to be upset by living here in the early days of the kidney seeding project, if that is what it is going on in my milk box.<br /><br />It does seem like the deeper in the body that the organ comes from, the harder it is to integrate it into my daily routine. Maybe this is wrong thinking on my part, although of a different sort than my preference for hair that isn‘t brown, maybe it is some other prejudice. But, for now, at least, the kidneys come from too far inside. I’m not ready for it. <br /><br />I’m not ready for hearts and lungs either. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’d like to have some say in what part of the house or grounds they start appearing in if they come. Granted, it will be a difficult transition anyway, but shouldn’t I have some say in where I have to see them every morning? After all, they come from really far inside. I don’t like to even think my body is that thick. I’m not ready for it. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-29350799448534426722012-05-01T12:40:00.001-07:002012-05-01T12:40:36.947-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Jonathan Galassi, Andre Aciman, "Across the Great Divide," Tiny Bathing Suits and the Left-Hander's Advantage in the Ad Court -- <br /><br /><br />Date: April 19, 2012<br />Author: Jonathan Galassi<br />Venue: 192 Books<br />Neighborhood: Chelsea<br />Lit Celebs in Attendance: Wayne Kostenbaum<br />Free Drinks -- no<br />Q & A -- yes, but I chickened out<br />Book signed -- no <br />UE Check Number -- benefits expired<br /><br />First of all, let's remember that I am the book critic for Long Island Tennis magazine so when I, in the course of this wide-ranging essay, address Jonathan Galassi's reading two weeks ago, the death of musician Levon Helm, the advantages of being a lefty in tennis and why people younger than 60 shouldn't even bother having sex, that on the tennis parts, at least, I am a recognized authority. <br /><br />Galassi's reading from his new book of poetry "Left-handed" was at 192 Books. It happened to fall on the day rock musician Levon Helm died, but I didn't learn about that until later. <br /><br />A few months ago I was at 192 Books waiting for a reading to start and I read a passage in somebody's book about how Helm's bandmate, the then 17-year old Robbie Robertson rode a bus for two days from his home around Toronto to live with Helm's family in Arkansas. This was the beginning of the collaboration that resulted in the Band. Robertson found himself in a new environment. He'd never met many Americans, and now he was hanging around and playing music with white and black Southerners.<br /><br />The story I read on that previous visit to 192 Books said the Band's song "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was Robertson's thank you note and love song to Helm and his family and the culture of the American South they introduced him to. But on subsequent visits to the store, I was never able to find the book I'd read this passage in. Still, evanescent as that page in whatever book it was became, I hadn't forgotten it when I got to 192 Books for Galassi's reading. For me, all stories and evocations of the South, including those that note or celebrate positive aspects of the Confederacy, are always linked to the Southerner in my family, my daddy, Theodore Howard Shearer. <br /><br />So when I was at 192 for the Galassi reading two weeks ago, and 192 Books employee Patrick was playing some Band songs, I was already primed for a deep emotional experience before Galassi read from his sublime book of poems "Left-handed" or before I'd learned about Helm's death. <br /><br />Because I always get to readings too early like a doofus, I'd spent about a half hour in the park just up Tenth Avenue from 192, where, since it was April, I'd been able to sit on a bench and watch cherry blossoms drift down. Oh, mortality, Oh, the evanescence of passages in books we can no longer locate. Oh, the treachery of bookstores that are willing to, and might have, sold the book I wanted to revisit the story about "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" in. <br /><br />My father, who died in 1980, said upon Jimmy Carter's election, that it was nice to have a president without an accent. Between my thoughts about him, the Band songs Patrick played, the blossoms coating the paving stones in Clement Clark Moore Park and Galassi's poems, I found myself, again, in some kind of state of aesthetic overload. After all, from whom do we learn what it is to be a man, if not from our fathers?<br /><br />For previous generations of dads, perhaps my own, their response to the news that their son has switched from loving women (right-handedness in Galassi's metaphor) to loving men (left-handedness), might not be greeted with joy, but that is part of the reason that some men come to their left-handedness later than others. Galassi's poems about coming out later than most, earlier than some, would be strong whenever he published them.<br />But because the book was released this year, when Galassi was 62, presumably sparked by events that took place when he was in his late fifties, they are tinged with an appreciation of his own mortality as they chronicle his change in sexual affiliation.<br /><br />"I want spring to come because<br />I want upheaval, flooding<br />the excitement of the primal rite.<br />And I don't want spring to come<br />because it means another, one less spring."<br /><br />I don't know what the first sign was for Galassi that he was becoming interested in men, but for a former friend of mine's family, it was when their dad started wearing tiny bathing suits to the beach. As I first listened to, and later read, the poems in "Left-handed," I wondered why it isn't uncommon for a man to switch in the direction Galassi has, but how you never, or rarely, hear about a man switching from being a lefty to a righty. For a lot of people, some obvious answers to this question may exist. By now, I've moved on to a secondary question, which may also suggest some obvious answers, namely, why is the frequently, younger person, who inspires the switch, always so cute? <br /><br />To have listened to Galassi read his poems, with the faint echo of the two or three Band songs played before the reading started, only underlined the linkage of my own mortality and my version of the search for love and sex that Galassi addresses in "Left-handed." Some of us geezers are still seeking love even as our contemporaries, our heroes, are dying. "Kill the Rock Stars" was a perfectly fine name for a record label in the eighties, but even more deadly for our generation's heroes than regular rock star debauchery and drug use is the passage of time.<br /><br />What is more central than sexual desire and the fear of death , more human than to seek out some small respite from the onrush of death, now all the closer since these age spots have popped up on my hands. What is more touching than the process of seeking out new love, either as a righty or a lefty, when you know your chances of achieving the moments of illumination it provides are becoming fewer and fewer. "The Last Waltz" is only a couple of dances from now, certainly. <br /><br />So you could hardly find a reader more attuned than me to Galassi's theme, one of them, anyway, of late middle-aged desire. As I think about it, the enhancing effect of being close to death while still seeking out love and trying to find a place for the fulfillment of desire is almost the only thing that matters.<br />"Left-handed" is a tour de force description of the painful change the author went through. For all of us who are Galassi's age, it is less a question of righty v. lefty, though that brings its own challenges, but how do you make peace with the knowledge that there's going to be a last love and it might have already happened? <br /><br />And even if it hasn't, surely we aren't going to get too many more attempts and this bittersweet knowledge is only reinforced by cherry blossoms falling off trees and the songs Patrick played before the reading. At what point does the pursuit of love for us geezers become a lost cause, more suitable for being turned into myth as the waning days of the Confederacy were in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" than for realization ?<br /><br />Maybe we can meet people and socialize, but it all takes place against an unseen, but omnipresent Lenten background of purple and black with the difference that although this is Palm Sunday, Easter will be the end. The cherry blossoms will fall from the trees in Clement Clark Moore Park next April, make sure you check them out if I miss them.<br /><br />What readings should I go to this last, this holy week? In any case, why would anyone bother seeking love or sex if they have decades more to frolic in, what would be the rush, it's beyond me now, though this isn't an insight I had at a younger age, oddly. <br /><br />But now that Levon Helm and sax man Clarence Clemmons, who I actually hung out with decades ago and had hoped to meet again, have died, there's little sense in not making some effort, however feeble (I know I'll write about it on my blog that nobody but Lou and Chris reads.), to connect with other "rock stars" while you guys are still around. These men are my contemporaries who as Galassi's poems make clear, it would be easy to miss for the same reason I'm never going to be able to amuse Clarence with my story about how he brought us all back from that bar in Deal, in the seventies to hang out with him at his apartment in Sea Bright.<br /><br />So that's why I'm inviting Galassi, Jimmie Atlas, Andre Aciman, and Sven Birkerts to play in a doubles tennis match at my home court in Tribeca. Any tennis court and some other sports settings are one place, lefties have big advantages. Don't forget, I'm likely to be right about the tennis parts of this essay, my daddy taught me how to play. I know Atlas plays tennis, Andre used to, whether or not Birkerts or Galassi plays doesn't really matter much because my court in Tribeca is also an excellent place to drink outdoors on warm summer nights while contemplating the nearby Woolworth Building. And if booze has left an potential guest's life, we can always admire the city's prettiest skyscraper and compare notes on Lipitor doses. <br /><br />You might ask how Birkerts earned his invite. He is, among other things, an out-of-towner. It is because as I assemble this DreamTeam of readers, I have to get some man to pinch hit for Andre. No, it’s not your second serve, bro. It's because Andre didn't grow up here. So the bits about the dull, green T-shirts young women wore in the seventies and the blue, plastic diaprahgm boxes found in their dorm rooms and off-campus apartments, along with copies of "Our, Bodies, Our Selves," will be lost on him. If I had to choose between perfect French and knowledge of the infield fly rule, well, it's an obvious choice, but I'll need sometimes to substitute someone as a fourth for this match-up who knows why there's no point letting the ball drop with a runner on base when the batter pops it up.<br />Birkerts will also be a better audience than Andre for my story about going to see the Band in 1969 at Madison Square Garden. It snowed that night and to have been 17 and loose on Eighth Avenue, well, you guys get the idea, right? Birkert's essay about the time he played his guitar for a much more accomplished musician is a reminder that there was nothing bigger than being a "guitar hero" for those of us who came of age in this country in the seventies. <br />One of the first and funniest boomer generation evocations of decline and the presence of death was the Firesign Theater skit about members of the Dead and the Airplane in an old age home arguing about some important topic from our prime years, whose drugs were best, whose groupies the more comely. This was a skit from our long-gone years in which desire was unfettered by mortality. <br />Google Alerts, do your damnedest. Feed my ideal readers' heads and don't doubt for a moment that because all the big points tend to come up on the ad (left) side of the court, a lefty's slice serve nearly always produces better results than a righty's. I say this, ex cathedra, with the full authority of my position as the book critic for Long Island Tennis magazine.Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4155861818452054747.post-4205213485826765882012-04-28T11:54:00.001-07:002012-04-28T11:54:13.130-07:00Lower Manhattan Man, Readings Enthusiast, Begins Final Training Phase For PEN Conference –<div>
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New
York, New York ( 29 April 2012) – Brent Shearer, 57, the Lower
Manhattan resident who has gained notoriety as a literary gadfly, held a
press conference at Soho’s McNally Robinson bookstore in response to
media requests for an update on his training regimen in preparation for
the PEN conference.</div>
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“I’m
tapering off on my time actually listening to readers even though I
have continued to adhere to my grueling schedule of going to readings in
these last few weeks before the conference. I think this is the best
approach because this way I don’t lose my rhythm of getting to the
events on time. </div>
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“The
point is that by not listening to the readings while I’m there, but
still going to them, I think I have achieved pretty much the literary
equivalent of the lift that “blood doping” gives runners. I expect to be
able to pay better attention to readers at the conference because I’ve
spent the last three weeks not listening to writers who have read their
works at local venues such as the KGB bar or the Housing Works Caf<span style="font: 12px Times;">é</span>, not to mention our hosts this afternoon.”</div>
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Shearer
also addressed other concerns raised by the press and the public in the
run-up to the PEN World Voices Festival of
International Literature, starting in New York next week.</div>
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Shearer,
the author of the best-selling memoir, “In the Front Row, On the Dole,”
the story of a man who lost his job and started his now-legendary
going-to-readings project, which resulted in first place finishes in
the PEN competition the last two years, also said, “The new testing
rules don’t scare me. I’ve never used any banned substances in my
preparation for the PEN conference. Anyone who wants my urine or tissue
samples is welcome to them.”</div>
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While
reluctant to exactly spell out how he manages to attend so many
readings, while piling up the highest per reading scores in the history
of the PEN conference. Shearer did say the following in response to
questions about whether he was changing anything this year in his going
to readings technique.</div>
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“A
lot of times the margin of victory comes down to how well you can
coordinate your use of the city’s mass transit system to hit as many
readings as possible to pile up points. Cabs have some utility but if
there’s a lot of traffic, forget it. A bike would be good, but I’m
scared to ride in heavy traffic so it limits my use of this mode of
transport. </div>
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“Being
from New Jersey is actually an advantage because in addition to having
to know the city’s transit structure as well as natives, I also bring to
the table my knowledge of the PATH system. It will surprise people, but
often the best way to get from one PEN event to another, say if it’s a
question of getting from say “Death in Spring”and “The Time of Doves” at
the Cuny Graduate Center, near Herald Sq to “A Thousand Deaths Plus
One” at the New School, NYU or anywhere else in the West Village, is on
the PATH.</div>
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Shearer
also touched on what has been called his “sharp-elbowed” approach to
getting the most “mike time” during the questions and answers period
that follows many PEN readings. “It’s hard to do well in the PEN
competition if you don’t get the bonus points awarded to frequent
questioners. They provide a cushion to compensate for the inevitable
screw-ups when you get held up on a train or stuck in traffic in a cab
so if that means resorting to techniques like unplugging the mike on the
other side of the auditorium so I can squeeze in a second question,
well, you might have noticed there’s a big gap between first and second
place prize money.”</div>
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Shearer
responded to criticism of his practice at last year’s event of sitting
in the “empty” chair customarily placed on the stage at PEN events to
draw attention to imprisoned writers. “The symbolic impact of these damm
chairs occurs only at the start of the reading when the moderator makes
the same canned speech noting the their significance. Once the reading
starts, it should be every man for himself. Those on-stage stairs allow
the readings competitor the best access to panelists during the
questions and answers session and often the quickest egress from venue.
I’m sure the imprisoned writers, once they get mentioned, could care
less who sits in their chairs during the readings.”</div>
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Shearer
also said the controversy about professional audience members accepting
“guarantees” to attend particular authors’ readings was, in his mind, a
non-issue. “I feel as much as anyone that it isn’t an official reading
if I’m not there. But these rumors of appearance fees for leading
competitors are easily dismissed. If you are tying to win the whole
event, you can’t let your schedule be affected by the kind of small
change payments that we are rumored to be receiving.”</div>
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In
response to a reporter's question, Shearer reacted to criticism that
the conference’s competition should not allow competitors to merely
skip, as Shearer does, events which are wholly or partially conducted in
languages other than English. </div>
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“To
make this point is more evidence of the hypocrisy of the event’s
organizers. I don’t see them scheduling any non-English events at any of
the main venues with the best-known writers. They avoid this because
they want people to come, want to sell tickets. It’s obvious that the
few, relatively, paid events help subsidize the majority of the events
which are free and open to the public." </div>
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"When
the organizers schedule Salman Rushdie and an otherwise all Filipino
slate of authors presenting their work in Tagalog, then they can talk
about penalizing competitors who attend only English events," he said.</div>
</div>Brent Shearerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05162751351611934490noreply@blogger.com0