Wow, New McSweeney's IT Book Kinda Like Cover of This Blog !

How Not to Run A Panel on How Not to Run A Reading Series: A Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Changing of the Guard in the Red Room

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.

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.

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."

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.

 

There are no Sams on Italian Trains



Date: July 30, 2019

Venue: Books Are Magic

Authors: Emily Nussbam, Willa Paskin

Free Drinks: No

DroneoMeter Readings: Negative

Benefits: expired

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

My new accomplice in crime laughed.

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

She said, “Books Are Magic.”

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was sorry to miss the program, but I’ll definitely buy the book at an independent bookstore and read it.  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.

I found myself out on Smith Street in a jiffy, ready for whatever chance encounter might come next. Suck on that, Pasolini.

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.

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.

 

 

No Bridge Between Cultures for you, Funny Man!

 

 

 

 

Date: April 24, 2019
Venue: Italian Cultural Institute
Program: Fernanda Pivano: A Bridge Between Cultures
Writers: Erica Jong, Francesca Pellas, Gini Alhadeff
Free Drinks: Unknown
DroneoMeter Reading: Unknown

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.

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.
 

  

Dear Mr. Van Straten,

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.
 

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.

Brent Shearer VIP

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.

Listening to Some Dope Shit, Sitting Between Raluca and Peter

Date: June 5, 2018

Authors: Chelsea Hodson with Leopoldine Core

Venue: Greenlight Books, Brooklyn

Free Drinks: Yes

Q & A: Yes

Drone-O-Meter reading: negative

UE Check Number: benefits expired

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.  

Raluca and I really had fun identifying Chelsea’s agent, who was sitting in the front row.

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.

“With an M, but with a funny spelling,” I said.

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.”

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.

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.

Neither performer broke character when the reading was over. I think the guy just carried Chelsea out the door.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Tonight I’m Someone Else” is a must-read for this professional audience member.

 

Novelist Lauren Stahl Shocks Grizzled Strand Vets, Other Audience Members w/ Really Short Reading

Date: February 2, 2018

Author: Lauren Stahl

Venue: Mysterious Bookstore, Tribeca

Free Drinks: white and red

Q & A: no

Drone-On-Meter Reading: event too short

Email: diordream@gmail.com

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I still haven’t tried tongue.

 

 

Pen Parentis Gift Bags Spark Lit World Controversy

Michael Greenberg at the Mic

Date: November 14, 2017
Authors: Michael Greenberg, Joanne Jacobson and Diana Geffner-Ventura
Venue: Andaz Hotel, Wall Street
Free Drinks: yes (self-serve white wine, red  wine)
Q & A - yes
Book signed - no
UE Check Number – benefits over 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The evening’s theme was Health Matters and it was a consideration of how illnesses affect creative careers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The other thing is that Twitter has rotted my brain, but that’s a topic for another post.

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.

“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.”

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?”

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?

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 “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.” 

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?

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.

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).

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.

MFA or NYC? - Post-Mortem MFA To Have Scribes Knock Knock Knocking at Gate of Heaven

Date: October 14, 2017

Authors: myself, others 

Venue: Cell Theatre

Free Drinks:

Q & A: no 

Book signed - no

UE Check Number – benefits over 

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.

The Gate of Heaven-Writers Institute MFA (post-mortem) program constitutes an intimate creative apprenticeship that extends beyond traditional classroom and burial options.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In fact, we expect to announce a deal with the New York Review of Books classics reissue program, which will reward students who complete our program with re-publication in the series.

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.

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. 

Gate of Heaven – CUNY Writers’ Institute MFA Post-Mortem Year Abroad

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

 

 

 

 

 

Gerard and Febos Sparkle, Caldwell MIA, BookCourt Closing Bad Vibes

Date: April 20, 2017
Venue: Pete’s Candy Store
Authors: Melissa Febos, Chole Caldwell, Sarah Gerard
Lit Celebs Present: Molly Prentiss
Free Drinks: Yes, I got there before the register opened
Drone-On-Meter : negative
UE check : N/A

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.


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.


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.
 

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.
 

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.

 

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.”

 

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.
 

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.

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.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smitten With Jimmy Breslin

 

 

Date: April 22, 2008
Venue: McNally Jackson Books
Author: Jimmy Breslin
Lit Celebs Present: Ronnie Eldridge, spouse, host of public access TV show
Free Drinks: No
Drone-On-Meter : negative
UE check collect: #276534

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.