Bikes, Books, Broads: Skyhorse, Aciman, Rushdie

Date: February 9, 2012
Authors: Granta "Exit Strategy" issue launch with Judy Chicurel, Vanessa Manko, Alexsander Hermon and Susan Minot
Venue: 192 Books
Neighborhood: Chelsea
Free Drinks -- yes
Lit Celebs Sighted: Brando Skyhorse, Andre Aciman, Salman Rushdie
Q & A -- no
Book signed -- no
UE Check Number -- 1245673

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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. 

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?

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.
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.

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."

Rushdie said, "Yeah, I am. Thanks."

"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.

"Yeah, I know. It's just a lark, really." Rushdie said.

"Anyway, I can use that for some Rushdie material." I said. Then Rushdie moved on to meet other people.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

When the Kill Fee Curdles, Bklyn Writer Not Amused As Harper's Pulled Plug on Comic's Profile

Date: January 3, 2013
Authors: Adam Wilson, Teddy Wayne, Justin Taylor, Sal Pane
Venue: KGB
Neighborhood: East Village
Free Drinks: not even a buyback
UE check #: benefits ended


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.

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.

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.

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 Los Angeles Review of Books, 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.

My Crime Against the Seward Park NYPL Branch

Date: March 15, 2010
Author: David Rakoff
Venue: KGB
Neighborhood: East Village
Free Drinks -- no
Q & A -- yes
Book signed -- yes
UE Check Number -- 890765

(David Rakoff died in August 2012)

 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I said, "Oh, I'll introduce you to him."

As we made our way through the crowd toward Rakoff, she asked me, "Do you know him?"

I said, "Well, not personally."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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?

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.

My Dates With Hannah Tinti

Date: February 22, 2011
Author: Hannah Tinti
Venue: The Stone
Neighborhood: East Village
Celebs Present: Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Amy Hempel, A.M. Homes
Free Drinks -- none
Q & A -- none
UE Check Number -- benefits expired



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.
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!
At the next intermission, I tapped her on the shoulder and said, "I know your last name."
"No, you don't," she said.
"Yes, I do."
"What is it then?"
"Look, we're two people who've just met in a bar. No sense dragging our resumes into it," I said.
Hannah was fine with that and we talked a little more before she excused herself to go say hello to Said.
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.
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.
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. 


Hannah Writes All Night

Hannah writes all night.
At the Stone
the new kid, shot in the back.
Oh, for testosterone’s tumult
she has the knack.

Hannah writes all night.
Sure, we were getting bored
us boys, stuck with a dick.
Filling bottles at crazy angles,
changing size like an accordion’s
a neat enough trick,
but Ren makes it fun
to have a prick.


Watch out, Lou Reed.
Step back, Laurie Anderson.
Hannah’s breaking out the uke.
The loveliest thing in a gal
makes Hannah the best kind of pal
before we perish in a ring of desire
Hannah writes all night
and her boys take us higher.

Upswing in Police Beatings Key to New Optimism in Ukraine

Date: June 28, 2012
Authors: "Voices of the Financial Times" featuring Simon Kuper and Emily Stokes
Venue: Book Thug Nation
Neighborhood: Williamsburg
Free Drinks -- Six-Point in cans
Q & A -- none
UE Check Number -- benefits expired


"A good way to get despondent is to look at Ukrainian statistics."

"It's an excellent sign that Ukrainians continue to report police beatings."  


 --- Financial Times, Simon Kuper's "Opening Shot" column, June 23/24

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.

Cop car pulled over as I crossed Taras Shevchenko Square. Cops broke four of my fingers in attack. Other injuries.

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. 

Left bar to drag ass to police station. Saw police attack neo-Nazi skateboarders with trucheons. Be still my joyous heart.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gideon's Mom Has Got It Goin' On

Keith 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.

Row, Dole covers N+1 Lollapalooza like a pilgrim on his knees except for bike part and #6 train ride.

Date: June 26, 2012
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.
Venues: 192 Books, KGB
Neighborhoods: Chelsea, East Village
Free Drinks -- beers distributed to friends and family by Marco, but not enough for entire audiece. One Baltica buy-back from Lou at KGB.
Q & A -- no, mill-around substituted by 192 Books event authors
Book signed -- no  
UE Check Number -- benefits expired


"Jews and culture,
Jews and culture,
Any time or weather,
You can't have one
without the other."

-- tune of "Love and Marriage"


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."
"Go for it," he said. "She's single."

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.

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?"
"I thought he was a friend of yours?" Ellen would say. 

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.

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.

Example One:  "Selling communications devices to survivors and their families is like selling candy-flavored liquour to kids. Both tap into primordial urges."

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." 
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. 

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."
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?

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.

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.

N+1 Lollapalooza Tour Stop #2 -- KGB

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

The funny thing that happened when I was talking to Keith was
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Genre or Respectable?

Date: May 31, 2012
Authors: “Laughter in the Dark: The Comedy of Noir” with Brian Evenson, Tim Horvath and Bradford Morrow
Venue: McNally Jackson
Neighborhood: Soho
Free Drinks -- no
Q & A --  yes
Book signed -- yes, albeit a galley
UE Check Number -- benefits long gone, how you supposed to monetize these blog things?

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?
"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.
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.
But, first, the trouble with this otherwise excellent reading was that it went on too long.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 



Not Ready For It


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.