KGB - DOU - EP

This Tuesday (4/12) I'll be reading at KGB's nonfiction night with Deb Olin Unferth, author of the new memoir Revolution. Doors open at 7—KGB is at 85 East 4th St.

(The KGB site mysteriously renders her surname "Unsworth," but don't let that fool you—she's the same DOU who sometimes pops up in The Believer.)

Upcoming stuff!

On April 12, I'll be reading at KGB's "True Story" night with Deb Olin Unferth—she'll be reading from her wonderful new memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, while I'll be reading from...uh...I'll figure something out. (Maybe this?) More here.

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On May 4, I'll be in conversation with...Sloane Crosley! We'll be yapping it up at McNally Jackson, on the occasion of the paperback release of her second essay collection, How Did You Get This Number.

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More as these dates approach...

January Believer!

The first Believer of 2011 (!!) is out! (I was at Book Culture yesterday and saw a stack of 'em!)

You must read Andy Selsberg's piece on conscientious clothing—is there a movement afoot? Does said nascent movement need a Michael Pollan (as Andy suggests)? Well, Andy Selsberg is the Michael Pollan of the conscientious clothing movement!

Reif Larsen (on the pleasures of the book, and the possibilities of the e-book) and Theo Schell-Lambert (on what those e-book ads really mean) will blow your mind!

Plus interviews with Guy Maddin, Pharoahe Monche, Bianca Casady, and others!

An excerpt from Deb Olin Unferth's upcoming memoir Revolution (which is great)...Justin Taylor on Bette Pesteky's Lish-edited 1981 collection, Stories Up to a Point...Columny goodness from Greil Marcus, Nick Hornby, and Jack Pendarvis...and much more!

Happy new year!

Reading! Lunchtime! Midtown! TODAY!

For Underwater New York:

Wednesday, June 30

12:30 – 1:45 pm

Bryant Park – 42nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues

An afternoon with Underwater New York

Featuring

Music for Underwater Things by Michael Hearst;

Readings of original underwater stories by

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Ed Park, Personal Days: A Novel

Nelly Reifler, See Through: Stories

Said Sayrafiezadeh, When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir

Deb Olin Unferth, Vacation;

And an underwater letter-writing activity from

Ben Greenman, What He’s Poised to Do: Stories

A reading!

NEWS BLAST——————————

Ed Park will be making a rare public post-baby appearance on June 30 at Bryant Park!

He, rather I, will be reading something aquatic (maybe this?) as part of the Word for Word series (Underwater New York edition), along with Deb Olin Unferth*, Nelly Reifler, Said Sayrafriezadeh, and a "special guest"...

These readings are at noon—a good way to spend your lunch hour!




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*With this reading, Deb and I will have read together four times—a record?

Tonight!

I'll be jumping on the 2/3 and taking it to Times Square and then taking the 7 into Queens and then (whew!) getting on the G train to Greenpoint*, Brooklyn, and emerging there to read at the Word bookstore. Please come if you live (or linger) in that area! Reading is at 7:30. Brian Baise and Deb Olin Unferth are also reading.

Here's the Word store site; here's what some site says; and this is from something called the Brooklyn Based Tip Sheet (I think that's what it's called):

THURSDAY: Word of the Ghost
Word bookstore's ongoing Indie Press Night returns with two glittering literati: novelist Deb Olin Unferth, whose lauded debut novel, Vacation, was published by McSweeneys, and Believer founding editor Ed Park, author of Personal Days and publisher of the quirky New-York Ghost. 7:30 pm, 126 Franklin Street, Greenpoint.

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Otherwise...if you're in the Morningside Heights area, go see Dzyds in conversation at Book Culture:

Join Columbia University professor Jenny Davidson for a discussion about her latest book, Breeding: A Partial History of the Eighteenth Century. She will be joined by Vassar professor Julie Park**, for a conversation about the book.

JENNY DAVIDSON is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. She is the author of two novels, Heredity and The Explosionist, and a critical work, Hypocrisy and the Politics of Politeness: Manners and Morals from Locke to Austen.

JULIE PARK is an assistant professor of English at Vassar College. She was an editor of Eighteenth-Century Fiction from 2003-2008. Her book, The Self and It: Novel Objects and Material Subjects in 18th-Century England, is forthcoming this year from Stanford University Press. She has published articles on the history of the novel and the dolls, automata and fetishes of eighteenth-century England in several academic journals.

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*where someone is looking for a time machine
**no relation

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for February 24, 2009

I. Booking Bands: You Shall Know Our Velocity Girl...Things They Might Be Giants Carried...you get the idea....Can you think of one that's not already on the list?

(From Dzyd Jen)

II. "A rather aggressive exercise in point-missing": Mike Rutherford's album based on a science-fiction oddity from 1964, Peter Currell Brown's Smallcreep's Day.

III. Odd choice of verb?

Born into an immigrant family living in public housing, Mr. Locke, 59, made it to Yale University and served as a prosecutor, state legislator and King County executive before his election as governor. —NYT

IV. Major Beatles find posted at Hey Dullblog.

(Thanks, Eric)

V. On the red carpet the other night, James Franco gave a nod to Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste!



VI. I'll be reading in Brooklyn this Thursday at 7:30...wait, let me copy the "upcoming readings" stuff from the PD blog!

Thurs., 2/26 Word Books, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 7:30 p.m., with Deb Olin Unferth (Vacation) and Brian Baise

Tues., 3/3, New York Society Library, 10 a.m. (WHAT?!)—not a reading, more a panel

Thurs., 3/12 Gallatin Teachers' Reading, 6:30 p.m., Bronfman Center (7 East 10th St.), first floor

Tues., 3/31, First Proof Series at Vassar College, 5 p.m., Class of '51 Reading Room, Vassar Library, Poughkeepsie, NY. (More info here.)

Readings

I'll be reading this week (Wed. 2/18, 8 p.m.) at Manhattan Valley/Morningside Heights' own Ding Dong Lounge (929 Columbus, 105/106), following some current Columbia writing division students.

And I'll be reading next week (Thurs. 2/26) all the way in Greenpoint at the Word bookstore, with Deb Olin Unferth and Brian Baise.

(More info and links here. Some more appearances in March, and April, and I think early May.)

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for July 28, 2008

I. Short-story wizard Deb Olin Unferth's first novel, Vacation, is coming out soon (the unofficial prequel to Personal Days?!)—and there's already a nifty trailer for it:



There is a plan for Deb and I to read together at KGB in December, along with the mysterious Heidi Julavits........and speaking of HJ—she and I will be introducing something Believer-y at Symphony Space in November.

No need to mark your calendars now—I will remind you about these things constantly in the intervening months!

II. Wait—speaking of KGB—I'll be reading there this Thursday! More reminders soon...

III. Dzyd Mollie wonders:

[S]ay you were to construct a speculative Venn diagram of 'People who are familiar with the movie Once and/or independent Irish rock band the Frames' and 'People who are familiar with Mary Worth (in a nonironic fashion).' You would probably project a very, very small overlapping space..."

(That's an exceptionally limiting Venn diagram...but can it match this one?)

IV. There should be a flip-book about...the making of a flip-book.

V. Rounding out today's Table-talk, a note from Dzyd Luc:

"Here's an interesting variant on the Ouroboros. It's an emblem by Maurice Scève—the viper's suicide: 'to give you life I give myself death'—and I found it on the excellent blog A Journey Round My Skull."


Hard to tell exactly what's going on here, but: Is the serpent spilling its own blood to provide nourishment for its spawn? Eagle-eyed Dzyds, please call in.

(Speaking of Luc: new post—at last!—up at his Pinakothek.)

Monday grab-bag, or My new sweet style

...what if I wrote my next novel like this?...Actually the followup to Personal Days has been written, by the inimitable Deb Olin Unferth. It's called Vacation....If I were a saxophonist who played on the street for money, I'd learn "Careless Whisper"...The place name "Multnomah County" gives me the heebie-jeebies...Heffernan: "In his vertiginous free time, he crash-diets, cheats at kickboxing and persuades people to give him money"...Finally finished watching a movie—My Blueberry Nights—is it just me or does some of it feel quite Blockian? Some of the dialogue (esp. between Jude Law and Norah Jones)? And the AA stuff...I'm on the fence about it over all, well, no, let's say I liked it...why not...I used to be a film critic!...The soundtrack should've had Prefab Sprout's "Blueberry Pies"—the lyrics are even almost appropriate: "So if I come begging with take me back eyes/All you have to tell me/All you have to tell me are blueberry, blueberry pies"....WHATEVER!!!......Speaking of food: Korean food....Also in the NYT, a Q&A with American Teen director Nanette Burstein, talking about "her own intense high school experience two decades ago in Buffalo"...ummm....yes...she and yr correspondent were classmates!...Did someone say Buffalo? Yes: The Stubblemeister did, with a tip for Dizzyheads....

The year 1988 was kind of a blur for me

Hot of the presses—in the Times, Dizzies Team Member Hua (has the blog stopped?!) listens to Top Shelf 8/8/88, a hip-hop CD of dubious provenance.

Afrika Baby Bam of the Jungle Brothers, who contributed the track “Back in the Jungle,” which he said was recorded in 2003, dismissed concerns about the authenticity of the project. “We still remember the culture and tradition,” he said. “How much more do you need, outside of the actual date, to make a record as authentic as you would have made on Aug. 8, 1988?”

Other Dizzies Newsfeeds™: Vocabulary via Edmund Gosse via Levi: jobation is "a lengthy and tedious rebuke"...quinduncs are "gossips or busybodies"...Levi's also got some delightful posts on Ring Lardner and Proust via Powell...Am excited for these 145 short-shorts from McSweeney's, three books by Dave Eggers, Deb Olin Unferth, and (Psychic E. singer!) Sarah Manguso....I don't play a lot of video/computer games, but this Fancy Pants adventure is simple and cheering...A new New-York Ghost is out, the nearly one-year-anniversary edition...How long will it last?!...Press release/reminder, I'll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival tomorrow—here is the official listing...it's at "Mainstage (Borough Hall Plaza)":

5:00 p.m. EVERYONE'S A (FORMER) CRITIC.
Three music and arts critics known for their humor discuss what it means to be a critic and the art of writing beyond the review. Featuring popular essayist, memoirist, critic and soon-to-be novelist Chuck Klosterman, Rolling Stone music critic and new memoirist Rob Sheffield, and Believer editor and former Village Voice editor/critic Ed Park whose comic novel Personal Days will be released in 2008.

Stories in the BEST way

Tonight in Brooklyn: Two great short-short story writers for the price of one—Deb Olin Unferth and Gary Lutz. More details here. (Via Dizzyhead Thomas)