Disambiguations™ for June 2, 2011

Some catch-up...

I. Rachel Aviv made her amazing New Yorker (!) debut last week with "God Knows Where I Am," about a psychiatric patient who refused treatment, moved into the attic of an abandoned house, and subsisted on apples while keeping an extensive diary. Such a good piece. You need to subscribe to read it (though the abstract is oddly compelling).*

II. Hans Keilson, who found late-career American literary success last year (at the age of 101), has passed away. Damion Searls, who translated Keilson's Comedy in a Minor Key, wrote this appreciation/profile of him last year for The Believer, which you can read now in full online.

III. Speaking of The Believer—the June issue is out! Robert Ito kicks it off with a fascinating piece on Josiah Flynt Willard—hobo, writer, turncoat. Charity Vogel finds the godfather of the game show; Hillary Chute (!) interviews Joe Sacco, the war reporter/graphic narrativist; Brandon Stosuy listens to Destroyer's Kaputt; the usual columns including the new Daniel Handler one; and much more...

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*A side effect of reading Rachel's piece was wanting more, which meant reading some of the rest of the magazine. Great magazine! I liked the profile of Cory Arcangel—excellent. As if a quote from Ed Halter wasn't enough, it also mentions that he was a star lacrosse player at my alma mater. Then I started reading the açai berry piece and a review of a bio of Rabindranath Tagore. But then I had to leave the magazine (it was my sister's).

Disambiguations™ for June 3, 2010

New Believer is out! It's really good: Hillary Chute interviews Phoebe Gloeckner...Robert Hass on the new Chinese poetry...Realistically hungry David Shields in conversation with La Manguso...particularly excellent Nick Hornby column and Tom Gauld comic...Bookworm mastermind Michael Silverblatt interviewed by Sarah Fay...Elizabeth Gumport on Elaine Dundy...columnly goodness from J. Pendarvis, G. Marcus, Rose McGowan (!?), reviews by Stephen Burt, Gary Lutz (!?)...much more!

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I think when it was May I said to myself, "How is it already May?" Yesterday I said, "How is it already June?"

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Last night on 2 train from 14th St...

You: Reading at random from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, after having just done a reading with LD herself!
Me: Alarmed but happy to hear Rush's "Fly By Night" pop up on the iPod!

Wait—we are actually the same person!

[File under "Missed Connections" (ed4ed edition)]

Art issue

The Believer's Art Issue is out!

Michael Paul Mason on an art-world darling—who went on to sell doughnuts at Krispy Kreme...

The grandson of Charles and Ray Eames constructs an alternate universe...

This comics-heavy issue also features Jeff Chang on Morrie Turner (the first nationally syndicated African American cartoonist), the one and only Hillary Chute talking to Aline Kominsky, interviews with Peter Blegvad and Chris Ware, and...a new feature, called "Comics"!

Plus Michelle Tea, Greil Marcus, Joshua Cohen, and much more...

Jack Pendarvis...more...more...

Also!

Tabular Talkage for Tuesday, December 9, 2008

1. At Print, Hillary Chute talks to Art Spiegelman about the rerelease of his Breakdowns. (The interview runs in five parts this week.)

2. Dennis Cooper has more Oulipo links/photos/videos than you can shake a stick at...(Via L.G. Thos.)

3. Jenny's latest book!

4. Next Psychic Envelopes cover?



or



(Anyone know anything about the musicians who wrote/performed these songs?)

5. ”Beethoven learned to add and subtract but never learned to multiply. If he had to multiply 65 by 59, he wrote 65 in a column 59 times and added it up.” —Jan Swafford, “How the Illuminati Influenced Beethoven,” Slate

Son of Table-Talk of P.G. for November 3, 2008

I. New Believer is out—the Art Issue! Hooray!

Lawrence Weschler on/with Robert Irwin and David Hockney; Mark Swartz on ; Sheila Heti interviewing Frank Stella; Morgan Meis on the art of the clubhouse; Joshua Cohen on a fake Caravaggio; Michael Marcinkowski on Cavemen (!!!?!?!?!?!?!); epic Hillary Chute interview with Lynda Barry; Jonathan Taylor on the third Twin Tower...in Tulsa; much, much more!







II. The NYT goes to the Bowery for the return of the Homeless Museum:

He said Albert pointed to a pumpkin that was keeping a stack of letters from blowing away and told him, “Twenty-seven years ago I could have drawn this perfectly.”

(Read all of Samantha Topol's Believer piece on the HoMu, from Dec. 2006/Jan. 2007 issue here.)

III. A Flickr set of spirit photography (via L.G. Thos.)

IV. Dizzies Name of the Year™: Ninth place N.Y. marathon women's finalist Dire Tune.

V. Dizzies Lede of the Day (trademark pending):

It’s like being named the outstanding British soldier of 1776.
The trade publication American Banker unveiled its Banker of the Year award last week: It went to Kenneth D. Lewis, chief of Bank of America.
—Stephanie Clifford, NYT

McCloud 9 — Mots sans frontiéres

The new Believer is out, and—I love it. Brothers Scott and James Browning visit the North and South Pole, respectively—each with their mom (but not each other). You need to see this in print—the top half of each page consists of Scott's journey, the bottom half is taken up by James's.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Taylor visits the house of the great "I hate Austria" Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, and learns (among other things) that the author was a Prince fan—a wonderful piece, often echoing TB's style, that can be enjoyed even if you're not yet a Bernhardian.



And there's much more: Dizzyhead Paul on allonymic lit—books falsely published under an author's name...Conversations with Namesake director Mira Nair and with Omnivore's Dilemma writer Michael Pollan...Online you can read Hillary Chute's great interview with Understanding Comics author/artist Scott McCloud (Hillary's also co-edited the Winter 2006 number of Modern Fiction Studies, devoted to Graphic Narrative—a must for brainiac graphic novel aficionados.)

This is no April Fool's!

Time to subscribe? Definitely. I can't believe how cheap it is!

(Believer illustration by Tony Millionaire.)

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The new anthology Words Without Borders looks terrific—writers I've heard of (Jonathan Safran Foer, Edwidge Danticat, Javier Marías, et al.) introducing writers I haven't heard of: Italy's Giorgio Manganelli, Korea's Jo Kyung Ran, Norway's Johan Harstad. Perfect eclectic subway reading. (Thanks to Dizzyhead Gautam, who worked on the book.)