Anthology fever

I gave a reading last night with Rachel Sherman and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh at the Lillian Vernon Writers' House (it was fun), for the students at the NYU summer session. There I also got to pick up a copy of They're At It Again: An Open City Reader, edited by Thomas Beller and Joanna Yas.

It's huge—I didn't realize it was nearly 800 pages. Who's in it? A quick glance yields Paul Bowles, Jonathan Ames, Geoff Dyer, Bryan Charles, the aforementioned R.S. and S.S., Davids Means and Shields, Sam Lipsyte, Martha McPhee, Mary Gaitskill, Rivka Galchen, Walter Kirn, James Lasdun, Victor Pelevin, Hal Sirowitz, Edmund White, Leni Zumas, Richard Yates (!), Charles Bukowski, Will Eno, Sylvia Foley, Hubert Selby Jr., Jessica Shattuck...the list really does go on...It's satisfyingly heavy, and I'm excited that my story "Bring on the Dancing Horses" (from Open City #30) is included...

*

A slimmer book, but with nearly as many contributors, is No Near Exit, an anthology of writing from Post Road magazine, each one selected by a different writer, making for a vertiginous reading experience. Plus, some of the pieces are interviews with writers, and others are writers recommending books by other writers...

Two round numbers

In the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy, Tom Beller reflects on Open City and "a literary magazine's strange relationship to time":

Why did we close? We decided to close the magazine the way Hemingway described bankruptcy—gradually, then all at once. Our last issue was so good, I thought, and the party for it was so good. Why stop? On the other hand, why not go out in top form, when everyone is still in a good mood?

We will keep the books going. Books are much less capital intensive. Also, as Fran Lebowitz has pointed out, a magazine has to keep being published. Books come out at their own pace (or, in the case of Fran, they don’t come out).

Now we have arrived at two round numbers: issue number thirty. Year number twenty. We’d often been referred to as a literary quarterly, and over the years have participated in a kind of soft obfuscation—about our circulation, about how often we published. To have these bold round numbers, 20 and 30, seemed almost funny in their plain truth.

The height report

The WSJ's Speakeasy talks to Joanna Yas about Open City: "These tall men were standing at the door, waving around copies of their literary magazine."

Open City

The journal Open City is ending—I can't believe it's been around for twenty years. (I feel honored to have been in the last issue.) Thankfully, it will continue to publish books—I recently finished:

—just great.

(Carolyn Kellogg has more here, and here's Christian Lorentzen at the NY Observer.)

Drinking up the eau de cologne

Rob Sheffield on Elvis Costello's Trust: "He was still singing about girl trouble, but for the first time, the girls in his songs weren’t faceless villains or metaphors for fascism."


Bonus: video of E.C. on Tom Snyder's show, 1981, singing "Watch Your Step."

From The Memoirs of Parkus Grammaticus: Last year I wrote two stories with titles nicked from/mood inspired by songs: "Bring on the Dancing Horses," which I wrote for the "Impossible Geometries" event at 177 Livingston (and now in the latest issue of Open City); and "Watch Your Step," which I wrote for a Housing Works/Bookforum reading, and as yet unpublished, but possibly the cornerstone of a novel, though not the one I'm working on now.

On a related note: the February/March Bookforum is out; I haven't seen it yet, but it has my review of Jonathan Coe's latest novel, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. (The piece is not available online.) Thanks again to Michael Miller for the inspired assignment!

Open City — tonight!

Tonight: reading at the Open City party (The Magician, 118 Rivington)—new issue has a new story of mine...

Open City reading/party

I'll be reading next Tuesday (12/14) at Open City's Holiday/New Issue Party, around 8 p.m. (The party is from 7 to 9 at The Magician, 118 Rivington between Essex and Norfolk.)

Here is the official invite:




Fifteen smackers (i.e., $15) gets you in (& OPEN BAR!) and a copy of issue #30, which I'm honored to be in! My story is called "Bring on the Dancing Horses," and I'll be (I think) reading a bit from it that evening. (Or I might read a little from the story that I've been writing this week. WHO KNOWS?!) My last reading of 2011! Alissa Quart is reading!

Tonight! Reading at KGB...!

I return to KGB for a reading with Bryan Charles! (What will I read?!) More info here, but I'll just copy it for you:

The Open City October KGB Reading

Featuring readings by:

Bryan Charles
and
Ed Park

Wednesday, October 27, 7PM

KGB Bar
85 E. 4th Street (btw 2nd and 3rd)
NYC
FREE

Bryan Charles is the author of the novel Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way and Wowee Zowee, a book about the band Pavement. His memoir, There’s a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From, is forthcoming from Open City Books in November.

Ed Park is the author of the novel Personal Days. He is also a founding editor of The Believer and a former editor of the Voice Literary Supplement. A new story will appear in the winter 2010-11 issue of Open City.

EP at KGB with Bryan Charles

On Weds., Oct. 27, I'll be reading with novelist/memoirist/Pavement scholar Bryan Charles at KGB—it's a reading for Open City. (A story of mine will be in the winter issue.) Bryan's memoir, There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From (a VTS, as the narrator of Joseph Weisberg's 10th Grade would say), is out now from Open City Books.

I'm excited! I don't know what I'm going to read from yet. (Probably not Personal Days, the award-losing novel of 2008....)

Maybe something from the Work in Progress or the Work in Progress 2 (i.e., the Work in Progress that I'm not supposed to be working on until I finish the first Work in Progress, but which I sometimes still work on anyway). Or from the Work in Progress 3, a/k/a Disambiguation, originally the first Work in Progress, that I would occasionally read from in 2009? (Remember 2009?) Or maybe just this gemlike short story that is currently here [points to skull]...

Starts at 7! My only reading of the fall! A/k/a my only nocturnal appearance below 14th Street of the fall!