Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for September 24, 2008

Time Out Chicago on U. Chicago's reprint of Richard Stark's first three Parker books—a project spearheaded by none other than Dzyd Levi...I recommend all three books wholeheartedly...they will "hold you up"...!

When worlds collide: A recent Gossip Girl had Chuck speaking disdainfully of Blair's British beau as a "Bertie Wooster"...

Scott Bradfield—fan of Cavemen? Read his new story (up at The Fanzine), "Mankind Through the Ages," to find out...

At the Poetry Foundation*, Dzyd Jordan on Joe Brainard's Nancy paintings and Dzyd Mike on the importance of a good book title....

Who is "Kongthin Pearlmich"? "All his life he has been a recluse. He has avoided the art establishment like the plague." ¶ "A spokesman for Canterbury Cathedral said: 'The work has been offered to Canterbury Cathedral and we are certainly considering it, but we don't know much about the artist.' " ¶ "Experts at Sotheby's and Christie's said they did not recognise the artist's name."...

Strange embedfellows: Google lets you embed books! Not quite sure what this means. (Via L.G. Thomas)...Is it like this, where you can search inside Personal Days?....Speaking of which, is morale low at your company?...

From Dzys Team Member R.E.S.: "Not your grandfather's Moby Dick"....

The mighty Sampson Starkweather has a thing (poem?) in Typo 12—here's an excerpt from "A Limitation of Birds":

Browsing through used books on 32nd Street, I heard a young man say into his cell phone
Hi, is this the number I’m supposed to call if I find a dead bird in the street?
Later, I saw a pigeon lying in the gutter, some boys without shirts on
were poking it with a stick. I wanted to say something
but I didn’t know what number to call.

Speaking of poetry—this excerpt from Dzyd Mike's (different Mike's) Colored Squares will have you scratching your head and twitching your fingers—and saying: "More??"...

This Saturday (9/27): Dzyd Leland, Ron Rosenbaum, Robert Polito, and others hold an all-day New School conference on "Lolita in America"....

One more PD reading added: I'll join Paul Beatty, Gary Shteyngart, and other authors to read at an Obama fundraiser on October 19. More info here...

ALL DZYS TEAM MEMBERS please post items of interest!



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*where—contra the bio read at the Brklyn Book Fest!—I no longer work

Cinema cope

At The Fanzine, Scott Bradfield reviews Steve Erickson's Zeroville:

A sort of pop-culture-retelling of American history from 1969 through the early eighties, it follows the life and career of a renegade ex-Calvinist named Isaac Jerome (though he prefers to be called by the weirdly-appropriate name of Vikar.) Raised without any of the usual cultural amenities—television, radio, magazines, and simple human affection—Vikar eventually defies his father by going to the movies. He has a disparate introduction to world of cinema by viewing everything from Blow Up to The Sound of Music, and this turns out to be only the first step in an escalating series of transgressions.

Inside out

M. John Harrison picks Dizzies fave Scott Bradfield's The Secret Life of Houses as one of his top ten books linking "the inside to the outside, the scientific to the personal, the individual to the universal."

Also available now: The "shocking conclusion" to Hua's Eddie Gong saga.