Silence, cunning, exilée

From the new Bookforum, a review of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Exilée and Temps Morts:

The intergenre artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha made her reputation with the experimental novel Dictée, published in 1982, a few days after she was murdered by a stranger in New York. A speculative history of Korea as it intersects with the life of Cha's mother, Dictée intercuts oneiric prose with family photographs and political documents. English, French, and Korean shape the book's voices.

Cha's small but multilayered archive also includes films, objects, and performances, and in 2001, Berkeley Art Museum curator Constance M. Lewallen organized a retrospective of Cha's art called "The Dream of the Audience," which traveled in the United States, Korea, and Europe. Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works, edited by Lewallen with an essay by novelist Ed Park, is a companion to the exhibition's catalogue. As Park explains, the texts "Exilée" and "Temps Morts" originally appeared in a 1980 anthology called Hotel, which included contributions from Laurie Anderson and Jenny Holzer. But copies were boxed before the ink was dry, the pages stuck together, and few people have ever seen the book.

Hsu-Park-Lim: An Eternal Golden Braid — Cha exhibit — holiday ideas

(From last Saturday's Page Turner Asian Am Litfest...that's Ken Chen, moderator/AAWW director, on the far left.)

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An interesting review by Jana Hsu (no relation to Hua I assume!) of the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha exhibit "Earth," up at the Berkeley Art Museum; the piece mentions the recent Cha book Exilee/Temps Morts, to which I contributed an essay.

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Penguin Group authors were asked "what to give and what to get" this holiday season. I heart this hilarious Janice Lee suggestion:

Personal Days by Ed Park is The Office in book form: laugh-out-loud funny and perfect for so many people: your college-age nephew, your twenty-something friend in advertising, your thirty-something friend who's a full-time mom, your friend in his forties who just got laid off, and so on. In fact, I can't think of anyone it wouldn't be great for, except your friends without a sense of humor. Don't give it to them.

The bit between my teeth

Parkian verbiage oozing out into the webosphere..........

At the Poetry Foundation, I look at Silver Jews mastermind/Actual Air poet David Berman's book of drawings, The Portable February.........the piece features a slideshow....



And back in May—remember May? I don't—I pondered Edward Gorey's unproduced screenplay, The Black Doll, for Moving Image Source. (More of me on Gorey here.)......"The Freud Notebook" is in the current issue of Post Road (#17)......

Coming soon: READ HARD (Blvr anthology)[UPDATE: Available now!]—


—and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Exilée and Temps Morts (for which I wrote an essay).................

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Also: the Believer music issue is out, about which more soon—but for now check out Joe Hagan's "The Ballad of Benji Hughes"; the site features two B.H. tracks that I think you'll like....one has the great title "I Went with Some Friends to See the Flaming Lips."