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From Stephen Elliott
We’ve written about Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading with excitement before, and this week is no exception. The latest issue features new writing from Mary Gaitskill: an excerpt from her novel-in-progress, titled “The Devil’s Treasure.” We won’t spoil any of it here, but let’s just say it feels good to read Gaitskill’s work again.
...moreRADAR Productions hosts its first East Coast fundraiser to benefit the 4th annual RADAR Lab. The fundraiser takes place from 7pm – 9:30pm at The Strand Bookstore (828 Broadway) in Greenwich Village March 24.
The lineup features Mary Gaitskill, Tao Lin, Lorelei Lee, Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott, and Michael Cunningham.
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“If I ever caught you spun, we’d be over. Only one of us gets to be fucked up at a time.”
This week in New York The Future of Criticism with Lorin Stein and Maud Newton, John D’Agata and Thalia Field discuss the lyric essay, Alice Walker on activism, Salman Rushdie and Lee Bollinger discuss free speech in a globalized world, Mikael Kennedy shows his Polaroids at the Chelsea Hotel and Congress for Curious People symposium is held at Coney Island.
This week in New York Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood holds a reading series, Threepenny Review celebrates its thirtieth birthday, A Public Space throws a launch party for Issue 10, Paris Review holds a Fiction Salon, Meghan O’Rourke reads, Ryan McGinley shows some new photographs of more young naked people and the Guggenheim opens its “Haunted” show of mostly old but still good stuff.
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This week in New York Keith Gessen and Elif Batuman talk, Guernica has a reading, Joanna Newsom sings and plays harp, Marcel Dzama appears, talks and signs books, The Moth has a Story Slam, Christopher Walken loses a hand and Zoe Kazan gives him one, and Atlas Obscura presents an international celebration of curious and obscure things.
This week in New York Ben Marcus and Rivka Galchen at Harper’s Magazine’s The Family Table, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach talk, Mary Gaitskill, John Turturro, and Eric Bogosian at PEN benefit, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary La Danse, Jeff Lewis and the Wowz!
Friday October 16, the New Yorker opened its annual weekend festival of readings, conversations, art tours and musical performances. This is my account of the events I attended, which included among others a talk with Malcolm Gladwell, readings by George Saunders, Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Franzen, a musical performance by Neko Case and a conversation with James Franco.
The New Yorker Festival is fast approaching, and tickets are on sale now. As always, the festival, which runs from October 16-18, promises to bring together the most interesting minds in literature and the arts including Jonathan Franzen, A.M. Homes, Gary Shteyngart, Tilda Swinton, Malcolm Gladwell and many others.
I expected to feel a sense of accomplishment when I finished Wallace Stegner’s “Angle of Repose,” but instead I felt lost, grief-stricken. It was a mixture of sadness for the main character and a fear that I might yet ruin my own life—but mostly I wanted to be back in the middle of that book.
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The last book I loved was Hunts In Dreams by Tom Drury. Here’s the first sentence: “The man behind the counter of the gun shop did not understand what Charles wanted, and so he summoned his sister from the back room, and she did not understand either.” And this is kind of how the book is.
“I think the closest thing I can come to defining what that vital thing is for me—is that there’s a sort of soul-quality in writing, if it’s any good. It has a spirit or an energy to it that is very integral to who the writer is on a deep level.