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From Stephen Elliott
Wells Tower went home last night with the New York Public Library’s Young Lion Fiction Award.
Presumably because he’s been nominated for several awards and not won, a friend of his whom I spoke to at the event said that he invited her by asking if she’d want to come to an awards ceremony to see him not win.
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Bottles of infused vodka were upturned last night at Russian Samovar for the return of the FSG Reading Series. With Lydia Davis and David Means slated to read, the bar on the second floor was papered with poets, writers and confederates of the publishing industry.
It’s “Terry Southern Month” at The Paris Review Daily—the quarterly’s online “culture gazette,” the goal of which is to stay in touch with The Paris Review’s audience between print issues. Today, read an interview with Terry Southern from Issue 138.
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We’re giddy with the news that André da Loba, the artist behind the brilliant, whimsical and surreal illustrations for our Notable New York column recently received a merit award from 3×3 Magazine for his Notable New York series.
At 3×3‘s annual awards contest for contemporary illustration, The Professional Show (ProShow), André was also awarded a Bronze Medal for his illustrations for the graphic collectible card set “Biographies of Famous Americans” included in Gigantic Issue 2.
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This week in New York Bill Gates talks with his dad, the Joan Rivers documentary screens, Christopher Hitchens talks about his new memoir, Isabella Rossellini talks to Leonard Lopate, KGB Bar holds a Fiction/Poetry slam, and Crispin Glover gives a unique slideshow presentation and screening.
In his entertaining essay “BroBos in Paradise,” a pun on David Brooks’s pop-culture treatise BoBos in Paradise, Leon Neyfakh explores what he calls a new variation on Brooks’s term “Bourgeois Bohemians,” or BoBos.
Neyfakh calls them Brooklyn Bourgeois Bohemians, or Brobos.
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This week in New York, BookExpo America (BEA) kicks off, and this year with a new feature: New York Book Week–events that are open to the public. Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) discusses and serves up cocktails, Timothy Donnelly and Matthew Rohrer read, Melissa Auf der Maur performs, Al Maysles and DA Pennebaker talk documentaries, Edward Koren talks about the art of humor with Jules Feiffer, and Matthey Barney’s Cremaster Cycle gets a full run at the IFC Center.
This week in New York Ben Marcus and Deb Olin Unferth read, John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) performs with PiL, MobyLives presents book trailer awards, One Story holds a Debutante Ball, Jewcy presents readings by Rachel Shukert, Sam Apple and Jami Attenberg, Paper Monument Magazine (sister-mag to n+1) throws a party for Issue 3, and Marc Ribot provides live musical accompaniment to Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid.
While New York Gallery Week was last weekend, which for the most part means that galleries were open on Sunday, the galleries in Chelsea, SoHo and the meatpacking district have some new shows worth checking out. Here’s a cheat sheet of some of the more interesting work I’ve seen.
...moreThis week in New York Electric Literature celebrates the launch of Issue 4, the Shepard Fairey exhibit is at Deitch Projects, Daniel Clowes discusses Wilson, John Leguizamo is honored by Spike Lee and Eric Bogosian, Ugly Duckling Presse presents “Talk Show,” and Lynne Tillman and Michael Cunningham pay tribute to Flannery O’Connor.
This week in New York the sixth annual PEN World Voices Festival (PWVF) opens its week-long celebration of international writing with such notable literary figures as Sherman Alexie, Claire Messud, Yiyun Li, Salman Rushdie and Lewis Lapham among others (Full Schedule Here), Agriculture Reader holds a launch party, the Dead or Alive exhibition opens at the Museum of Arts and Design, Gossip perform, Stephen Colbert helps celebrate the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird and the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) continues.
As part of our event, A Night Together, which was co-presented with Tin House and Flavorpill on April 6, we held a contest to give writers the chance to win an opportunity to read on stage with Sam Lipsyte.
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 The Rumpus throws an A Night Together with Sam Lipsyte, Michael Showalter, Lorelei Lee, Jeff Lewis, Jump-Off winners and more, Jamaica Kincaid and Rick Moody help collect Books for NY Schools, Richard Nash and Jim Hanas debate fiction and technology, Gary Shteyngart and Amy Sohn host a Shabbat dinner, Robert Coover reads, Etgar Keret talks to Ira Glass and Frederick Wiseman’s film Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind screens.
Leave it to literary magazine n+1 to get interesting people together to talk about interesting things that are of interest right now. For example, in December they had Malcolm Gladwell and Christine Smallwood discussing Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual. A discussion on gentrification was held in January at the radical bookstore Bluestockings.
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This Thursday, New York’s New Media set, including Natasha Hafez, Rachel Sklar, Brooke Moreland, Soraya Darabi and Amanda Rose, will gather for what promises to be one of the largest philanthropy events organized through social media: Twestival 2010, which is part of the second annual Twestival Global – one day one cause all around the world.
This week in New York a tribute to George Carlin, James Wood reads a book he’s never read before, Shya Scanlon gets other people to read his poems, NYC Twestival 2010, Huggabroomstik, Jeff Lewis and others cover songs by Major Matt Mason USA, Victor Lavalle and Maud Newton talk, and Lapham’s Quarterly holds a panel discussion on creativity.
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 Sam Lipsyte reads from The Ask, David Shields reads from Reality Hunger, the Magnetic Fields perform, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks reads, Lore Segal and Tao Lin engage in a panel discussion about the novella, Stephen Elliott holds a writing class, Philip Gourevitch, Francine Prose and Lewis Lapham explore natural and man-made calamities and Light Industry presents the films of Jon Moritsugu.
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While it is now one month later, we’d like to thank everyone who came out for ONE YEAR LATER, the Rumpus anniversary party co-presented by The Rumpus and sister-mag HTMLGIANT at Broadway East, a charming place where Chinatown meets the Lower East Side.
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This week in New York, white tents are set up behind the New York Public Library in Bryant Park. It is called Fashion Week because it is a celebration of fashion of the sartorial kind. While that is happening in the park, we’ll be devoting space in the blog each day this week to two of our best-loved literary fashionables.
...moreIn “By George,” Maira Kalman’s final installment of her year-long New York Times series, “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” Kalman ushers in the new decade with a tribute to the man without whom our nation wouldn’t be.
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This week in New York The New York Times’s Arts and Leisure Weekend features Natalie Portman, Jeff Bridges, and Jimmy Fallon, Sweetgrass opens at the Film Forum, Carol Sklenicka discusses Raymond Carver, the films of Joyce Weiland screen at Light Industry, and Lev Grossman gets critics to question the hoopla around Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.
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This week in New York William Hurt converses at 92Y, Steve Beck performs the Goldberg Variations, Janeane Garofalo and Todd Barry in Comedy Below Canal, Christmas Eve klezmer party, Charlie Chaplin films are screened at the Walter Reade, Roger Ballen and Mike Kelley exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery, and a Mel Brooks double feature is shown with all-you-can-eat Chinese food.
This week in New York, lit mags The Faster Times, The Rumpus, Gigantic and Open City throw holiday parties, James Gallery holds Pornography in the City panel, Nick Flynn and Joseph Fasano read at Projection, LDM holds Holiday Episode, Stephen Elliott discusses the making of memoir, the Bloodsugars perform, Quentin Tarantino talks, Gabriel Orozco gets retrospectivized at MOMA, and the Madcap Manhattan series screens at Film Forum.
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This week in New York Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood talk about Evangelicalism and the Contemporary Intellectual, members of the Velvet Underground reunite at the New York Public Library, 60 Writers/60 Places screens, Anne Carson performs, Andy Warhol films get shown at Anthology Film Archives, Mark Doty and Marie Howe read, and Voice 4 Vision Puppet Festival presents odes to Salvador Dalí and Fernando Pessoa.
On November 9, 2009, four days before the release of Fantastic Mr. Fox, an animated film by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, I attended a live “conversation” between the two directors at the New York Public Library.
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This week in New York the Rumpus and Tin House present MORE THAN YOU EXPECTED with Rick Moody, Starlee Kine and Eugene Mirman followed by a meteor shower, Martin Amis and Chip Kidd celebrate Nabokov’s work with special exhibit of The Original of Laura, Pseudo-Futurist video game improvisation, a week of events centered on National Book Awards, Bob Dylan performs, artist Terence Koh talks at National Arts Club, Greil Marcus live in one-man show–Lipstick Traces, Cinema 16 presents Tom Smith’s masterpiece Solar System, along with PSA’s from the 60s with live musical accompaniment, and SCORE!
...moreThis 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!
This week in New York, Performa 09 festival of performing arts inspired by Futurist film, music and literature opens, Bomb throws a Fall Issue Launch Party, Books & Quiche Reading Series is back with Yiyun Li and Salvatore Scibona, Light Industry and Triple Canopy team up to bring you a 14-hour film installation, Robert Wilson’s Quartett opens at BAM, Agriculture Reader has a reading, and Tao Lin reads at Bookthugnation.