PPOW Gallery in Chelsea has been lending its space for a variety of interesting literary arts events through its Hostess Project. A few weeks ago it hosted a screening of a film by writers Michael Kimball and Luca Dipierro, I WILL SMASH YOU.

Last week it hosted a celebration of n+1′s fifth birthday and the launch of Issue 8. This is a subjective account of my experience. …more

In New York this week, James Frey and Maira Kalman at the CLMP Spelling Bee, members of The National collaborate with visual artist Matthew Ritchie in The Long Count at BAM, Sherman Alexie and Chuck Klosterman read, Guernica Magazine turns 5, Performa 09 begins, Literary Death Match returns to New York, and Lawrence Weschler presents Halloween Wonder Cabinet.

MONDAY 10/26 – Let it Bee – James Frey, Maira Kalman, Victor Lavalle and Francine Prose, among many other savvy writer-spellers duke it out at the spelling bee hosted by the Diane von Furstenberg studio to benefit the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses. Silent Auction 7:00pm. Bee 8:00pm. …more

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. …more

This week, Chinua Achebe speaks, n+1 in conversation with Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat, Jonathan Lethem reads, composer/drummer Bobby Previte with Psychedelic Furs’ Knox Chandler, photographer Jeff Wall presents more urban decay, “junkyard bohos” Huggabroomstik play, CMJ Music Marathon begins and Renée Fleming sings at the Met.

MONDAY 10/19: Chinua Achebe, whose first book in 20 years, a collection of autobiographical essays The Education of a British Protected Child was released this month, will be in conversation with K. Anthony Appiah. 92nd Street Y. 8:00pm. $19//$10 for 35-and-under.

Arguably the top soprano singing today, Renée Fleming takes on the role of Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at the Metropolitan Opera. 7:30pm. Tickets still available for $15 and $20. …more

MONDAY, October 12, 2009 – SUNDAY, October 18, 2009

This week in New York, The New Yorker Festival hits town. And yes, while the “Humor Revue,” “About Towns,” and “Kaffeeklatches” seem to have been sold out before they were on sale, there’re still some good readings and “Screen Gems”  available, and a slim, if precariously so, window for getting tickets to sold-out events (see below) – and see a full schedule here; A Festival of Frightening Movies begins at Lincoln Center, and Spike Jonze week continues a the MOMA, in celebration of the Friday release of Where the Wild Things Are.

MONDAY 10/12: Spike Jonze: Award-Winning Music Videos, Short Films and Commercials, Part 2 (100 min.) Museum of Modern Art. 8:00pm.

Brian Evenson and Mary Caponegro read at McNally Jackson. 7pm. …more

In conjunction with the national release of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, 10/16/09, the first feature film Jonze has directed since Adaptation (2002!), there are a lot of Wild Things happenings around New York. (Also, his company Girl Skateboards is releasing a limited edition Where the Wild Things Are Board Series. And check out the Exclusive WTWTA Short Film The Vampire Attack).

Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years – The Museum of Modern Art is presenting a retrospective of Jonze’s music videos, skate videos, films, and commercials (Thursday, Oct. 8 – Sunday, Oct. 18). 11 W. 53rd St. …more

Monofonus Press, an Austin-based record label and multimedia organization, is heading to the deserts of Marfa, Texas this weekend to stage an elaborate video-art presentation at the 4th annual Trans-Pecos Festival of Music and Love at El Cosmico, hosted by hotelier to the in-crowd Liz Lambert.

Liz Lambert called on Morgan Coy, founder of Monofonus, to develop a video-art segment of the program because Monofonus is known for bringing together artists in various disciplines. It specializes in the physical and digital distribution of music literature and art, one aspect of which is its IF Series, a publication of artfully rendered and curated book-and-album packages that are as amazing to touch and hold as they are to listen to. …more

A woman who can’t speak leans her bandaged head towards a microphone and hums.

After recording a live loop, she plays it back and hums again–this time a little differently. She does this again and again, layering sound over sound, until she has composed something that lies between Gregorian chant and Icelandic post-rock. While this woman has lost her ability to speak due to a brain operation, she has, it seems, just found her voice.

The contemplation of voice, in its many physical and metaphysical permutations, is the subject of Robert Lepage’s internationally acclaimed epic Lipsynch, a nine-hour production that is having its U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. …more

MONDAY, October 5, 2009 – SUNDAY October 11, 2009

This week in New York, Stephen Elliott reads from his memoir The Adderall Diaries, which has its East Coast Launch with n+1, Spike Jonze week in New York, Sufjan Stevens performs, Arthur Jones hosts The Post-It Note Reading Series, Opium Magazine hosts Live Relaunch, Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime screens at the NYFF.

MONDAY 10/5: Sufjan Stevens and Cryptacize at Bowery Ballroom. 6 Delancey Street. 7:30pm. Show 9:00pm. (bet. Bowery and Chrystie). $15 …more

This week in New York, Charles Simic reads, Spin Mag hosts Salman Rushdie, The New York Film Festival opens, Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in Peter Sellars’ production of Othello and Robert Lepage’s “Mindblowing” Lipsynch begins at BAM.

Monday, September 28, 2009 – Sunday, October 4, 2009

Monday 9/28: Tosca. The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Puccini’s drama makes its house debut. You can see this classic and almost all other Met operas for $20. Metropolitan Opera House Lincoln Center. …more

As the New York Bureau Chief, I thought it might be a good idea to round up some notable literary and cultural events going on around New York that I think readers of The Rumpus would be interested in. So, I’ll start with some nightly, and sometimes daily, notables for this week:

Monday, September 21, 2009 – Sunday, September 27, 2009

Monday 9/21: The Rasskazy Book Launch Party at Housing Works: Tin House Books and CEC ArtsLink celebrate the release of Rasskazy, a new volume of translated short stories by the best of contemporary Russian writers. The event will include a round table discussion with the editors and two of the writers and a reception. 7pm. …more

September 13, 2009
10:37am – Walking by Book Stands

Tao Lin T-shirts were dangling on hangers at the Melville House booth at the Brooklyn Book Festival. The T-shirts said “Tao Lin: 1983- ????” Across from Melville House was the Ugly Duckling booth. The books were beautiful to touch. I touched A Plate of Chicken by Matthew Rohrer and bought it. It was hot and sunny. I thought, This is the last hot day of summer. …more

Reasons to attend the 2009 Brooklyn Book Festival: 1) it’s one of the most hip, smart and diverse American literary events, 2)  because Ben Marcus, Sarah Manguso, Thurston Moore, Heidi Julavits and Tao Lin are just some of the stars and emerging writers who will be talking/reading, 3) panels will talk about DFW , rappers and upward mobility, among a lot of other great things read and discussed, and 4) because it’s free (though for some events you need to secure tickets in advance).

While great things will be happening in several venues throughout the day, and you can see a full listing of the events and locations here, here’s a suggested itinerary (a personal cheat sheet with some Tough Draw Alternates). Enjoy! …more

Macro Sea has reportedly laid plans to put dumpster pools in strip mall parking lots in Brooklyn to demonstrate the creative re-use of refuse bins.

The project is part of Macro Sea’s broader vision to denude the American strip mall of its common characteristics and curate the space through collaboration with architects and artists, such as Vito Acconci of Seedbed fame, to enhance community. Jocko Weyland, editor-at-large of Open City Magazine and author of The Answer is Never – A Skateboarder’s History of the World (Grove 2002), is the Project Director.

Perhaps this is an offshoot of the cool and curious conversion of dumpsters into pools, gardens, and skateboard ramps that has already caused a ripple in London.

Brooklyn is also the site of the secret underground climbing speakeasy, where climbers have crawled vertically (due to space constrictions) in an atmosphere of pot smoke and beer, for nearly twenty years.

Gored by a banana on a barroom floor, a man lies supine as a nun slaps a midget, a down-and-out Santa drinks hard and a sullied beauty queen totes a severed head …more

Guernica talks to Fatima Bhutto, 27-year-old poet and Pakistan’s heir apparent, about the death of her father in one of Pakistan’s famous “encounters,” the two sides of Benazir and why Obama legitimizes the Taliban.

In “Dancing About Architecture,” Arthur Philips’s essay in the July issue of The Believer, Philips offers a worthy apology for writing on music, and why the physical impact of the phrase “chill horn,” in William Gaddis’s The Recognitions, has value.

“Head Trips,” an essay in Cabinet on the history of comic foregrounds, those painted wooden facades with a hole where your head should be, offers an interesting meditation on the historic role of the comic foreground as vehicle for fleeting transcendence from one’s social stratum.

In her latest journal entry, “Time Wastes Too Fast,” for her ongoing NYT Pursuit of Happiness series, Maira Kalman visually portrays her visit to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home, in which she offers twee renditions of the home that Jefferson designed, a note that he wrote to Adams, “I cannot live without books,” and touches on his conflicted relation to slavery.

And small non-journal-related aside: don’t bother trying to get your kids into Camp Quest, an atheist summer camp funded by Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, for tots who’d rather learn to disprove telepathy and crop circles than paint pottery. It’s filled for summer.

Among the many offerings of Triple Canopy Issue #6 “Urbanisms: Model Cities,” are three standout pieces.

“What is the Antique in Truro: A Portfolio” is a stunning collection of Adam Davies’ photographic portraits of American cities that have endured mass exoduses after the collapse of their mainstay industries.

In “Infrastructure for Souls” Joseph Clarke compares megachurches to well-run companies, tracing the parallel development in design of the corporate-organizational complex and the corresponding structural arrangement of churches.

“Virtual Bowery” takes you through Dan Torop’s stint at Eyebeam, where his fascination with trumpeter swans, the behavioral rules of birds, and “the purity of algorithm and language” committed his plan of reconstituting the Bowery circa 1997 to an unexpected deviation.

This summer, writer, illustrator and animator Arthur Jones will illustrate your one-sentence story with one Post-It Note. Jones, who has taken his Post-It Note Series on a cross-country tour, and whose yellow sticky notes have given darkly comic life to the stories of David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein will now illustrate yours. The animator of videos for punk bands Man Man and Need New Body, among many others, says “You go ‘badda-beep-boop-bop’ and I go ‘dweedlty-do-dwap-pfzzt’ and then we have something we created together. It might sound like Ornette Coleman or it might sound like John Tesh.” And keep an eye out for the upcoming Rumpus Interview with Arthur Jones.

With BookExpo America at a comfortable distance for reflection, it’s a good time to take a look at “Random BEA Thoughts,” Chad W. Post’s five-part essay on the need for reevaluating the book trade. …more

I swiped on the lights in my cabin jerked from a half-sleep by a non-human fracas coming from a place right beyond my window. …more

On the heels of BEA comes the 2009 Woolf and the City conference, an event of modern proportion, which will be bringing fans of Virginia Woolf to the campus of Fordham University in New York from June 4-7. Keeping things ahead of the times, as Woolf would have wanted it, there will be Plenary Talks such as “Woolf’s Creative Violence,” “Cosmopolitan Woolf,” and “Stalking the Cyber-Woolf in a Digital Age.”  Special events include an evening with Princeton and the Stephen Pelton Dance Company, with an after party at the Hudson Hotel. Visit the site for a brief or full conference schedule and keep an eye out on The Rumpus for an upcoming review of the conference plus a Rumpus Interview with Cecil Woolf, the nephew of Leonard Woolf.

Short fiction is often spoken of in terms of genre, a genre of ephemeral writing that is erased from the mind as quickly as it was most likely written. But the fallacy in this is that genre presupposes a style and tendency. But short fiction doesn’t necessarily “tend” the way romance tends toward the quest, the division and reunification of lovers, and/or an interest in the occult. …more

TED, or Technology, Entertainment, Design, began as a conference in 1984 that brought together leaders in those three fields with the mission of spreading ideas. Now, the annual conference challenges presenters to give “the talk of their lives” in 18 minutes. And while attending the talks can be cost-prohibitive for most, the talks can be viewed online, or downloaded, gratis, and watched on your iPod or Zune. The offerings from TED’s latest conference, just released, include talks on military robots, wingsuit jumping, and orgasms.

…more

BookExpo America is back in New York at the Jacob Javits Center with a show, conference and special events. What’s nice about Book Expo is that all the booksellers come to town, the bookstore owners and employees from across the country. These are good people. lovers of books, holders of light. Here’s a list of some things going on in New York this weekend, both at Javits and elsewhere: …more

In “The Pop Culture Clause,” Elizabeth Wurtzel’s essay in the new issue of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Wurtzel asserts that American culture has produced Elvis, blue jeans and the gold rush because the Framers of the Constitution had the prescience to pen the Intellectual Property Clause of the Constitution, also known as the Progress Clause. But Wurtzel, who is most well known for documenting her depression in her memoir Prozac Nation, and who has since graduated from Yale Law School, fails to mention that at that time the concept of protecting intellectual property was, in fact, nothing new.  …more

Conjunctions: 52, Betwixt the Between, its Spring 2009 issue, has just been released. According to the Editors’ Note, the issue explores what happens when the “borderlands of the normal and absurd…are breached.” This breach is bare in  Secret Breathing Techniques, by Ben Marcus. …more

For a limited time, NPR is offering an Exclusive First Listen to a collaboration of Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse‘s multi-instrumentalist Mark Linkous that may never be released. …more

David Geffen, one of Hollywood’s most hallowed players, has roused the newspaper industry with his recent offer to purchase a large stake in the the New York Times. On May 11, Fortune Magazine revealed that Geffen was shopping for the 19% share held by the hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. No deal was dealt. And only weeks before, Harbinger proposed a pact with Google co-founder Larry Page to buy the Times Co. though the Google co-founders, who recently purchased a fighter jet, turned it down. Regarding the hedge fund’s approach to Google, the Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told Fortune’s Richard Siklos, “Things to worry about, things not.” …more

Having to face the strain and fill time in between jobs has, for many, become a matter of survival. On this topic, Charles Darwin had this to say, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” A recent series of articles in the Boston Globe, Anything, Anywhere, Anytime, illustrates that even now, Darwin’s observation is more than opportune. …more

Who knew a gap could be filled with so much. But such is the lure and luxury of the films of Les Blank, such as his ode to gap-toothed women aptly called Gap-Toothed Women.  When asked why gap teeth are referred to in France as “the teeth of happiness,” a young French girl strokes her cat and coyly demurs, saying she doesn’t know in a way that suggests she knows all too well, too well, even, for her years. …more