Lux Lotus

Scot's Honor

I came across this image (scanned and cropped) in a two-page spread in a Spanish fashion magazine last night and I thought, EDINBURGH: YES. I've made my "reservation" for a long weekend next week, and the airline says it's not final pending "confirmation." Meanwhile, I sit and wait and lick my lips in anticipation of fried candy bars and whimsical childrens' masks.

Fotomat

I must say that it's quite an amusing experience to be idly clicking around late at night and very unexpectedly come across a photo of yourself... at a party at the Museum of Sex no less!

A Reason to Read: Vanity Fair

In Quebec this summer I would walk miles from where I was staying into town to buy books every few days, and, as English is not the primary language there and I was out in the country, classics were more or less all I could find. And what a good thing that was! I read Vanity Fair for the first time and walked around in a daze for days wondering how people can be so cruel and how one person could be so funny. Thackeray's masterpiece is an exquisite novel, posited jarringly "without a hero," that cleaves a stark line between the old and new in modern storytelling. My favorite line is this one:  A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. The full passage can be found here.

The Look I Love: 1977-1--No.319

During my trip to Japan last fall, I stopped by Cow Books and picked up a '70s-era fashion magazine while I was hanging out in Nakameguro in Tokyo. I love the hair/make-up styling and overall aesthetic so I thought I'd scan and share a few images:

The Most Stylish Office I've Ever Seen

... belongs to Sang Lee, SJL Attorney Search. Dig it!

Lux Loves: Reality Sandwich

I have to go out every night this week and should already be in bed, but I'm going to print out Steven Taylor's "True Punk: Everything I Say is a Lie" from Reality Sandwich so that I can read it in transit or whenever I have a free moment (I should say that I very seldom print anything out at all). I might be reading it for the next year, as allusive and static and labyrinthine as it is, e.g.

"I have in mind the idea from narrative anthropology that culture is the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, that we locate ourselves in webs of narrative, and that myth is a way of making a paradox tolerable. Life and death, for example, can only be reconciled in myth. Myth is a cognitive apparatus for the accommodation of absurdity. And as we know from the classic mythologies that, if we are lucky, we learn in childhood, any given myth does not stand alone. Myths form a system, a cosmos, a culture, a psyche. So in the limited time that we have, I will trace a few myth vectors that converged in a style of absurdity that crystallized in a Bowery bar in 1975, from which it entered an old trans-Atlantic trade route that had, in the 17th century, carried an Algonquian Indian word meaning 'a smoldering thing,' to England, where it came to designate a fallen woman, as in this scene from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure..."

Read the rest here.

In Search of Lost Time

No time to type, hardly, thus nothing new to report at present (except The New Indie Novel Night is in Flavorpill!), so consider:

Lux Lotus one year ago
Lux Lotus two years ago
Lux Lotus three years ago
Lux Lotus four years ago

The more things change... well, the more I delight in appealing company, spendy restaurants, travel, art, fashion, desire, etc.

Take a Letter

It's past two a.m. and I'm only stopping work on principle. Right now I'm getting the word out about three books that are so brilliant I can't see straight when I think about them:

• Crust by Lawrence Shainberg (Two Dollar Radio, October). See: "No to Kindle, Yes to Object Status: Two small presses argue for books as art", Publishers Weekly
• Correspondences by Ben Greenman (Hotel St. George Press, November). See: "FW Exclusive: The New Yorker’s Ben Greenman Emails Us About Hating Computers," Flavorwire
• The Rowing Lesson by Anne Landsman (Soho Press, November). See: "Anne Landsman on the curse of the second novel," Maud Newton

Once upon a time I had a dream wherein I'd spend the month of December in Venice, preferably in a decrepit palazzo with a maid's room let out by some Marchesa Casati-type, or, more likely Casa de Uscoli, but now I'm much too busy to go. Luckily, "busy" in my metier means an endless stream of parties that you're invited to, of course. I have about a dozen events spanning literature, art, design, architecture, music (including one with PAUL SIMON next week!) and more before the end of the year and all of the latest details can always be found here (and not all of them are even posted, or confirmed, yet).

And if the past can be considered any indication of the future at all, I naturally expect that the very best books I publicized earlier in 2008 will be showing up on lots of lists of favorites, so why not yours? They are: Have You Found Her by Janice Erlbaum, Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, Cost by Roxana Robinson and The Drop Edge of Yonder by Rudolph Wurlitzer.

"Upstairs at the Square" has concluded for 2008, and all of our blockbuster shows are online for your viewing pleasure. And I've started contributing to Very Short List, so you should sign up for that, although I don't think they've run any of my picks yet.

The real reason for this post, besides all of the above, which is a formidable prelude, is that I was asked not too long ago to expand a piece that I wrote for Lux Lotus for inclusion in a book. So I have to do that. And everything else. And then I'll be back; could be two days, two weeks, two months. If you know one thing about me by now, it's that I am frequently as surprised as anyone else by my, shall we say, mercurial nature. In the meantime, why not sign up for Luxletters? Maybe I'll send you one. XO.

Pictured: a photo of my moleskine notebook (with notes on this show).

9:39PM (SLOW)DANCE PARTY

On Message

I went to bed early because the anticipation was far too much for my sensitive soul, and then woke up a restless hour later to ecstatic cheering and fireworks! Being the curious kind, I went out for a stroll, and just as I was rounding a particularly lively corner, overheard a man who'd stepped out to the curb to make a call say to whoever was on the other end of the line, "I've been meaning to call you for a while, and this is as good a moment as any." Even though he didn't say it to me, it was still the most romantic thing I've ever heard. Everything is new, and can be, starting now...