For fans of Henry Darger and Marcel Dzama but even better! Noted, "These works incorporate images of current events, legendary characters, fairytale and iconic symbols... to reflect how history can be manipulated through memory and cultural narrative... The results are mixed media pieces that comment on our collective nostalgia for myth and heroism."
Pictured: Insurgency No. 10, 2006.
More: carolinefalby.com
I am touched that you miss me already; I miss you too! If you're in New York tomorrow (Wednesday), join me for a glass of wine and a glimpse into the dark world of addiction, in a cafe. It's all v. belle epoque, no?
UPDATED, elevenish: the universe had other plans for me than a blogging break-- I went for a late bite at Bacaro and the first face I saw there was effortlessly soigne Lux Lotus reader Marina of The Fifth Day of May!
Ah, memento mori-- an artist after my own heart. Check out Eliza Fernbach's "Rushing to your death?" project. And take a moment.
Pictured: Yours truly + Tayari Jones, nicked from her brilliant blog.
Today I had lunch with the eminently stellar Tayari Jones. Tayari's latest novel, The Untelling, was one of the first books I represented as an independent publicist. The other was Quinn Dalton's Bulletproof Girl, and they both came out on the same day in April 2005 (on that day, I think I was in Amsterdam). Even then I knew I wanted to work with authors whose talent I was so awestruck by that I could keep talking about it for a lifetime. Today though, Tayari and I just chillaxed in style, as always, at a table in front of Cornelia Street Cafe, which I suggested because I like supporting writers' establishments. When we reluctantly parted ways, I, to my delighted astonishment, ran into Anne Landsman (The Rowing Lesson) and Rachel Cline (My Liar) on Bleecker Street. It was that kind of an afternoon-- all the stars were out! And then as I was crossing Spring at Lafayette, who should cruise by me on her bicycle (again) but Dilettantsia's #1 girl crush, supermodel Agyness Deyn. Lovely day.
...est arrivée.
So that first edition of Nog that I had to have arrived in the mail today (it's the hardcover version, with a quote from Richard Poirier of Partisan Review calling it "the most original, exciting and talented new novel since Thomas Pynchon's V," not the paperback, on which Pynchon himself declares that "the novel of bullshit is dead"), and I love Rudy's bio: Rudolph Wurlitzer has published short stories in the Atlantic Monthly and The Paris Review. He lives nowhere in particular. He is thirty-one years old and can be reached in care of his publisher.
It's not that different today, except with more fascinating and nearly unfathomable accomplishments. I wonder where he was living then? I sat in on an interview he did last week with a journalist here in New York, and I am wondering, did this come out before or after he got a job on an oil tanker (oh that's right; he was 17), or when he was in Paris, "chasing after the same girls" as Phillip Glass, or when he "drifted down to Mallorca to be secretary to the poet Robert Graves," of whom all he said was, "He taught me to write in short sentences." And then there was that time that he was on his way to Mexico when Bob Dylan called him up... Or was it Cuba?
Also the more I work with him, the more I am truly amazed that he actually has a publicist. He certainly doesn't do the dog and pony show. And best of all, as I am writing this post, David from Largehearted Boy left a totally related comment. At any rate, take a look at The Drop Edge of Yonder. I've heard it described as an "acid western," and that's a start.
Here's the latest on my current projects, if you're curious...
Last night's edition of "Upstairs at the Square" with host Katherine Lanpher and guests Min Jin Lee and Mike Doughty was absolutely out of this world. In the next few weeks, Min Jin will be crisscrossing the country to promote the new paperback edition of her nationally bestselling debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires. I hear that David from Largehearted Boy plans to be at the event in Alabama! Last night's show will be up at bn.com/upstairs in a few days. Also, Min Jin contributed an entry to Tayari's "Cocktails with Writers" series. Good to have on hand while clicking refresh, refresh on Ms. Jones' give-for-a-great-cause auction this weekend.
Rudolph Wurlitzer's new novel, The Drop Edge of Yonder, is getting serious critical raves (and inciting ecstatic reverie everywhere else, too). I get an email or talk to someone every day who is like, WHOA. The latest is at the Barnes & Noble Review, and gets off to a brilliant start: "Thomas Pynchon. Scott Spencer. Dennis Cooper. William Burroughs. Donald Barthelme. John Ashbery. Michael Herr. Patti Smith. If you can legitimately judge a writer by fellow scribes who honestly extol his work, and count on his inhabiting a plane of popularity and celebrity similar to the one where his endorsers dwell, then Rudolph "Rudy" Wurlitzer should be a name on the lips of sage critics and fans of zesty, transgressive postmodernist fiction everywhere..." Like any publicist with a brain, I seldom mention prospective coverage until it materializes in the physical world but I will say that in the middle of going over my notes this week, I put them down, went online and ordered a first edition of Rudy's first novel, Nog, on the theoretical assumption that in about a month, it will be both impossible to find and impossible to afford. Fortunately, the new one is fifteen bucks or less. Things are looking very good.
Janice Erlbaum continues to wins hearts and minds with her new memoir, Have You Found Her, still going very strong. She's all over the place this week, writing about a weird date for Nerve in THE CREEPIEST, about the politics of admiration in "Let Us Now Praise People We Want to Have Sex With" for The Best American Poetry, plus recalling her stint as a drag king-- in the club and on the page-- with "Trying on My Dude Suit" for Kore Press's provocateurs' hangout, Persephone Speaks. If you're in New York, you can join us for a blindingly fabulous dose of the Janice Erlbaum Experience (tm) at Sunday Salon in Brooklyn this weekend. She's also got upcoming appearances at Sundays at Sunny's, Housing Works and the Other Means Reading Series. And then it's time for summer.
In an unrelated interview where she touches on one of her many enchanting life philosophies, the brilliant author and auteur Marjane Satrapi (who I have not worked with, save for a one-off event a few years ago) unwittingly sums up my delight in working with the Goethe-Institut New York, where I help publicize extremely intellectual events followed by free, boozy receptions full of good-looking Europeans in a landmark Beaux-Arts townhouse on Fifth Avenue (and downtown at Ludlow 38): ""I'm a lady." She likes the sound of lady so much that she repeats it, running it off her tongue with lascivious delight. "I'm a lady." She likes to mislead people, she says. "It is better not to look like what you are; it is better to look like a bourgeois woman because then all the doors are open for you and then you can just go and make hell. That is much more exciting." (via) Next up: The buzzworthy new "With God on Our Side: The Crisis of the Secular" series takes up "The Islamic Challenge," with Paul Berman and Paul Scheffer this Tuesday.
Tomorrow evening, "Upstairs at the Square" (one of my signature professional projects at the moment) welcomes bestselling debut novelist Min Jin Lee, along with hot singer-songwriter Mike Doughty, in conversation with host Katherine Lanpher. In her words,
"At the next 'Upstairs in the Square,' we’re going to give you a show you can really get your teeth into with Min Jin Lee’s smash debut novel Free Food for Millionaires and Mike Doughty’s latest album Golden Delicious.
Free Food for Millionaires has won Min Jin Lee comparisons with Thackeray and Dickens – if they had ever written about the haves and the have-nots in late 20th Century Manhattan as experienced by a tart-tongued daughter of Korean immigrants. The book was a No. 1 Book Sense pick and was named one of the best books of 2007 by both NPR’s Fresh Air and USA Today. 'Free Food' is now out in paperback and Min Jin also has an essay in the current issue of Vogue.
Mike Doughty is the former front man of the ‘90s group Soul Coughing; when the group split up, he rented a car and criss-crossed the country selling his first solo effort on his own. You might know his song 'Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well’ which he performed on Letterman and which was featured on the TV hit Grey’s Anatomy. He’s already garnering kudos for his new album, Golden Delicious, which is on Dave Matthews’ label and was produced by Grammy winner Dan Wilson.
We feel lucky to have these two. Mike is on tour and actually has a show later the same night in Brooklyn; Min Jin now lives in Tokyo and this is one of her few appearances in this country for the paperback.
So join us for a night of conversation and performance you won’t hear anywhere else."
Upstairs at the Square
This Thursday April 10th
7 p.m. sharp (doors open at six)
FREE
Union Square Barnes and Noble
“Upstairs at the Square,” which will celebrate its two-year anniversary this June, has paired authors such as Tom Wolfe, Anne Enright, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Lynch, Anna Gavalda, and Armistead Maupin with musicians including The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, Duncan Sheik and members of the cast of Spring Awakening, Sondre Lerche, Au Revoir Simone, Badly Drawn Boy and more. A full archive of recordings of all previous events is available on Barnes & Noble.com (bn.com/upstairs), where “Upstairs at the Square” is enjoyed by listeners around the world in addition to its live audiences.
Photo credit: Kerry Raftis.
"I was alone in my room-- per ush -- smoking a cigarette, painting my toenails Chanel Jasmin, and watching Bertolucci's The Dreamers. (What I wish: that when I move to Paris -- which I'm totally doing when I'm twenty-one-- I could go in a time machine to the sixties too..."
Don't miss Emma Garman's masterful story, Talking with Francoise Sagan, in the new Movies Issue of the Mississippi Review!
Drinking mint tea, looking out the window, flipping though magazines -- Russia!, Departures, Arthur, Paris Vogue -- waiting for one of my favorite people to arrive, and what else? Switching on the dial for RADIOLUX, of course. Was disappointed not to find Coltrane's "Violets for Your Furs" or Ms. McKay's "Pink Chandelier," but we'll make do. Like we always do...
