Lux Lotus

The Female Gaze

Spent a few days upstate with my pal, Jen Bekman, and I'm back now. It was fun to chill out in the woods and wax philosophical; as I observed today at breakfast, I think about totally different things outside of the city. Upon my return, I had dinner with a friend and discussed feminine archetypes and my strange shared expression and birthday with Georgina Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and got home to discover maybe the best mail ever: a Boudicca shirt I ordered from Jezebel by Leigh Batnick, whose positively wicked cards I've been receiving for ages, and an envelope from my mother containing three silk camisoles and a twenty dollar bill. I'm not sure what that means besides the fact that sublime wisdom can be passed down from generation to generation, without a word, by post. As for me and the moment, I'm off for the summer. No plans to travel as yet, but I like it when the pace of life around here gets slow like honey, like I like it. I'll be back after Labor Day, barring any urgent brilliance. If you're looking for summer reading, here are the books I've been getting the word out about so far this year. Every one a beaut:

YOU or The Invention of Memory by Jonathan Baumbach
Harry, Revised by Mark Sarvas
Please Step Back by Ben Greenman
Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson

Luxloves: Emma Garman

New this week at The Second Pass and Words Without Borders.

Please Step Back, Downtown

 

Tonight Ben Greenman gave his final scheduled reading in New York, as part of his tour for Please Step Back, at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca. He and Todd Zuniga of Opium Magazine turned into a three-ring spectacle with my approval although I didn't want to know beforehand what was going to go down. In the first photo (all were snapped by TZ on his iPhone), Ben attempts to set a world record for writing the longest story in sixty seconds. In the second, I am sitting in the front row between star-on-the-rise Megan Branch and Lauren Elkin of Maitresse, who enviably splits her time between Paris, Hong Kong and New York, if you can believe it. She showed me the book she's reading, an anthology of new hip scene Inculte, and we talked about Oulipo, and I've gotta get to Paris, soon! Afterward a bunch of us strolled up to Walker's for a drink, standing around talking shop at the bar; a perfect New York evening. Todd's taking Opium's Literary Death Match on the road to Paris, London, San Francisco, LA and Chicago, in addition to the current issue of the magazine, which is almost sold out thanks to all the global press it's been getting (the cover boasts a nine word story that won't be revealed for a century). I love it when cool people mingle. The more, the merrier.

Gracious Vigilantes

Check out Gracious Vigilantes, a new project my friends make.

Pictured: Urban Skate Warrior.

Artcrush: Tobias Zielony

I first encountered the work of Tobias Zielony when I publicized a show that the Goethe-Institut New York presented with C/O Berlin in 2007, the opening of which the Berlin in Lights Festival blog reported as "certainly the liveliest event I’ve been to yet," and he has remained in my mind as one of my favorite contemporary artists since. He is known for photographing young people hanging out at night in cities like Bristol, Marseille and Los Angeles, and, even given the occasionally time-worn aspects of that aesthetic, his work is as seductively compelling as an endless evening with no agenda and the possibility of broken rules.

Luxloves: Dot Dot Dot

When I'm in New York, I mostly schedule my life so that I can walk everywhere. Today I had to take the subway so I wanted something to read and grabbed Dot Dot Dot (issue 11), an art journal I'd picked up at Dexter Sinister, a terrific little bookshop that's open Saturdays on Ludlow Street, a year or so ago. What a fantastic object I'd allowed to languish, and how I've despaired at creating my own peril! Mostly, I'm delighted that I discovered it today on an otherwise grimly overcast, muggy wall-to-wall work day. There's too much emphasis on criticism by and about dudes for my taste, but the essay on The Fall's Mark E. Smith is essential reading (related: Badly Drawn Boy told a memorable story at "Upstairs at the Square" about encountering him in Manchester as a teenager), as is the entire issue, lest you miss one of the sharp little details, as in comparing the graphic design of The Sex Pistols to early avant-garde journal Blast, the aggressive cover design of which was made possible by a "chance encounter with an alcoholic ex-printer." The writing and editing is top-notch and Dot Dot Dot overall meets my true standard of excellence: I can hardly bear to part with it, but will gladly give it to a friend as soon as possible.

Poets & Writers + Projects

The new issue of Poets & Writers features a piece on next-wave book design that includes Lawrence Shainberg's Crust, an of-the-moment novel I publicized... And, fun fact, covergirl Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie appeared "Upstairs at the Square" with Craig Finn (of The Hold Steady) not too long ago, and you can view it online. Our next show is August 18, with Regina Spektor and Kurt Andersen... The new stories I've been getting the word out about this spring are predictably all the rage: The Miami Herald today calls Jean Thompson's Do Not Deny Me "superb" and illustrates the review with a heart that's a fist; in a word, yes... Ben Greenman's coast-to-coast hit tour for Please Step Back wraps up next Monday the 29th with Opium's Todd Zuniga and a conversation on indie publishing at Barnes & Noble, Tribeca; join us for a scintillating chat and then we'll all go out for a drink in the neighborhood afterwards... Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised, read at Book Soup in West Hollywood this weekend; my friend Katherine Lanpher describes his debut as "funny and warm and knowing, sort of like having a guy friend who will tell you what men actually sound like when you're not around," while the Hipster Book Club praises it for the way that "Sarvas delivers the novel as slowly and teasingly as a burlesque show." Not too hot to handle, but close, and in the best way... Meanwhile, last but certainly not least, Anne Landsman's The Rowing Lesson just won the M-Net Literary Award, South Africa's most prestigious book prize! I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to work with such talented writers, and to help them connect with new readers and fans is reward beyond measure. I have a few extra copies of Do Not Deny Me, Harry, Revised and The Rowing Lesson; leave a comment if you'd like one.

Notes on Nebraska

I'm back in New York now, but wanted to tell you about two places I enjoyed visiting in Nebraska. Last Saturday I had dinner at The Boiler Room in Omaha's Old Market neighborhood with my friends Stuart and Amy. It was beautiful, with crisp styling and a creative New American menu of local food. We shared nearly everything because it was divine! If you've ever been to Mercer Kitchen in SoHo, you can imagine the vibe, both of the restaurant and the neighborhood. On Tuesday in Lincoln, I visited the Philip Johnson-designed Sheldon Museum of Art. It's a lovely example of classic Modernism in an unexpected setting. I have a soft spot in my heart for university art museums, because of their ability to unexpectedly dazzle, and the Museum didn't disappoint. The permanent collection is strong in boldfaced names of the Old Guard, such as O'Keeffe, Diebenkorn, DeKooning, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, et al, as well as contemporary stars like Kara Walker and Alec Soth. And then there are the little-known bequests that show up as happy surprises, like Cornelis Ruhtenberg's Boy and Girl, a somber love story that predates Emo and Twilight by more than half a century. My greatest delight was found in the exhibition of Whistler prints, as I am a fan. Whistler's sometimes photo-realistic etchings and lithographs offer extraordinary depictions of everyday bohemian life, not the fashionable luxurious version that's commodified now, but more like the actual existence of being a broke artist just walking around. Standouts included straightforward industrial portraits Black Lion Wharf (1859) and The Tyresmith (1890), plus the more intimate and dreamy vignettes of Venus (1859), a nude in repose, and La Danseuse, whose entangled fingers suggestively spread her translucent cape. Speaking of riveting, a genius book that I read on this trip is my friend Rob Walker's Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, which I'll be thinking about for a while. It offers a deeper exploration of up-to-the-moment alternative models of information distribution vs. traditional communication channels for expression of cultural production in the marketplace than anything else I've encountered (besides Rob's regular "Consumed" column in the New York Times Magazine). When I got home Kaya Oakes' Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture was waiting. I'll turn to that next.

Twenty-Four

Last night in Chicago: For this, with Zach Plague (boring boring boring boring boring boring boring). He's not. Chicago Public Radio taped it, I was told.

Tonight in New York:

For this, with Katherine Lanpher & friends. Bloomsbury heaven!

Tonight a new friend asked if I live in New York. I do. For now.

Next up: Nebraska on Friday. And then .... ?

Woolf in the City

I will be in Chicago this Friday for the Do Not Deny Me party with Featherproof, but if I were in new York, I would not miss June 5th's one-night-only music and dance performance, "it was this : it was this:" as part of my friend Anne Fernald's Woolf in the City!

it was this: it was this:
songs and dances inspired by the life and work of
Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group
with Princeton & Stephen Pelton Dance Theater
at the 19th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference
Friday June 5th, 2009 8pm
Pope Auditorium, Fordham University
113 W 60th St, New York, NY 10023

Tickets $20. Available at at the door. Noted,

"Southern California frolic meets Northern California serious in a one-night only collaboration of song and dance.

Princeton, the Los Angeles-based trio, join forces with San Francisco’s Stephen Pelton Dance Theater in it was this: it was this: an evening of songs and dances inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group.

Princeton will perform all of the songs from their recent EP Bloomsbury, each lyrically focused upon a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Portraits of Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes are each presented in a different musical framework with lush orchestral arrangements. The band is comprised of twin brothers Jesse and Matt Kivel and Ben Usen. The band will be joined by 8 additional musicians in recreating their frolicsome, exuberant take on the cast of Bloomsbury characters.

Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, known for known its intimate theatricality and emotional intensity, may be familiar to audiences from previous Woolf conferences. This year the company will perform several new works including the premiere of it was this: it was this: a choreographic study of Woolf’s punctuation. Using a single paragraph from To the Lighthouse, the company dances their way from the first word to the last, pausing briefly for every comma, parentheses and semicolon in-between. The company also performs a revised version of The Death of the Moth, first seen at the Plymouth State Conference in 1997.

The artists will combine forces for the premiere of Lytton/Carrington, a portrait-in-miniature of this most original of love stories.”