PART 1: Dispatches from Dream City: Zadie Smith and Barack Obama

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Reading and re-reading Zadie Smith’s spookily empathetic essay about Dreams of My Father and the natural linguistic flexibility of the biracial, upwardly mobile figure, the inevitable thought occurred to me: Is Zadie Smith the Barack Obama of literature?

Consider the parallels between the two: both are biracial (Zadie Smith had a white English father and a black Jamaican mother). Both are precocious strivers who came from somewhat déclassé origins and rose to become shining examples of their respective countries’ meritocratic aspirations (Zadie Smith grew up in a council flat, the English equivalent of a housing project, and received a scholarship to Oxford). Both give evidence of having been closer to their white parent. Both seem to promise liberation from the bad faith that has existed on both sides of the color line since the start of the post-civil rights era. Both are figures who because they smoothly speak the language of progressivism (in Smith’s case, the language of progressivism is the language of avant-garde literature and abstruse academic theory) appear–or in the case of Obama, appeared–less cautious and conservative than they really are. Changing My Mind is the title of Zadie Smith’s collection of what she calls ‘occasional essays;’ it might as well be titled ‘Only Connect,’ to use the credo of her beloved E.M.Forster’s Howards End–like Forster and like Obama, Zadie Smith is a builder of bridges and a reconciler of the seemingly irreconcilable.

There is a remarkable essay, “Two Directions for the Novel,” which is a kind of Beer Summit for contemporary fiction: on one side of the table is Joseph O’Neill, author of the Gatsbyesque 9/11 novel Netherland, on the other side is Tom McCarthy, writer of manifestos (still, after a century, a prerequisite for avant-garde credentials) and author of the astringently difficult novel Remainder.
It can be said that—

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Polestar Poetry: Double Release!

1. Both lovers of unicorns & patterned tights: Leigh Stein with reader Lauren Ireland. 2. Fiction & poetry writer Ben Carlton Turner with reader Paul K. Paul says, “If you hang out in a barber shop, expect a haircut.”


















According to their website, Polestar Poetry Series is: held one Sunday a month, the brainchild of poet Melissa Broder, dimly lit, and smells like Dylan Thomas (I don’t know what Dylan Thomas smells like so I can’t verify if that last part is true). It is also usually at Cake Shop, but last night’s reading was at Bruar Falls in Williamsburg, which is a cozy little bar on the half still-heroiny, half gentrified south side. The evening was a double release party for lit mags Annalemma and La Petite Zine (which was described by hosts Melissa Broder & Chris Heavener as “in the ether, a literary fart”), and  featured a band, Sweatpants, that played after the readings.

The bar was crowded, but not oppressively, which was pretty awesome for a poetry reading on a Sunday night. Sasha Fletcher went first, and he gave us a tip during one of his poems: if you watch Jaws backwards, it shows a shark throwing up enough people to fill up a beach.

1. Reader Ben Mirov with friend Zee Cee. 2. Johnny, graphic artist Amanda Noa, & BlackBook’s Steve Lewis.


Ben Mirov took the stage next and offered us two envelopes to choose from, either Sadness or Confusion. This led the bar to chanting SADNESS! CONFUSION! SADNESS! SADNESS!, and this felt like a metaphor for something, although I’m not sure what. Childhood in third world countries? Maybe serious relationships. Anyway, the audience chose Sadness, which caused one audience member to loudly wonder, “Why am I at a poetry reading about sadness?” But really, is there any other kind? Mirov’s poetry was chock-full of one-liner gems, including but not limited to: “My only wish is to make high-quality pizza for government men.” “No one ever says now is the time for assholes and cake.” “Sometimes I think everyone on television worships Satan.”

Lauren Ireland was up next, and her poetry tackled topics such as loneliness, feelings, time, dreams, being sad, sad cheese fries, better cheese fries, tough sluts, and pissing on Belinda Carlisle. But, more importantly, she also had a whole series of poems addressed to Lil Wayne. Because Lil Wayne is awesome, I asked her about it later. She said she loves Lil Wayne, and also TI, and has sent Lil Wayne postcards at Rikers but he doesn’t return them. However, she hasn’t visited him because she doesn’t need another restraining order.

1. The band Sweatpants which features the publisher of Publishing Genius, Adam Robinson, on guitar & vocals. 2. Polestar’s hosts: Chris Heavener (who got an MFA in hugging) & Melissa Broder (who I’m pretty sure is the winner of the Most Pixxx on Dish Award).



Krystal Languell read fourth, and one of her pieces was about NASA and outer space, which was a topic she likes because space exploration makes her feel patriotic, she explained.

Paul K was the last reader, and his piece was, as Broder put it, “brutal.” Well, I fucking like brutal. He told a story about a girl in South Florida named Amber, who was “trashy and hot” like girls from Florida often are, before they look like characters from “Intervention and Cops.” I won’t spoil the rest for you, but K also covered super sexy things like the Shaq movie Kazaam, having a seizure while giving a blow job, and using puke to swallow Klonopin.

What an amateur… doesn’t he know that benzodiazepines dissolve in your mouth?

–Julia Jackson is working on her MFA in fiction at Brooklyn College, and is a regular contributor for Electric Dish.

Amanda Noa took photos for this event.

“Billy Echo” by Sean Ferrell

We all forgave Billy his silences because, truth be told, understanding him was a few yards past impossible. His first words were “Gimme gimme,” not because he said it twice but because the echo was already there. At first no one noticed. Some thought it a stutter. His grandmother, the first to see his lips didn’t move with his words, said, “That boy’s not right.” She said that about most, so it was ignored. But by the time Billy and I had reached our double-digit years, by the time we noticed girls and their differences and how we might feel about them, the echo had gotten worse, words overlapping from the moment he started the first syllable. Billy gave up on talking much at all.

In all other ways he was there, pointing, grabbing, pushing, adding his laughs so deep and layered that a group of three or four plus Billy sounded like an audience of thirty or more, an overfull car-load of joy ripping from him. Once, on a dare, he’d gone into a restaurant’s drive-thru and ordered burgers for me and Cousin Jodi. The manager called the police who failed to understand our and Billy’s laughter, who failed to understand why they couldn’t find the source of the others laughing with us, who couldn’t fathom why Cousin Jodi wet herself when the officer asked Billy for his name.

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Teleportal Reading Series

Editor’s Note: Teleportal Readings is a multi-media reading series in Austin, TX, which really shakes up the reading. Their most recent event featured Jennifer Egan and Maira Kalman reading live, with a video reading by Doug Dorst, as well as an EL Single Sentence Animation by Joanna Neborsky, and synthy sounds from Silent Diane. Artist Austin Kleon sketched it out for us.

–Austin Kleon is a writer and artist living in Austin, Texas. He’s the author of Newspaper Blackout.

Greenlight GO!

1. Brette, Greenlight’s manager, dispensing libations. 2. Diego & Micol Beltramini, who are both visiting from Italy, and Micol is a writer who is at work on her fifth book of fiction.


Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of Greenlight Bookstore’s opening, so they had a party to mark the occasion. What’s a party in a bookstore look like? Well, the lights were up all the way, so don’t expect anything to get “freaky” with your “bump and grind.” But there was champagne! And, more importantly (for me), there were cupcakes and brownies! Also in attendance were Veggie Platters, Hummus, and Bread. Akashic Books‘ Johnny Temple DJd with real records, playing such things as reggae and A Tribe Called Quest.




1. Zalykha & Alex, who live in Williamsburg but were in the area and decided to stop in for the party. 2. Pitchaya Subdonthad, Nathan Ihara (from Melville House), Casey Walker, Caren Thomson, & Brittany Banta. They are all in a top secret, Illuminati-style book club. SHHHHHHH.

We mingled and indulged in champagne and chocolate for about an hour. Then the “performance” section of the party began. First, we learned about new additions for the store, such as the very first Greenlight-branded merch (totebags), and that things like book clubs (hopefully Illuminati-style!) and a new website — complete with an e-commerce section — are in the works. After, the booksellers read toasts written by famous authors, including Jhumpa Lahiri, the totally WILFy Joshua Ferris, Jennifer Egan, and David Mitchell. Jonathan Lethem’s toast rhymed and discussed drinking tall boys (probs of PBR — what a whipster [writer-hipster]). Rick Moody talked about his allegiance to AA (so much for the second A), and the bookseller introduced it by saying something about a Port-A-Potty head. Three booksellers read Gary Shteyngart’s toast in chorus, and they did it with faux Russian accents, so I pretty much had no idea what they were saying.

1. Paul Holdengräber of the New York Public Library, and George Prochnik, author of In Pursuit of Silence. 2. The fabulously stylish Eboni Hogan, Jon Sands, & Syreeta McFadden, who is the managing editor of Union Station Mag. All three of them are poets, so watch out!!!
Finally, we got to hear from Johnny Temple, who said that it is NOT a gloomy time in publishing. He reminded us of the “good ole days,” when you could only be published if you were white. And male. And straight. Paul Holdengräber spoke last, and discussed his disease (bibliomania) and its symptoms (which include owning over 16,000 lbs of books). He encouraged us all to buy books, because without our support stores like Greenlight would not exist. He wrapped up his talk  with a quote from Jorge Luis Borges, who said he imagines “Paradise will be a kind of library.”

Inspired, the crowd all rushed to the check out to purchase books, a sign of their collective bibliomania.

–Julia Jackson is working on her MFA in fiction at Brooklyn College, and is a regular contributor for Electric Dish.

Guernica 6 Benefit Bash

1. Alina Simone sings. With her band, Shawn Setaso (on guitar) and Conrad Doucette (slightly invisible on the left of the frame, on drums). 2. Jacob (who has a great name), Morgan, and Ashley were here “covering” the event for Crushable.com. I told them I was “covering” the event myself. Getting in free is popular.

To celebrate its sixth year of ’net life, Guernica magazine took over the powerHouse arena in DUMBO. These days, magazines are sinking faster than fruit flies in soaped beer, so Guernica’s lasting six years is no mean feat. Those who wanted to celebrate Guernica (and who were willing to brave the shit weather) got themselves the usual powerHouse fair of BK brews and not-box wine in addition to philanthropy’s warm fuzz. Which was good, since literary get-togethers benefit from booze: the anxious edge that dogs gatherings of introverts drains from the air and scroungers’ fingers get drunk nimble as they discretely fill satchels with free crackers. And, after a few drinks, the types and stripes of blazers and horn-rimmed glasses that line the floors of these things distinguish themselves: bookish lightweights become overly boisterous, joyful, while inveterate drinkers maintain crisp speech as they ask for one more beer.

1. Jennie Engelhardt and Emily Harrison. A co-founder of Hare+Hart,  which donated the kid gloves, Jennie was nice enough to laugh at my stupid rabbit and deer skin jokes. 2. Karen and James, partygoers. I rather liked James’ tie.



The event was emceed by Laura Krafft, not the tomb raider. Laura, who’s from LA (or, The Place Where There Are No Bed Bugs), was very concerned about NYC’s bed bug problem. There was also a performance by Alina Simone, chanteuse, and a silent auction. Up for bidding were items including kid gloves (see, kid gloves: that’s where that phrase comes from!) and a Very Big Book. One of the editors of Guernica confessed to me—this may be an exaggeration—that he was considering making the minimum bid on the Very Big Book and selling the book himself on eBay. I couldn’t get Google Shopper to tell me how much the book was worth, or I would have done that myself. I could have, possibly, suggested that plan to the intern who held up a bag of left-over cheese at the after party and told me, “I don’t get paid. This is my payment!” She was, after all, nice enough to share her cheese.

1. Literary Agent Sarah E. Dickman of the Nicholas Ellison Agency has little luck getting a yellow cab in the BK hinterlands. 2. Not rabbit or deer gloves; kid gloves. 4. Baklava, fuck yea!

–Jake Davis is a happy moment of inky blackness. [Editor's Note: Also, he's a regular Dish contributor]

Symphony Space Does BASS

1. Best American Short Stories series editor Heidi Pitlor, Richard Russo, & Houghton Mifflin’s publicity manager Summer Smith 2. Actress Hope Davis, during the soundcheck. Davis read Jennifer Egan’s story “Safari.”

















The first of the Selected Shorts season series, an evening celebrating The Best American Short Stories 2010 edited by Richard Russo, was last night. The good people at Symphony Space were gracious enough to give us the royal treatment, and I was let in an hour before show time for the sound check—early enough to catch actress Hope Davis reading parts of Jennifer Egan’s “Safari,” which was included in the anthology.

Backstage in the greenroom (yes, even authors get greenrooms for events as big as Selected Shorts), host Isaiah Sheffer chatted with actors Davis and Roberts, Russo, series editor Heidi Pitlor, and publicist Summer Smith. There, I learned the actors’ secrets:  Davis was sick and had to dope up on cold medicine in order not to cough during the performance and Roberts had to look up the word “valetudinarian” (the title of Joshua Ferris ‘s story that he would read on stage) thirty minutes before he left for the show.


1. Davis, with host Isaiah Sheffer (in his new fall suit!), and actor Tony Roberts, who read Joshua Ferris’s “Valetudinarian.” 2. Russo, talking writer stuff with the babelike Ferris.

“This year’s is a very strong collection,” Sheffer said, “and I don’t say that every year.” Russo asked Pitlor if there were any differences between this year’s collection and past years’, suggesting that perhaps he had chosen more unknown/emerging writers than usual. “Nope, it’s about the same,” she said. Russo, a reader of the series since its inception in 1978, admitted later that the only difference was that this year he loved all twenty of the stories.

Pitlor personally selected Russo for the job,  wanting to pick someone who was both critically and commercially successful. Apparently she used to be an editor and is enjoying the other side of the coin. Picking stories for this collection is akin to being Santa Claus, she said – everyone’s happy when they’re told that they have been selected.

How old is Ferris, the group wondered, marveling at the emotional maturity and range displayed in his writing. When he came into the room, they decided to ask him. “Oh, I am old,” he said. “I just don’t look it. I had a friend that used to say I was a teenager once – for about six weeks when I was seven.”


1. Fans Jason & Jessica, who came here to see Ferris but, after listening to “Safari,” are now also fans of Egan. 2. Employee of Sheffer and poet Michelle DuPre, along with singer-actress Stephanie Baldwin. DuPre says this was her first time at a Symphony Space event as an employee, and that it was nice to see all her hard work come to fruition

The event began at seven with an introduction by Russo. From about a thousand stories, Pitlor forwarded 250 to him.  It was easy for him to cut these down to 50, but cutting down to twenty was hard—like “literary water boarding.”  In the end, it came down to the difference between loving and admiring a story. You can explain what you admire, but love—you can’t articulate or analyze love. When he was truly in doubt, he trusted his jealousy. All of the stories in this collection made Russo sick with envy. As for the Egan story – for Russo the clincher was “the ending, it was the ending!”

Davis read Egan’s story in a performance so subtly nuanced that it made me freak out a little (I have a major adversity to public displays of emotion, and for a few moments I was in danger of crying). Roberts then read Ferris’s story, and his performance had even Ferris himself laughing.

The evening ended with Russo and Ferris conversing about writing, and writing “Valetudinarian” in particular. Ferris described his writing process as a series of traumas, and that each story was the result of hours of hard work and numerous revisions. He’d spent about three months on “Valetudinarian,” working for about six to eight hours a day, and early drafts – according to his wife—felt like a David Lynch movie. Russo asked Ferris how he so convincingly portrayed the life of an elderly man, and Ferris said that his in-laws, although not like the characters in the story, gave him some material to steal from, but mostly he was able to do it because his strong suit as a writer is imagination, not memory.

The evening concluded shortly before ten o’clock, and this was when the audience’s age could really be felt (this certainly wasn’t a Tao Lin reading). “It’s so late!” a woman complained on her way out the door. “Oh, but it was worth it,” said her friend.


–Julia Jackson is working on her MFA in fiction at Brooklyn College, and is a regular contributor for Electric Dish.

CREATIVE TIME, Episode 2

One of the most compelling aspects of the second day of the Creative Time Summit, which closed Sunday evening, was the sustained conversation across topics about privilege and diversity. A hard thing about working in art and activism is building coalitions – whether it’s due to barriers in the way others working on similar concerns feel about the involvement of artists, or merely what kinds of groups we have access to as artists. I speak specifically from my experience as an artist working in an academic context, in a department that is exclusively white and overwhelmingly male. But the presenters during Creative Time’s second day proved that it is not impossible to build diverse and self-reflexive coalitions; it can be a part of an artistic practice committed to affecting positive change.

With this in mind, the panel that stuck out the most was the session on Governments. Keynote Laurie Jo Reynolds, whose project Tamms Year Ten addresses the human rights abuses in the Illinois supermax prison Tamms, has effectively built a practice that involves playful artistic intervention, coalition building, and legislative pressure to raise awareness and work for justice for inmates at Tamms. The playfulness of many presenters’ projects brought to mind the distinction between participation and engagement, and the ways in which artists can play with, bend, and in some cases break the systems we find ourselves embedded in as practitioners, academics, theorists, citizens, and human beings.

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100 Years of Poetry

1. Signage! 2. Daniel Hoffman.















It was a packed house last night at Cooper Union’s Great Hall, where a pantheon of U.S. poets laureate had been assembled by the Poetry Society of America as part of their centennial festivities.  PSA was celebrating the anniversary of the organization’s very first meeting in October 1910 and the publication of The Poets Laureate Anthology, copies of which could be seen tucked under elbows and poking out of handbags.  The crowd, for its part, was similarly centenary.  Behind me, I could overhear one grandmother telling another about her various stints as a Stanford student, high school English teacher, world traveler, and renowned poet’s lover (the first three motivated by the last).

New York City cultural affairs Commissioner Kate Levin graced the stage early to proclaim (per Mayor Bloomberg degree) October 12, 2010 PSA day.  No sooner had the event begun to feel like a benefit than Billy Collins appeared at the podium to roaring applause, as charming as his poetry and with a voice oddly and soothingly like Kevin Spacey’s.  Listening to him read (including his own “Forgetfulness” and hilarious “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House”) was like movie-watching with someones who have already seen and loved the film; they’re leaning forward, silently mouthing, starting to laugh before the jokes are delivered.

1. Kay Ryan. 2. Eventgoers Brett and Luke


The laughter melted into ohh-ahhs and appreciative murmurs for Rita Dove and Daniel Hoffman, who stole the evening’s most tender moment by dedicating the reading of his love poem to his late wife Elizabeth McFarland.  More laughter and more murmuring for Kay Ryan, whose reading of Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow” saved it from its recent fate of butchered analysis on the subway (the Poetry in Motion program is run by PSA; the first time I saw Frost above the closing doors, the high schooler next to me said to his friend “Yo, ‘a day I rooed.’  I rude.  Thas retarded.”).  The guy next to me, who admitted the only name he knew on the docket was Collins’s, gushed “That’s Kay Ryan?  I love her.” Charles Simic followed and should have been the closer, but Mark Strand appeared without introduction or explanation, to read a poem by Anthony Hecht and his own “My Name.”

The program carried on with performances by Natalie Merchant—formerly of 10,000 Maniacs fame—and Maria Tucci reading more (longer) Frost.  Merchant’s voice was gorgeous, but the collective attention span had been taxed by the pleasure of so many adored poets reading so many adored poems.

1. Mark Strand, next to his attempted hiding spot.

Rowdy it wasn’t—the hottest point was Charles Simic enunciating the word “breast” or Natalie Merchant throwing off her black overcoat to reveal a cardigan and scarf—but as people filed out, their faces were all smiles, their eyes all clear, their expressions all revealing the same resolution to enjoy more poetry more often: a mark of success for the PSA.

I lingered, hoping to bother Mark Strand as one of his former college students.  Given how many he’s had and how little I could say in class because his word tends to be the last on contemporary poetry in a room full of undergrads, I assumed he wouldn’t remember me, but he did and assured me that he never forgot a face.  When I raised my camera though, he made a beeline for a shadowy column.  “I prefer to remain anonymous,” he said.

- Kai Twanmoh is tickled to be making her dish! debut.  She spends her days at a New York City non-profit and her nights elsewhere.

Field Guide to NYCC

Early morning at NYCC.

When attending a big grand stand comic convention, there are rules and situations to be aware of. What I mean by a “big grand stand comic convention” is this: an arena-sized hall with huge big name exhibitors. Plenty of small comic conventions happen in tiny stuffy conference halls of Holiday Inns and in other generic-like places, but nothing compares to the deafening roar of fanboys let loose under one roof. Held in the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, New York Comic Con is of the former.

From Friday, twelve noon, to Sunday, five at night, people bombard the Javits Convention Center either in costume or in their regular Cheetos-stained vestments. Dressing up for conventions is more commonly known as “Cosplay,” short for costume play. From television shows, films, comics/books, or in some cases simply from imagination, these fans construct lavish costumes of the most desirable protagonists and antagonists. These costumes are like a bird’s plume. You, the simple observer, can learn a lot from watching your contemporaries in this ritual. The well-constructed costume relays the wearer’s time, efforts and prosperity. All these things are desirable in a mate. Never touch. Always ask before taking pictures, that’s just manners.

COSPAY! 1. Ramona Flowers & Gideon Gordon Graves. 2. Ramona & creator Bryan Lee O’malley at the Best American Comics talk.

At the entrance of the con floor, your senses can be overloaded if you’re unprepared. This is what I imagine Tokyo to be like on a slow night. The colors, the sounds, the smells, the feel of cheap polyester as a cosplayer brushes against your bare skin. Everything hits you like a ton of bricks. Before crossing the threshold from clear order into pure chaos take a moment to acclimate yourself. This is your last time to turn back before you dive into the fold. Be aware that at times the air on the con floor can get so heavy, you can taste the dandruff and wet dreams of the attendants. At its max, the floor can feel like a hive mind. Everyone is buzzing for stimulant, grasping for it at the next booth. The best bet for this situation is to just let the crowd take you like a giant wave. There is no use in fighting it.

The volunteers, or in this case “Heroes,” who helped set up the con, pass around buttons and flyers so fanboys and girls can fill their little pockets with pulp. Eventually these things litter the floor along with the wrappers from consumed candy bars. The trash overflows like waterfalls. There is no way to just walk; you trudge. Soon enough the smells from the concession blend with the odor of the clientele and you’ll get this miasma of cave rot, something like what a young Batman would have to deal with if it were not for Alfred Pennyworth. The trick is to breathe slowly, swill it around in your lungs, then exhale. You will get used to it.

If you get bored observing your contemporaries in this dance, there are plenty of things to take up your time: panels, signings and other events for our ADD Generation. For example this year, a speed dating event was held. At three minute intervals, con goers get the opportunity to talk to the opposite sex while praying to their respective deities for a spark. If speed dating isn’t your style, you can sit in on panels. Make sure to carry a recorder or notepad or you’ll miss gems like, “That was a piece of shit movie.” Darwyn Cooke’s exact thoughts on the Frank Miller movie adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Cooke, unapologetic in his response, went on to ream Miller a new asshole. Just like everyone else, Cooke holds Will Eisner’s The Spirit in the highest of regard, noting its ability to straddle genres and draw in readers. He felt the property wasn’t handled  respectfully and that the “shit movie” not only cheated him but also cheated the viewers.

Or you could hear the CCO of DC Comics, Geoff Johns, tell fans that, “DC Comics has much bigger and richer characters than Marvel.” Listen as fanboys gasp. A blunt edge to the ever long battle between the two mighty publishers. This is something we need more of. In a time when respectability has become ubiquitous we need more mud slinging. Make a commotion. The industries are starving for verbal fists to start flying.

The weekend eventually becomes circadian. You move from booth to booth then to events then pop into a panel, then you move from booth to booth. There are plenty of noticeably processed portable foods to consume as you move around the convention floor. This is the 21st Century traveling circus.

–Topher r. Scotton works as an editorial assistant at Electric Literature and is a nomenclature consultant. He is terminally handsome.

First photo by Dawson Schachter. Second & third by Zoë Gulliksen.