NEENER, NEENER – Ben Marcus’ The Flame Alphabet at BookCourt

1. The cheery cover art for Ben Marcus’ “lighthearted comedy.” 2. Sam Margevicius, a photographer, was more interested in looking at that dope David Lynch book than at me. I don’t blame him.

 

What I love most about BookCourt in Cobble Hill, besides it being one of the best all-around bookstores in Brooklyn, is its interior design– the open backroom is expansive enough to hold a large crowd, yet it retains the intimacy of a much smaller room, which doubly renders any reading more penetrating and effective. So as I’m on my way to see Ben Marcus read from his new novel, The Flame Alphabet, having only read interviews with him discussing poisonous language from the mouths of adorable children, I’m getting really excited to go in totally blind and hear him read.

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JAMES KIRKWOOD: mythical…but maybe not murderer

The story of James Kirkwood demonstrates how easily and inexplicably the acclaimed can fall off the critical radar.

In 1975, he had two shows playing on Broadway, while his latest novel Good Times/Bad Times saw reviewers comparing him to Saul Bellow and Joseph Heller. One of those shows – A Chorus Line – won him a Pulitzer Prize for his co-writing contribution. Yet the reaction of most people today to the mention of Kirkwood’s name would be a crinkled brow. Almost none of his works remain in print.

Kirkwood became my favourite writer in the 1980s. I was enchanted by the vulnerability and effervescence of novels like Good Times/Bad Times, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead! and Some Kind of Hero, and even more by the fact that neither of those qualities ruled out streetwise grittiness in his prose. Yet though he was my favourite writer, he for a long time remained a myth to me. His books were not in print in my native UK and for an impoverished young man were only obtainable by scouring second-hand shops, a veritable tilling-for-gold process that produced indescribable joy on the rare occasions when an out-of-print or imported paperback turned up. In those pre-internet days, I could discover nothing about Kirkwood beyond what was conveyed on book flyleaves and covers. The first time I ever saw his name mentioned in a British newspaper was in a list of AIDS fatalities. Needless to say, I hadn’t known he was dead.

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Return of the Nerds: FSG’s Work in Progress presents Nerd Jeopardy! at McNally Jackson

1. Einstein formulates the theory of how nerds have fun. 2. FSG Online Marketing Manager, host and charmer Ryan Chapman, who’d been drinking all day.

 

I’m on the F en route to McNally Jackson to cover FSG’s Work in Progress’ awesome Nerd Jeopardy, wondering, “Why am I more excited to attend this event rather than seeing these guys or these guys?” Yes, despite the fact I have no knowledge of Nerd Alex Trebek’s (a.k.a. FSG’s Online Marketing Manager and all-around charming fellow, Ryan Chapman) musical talents and there will be no live music or rock show eye candy, there IS the chance to win sweet, expensive prizes (even if you don’t compete on a team!), get drunk for free, heckle, and mingle with really, really good looking nerds. I covered this event again for these reasons, but mainly because it’s pure fun. Allow me to be a bit of blowhard when I say it’s sort of a celebration of everything awesome about nerds, that dismantles the myth established by this guy.

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Booze, Brownies and Books at WORD Brooklyn

1. Gillian Telling: mom, writer, Dirty Girl.  2. Author Kate Rockland escaped Wenner and lived to tell the tale.

“I want women to be in touch with their bodies,” began Kate Rockland, author of 150 Pounds“>150 Pounds, “but not in a, you know, touchy-feely Smith College kind of way.”

And so the tone was set for last night’s reading, “Booze, Books, and Brownies with the Women of Wenner Media (Former!): Gwen Cooper, Kate Rockland, and Gillian Telling.”  It was standing room only in the basement of Greenpoint’s WORD bookstore, the double allure of Rolling Stone horror stories combined with advice on breaking into publishing having drawn a mixed crowd of young hopefuls and seasoned warriors alike.

 

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LITERARY ARTIFACTS: the quixotic search for Cervantes’s bones

Cervantes: Lost in La Mancha, Found in Madrid. (Maybe. Probably. We Think.)

Each month in the Literary Artifacts space, writer Kristopher Jansma writes about his encounters with rare books, writerly memorabilia, and other treasures in New York City and around the world, hoping to discover how the internet age is changing the face of literature as we know it.

 

Somewhere deep inside the Convento de las Trinitarias Descalzas in Madrid, historian Fernando Prado is searching amidst the holy books and cloistered nuns for the man who wrote the first modern novel, published 407 years ago today: Miguel de Cervantes— or whatever’s left of him.

The plaque on the exterior of the convent memorializes the author of the great Don Quixote, who is buried inside.  Probably.  They’re pretty sure he’s in there somewhere.  Just no one’s quite sure where.  Cervantes’s bones may have been moved to another convent nearby during a 17th century renovation.  Although it’s thought they were moved back again, and that they weren’t disturbed at all when, in the 20th century, part of the convent was converted into a courthouse.  However, what’s certain is that he was buried there initially—at least it said in his will that he wanted to be.  Though Cervantes himself was not a member of the “Barefoot Trinitarian” sect that runs the convent to this day, they once helped ransom him out of slavery, and one of his daughters belonged to the convent (they think).  All we really know for sure is that the great author died nearby, in his home, of dropsy (only it may have been cirrhosis of the liver, or possibly diabetes) on April 23rd, 1616, just ten days before William Shakespeare.  Except that Spain was using the Gregorian calendar and England the Julian… so really they died on the same day.

OK, fine.  Really all we actually know is that he’s dead.

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Franklin Park’s 3rd Annual Short Fiction Night

1. Katy Pierce, a painter, with David Greenwood, who writes monographs on tweed. 2. Sarah Caciaio, a linguistics student at the CUNY Grad Center, Melynda Fuller, an editor and nonfiction writer, Andy Devlin, a filmmaker, & Liza Monroy, author of Mexican High. 

 

On Monday, I arrived at Franklin Park Bar in Crown Heights over an hour early, in order to meet with some of my co-workers here at EL for happy hour before the reading. The bar was already crowded, and all of the seats were occupied. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and managed to snag one of the booths as its inhabitants were leaving. My point: if you’ve ever wondered how early you have to get to the bar to find a seat, the answer is Very Early.

Fortunately, the crowd had come for good reason: great literature, and an especially great line-up, featuring two talented hot ladies and three talented and hilarious Woody Allenish-voiced men, showcasing the wonders of short fiction. And the rest of the world is taking notice of what is happening at the monthly series, earning mentions in publications from BlackBook to The New Yorker to Time Out.

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The 2011 Story Prize Finalists

Faulkner once said that every novelist is a failed short story writer, and every short story writer is a failed poet. I’ve paraphrased (Faulkner said it with more eloquence and more words), but his point is counter to the common wisdom.

Novels typically reside at the top of the publishing and literary hierarchy, while short story collections receive fewer awards, reviews, or sales (if they’re published at all). And, of course, no one reads poetry.

Enter The Story Prize.

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WINNERS: Holiday Restraint Contest

Electric Literature is pleased to announce the winners of its Holiday Restraint contest. Below are the winning entries and a few words from the contest judge Mike Edison.

I reckon I was asked to judge this beast as much for my firm grip on the English language as for my reputation for excess (not to mention that I learned to judge battles inside of a steel cage), and without getting too puffed up about it, I was, as Keith Richards might say, positively gob-smacked about the invite.

For those of you coming in naked, the contest rules were deceptively simple: write a short story of 30 to 300 words that used each word only once.

Over 130 entries ran the gamut from failed word jazz, fractured Haikus, stoned prose poems, the worst of William Burroughs’ cut-and-paste experiments, and the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of failed beatniks and first-year English as a Second Language students, to genuine moments of insight rife with rhythm, humor, and what I like to call “zork,” although I am not sure that term has been adopted by the literary world at large.

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REVIEW: The Fallback Plan by Leigh Stein

The Fallback Plan
Leigh Stein
Melville House
224 pp / $14.95

I first encountered Leigh Stein in a Classics course at Brooklyn College in the spring of 2010.  She sat adjacent to me, and as the professor recounted the Iliad’s instances of aristia, Leigh would write furiously in her notebook any words, phrases, or descriptions pertaining to the text.  I found this technique captivating because, already having knowledge of Leigh’s accomplishments as a poet and fiction writer, I imagined her entries as alternative versions to Homer’s epic, wherein Helen of Troy develops a chronic case of acne after promising to be bestowed to Paris, or Achilles becomes fatally dizzy after chasing Hector around Troy’s walls.

Similar to this fashion, Leigh Stein’s delightful and hilarious debut novel, The Fallback Plan, is a vertiginous rewriting of what do after college when even one’s fallback plan is hardly a sustainable option.  Stein’s narrator, Esther Kohler, accepts this fate as social common sense, i.e., is externally apathetic to moving back in with her parents or watching her capricious boy interest, Jack, fumble with his prettier girlfriend.  She is reservedly jealous of her friend Tierney who writes her letters from Rome, and bemused by her friend Pickle, whose preoccupation with weed and video games starts to rub off on her.  So what does one do when job searching becomes a laughable prospect and one’s Wellbutrin recreation runs dry?  Take a babysitting job, of course, set up by none other than Esther’s assiduously proud mother.
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