Living in a Material World: A Conversation with George Saunders and David Lipsky

1. David Lipsky and his Macbook, trying to find something bad to say about Saunders. Conclusion: impossible. 2. George Saunders: he do the police in different voices.

 

On Thursday, I went to the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House around six-thirty and met my friend Useless MacNastus. Most evening readings start at seven, so we figured half an hour was early enough to guarantee ass and back support while listening to George Saunders. We figured wrong. The nineteenth-century townhouse was clogged with people, including a girl hunched beside a garbage can like a dispossessed Oscar the Grouch. The more fortunate fought for seats that faced a mirror. Pressed against a wall in the muggy main room, Useless said, “The moustache quotient is off the charts here.” “Everyone looks like George Saunders,” I said, then George Saunders inched by us. He made eye contact and said “Ehhhhhhhh,” which is the sound you make when two sweaty doofuses are watching you squeeze through a crowd.

Nerdaroo: FSG and Small Demons Present Nerd Jeopardy

1. The only other dude I know who’s named Jean-Claude is this guy. He should make a wine. 2. Maud Newton, y’all!

 

What happens when it’s 70 degrees outside in New York City at 7 PM? Obviously, you get 60+ nerds to go to SoHo’s McNally Jackson’s air-conditioned basement to participate in the much-loved, always-drunk Nerd Jeopardy, presented by FSG: Work in Progress and Small Demons. Our affable host and Trebek doppelganger, Ryan Chapman, stepped up the ceremonies with more wine, harder categories, and cameo appearances. We were a bit more debauched this time around, but that only adds to the fun and nerdery of literary events. Like, would you get excited if someone properly pronounced “Lafayette” with a short u/long a vowel couplet because that’s how Faulkner would have said it? Or better, how could you not be excited?

BETRAYED! at Franklin Park

1. Diego Ongaro, Filmmaker, Roasted Pig Delivery Dude, and Hubby to Courtney Maum, fiction writer, humourist and Outlet contributor, with Michelle Legro, Online Editor to Lapham’s Quarterly. Kielbasa Dogs not named. 2. Penina Roth, Founder and Curator of the Franklin Park Reading Series and professional podium raver. We have the same Smiths cassette. Yay!

 

It felt like summer last night in Brooklyn, and Franklin Park‘s big front yard seemed like the perfect place to round out the particularly gorgeous day. Inside, a crowd of literary lovers was ready to get back stabbed, cheated on, and psychically attacked. Or, in other words: It was Betrayal night at this month’s installment of Franklin Park Reading Series. Joseph Riippi, Leah Umansky, Fiona Maazel, Toure, & Heidi Julavits were the writers who would share their sordid tales.

Larghearted Words from Greenpoint

1. Watching along with Will Boast (in front) as Gabe Levine plays. 2. Brian and Andrea here for some Electric Literature. 3. Eleanor Henderson closes the night with a trip to 1988.

  

This weekend WORD, Greenpoint’s independent book store (who just celebrated their 5th anniversary! congrats!), hosted Largehearted Lit, featuring readers Will Boast, Eleanor Henderson, and musician Gabe Levine. And, as the reading’s curator David Gutowski announced, “This is the only reading in the city that’s catered,” to chuckles from the packed room.

I found it a responsibility that if I were to write about the space, the fiction, and the music, it would only be appropriate if I tried (two) carrot-ginger cupcakes with orange cream cheese filling, courtesy of The Brooklyn Baker.

Meanwhile from the LBC…Cheap Drinks, Surf Rock, Literary Contests and Sexual Tension at The Lightbulb Mouth Radio Hour

1. On the right is poet, bouncer, proud Samsung employee, and charismatic stallion Andy Buell.  On the left is career criminal and art lover, Stephen Benz.  If you show up wearing cocktail attire, you only have to give Andy five dollars.  If you show up in street clothes, your dirty ass has to pay eight. 2. The lady in red herself, Adrian Wyatt~ one of LBM’s producers and one of its speakeasy-chic poetry girls.  She was armed with a full lineup of Write Bloody authors, and enough moxie to knock out an alpha male elephant walrus. 3. Poetic dynamo and inspired performer Brendan Constantine brandishing his artificial flower covered flyswatter.  He said he interpreted the invite’s call for formal attire to mean formal attire for rehab.

  

I descended the damp, steel basement steps of Harvelle’s in Long Beach, California and was given a blue poker chip by a dark haired woman in a red velvet dress.  Her eyes were full of burning embers and her cigarette tray was full of poetry.  The house band started playing “Fate” by Dr. Dog, and it was at that moment that I knew I was going to have a holy & a heartfelt Sunday night.  As I walked though the dark club filled with artists and other cool, well-dressed, sarcastic people, I realized I was feeling almost frightened about the amount of sheer talent I was going to be exposed to in one evening.  Many of the performers were writers that I could listen to for days and days, and with their powers combined they could have very well summoned a spirit wolf, or perhaps Captain Planet.

Fence Magazine’s Spring Issue Launch at Housing Works

1. Novelist, short story writer, and editor Lynne Tillman. On Fiona Maazel: “I love your imagination. It also terrifies me.” 2. Fiona Maazel, reading from “Screen.” “I know what happens to boys in a public bathroom, I know the face of evil.”

 

Fence Magazine is primarily a poetry journal, but for fifteen issues the SUNY Albany publication has had the inimitable Lynne Tillman as its fiction editor, and the Spring 2012 issue launch reading at Housing Works in SoHo doubled as a farewell salute to Tillman, as the forthcoming issue is her last as Fence’s fiction editor. The readings from Fiona Maazel (Last, Last Chance; Woke Up Lonely, a novel, is forthcoming), James Yeh (co-founding editor of Gigantic; he also has a kickass story in the latest issue of NOON), Elizabeth Koch (co-founder of Opium Den and Black Balloon), and Paul Lisicky (Famous Builder, and the forthcoming title Unbuilt Projects) showcased Tillman’s fictive impetus for wryly imaginative stories that skate in darker corners of the psyche.

A Practical Man: David Rees’ How to Sharpen Pencils at B&N Union Square

1. Sara Chicazul, a Maker of Things, including her pipe-cleaner pencil cup headdress, with Chase Gordon, a Motion Graphics Designer, who are sartorial mavens, in my opinion. 2. CBS was there filming B-Roll. That is a camera, book people, if you can believe it.

 

“I am not a novelty act. I sharpen pencils. And I’m pretty good at it,” said David Rees during the Q&A of his book’s launch last night at Barnes & Noble Union Square. How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisinal Craft of Pencil Sharpening, For Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, and Civil Servants, with Illustrations Showing Current Practice, is a “serious” look at artisanal pencil sharpening, and Rees is not joking. He makes money. For $15 a pop, you too can have your No. 2 pencil manually sharpened by Mr. Rees, who is best known for his political cartoons, replete with bagged and cataloged pencil shavings. With performances by Eugene Mirman (Delocated, Flight of the Conchords), Stacy London (What Not to Wear), and Sam Anderson (Critic-at-large for New York Times Magazine), last night was one of the most unorthodox literary events I’ve ever been to, and one of the best.

Real Love and Cheetos Dust: A Night with Mike Doughty

1. Mississippi Street is my favorite place to scare passengers while parallel parking. 2. Dan and the ghost bartender of Mississippi Studio, who recommends very good beers for friends who aren’t specific and have given you beer money. 3. Eddie and Melissa held down the left side of front row with my friend and me.

  

On Friday night, Mike Doughty brought stage banter, memoir, and music to Mississippi Studio. No one took a cool seat towards the back. Everyone filled the main floor rows closest to the stage like a game of Tetris.

I got a seat in the front row and joked about losing my Ruby Vroom tape with a woman holding a copy of Doughty’s memoir, The Book of Drugs. I sat in the front row to get a good stage shot of Doughty for this write-up without getting up, but I was also more than a little excited to be at his feet. The man’s got great pipes and music capable of consuming the duller details of the moments around us. The woman with his book said he writes like he talks. She loves the way he talks.

The Greatest 3-Minute Punk Stories Ever @ Public Assembly

1. Tobias Carroll opened up the evening. 2. The crowd, including Tobias.

Last night Williamsburg’s Public Assembly saw a good turnout for Volume 1 Brooklyn’s The Greatest 3-Minute Punk Stories Ever. Founding Editor Jason Diamond hosted. There was more comedy than anything else. We were treated to a seemingly endless (though appreciated) compilation of reminiscences from the punk scene, and the punk not-scene—which many storytellers made a point of.

Atticus Lish Party

1. Screenshot of the introduction from the minisite. 2.  Norman and Barbara Charles, friends of Gordon Lish, deep in conversation with painter Shelton Walsmith.

KGB Bar on 4th st and 2nd ave was as crowded as it could likely ever legally get this past Saturday night. While normal circumstances would point towards the two hour long open bar, managed by an increasingly desolate lone bartender, it was all truly the work of one man- Gordon Lish, the literary icon for the ages, editor for Neal Cassidy and Alan Ginsberg, Raymond Carver and Don DeLillo, commanding reigns at Esquire and Knopf once upon a time, now the friendly man introducing himself, rather than the other way around, to every party guest walking through the door.