Better Off Dead: Coffin Factory’s Issue Two Launch Party at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe

1. Michael Signorelli, Adam’s editor and beer rest; Adam Wilson, writer, Faster Times editor, mean-mugger; Sarah Rapp, Adam’s girlfriend and community manager at Behance; and Amanda Bullock, the Housing Works events director who brought these lit-loving beer-drinkers together. 2. Joe, Penguin representative, Tiffany, book blogger, and Robert, tie-wearing MTA employee who couldn’t tell me when I’ll be able to trust the Q train again. Between Tiffany and Robert: grade-A photo bomb. 

 

Somehow, I managed to be an English major in New York without visiting Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. I fixed that last night around seven. Two hours and a few $5-suggested-donation beers later and Amanda, the events director, had to remove me from under the store’s sloping staircase, where I figured I’d hide forever and live among the books. In between I’d attended the launch party for Issue Two of The Coffin Factory, a new literary magazine that I’ve fallen for as suddenly and unconditionally as Housing Works. Contributors Adam Wilson, Carlos Labbé, Jeannie Vanasco, and Justin Taylor read excerpts from their Factory pieces to celebrate the launch before the evening flowed into beery schmoozing.

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MEGA BROOKLYN BOOK FEST SMASHDOWN!

This weekend saw the sixth annual Brooklyn Book Festival, which took place in downtown Brooklyn. Over 260 writers were featured in the panels and readings, not to mention the hundreds of booths occupied by literary mags and publishers. In addition to the Book Festival itself, this year’s celebration was expanded to four days and included “Bookend” events at venues throughout the borough, including BAM, BookCourt, Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn Winery, Greenlight Bookstore, and powerHouse Arena. Of course, such an event made for ideal Dishing, and therefore we unleashed a team of bloggers on the unsuspecting literary world. Below are our collective experiences of the Book Fest’s big day, and you can see our coverage of Bookend events here, here, and here.

1. Authors David Goodwillie (American Subversive), Justin Taylor (The Gospel of Anarchy) and Amanda Bullock, Events Coordinator for Housing Works, fresh-faced before the morning panel. 2. Book Festival participants Carol and Lynne ponder their next move.

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Pete’s Candy Store Reading ft. Justin Taylor and Alison Espach

1. Host Mira Jacob. 2. Alison Espach and friends.

I should have known better.  I went to college in the great U.S. of A. so when I said to the the cute bartender at Pete’s Candy Store, “What’s good?” and he said, “Get the punch,” I should have known to say, “Beer, please.” But no, I got the punch and it tasted appropriately like a piece of candy when in reality it was just a bowl full of liquors. In that way, Pete’s is like the greatest frat that never was.

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Blake Butler MARATHON: Night 1

1. Drew Lerman, who is a fiction MFA student at Sarah Lawrence, & Lindsay Hunt, a food writer and photographer. 2. Readers Justin Taylor & Brendan Sullivan.

Once upon a time, not very long ago, a young man submitted a story to a website called Fifty-Two Stories. The man who ran the website loved the story written by the young man, so much that he published it on his website that very day. Soon, the story became more than a story: it became a novel. The man with the website loved the young man’s new novel and decided it needed more than an ordinary reading to celebrate it. It needed a marathon reading, a reading where the whole entire work would be read over four nights by a host of wonderful writers. And so it was done.

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Esto Perpetua

A girl says, When Julian would scream until his throat bled I’d think how I knew our love would endure forever. When I’d watch him shave his chest in some motel before the show I’d feel less sure. When the band would play “Righteous Soul Slave” for second encore I’d know that they would never be famous. They were too good. The audience didn’t understand the complicated, holy thing that was happening. It—the audience—only wanted a wall of noise to throw itself against, an ocean to dive into and drown a while. Whatever. Julian’s the poet, I’m just his. Some of the weak ones fell, bleeding, got trampled or were pulled upright by some pit angel; glaze-eyed, disorientated, stalk-stumbling off. I’d stand off-stage on Julian’s side and watch the show. Except of course on the nights—these were not rare—when the stage was just a taped-off section of floor. Those nights I stood in back with Darren the manager i.e. the merch guy i.e. the bass player’s cousin, and watched the crowd heave. Each crowd was different and the same. Sweaty teenagers swipe half-drunk warmbeers from ledges, chug with pride, to puke later in the parking lot with same. Julian was the singer and lead guitar. He was pasty and gorgeous, haunted and haunting, recalcitrant nova, all the right things, blah. But our lives were perfect, weren’t they? Rattling motion and cigarette ash. Where were we, anyway? A rest stop in some desert, bald mountains like a great fence hemming us in. The van choked out blue smoke if we pushed past sixty, but we knew we had to be in the next place by this time the next day, whatever day that was, I mean was going to be. The stakes never changed, just the fill-in-the-blank after WELCOME TO SCENIC, another sign we were already in Heaven, anyway Limbo—some place where verb tense doesn’t matter. Whatever. Details were anyone else’s job. My only job was Julian. After all, where would he be without me?  Me without him? I shouted to the drummer that I was a quarter short for the snack machine. He looked past me, at the thing itself, fished one from his pocket and flipped it my way, then turned away to light his cigarette. I of course missed the catch and it landed flat in the clay, no skitter. I picked it up and saw that it was shiny, new, one of those state ones. A bird—hawk, maybe? Fuck it, it was going straight into the coin slot so I could eat. But right before I slipped it in I decided two things: first that the state on the coin was the place where we were, so Idaho. Second that the coin was a tea leaf, state motto therefore a secret message. I don’t know dick about Latin but some things are just obvious and sometimes I think that’s what God is: the obvious, resplendent and intractable and dumb. I left the other Twix in the wrapper for later, got back in the van and told Julian that in the next town he could have a groupie, if I could film it.

- Justin Taylor is the author of the story collection Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, which is just out from Harper Perennial. He is also a contributor to HTMLGiant. His personal website is http://www.justindtaylor.net/