Sunday, January 17, 2010
Eat, Drink & Be Literary
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere
About
Monday, January 11, 2010
Herta Müller: Nobel Prize Winner
Excerpt from The Appointment
Lately I'm being summoned more and more often: ten sharp on Tuesday, ten sharp on Saturday, on Wednesday, Monday. As if years were a week, I'm amazed that winter comes so close on the heels of late summer.
On my way to the tram stop, I again pass the shrubs with the white berries dangling through the fences. Like buttons made of mother-of-pearl and sewn from underneath, or stitched right down into the earth, or else like bread pellets. They remind me of a flock of little white-tufted birds turning away their beaks, but they're really far too small for birds. It's enough to make you giddy. I'd rather think of snow sprinkled on the grass, but that leaves you feeling lost, and the thought of chalk makes you sleepy.
The tram doesn't run on a fixed schedule.
It does seem to rustle, at least to my ear, unless those are the stiff leaves of the poplars I'm hearing. Here it is, already pulling up to the stop: today it seems in a hurry to take me away. I've decided to let the old man in the straw hat get on ahead of me. He was already waiting when I arrived—who knows how long he'd been there. You couldn't exactly call him frail, but he's hunchbacked and weary, and as skinny as his own shadow. His backside is so slight it doesn't even fill the seat of his pants, he has no hips, and the only bulges in his trousers are the bags around his knees. But if he's going to go and spit, right now, just as the door is folding open, I'll get on before he does, regardless. The car is practically empty; he gives the vacant seats a quick scan and decides to stand. It's amazing how old people like him don't get tired, that they don't save their standing for places where they can't sit. Now and then you hear old people say: There'll be plenty of time for lying down once I'm in my coffin. But death is the last thing on their minds, and they're quite right. Death never has followed any particular pattern. Young people die too. I always sit if I have a choice. Riding in a seat is like walking while you're sitting down. The old man is looking me over; I can sense it right away inside the empty car. I'm not in the mood to talk, though, or else I'd ask him what he's gaping at. He couldn't care less that his staring annoys me. Meanwhile half the city is going by outside the window, trees alternating with buildings. They say old people like him can sense things better than young people. Old people might even sense that today I'm carrying a small towel, a toothbrush, and some toothpaste in my handbag. And no handkerchief, since I'm determined not to cry. Paul didn't realize how terrified I was that today Albu might take me down to the cell below his office. I didn't bring it up. If that happens, he'll find out soon enough. The tram is moving slowly. The band on the old man's straw hat is stained, probably with sweat, or else the rain. As always, Albu will slobber a kiss on my hand by way of greeting.
Well well, your eyes look awfully red today.
I think you've got a mustache coming. A little young for that, aren't you.
My, but your little hand is cold as ice today—hope there's nothing wrong with your circulation.
Uh-oh, your gums are receding. You're beginning to look like your own grandmother.
My grandmother didn't live to grow old, I say. She never had time to lose her teeth. Albu knows all about my grandmother's teeth, which is why he's bringing them up.
As a woman, I know how I look on any given day. I also know that a kiss on the hand shouldn't hurt, that it shouldn't feel wet, that it should be delivered to the back of the hand. The art of hand kissing is something men know even better than women—and Albu is hardly an exception. His entire head reeks of Avril, a French eau de toilette that my father-in-law, the Perfumed Commissar, used to wear too. Nobody else I know would buy it. A bottle on the black market costs more than a suit in a store. Maybe it's called Septembre, I'm not sure, but there's no mistaking that acrid, smoky smell of burning leaves.
Once I'm sitting at the small table, Albu notices me rubbing my fingers on my skirt, not only to get the feeling back into them but also to wipe the saliva off. He fiddles with his signet ring and smirks. Let him: it's easy enough to wipe off somebody's spit; it isn't poisonous, and it dries up all by itself. It's something everybody has. Some people spit on the pavement, then rub it in with their shoe since it's not polite to spit, not even on the pavement. Certainly Albu isn't one to spit on the pavement—not in town, anyway, where no one knows who he is and where he acts the refined gentleman. My nails hurt, but he's never squeezed them so hard my fingers turned blue. Eventually they'll thaw out, the way they do when it's freezing cold and you come into the warm. The worst thing is this feeling that my brain is slipping down into my face. It's humiliating, there's no other word for it, when your whole body feels like it's barefoot. But what if there aren't any words at all, what if even the best word isn't enough.
The Syrian poet Ali Ahmed Said Esber
Two Poems
A Mirror for the Twentieth Century
A coffin that wears the face of a child,
a book
written inside the guts of a crow,
a beast trudging forward, holding a flower,
a stone
breathing inside the lungs of a madman.
This is it.
This is the twentieth century.
A Prophecy
To the country dug into our lives like a grave,
to the country etherized, and killed,
a sun rises from our paralyzed history
into our millennial sleep.
A sun without a prayer
that kills the sand’s longevity, and the locusts
and time bursting out of the hills,
and time drying out on the hills
like fungus.
A sun that loves maiming and murder,
that rises from there, behind that bridge...
The San Francisco Panorama
Richard Price
86th & Lexington Ave
150 East 86th Street, New York, NY 10028, 212-369-2180
Special Instructions
A limited number of pre-signed copies of Lush Life and Paris Review Interviews, Vol. I will be available at this event.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (P.S.)
The Waiter waited his first table at age thirty-one. In 2004 the author started his wildly popular blog, www.WaiterRant.net, winning the 2006 "Best Writing in a Weblog" Bloggie Award. He is interviewed regularly by major media as the voice for many of the two million waiters in the United States. The Waiter lives in the New York metropolitan area.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Also recently published by Calamari Press is Boons & The Camp by David Ohle
two novellas by David Ohle
Printed compilation of literary text objects
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
favourite books (over 65,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next.
Watch the story behind the story
Little Bee: A Novel
Chris Cleave
To Kindle or not to Kindle?
Digital Revolution?
Kindle Ebooks Outsell Real Books on Christmas
National Book Critics Circle Awards Finalists' Announcement
Special guest announcers: Anthony Appiah, President, PEN American Center, 2008 Sandrof award winner, to announce the Sandrof award; Balakian winner Albert Mobilio to announce the Balakian award; 2008 finalist Elizabeth Strout, fiction; 2008 winner Ariel Sabar, autobiography; 1999 finalist Jean Strouse, biography, 1997 and 2008 finalist Vivian Gornick, criticism; 2008 finalist Brenda Shaughnessy, poetry, and 2000 nonfiction winner Ted Conover.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Who is Edward Schwarzschild?
Who is Elisa Albert?
IN SHOPS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6: THE TROUBLEMAKERS
January 26-30, 2010
Rob Pruitt
Reading this week
UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE |
presenting their new book from UDP:
TEN WALKS/TWO TALKS
Thursday, January 7, at 7:00 pm
@ McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, New York, NY
Launch Party for It All Changed in an Instant - More Six Word Memoirs
Join us for a launch event with Larry Smith, Rachel Fershleiser and contributors to the book. We will also be hosting our own six-word memoir contest - come up with a six-word memoir related to the topic of writing and you might win a prize! Send your entries to kelly@wordbrooklyn.com
Facebook RSVP here
Coming out Jan. 5, 2010
about this book
Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn’t bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.
His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is—well, something quite different.
(taken from Random House)
Sunday, January 3, 2010
RAIN TAXI, a winner of the Alternative Press Award for Best Arts & Literature Coverage, is a quarterly publication that publishes reviews of literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction with an emphasis on works that push the boundaries of language, narrative, and genre. Essays, interviews, and in-depth reviews reflect RAIN TAXI's commitment to innovative publishing.
Friday, January 1, 2010
"So ugly, worth nuffin."
"Sometimes I wish I was not alive," Precious says. "But I don't know how to die. Ain' no plug to pull out. 'N no matter how bad I feel my heart don't stop beating and my eyes open in the morning."
Precious
by Sapphire
Book Twenty-Five
Review:
I was skeptical about reading this book, especially around the holidays, when all people want to do is feel good, eat and drink themselves silly, but I am glad I pushed myself to give it a try. A truly disturbing, sad main character, who right from the first page, sucks you in to her world, her chaos and gives you no other choice but to cheer her on. Claireece Precious Jones is abused by her mother, raped by her father and barely has a chance at life. She grows up on welfare, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and basically nonexistent. Although her story is written in dialect, at times a tough read, you find yourself drawn to the language. If you are brave enough to feel sad, mad and pure hate for humanity, pick up Precious.
Precious is now a major motion picture based on the novel Push by Sapphire, starring Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, and Lenny Kravitz.