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http://fictionwritersreview.com/blo
But I'll keep visiting LJ land and might occasionally post something non-bookish at draft table.
Our new apartment is beautiful. You can see more pre-move photos taken last Saturday evening here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58038820@N
We're still unpacking and calming the felines down, but soon we'll have photos of furnished-ness.
I'm running to the nearest newsstand to buy it, but I'll only re-subscribe when they return to including a story in every issue. (I could vent about how furious this still makes me for hours...the Atlantic used to publish, hands down, the best new stories available anywhere, including beautiful work by completely unknown authors. Now they publish a lot of long, excellent features that I can't finish because I'm too angry that there isn't a story for dessert.) But yes -- the 2008 Fiction Issue! -- Buy one now or check it out online; there's web-only access to past fiction issues, an archive of literary interviews, an article about top MFA programs, and more at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/2008
And if you haven't yet heard about Heeb's Notorious Issue, it features a kitschy swimsuit calendar of the chosen:
[photo by Gilles Bensimon]
[PHOTO CREDIT: LEO FRIEDMAN]
Arthur Laurents will direct a darker, grittier -- and bilingual! -- revival of West Side Story; previews begin in February of '09. I am really excited to see this production.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/theat
Also, on a totally unrelated note, I want one of these. Or at least I want to throw one at all the people freaking out over how this will sexualize their daughters. Um, see also: ALL BARBIES.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne
2.5 BR, 2 BATH on the fourth floor of our current building. Hardwood floors, big windows. The foyer/hallway is significantly wider than our current apt.'s, and when you first enter, Rob's bedroom is on the right; it's a lovely, big room with a nice closet and its own private bathroom. Continuing down the hall, you'll run smack into a little but highly functional kitchen (with cabinets! at last!) which is open to the living room (though separated by a bar/half-wall); the living room is large and gets lots of light; we're having an accent wall painted a slate-greenish-gray. There are some built-in storage shelves (like a pantry, sort of). To the left is an entrance to the second bathroom. Straight ahead, through double-doors, is Aaron's and my bedroom, which has a painted-over decorative fireplace. In that bedroom are two additional smaller doors -- one a second entrance to the bathroom, the other the entrance to a little office space/dressing room with a closet. From the windows, we can see the NYC skyline. And we'll all get thighs of steel walking up four flights of stairs...brings back memories of Chelsea.
Photos to come!
Also, Oliver and Tally may not know it yet, but they plan to blog about their adventures in co-catitation. Tentative title: Who The Fuck Is This Fucking Cat?
While I agree with this article -- that indie (or self-published) books get shorter shrift and far less cred than indie films and indie music -- I'm surprised that neither the author nor his commenters mentioned one pretty obvious difference: their potential to sell, period. Everyone goes to the movies, and everyone listens to music, and if an indie film or album is a break-out hit, it's likely that a whole hell of a lot of people will pay to see it or listen to it. But when you look at even a "best-selling" book, how many people are really reading it?
I hate this, of course, and I hate that this leads to what the entry and comments do discuss -- how scared and snobby and tied to big houses we wind up being. Unlike music and film, the book (and I mean here the book read for pleasure) has to justify its existence; publishing fiction itself, even at big houses, seems like an "indie" pursuit.
I had out-of-town guests for about 1.5 weeks, went on a theater-going spree with said guests, then embarked upon an apartment search across Brooklyn (that ended when we signed the lease for an apt. on the 4th floor of our current building), then realized I was so far behind at work that sleep was no longer an option. And now it is mid-July!
FWR is coming along slower than I'd hoped, but I do have piles of good content (from a bevy of contributors) nearly ready to post. The launch will be soon, folks.
In the meantime, enjoy
this cartoon-essay about the books you're supposed to read and the circle of hell reserved for those who do not read enough...hey, they're not as bad as usurers.
Background: Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been commissioned to adapt An Inconvenient Truth into an opera, and NY Times writer John Tierney had significant fun crafting a fake letter from the composer to Al Gore in response to fictional notes on a draft. Hilarious! Enjoy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/scien
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/0
what WHAT?
Thanks to bookslut for the link.
http://jezebel.com/5016930/through-y
Come see Aaron (as Theseus) in this earthy, beautiful, and truly innovative production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Read this less biased review if you don't believe me:
Theater Mania: http://www.theatermania.com/content/new
Details:
Flux Theatre Ensemble presents
A Midsummer Night's Dream By William Shakespeare
Directed by
August Schulenburg
June 5-22, 2008
Tues-Sat at 8pm
Sun at 3pm
The West End Theater
263 W 86th St
Between B'way and West End Ave
(1 train to 86th St)
Tickets: $18
Purchase tickets online here: http://www.theatermania.com/content/sho
You can read my review of Midsummer director August Schulenberg's original play Riding The Bull here: http://miriam1978.livejournal.com/1
Schulenberg has another Fringe Festival entry this year, which I'm excited to check out.
This reminded me, in an excellent way, of Jaffe's The Best of Everything.
The Ten Year Nap is a sociological document wrapped in a compelling comedy of manners about specific mothers, including a group of highly educated women surprised to find themselves, in the 21st century, as homemakers. Now that their kids are getting older, can they return to what they left behind -- jobs at law firms, highly esteemed graduate programs, artistic ambitions? Do they want to? How do you make up for lost time, and is that time really "lost"? Is all paid work truly more meaningful than raising a child? Does "work" bring us closer to our potential if we aren't passionate about it?
Interesting stuff, all -- especially when you throw in these women's mothers (an immigrant restaurant worker, a feminist pioneer, an actress who committed suicide), some very successful working moms, the next generation of stay-at-home dads (who gazed through the windows of a gourmet store, "looking at the prepared salads as if they were porn" and "wore T-shirts advertising the rock bands and lobster shacks of their youth. They had goatees and stylish geometric spectacles. They held their babies against themselves in fabric slings."), and a voyeuristic affair.
Wolitzer's Austenesque wit, compassion, and relish for details make this book hard to put down. Almost every page offers that kind of specific, sharp writing I crave. Here -- I'll randomly flip through and find some examples:
p. 124: "The Benedicts came from 'good stock,' everyone said, which made Jill imagine them all aswim in some kind of thick, nutritional broth."
p. 228: "Watching another family up close was always alarming; their ways seemed tribal and unfamiliar and somehow wrong, as though if you looked even more closely you might detect hints of incest or some other aberrance."
p. 142: "He was a handsome and quiet pothead who had a trunkful of complex, ingenious felt puppets in his apartment in Brooklyn, which he shared with another puppeteer named Wolf Purdy."
p. 59: "The boys were eating icies, those little fluted cups of rainbow-colored Italian ices that turned their tongues and lips and the skin around their mouths an uneasy, drowning-victim blue."
p. 264: "He was sucking on a sour candy at the time, and his tongue and her tongue played a bit of ping-pong with that little orb, which cherrified the kiss and made it seem all the more salacious."
p. 266: "They were girls, still caught in the expansive amber of childhood." (on watching daughters play 'Jane Eyre')
p. 149: "No one said that you weren't male enough or phallic enough and that your canvases weren't big enough or didn't have enough broken doll heads attached to them." (on leaving the art world for political volunteer work)
1. Taking my first real (non-working) vacation in two years. I went to Vermont and spent time with Mom at the cabin on Lake Dunmore; there was no cell phone service, no internet, and absolutely perfect weather. Here's the "camp" itself and a view of the lake.
We visited family in Ripton, family friends in Newfane, and I went to KC and Justin's wedding in Saratoga Springs. Here's the happy bride belting out "In-Between Days." More wedding soundtracks should feature The Cure.
2. Attending my super-talented writer-friends' readings. Preeta was here in May, reading from Evening is the Whole Day, and Uwem was here last night to promote Say You're One of Them at Housing Works.
Buy their books at your local independent bookstore, which you can find here: http://www.bookweb.org/aba/booksense/st
3. Doing lots and lots and lots of editing work.
'The bar keeps going higher,'' says Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly. ''Well, you were a drug addict, but did you kill anybody? Well, you killed somebody, but did you do it with your bare hands? Well, you were hungry, but were you as hungry as Frank McCourt? The more that's written, the harder it is to come up with something new or dramatic to say.''
http://weburbanist.com/2008/04/28/20-br
This is one of the best...a bookshelf and staircase in one:
#1
#2
#3
I could adduce Kafka's formula: "A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul." I could go down to the cafe at the local mega-bookstore and take some wise words of Abelard or Koestler about the power of literature off a mug. But in the end -- here's my point -- it would still all boil down to entertainment, and its suave henchman, pleasure. Because when the axe bites the ice, you feel an answering throb of delight all the way from your hands to your shoulders, and the blade tolls like a bell for miles.
from "Let Me Entertain You," published in the LA Times http://www.latimes.com/features/books/l
Thanks, Kathryn, for the link!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co
The NY Times says a new tome of listage, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, is "keen to start an argument."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/b
527 comments and counting!
