Thursday, June 25, 2009
R.I.P.
-- Farrah Fawcett, the blonde-maned actress whose best-selling poster and "Charlie's Angels" stardom made her one of the most famous faces in the world, died Thursday. She was 62.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
I really enjoy doing readings, especially if the book's new. There are always a few "oops" moments--why did I use that word?and now it's published so I can only change it here, at this reading. But the "oopses" are (at least with this book) few and far between. In the three years it took to find a publisher I was able to clean things up, and PM provided a good editor.
Five readings in five nights in NYC--mornings spent at a rather boring and under attended Book
Expo, the publisher's/bookseller's trade show. End of the industry and blah blah blah. Hope not, since bookselling still pays the rent, but I got sick of hearing it from the "suits", people from the big houses who publish mostly crap anyway. America isn't a reading country, never was, and now that readership is split between screen and book...of course business is down. I think the Indies will be the last to die--bookstores and publishers--because they cater to people who really care about books, language, culture. In a country that is made up mostly of morons, it's a small audience--but enough to keep quality publishers/stores afloat. I hope.
Readings were great fun--except perhaps the Bowery Poetry Club, where I'd expected better attendance. Summer Brenner is a great writer with an especially good book, and she reads beautifully. I tried to counter her reading, which was serious noir, with a few jokes. My new novel is kind of a clown act anyway, my secret (now not so secret) homage to Terry Southern--a satire that (I hope) fights absurdity (of the American corporate structure) with absurdity.
I heard a few laughs when I read, so I guess the book's working.
New York is always exhausting, in that this-train-that-train-three-dates-a-night-can you be downtown by 2pm--kind of way. Saw Eileen Myles, Jonathan Lethem, Ramsey (lugging my book and Summer's around town. Thank you, Ramsey), Nikki Leger, Independence Hall (read one night in Philly), Dumbo (noisy, but such a view), a great bookstore called Bluestockings. A Chuck Close show in Chelsea, couple hours in MOMA...well, it was New York.
And next week is the homecoming, reading at Moe's where I spend at least 32 hours a week, then at City Lights, inspiration for poets/writers/troublemakers/beatniks.
Also confirmed a date to read with Eileen Myles at Books & Bookshelves August 18th--a chance to read some poetry--and a little from the novel.
what I'm reading: Call It Thought by Stephen Rodefer, Hylozoic by Rudy Rucker, What You Have Left by James Sallis. Rereading Banshee by Margaret Millar.
Five readings in five nights in NYC--mornings spent at a rather boring and under attended Book
Expo, the publisher's/bookseller's trade show. End of the industry and blah blah blah. Hope not, since bookselling still pays the rent, but I got sick of hearing it from the "suits", people from the big houses who publish mostly crap anyway. America isn't a reading country, never was, and now that readership is split between screen and book...of course business is down. I think the Indies will be the last to die--bookstores and publishers--because they cater to people who really care about books, language, culture. In a country that is made up mostly of morons, it's a small audience--but enough to keep quality publishers/stores afloat. I hope.
Readings were great fun--except perhaps the Bowery Poetry Club, where I'd expected better attendance. Summer Brenner is a great writer with an especially good book, and she reads beautifully. I tried to counter her reading, which was serious noir, with a few jokes. My new novel is kind of a clown act anyway, my secret (now not so secret) homage to Terry Southern--a satire that (I hope) fights absurdity (of the American corporate structure) with absurdity.
I heard a few laughs when I read, so I guess the book's working.
New York is always exhausting, in that this-train-that-train-three-dates-a-night-can you be downtown by 2pm--kind of way. Saw Eileen Myles, Jonathan Lethem, Ramsey (lugging my book and Summer's around town. Thank you, Ramsey), Nikki Leger, Independence Hall (read one night in Philly), Dumbo (noisy, but such a view), a great bookstore called Bluestockings. A Chuck Close show in Chelsea, couple hours in MOMA...well, it was New York.
And next week is the homecoming, reading at Moe's where I spend at least 32 hours a week, then at City Lights, inspiration for poets/writers/troublemakers/beatniks.
Also confirmed a date to read with Eileen Myles at Books & Bookshelves August 18th--a chance to read some poetry--and a little from the novel.
what I'm reading: Call It Thought by Stephen Rodefer, Hylozoic by Rudy Rucker, What You Have Left by James Sallis. Rereading Banshee by Margaret Millar.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Phil Ochs
Nobody likes William F. Buckley--evil man.
But I wasn't sleepy and I was watching Charlie Rose, and he was replaying Buckley clips because the son was on. There was a late clip of Buckley, looking like a grotesque of himself, like his Buckley mask had melted. He was saying that he'd done everything and that his life was over, but that he couldn't commit suicide, that being a sin. I felt the normal amount of sympathy that you might feel for someone who was a walking bag of shit--thought, he must have suffered from depression. Didn't quite say "poor man" but almost got there---feeling sorry for him, a little. Snapped out of it--oh, yeah, oh, yeah--there are good depressives and there are...walking bags of shit who are depressed.
Immediately thought of Phil Ochs, at first thinking well that's a strange skip, but then, no,
not so much--the sixties, the war...depression, and in Ochs case suicide.
And so I downloaded Rehearsals for Retirement because I don't have it on CD and Amoeba was closed. The opening lines make up the saddest couplet ever, well maybe not ever, but it's like something out of Wyatt, so universal, a perfect articulation of end-of-the-line despair:
The days grow longer for smaller prizes
I feel a stranger to all surprises
A brick wall of a couplet, high art, I think. Disturbing art is somehow (more) uplifting...that someone in such great pain could come out with those lines. Could only come out of intense pain--a kind of last gasp.
I'd read some bios but years ago, so I did a little late-night google research, refreshed my memory--that album cover with his tombstone, died in Chicago '68 (real date of death is, I think, '76)--that he was so torn up by, whatever you want to call it, the failure of the revolution, the death of the American dream (was there one?). His despair, depression, whatever was at least partly rooted in his concern for humanity.
Perhaps despair was (is?) an appropriate response to the times. And is it an essential ingredient in art?
But I wasn't sleepy and I was watching Charlie Rose, and he was replaying Buckley clips because the son was on. There was a late clip of Buckley, looking like a grotesque of himself, like his Buckley mask had melted. He was saying that he'd done everything and that his life was over, but that he couldn't commit suicide, that being a sin. I felt the normal amount of sympathy that you might feel for someone who was a walking bag of shit--thought, he must have suffered from depression. Didn't quite say "poor man" but almost got there---feeling sorry for him, a little. Snapped out of it--oh, yeah, oh, yeah--there are good depressives and there are...walking bags of shit who are depressed.
Immediately thought of Phil Ochs, at first thinking well that's a strange skip, but then, no,
not so much--the sixties, the war...depression, and in Ochs case suicide.
And so I downloaded Rehearsals for Retirement because I don't have it on CD and Amoeba was closed. The opening lines make up the saddest couplet ever, well maybe not ever, but it's like something out of Wyatt, so universal, a perfect articulation of end-of-the-line despair:
The days grow longer for smaller prizes
I feel a stranger to all surprises
A brick wall of a couplet, high art, I think. Disturbing art is somehow (more) uplifting...that someone in such great pain could come out with those lines. Could only come out of intense pain--a kind of last gasp.
I'd read some bios but years ago, so I did a little late-night google research, refreshed my memory--that album cover with his tombstone, died in Chicago '68 (real date of death is, I think, '76)--that he was so torn up by, whatever you want to call it, the failure of the revolution, the death of the American dream (was there one?). His despair, depression, whatever was at least partly rooted in his concern for humanity.
Perhaps despair was (is?) an appropriate response to the times. And is it an essential ingredient in art?
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Advertisements for Myself
I’ll be doing lots of readings this summer and fall. Here’s a partial list(some dates aren’t set yet).
Really looking forward to spending some time in NYC. I was there in '05 but just passing through, on my way to Yaddo. Last read there in '02 at Zinc Bar when my first novel, The Chandler Apartments, was published.
PM Press is an aggressive little publisher--they've put together a full reading schedule. A pleasant surprise--I can't complain that they aren't pushing the novel. If it doesn't sell I'll have to find something else to whine about. World-wide depression? But that shouldn't hurt the sales of such a low-priced ($13,95!) little novel.
I’ll be reading with Summer Brenner, author of the novel I-5, also, coincidentally, from PM Press. Check the various venues for times (Bowery Poetry Club reading is at 2pm):
Thursday May 28th Brecht Forum451 West Street NYC(212) 242-4201
Friday May 29 Wooden Shoe 508 S. 5th St. Philadelphia(215) 413-0999
Saturday May 30 Bowery Poetry Club308 Bowery NYC(212) 614-0505
Sunday May 31st Bluestockings172 Allen St. NYC(212) 777-6028
Monday June 1st Melville House 145 Plymouth St.Dumbo, Brooklyn(718) 722-9204
Monday June 15th Moe’s Books2476 Telegraph Avenue Berkeley (510) 849-2087
Thursday July 23rd Pegasus Books2349 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley (510) 649-1320
Tuesday September 29th City Lights Books 261 Columbus Avenue S.F. (415) 362-8193
Really looking forward to spending some time in NYC. I was there in '05 but just passing through, on my way to Yaddo. Last read there in '02 at Zinc Bar when my first novel, The Chandler Apartments, was published.
PM Press is an aggressive little publisher--they've put together a full reading schedule. A pleasant surprise--I can't complain that they aren't pushing the novel. If it doesn't sell I'll have to find something else to whine about. World-wide depression? But that shouldn't hurt the sales of such a low-priced ($13,95!) little novel.
I’ll be reading with Summer Brenner, author of the novel I-5, also, coincidentally, from PM Press. Check the various venues for times (Bowery Poetry Club reading is at 2pm):
Thursday May 28th Brecht Forum451 West Street NYC(212) 242-4201
Friday May 29 Wooden Shoe 508 S. 5th St. Philadelphia(215) 413-0999
Saturday May 30 Bowery Poetry Club308 Bowery NYC(212) 614-0505
Sunday May 31st Bluestockings172 Allen St. NYC(212) 777-6028
Monday June 1st Melville House 145 Plymouth St.Dumbo, Brooklyn(718) 722-9204
Monday June 15th Moe’s Books2476 Telegraph Avenue Berkeley (510) 849-2087
Thursday July 23rd Pegasus Books2349 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley (510) 649-1320
Tuesday September 29th City Lights Books 261 Columbus Avenue S.F. (415) 362-8193
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The New Rock 'n' Roll
See all that Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie stuff on your shelf, all those wanna-be Booker Prize contenders gathering dust, all that earnest shit:
BIN IT.Get real, buddy.You wanna know how the world works, get Andrew Vachss.Not intellectual enough?Get James Sallis, he'll fry your cells. Or for downright metaphysical, Paul Auster.Crime writing, bro, it's the new rock 'n' roll.--Ken Bruen, Calibre (2006)
BIN IT.Get real, buddy.You wanna know how the world works, get Andrew Vachss.Not intellectual enough?Get James Sallis, he'll fry your cells. Or for downright metaphysical, Paul Auster.Crime writing, bro, it's the new rock 'n' roll.--Ken Bruen, Calibre (2006)
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Baffling combustions are everywhere!
At a house reading, listening to Stephen Rodefer read, I felt the back of the neck hairs
stand up straight, had to hold the bridge of my nose to keep the tears from coming. Absolutely stunning reading by a great poet—still, I was surprised by my reaction. I curate a series, hear lots of great readings, but am almost never moved to tears. The poetry wasn’t “sad”, although there were elements of sadness. Just, um, perfect.
My favorite short poem is by Ungaretti—various translations, the one I remember:
Morning
Enormity
Illumines me
My next tattoo. Clay Blackburn, the protagonist of my novels, has it tattoo’d on his arm.
Occasionally some work of art brings on the “enormity” effect. Ilumines me. And then I have to excuse myself and leave the gallery/reading/concert. Experience a kind of exquisite devastation. I’m always baffled/embarrassed when it happens—I’m not the type to make scenes. But I’m grateful for it—release, epiphany, deep connection—whatever the hell it is.
.
At a house reading, listening to Stephen Rodefer read, I felt the back of the neck hairs
stand up straight, had to hold the bridge of my nose to keep the tears from coming. Absolutely stunning reading by a great poet—still, I was surprised by my reaction. I curate a series, hear lots of great readings, but am almost never moved to tears. The poetry wasn’t “sad”, although there were elements of sadness. Just, um, perfect.
My favorite short poem is by Ungaretti—various translations, the one I remember:
Morning
Enormity
Illumines me
My next tattoo. Clay Blackburn, the protagonist of my novels, has it tattoo’d on his arm.
Occasionally some work of art brings on the “enormity” effect. Ilumines me. And then I have to excuse myself and leave the gallery/reading/concert. Experience a kind of exquisite devastation. I’m always baffled/embarrassed when it happens—I’m not the type to make scenes. But I’m grateful for it—release, epiphany, deep connection—whatever the hell it is.
.
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