NYC: "February House" arrives in May

The Public Theater is opening a world premiere musical based on the bizarre vignette of Brooklyn history where W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers and Paul Bowles all shared a house in Brooklyn Heights. Uncovered and named by Sherrill Tippins, the "February House" was kind of a glorious mess and it sounds like its inhabitants didn't get a whole lot of work done, just developed inappropriate crushes on each other (Paul Bowles' wife on Auden, who was gay, for example) and got cranky at fellow housemate Benjamin Britten for playing too much music. In other words, it's just like every roommate situation that ever was. (Anyone want to tell my upstairs neighbors that their bass playing is no good? OK then.)

"February House" was cowritten by two fellow graduates of the Best University Ever, Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley. I don't know them personally but I remember seeing Bockley onstage in college (most notably in Sarah Kane's "Crave") and think this is a really cool project. Also one of them, or their associates, is running a @FebHaus Twitter feed that is fairly incredible. Sample tweet: "Carson burned the soufflé, but the housewarming party last night otherwise went off without a hitch."

The dollar cart wins again

These are the gag books my coworkers got me for my birthday (yesterday) proudly displayed on my desk. Caption on GOING ROGUE says "I red books and things! Happy Christmas!"

That greenish item in the front is my real book present, Adam Christopher's dystopian New York novel EMPIRE STATE, which looks kick-ass. Nice job, coworkers. My heart leapt up when I saw that Strand bag.

Authors born on this day include...

• Jack Kerouac
• Edward Albee
• Millard Kaufman (BOWL OF CHERRIES)
• Carl Hiassen
• Dave Eggers

Letter To New York

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:

taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,

and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,

and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,

and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
--Elizabeth Bishop. As invoked in David Rakoff's HALF EMPTY, where the author recites it to himself as he goes in for an MRI.

The bag of my dreams

Keep your Birkins and your Louis. I don't need another tote bag but I NEED this BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER one from (where else?) Melville House. It says it can carry a French bulldog, not that I have one, but still.

Shit Franzens say

I was sorry that while Jonathan Franzen and I overlapped a little in New Orleans, I had left by the time he hunkered down on Tuesday night at Tulane to give a talk about why he hates everything and Edith Wharton isn't pretty enough. Just kidding! It was part of the school's "Great Writers" lecture series.

Jami Attenberg was, and from her report here are my three favorite quotes:

• "I am committed to endings…I can no longer be mistaken for a post-modern author."
• "Twitter is unspeakably irritating. Twitter stands for everything I oppose."
• "I was taught to be nice to people, which is my credo even though I seem to have some small gift for offending people without intending to."

Sadly I missed the ensuing #jonathanfranzenhates series of jokes (in short, everything). According to the Tulane report he also said "Writing a novel is an experience. The process is more important than the product," which I'm definitely not sure I agree with. But Jonathan Franzen surely hates when we speculate on his process, and the best way to get us not to is to drop hints like this constantly and submit to major magazine profiles. Obviously.

Tournament of Books '12: Let's do this thing

This was a fun exercise! I recommend it! That said I only went 11 for 16 on this bunch. I had time to start OPEN CITY, but not finish it; library copies of THE SENSE OF AN ENDING, STATE OF WONDER and THE SISTERS BROTHERS were scarce, and I didn't get the gumption to start 1Q84. So I made my picks based on the information I knew and where I thought each match-up would break; the only one I really had no idea on was STATE OF WONDER vs. SISTERS BROTHERS. Anyone want to fill me in?

Edit: And in classic March Madness fashion my bracket is already blown. Oh, well.

Tournament of Books '12: Hiding from THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME

For those who like their Cormac McCarthy just a little more tender.

Donald Ray Pollock created the rural Ohio area chronicled in (and giving the name to) his first book KNOCKEMSTIFF as a microcosm for mid-20th-century depressed America, venal and corrupted even when it tries to do good. Even the one true innocent in THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME is eventually turned by his environment, the poverty and lack of community in his small town slowly curdling inside his chest. America!

That innocent for me was Arvin, the son of a war vet and a waitress who loses both those parents in a manner so grim* the townspeople he encounters afterward are afraid of him.Taken in by his grandmother, who is also raising a girl abandoned by her father (whose mother also came to a grisly end), Arvin grows up wary and spoiling for a fight in a town of thieves, cheats and murderers, all with perfectly respectable public faces. It's like an even darker side of WINESBURG, OHIO. If there's anything fundamentally good left in Arvin, it's because his grandmother tries to shield her charges from Knockemstiff's worst faces as long as she can.

Finding out what happens to Arvin kept me furiously turning pages even as the people he crosses paths with go from garden-variety unsavory to icky to truly depraved. Sometimes it's impossible to read a character without wishing he would just be okay on some kind of cosmic level (even as you know it's not possible). In terms of plotting, Pollock really delivers in bringing several other characters around Arvin into his trials. He's a fairly new author (THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME is only his 2nd book) and I will be anxiously awaiting his next book even as I fear to crack the cover.

ToB first-round opponent: THE SENSE OF AN ENDING, a book I didn't get to because I was stubborn and refused to buy a novella at hardcover novel prices. (I didn't mean to get all fist-shaky about it, but truly it wasn't worth it to me. Why, that's nearly 14 cents a page!) That said, I'm predicting this one will fall Pollock's way because he's the underdog against Booker Prize winner Barnes. Later today I'll put up my whole bracket, because hey, the tournament is here! In fact, this is the first matchup, tomorrow (with Emma Straub judging).

*For me it was right up there with the famous tree in BLOOD MERIDIAN. The (spoiler) tree of dead babies. That gross and horrifying. Have fun! "Oh hey, what are you reading?" "Just a book with a tree of dead babies in it. How was your weekend?"

You keep me under your spell

This post perfectly captures what it's like to completely fall under the spell of a book and just stay that way. Isn't that the best?

It's been a while since I felt like that; I'm not mad, it's just the reality of life. I'm thinking back to last fall when I was flying back to New York and I got so deeply into THE MARRIAGE PLOT I practically forgot I was even on a plane. Last summer when we were preparing for the hurricane, a guilty part of me hoped that the power would go out and I would have an excuse to hunker down with a flashlight for the day, because what was I going to do, go outside?? (Instead, we drank a lot of wine and by the afternoon I had such bad cabin fever I "broke into" the park to look for storm damage.)

Do you remember the last time you were completely captivated by what you were reading?

Kindle sale books of the month

I recommend: Two personal finance titles, Ramit Sethi's I WILL TEACH YOU TO BE RICH and Thomas Stanley's THE MILLIONAIRE NEXT DOOR.
I might be buying later this month but not now: Ira Wagler's GROWING UP AMISH.

Kate Beaton on the delight of one-star reviews. (Visit her blog and related website for more LOLs.)

Hey look, it's my shining moment

One more note before I'm out the door: The new head of the company where I work namechecked SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY today and asked if anyone else had read it. Mine was one of two hands up.

"What did you think of it?"

"It was all right." Everyone laughed (clearly, they haven't been reading my prestigious blog, sir!). Okay, I hedged a little, but what if Gary Shteyngart had been his brother-in-law or something? He did not admit as much, so I think I'm in the clear.

Reading on the Road: Oh how I want to be in that number

Top five fictional New Orleans characters who, nevertheless, I would not like to hang out with
Edna Pontellier, THE AWAKENING
Stanley Kowalski, "A Streetcar Named Desire"
Ignatius J. Reilly, A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES
Willie Stark, ALL THE KING'S MEN
Blanche DuBois, "A Streetcar Named Desire"


And one I would: Raziela Davis, the ghost who narrates Ronlyn Domingue's novel THE MERCY OF THIN AIR. (A ghost tour guide! Oh, you fancy, huh?) If you read and loved Ann Rinaldi books when you were younger, you're going to love this book as a semi-grown-up version.

I am taking none of these ride-alongs, but I am taking a paperback to be named later (relax, I don't actually leave till tomorrow! Plenty of time to dither some more!) and hoping to get through GAME CHANGE on the iPad. So I'll just let the robot take over for a few days.

Unbookening: The gauntlet is thrown

If I were a Pinterest user I would probably have a board for really beautifully organized bookshelves to shame myself into clearing mine up. (But maybe you shouldn't use Pinterest anyway until they get this copyright business cleared up.) That said: By next month I am going to have mine cleaned up to the extent that I can put up a picture. It's not going to look like the one at left (think: fewer plants, fewer typewriters). But as the major design feature in my living space I should be able to look at it and not worry that all my SECRET THINGS!!!!! are going to fall out.  

If you would also like to play along with this game, I can throw up a reminder later in the month and you can send me a picture of your shelf (or shelves, you lucky person, you). Really, you only need to clean this one thing. That's the messaging I'm going with and I hope you forgive me. But in any case, I will and then you can snoop at all my books.


On to the main event! 

Checked out 9 books from the library
Bought 4 books on Kindle
Borrowed 1
14 in

Returned 10 to library
Donated 1
11 out

Not spectacular, but I always have a plan.

Photo: finalgirl

Things I am looking forward to

1. Marilynne Robinson's new book of essays, WHEN I WAS A CHILD I READ BOOKS.
2. "Gatz," the 8-hour-plus complete adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY, at the Public.
3. NW, Zadie Smith's first novel in seven years, out in September. Here's the UK cover (via On the Strand):