Walk, drink, listen to readings

Sorry this is turning out to be a New York-centric week on the old blog, but I keep running into good stuff that is both book- and city-related. Today's recommendation: The New York Lit Crawl on May 16. I don't know how exactly this works, but I gather it's a San Francisco import where people go from bar to bar and listen to authors read. If I were in town that weekend I would definitely be checking it out.

Somebody's been reading the Style Section!

Right on the heels of last week's article about how the Kindle hides what you're really reading, I saw this ad campaign on the subway shuttle for M-Edge Kindle accessories. (Please excuse the blurriness; it was taken on a moving train with my non-smartphone.)

They are sharp, and as someone with a carefully considered iPod case I can see the utility of them as well.

Announcing the next Talk of the Town topic

We haven't quite nailed down a date yet, but May's Talk of the Town episode will feature an interview with author Maria Espinosa, whose new book DYING UNFINISHED was released in January. Details to come as soon as I'm done practicing my radio voice.

It may have been a mirage, but I'm pretty sure it was a...

About a month ago on vacation I read Lawrence Block's A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, a detective novel in which a P.I. investigates the death of an attractive young woman and finds she may be just the latest in a series of grisly killings. The book is set in New York City, and while most of its locales were remote enough from me that I didn't actually feel any fear, there was one -- a stretch of Park Avenue South which a near-victim describes as the place where she was plying her trade as a sex worker when she was abducted.

As it happens, I do some business at a widget factory* nearby and can occasionally be found making widgets late into the night.** I always thought of the neighborhood as pretty good -- its branch gym is freaking spectacular compared to mine -- so it surprised me that this kind of trade would be going on there, even late at night.

A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES was published in 1992 so I took its gritty details to be a remnant of the pre-Giuliani era, a time in which I never lived in New York but keep hearing about as either the best or the worst of times. Besides, the only people I usually saw out after a day of industrious widgetry were workers from the 28th Street Duane Reade taking smoke breaks and clumps of tourists who had taken a wrong turn from Union Square... until early this morning.

I would like to give Ms. 3:15AM the benefit of the doubt -- after all, I was out there too, albeit dressed more like the hipster grifter*** than in shorts and fishnets -- but what struck me as odd was that she didn't seem to be going anywhere. There's pleasant loitering, such as I was doing earlier that afternoon on Amsterdam Avenue in the sunshine, and then there's a deserted street just begging to be crossed. She lit up a cigarette and sank down to the sidewalk looking more bored than anything, while I was so tired I found myself putting the word "cab" into this little ditty (0:57 if you're in a rush). Cabs were scarce that night, so I could overlook her pacing east from Park and back again, but when I finally found one she didn't even attempt to beat me to it.

It was a glimpse into a different New York -- or a sign that I really should try getting more sleep.

*much more colorful than the truth
**behind two levels of security, Mom
***if you haven't heard of this story yet, perhaps don't read New York-centric media, you are simply missing out. As a correspondent put it, "Never, ever start a relationship with a tattoo as stupid as 'I love beards.'"

Easiest rhetorical answer ever

Of course you can't tell it's Proust, and that's worked out really well for the iPod, or so I've heard. Clearly the point of this article was for author Nicholson Baker to confess he used to be super pretentious:

Years ago, [Baker] walked into a temporary job with a copy of ULYSSES. “I wanted people to know I wasn’t just a temp,” he said, “but rather a temp who was reading ULYSSES.”

Odds, also ends

• Your eyes don't deceive: That's best-selling author Jennifer Weiner surveying the virtual crowd before her July release BEST FRIENDS FOREVER. I don't think she needs any help, but if I were her I would advertise on blogs I like (could be reading, could be otherwise) and do a major author tour.
• Flavorwire just had a little wrap-up of reading-related iPhone applications. The author concludes that reading on your iPhone is "worth it to carry a few books on it for when you get restless at a bar" and goes on to suggest reading ULYSSES at 1AM in bars, which coincidentally is going to be the theme of my New York-based social club should I ever found one.
• Speaking of New York and fancyphones, a Brooklynite used his subway commute to write an entire novel -- 45 minutes each way, twice a day. This is clearly a scheme for someone with supreme focus, but I can see how it would work. The author is Peter Brett, and the book is called THE WARDED MAN. Let's hope the MTA doesn't hear about it, or they'll just cut more service under the guise of making us all Joyces.
• Online reading clubs are the new hot thing: The New Yorker Book Club is "discussing" DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON, which I recommend, while New York magazine kicked off their "Vulture Reading Room" feature with Charlotte Roche's WETLANDS, the racy German bestseller that is either a boundary-breaking erotic classic or a dirty, dirty book. (I don't know since I haven't read it yet.)
• On a more personal yet still literary note, yesterday outside my apartment I nearly bumped into one of my high school English teachers from back home. While it would have been indecorous to point out, I am always a little pleased when this happens in New York, the "small town with a subway." He's not teaching any more or even working at my high school, but I'm reasonably sure that wasn't my class's fault.
  

Be assured I am both yellow-stockinged AND cross-gartered.

Cheers to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley for proclaiming today Talk like Shakespeare Day in honor of what would have been the Bard's 445th birthday. It probably won't be as popular as Talk Like A Pirate Day, but you can message @ShakespeareSays on Twitter for help and chuckle over other people's Shakesperiences.

By the way, my first Shakesperiences? Reading "The Tempest" and watching, cringe all ye purists, the Baz Luhrmann "Romeo and Juliet." And yours?

Should literary novels be more like "The Wire"?

...is the title of a New York Observer article which takes a Bookforum essay about literature and the downturn to a bunch of novelists who, according to the essay writer, should not have written the books they wrote. Walter Benn Michaels criticizes books that take place in the past, most notably BELOVED and THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, because they aren't relevant to our current problems and in fact distract from those problems by reminding us that things can always be worse. Memoirs (too myopic!) and stories that emphasize ethnic over class difference are also out.

What's in? Novels about "society," for which Michaels provides the examples of AMERICAN PSYCHO and HBO's "The Wire," though only one of those is a book last time I checked. Naturally, the authors the Observer asks to account for their inability to write more generally claim they either have already done what's been asked of them (Wells Tower) or at least thought about it (Joanna Smith Rakoff), because apparently there's nothing indecorous about asking a writer point-blank "Why didn't you do it differently?"

"The end of the novel is sort of like the weather, people are always talking about it . . . but maybe this time, we’ll get some results," Michaels writes. This caught my eye because I have just started watching "The Wire," approximately 5000 years after the rest of the world crowned it the Best Show Ever. Michaels heaps on:

If AMERICAN PSYCHO harks back to the great novels of Edith Wharton—novels of manners in which the hierarchy of the social order is always what’s at stake—"The Wire" is like a reinvention of Zola or Dreiser for a world in which the deification of the market is going out rather than coming in.

I like "The Wire" so far although I'm only partway through season 1, but my viewing is undoubtedly filtered by having read David Simon's books HOMICIDE and THE CORNER. While both address the problems of Baltimore generally, in some ways they fail Michaels' test: They depict the past (the '90s) in specific detail (i.e. naming the bars where policemen drink) and develop particular characters, some of whose problems have to do with their ethnic and cultural background. Of course, Michaels would probably retort that Simon later learned his lesson, but I don't totally buy that either.

Meet your Pulitzer Prize winners

In fiction: Elizabeth Strout, OLIVE KITTERIDGE
In nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed, THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO
In biography: Jon Meacham, AMERICAN LION: ANDREW JACKSON IN THE WHITE HOUSE
In poetry: W.S. Merwin, THE SHADOW OF SIRIUS
In general nonfiction (how is this different?): Douglas A. Blackmon, SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME
In drama: Lynn Notage, RUINED

I'm 0 for 6 on these... anyone else?

Also, this week's sign of the apocalpyse (TM Sports Illustrated): Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of the Mesa, AZ East Valley Tribune shared an award for best local reporting for a five-part story on a local sheriff's undue focus on immigration enforcement; Giblin has since been laid off as was metro editor Patti Epler who shepherded the project. The paper's publisher told Portfolio that she didn't think it diminished the prize at all. Hmmm.

So little space on the nightstand

I've been starting a lot of books lately. Notice I didn't say reading a lot, because I've somehow gotten to the point where I have a lot of half-finished books sitting around, things that I've set down to work on something else but never managed to pick up. I look like a slouch but I do intend to finish all of these, someday...

Anna Quindlen, IMAGINED LONDON
Started when: I was on the flight back from the Dominican Republic.
And why: Recommended by my madre.
Possible obstacle: Was hoping to use it for a different writing project, which is why I put it down in the first place, opting instead to finish a book I could leave on the plane guilt-free.

James Ellroy, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL
Started when: I had just gotten back from the D.R.; this was one of the two books I brought and didn't read.
And why: I really liked THE BLACK DAHLIA and wanted to experience more Ellroy.
Possible obstacle: Ellroy's novel is less a procedural than a series of overlapping procedurals told from multiple characters' points of view. The longer I stay away from this on the harder it might be to get back into it.

Gerald Kolpan, ETTA
Started when: Right after I returned hme
And why: I was thinking about reviewing it. Upon reading some I felt it maybe wasn't a good fit, but was still sufficiently interested to keep reading.
Possible obstacle: The only hardcover in this bunch.

Janet Flanner, THE CUBICAL CITY
Started when: This past weekend.
And why: I was headed out on the town and swapped my usual carry-all for something smaller before realizing none of my books fit in it. What's that you say? Go out without a book? Please. I think we know each other better than that.
Possible obstacle: Its diminutive size could also work against it as, with room for only one book, I'd be more likely to take a more substantial one where there is room. Maybe I should just leave it in the handbag which required it.

Ted Conover, WHITEOUT: LOST IN ASPEN.
Started when: I can't remember.
And why: I took a college class in long-form writing in which we read an interview with Conover, a journalist who specializes in experiential writing where he goes undercover as a prison guard or rides the rails with hobos. For this one, he drove a cab in Aspen, which doesn't sound quite so rigorous, but I have been to Aspen several times and thought it might be interesting.
Possible obstacle: Not remembering what has happened in the book so far? I was only a chapter or two in, though, so it shouldn't be too hard to regain that ground.

I was at home and working this week, but it felt like a vacation. With one of my sisters in town, my usually prosaic off hours became a mad dash to see and do things I either would never have thought of or had been putting off. I love being a tourist in my own town.

One of the places we stopped by was this park near the Hudson River whose name I didn't notice (and, somehow, can't find online) -- just one of those tiny corners of Manhattan I seem to forget about and suddenly rediscover. A policeman strolled the oval looking bored; across the lawn, a blond man and a curly-haired girl rehearsed some kind of scene with a coach in a white T-shirt. We were flush against the West Side Highway but it seemed preternaturally quiet inside, despite the pile of bikers in the grass and the older couple on the bench next to us. New Jersey looked on, placid.

I'm looking forward to coming back this summer, with a book, a friend, or both.

Photo: ShellyS

Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd read passages from romance novels

Rush to repurpose these clips in 3... 2... 1...


Via 52books.

What Zooey Deschanel is reading

Via Gothamist:

So being named after Franny and Zooey, we wanted to know how many times you had read it. Once. Just once. Maybe twice.

Are you reading anything right now? Yeah, I'm constantly reading. I read like ten books at once, I'm like one of those people. I got one of those Kindle things. So awesome. The Kindle 2. I'm reading this book called "Under the Banner of Heaven."

Do you have trouble finishing books when you're reading ten at once? When I'm reading like five books at once, I feel like I never finish any of the five. Yep, that's a big problem. But I always have tons of scripts to read to so my fun reading is books and magazines.

Do you subscribe to any magazines? On my Kindle, I subscribe to The New Yorker.

Well, look at you. Well, look at me.

Deschanel's musical project She & Him is officially endorsed by Wormbook as a great soundtrack for reading (and other things).

Your Assistance Please: Fiction about college (for the non-jaded)

The trauma of the month of April for high school seniors is unbearable at the time but fades gradually with the years. This year I got to relive the nail-biting all over again as my younger brother and sister waited for their letters, but at long last the decisions are in, the commitments sealed. I'm so proud of them, not that I was surprised when the shadowy folks in admissions were impressed.

As a potential graduation present, I wanted to recommend them some fictional books about college, which take place in college or somehow reflect the "college experience," but I'm coming up a little short. To appreciate a great academic satire like LUCKY JIM, they'll probably have to spend some time in a department or at least get to know some grad students, good and otherwise. Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY is awesomely moody, and has twins in it to boot, but also a plot twist which would be inappropriate under the circumstances. And I was only in high school when I read JOE COLLEGE, so maybe it wasn't as stellar as I remembered.

All of this is to say that maybe the great American twenty-first-century liberal-arts college novel has not been written yet. Well, at least I'll know to whom to dedicate it. But I must be missing something! Got any great fictional books about college to praise?

A book club you will want to join.

I try not to cross-breed my book-related activities, but if you read this you might be interested in Wrapped Up In Books, the brand-new Onion A.V. Club online book club. We'll be virtually discussing the first book, Katherine Dunn's novel GEEK LOVE, starting May 11. There will be blog posts of varying opinions and a live chat. Come by, it should be fun.