Forthcoming: The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life (11/2010)

“A masterful storyteller.” —Bookforum

“Xiaoda Xiao has made a stark and unforgettable contribution to the literature of imprisonment and survival.” —Scott Spencer

“When it comes to prison literature, China remains a great enigma. Whereas the Soviet Union gave us Alexander Solzhenitsyn, China has, of yet, produced no such comparable international voice in the modern age. Xiaoda Xiao’s The Cave Man is . . . a small start . . . a compelling look at Mao’s forced labor prisons.”
—Los Angeles Times

When Xiaoda Xiao was twenty years old, he tore a poster of Chairman Mao while inebriated. Several months later, Xiao was arrested in order to fulfill an absurd quota, and, without trial, declared a counterrevolutionary. He was sent to a labor prison on an island in Taihu Lake, where he worked in a stone quarry.

The Visiting Suit chronicles Xiao’s arrest through his release from the labor prison five years later.

The book, told in stories—which have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, Confrontation, and Antaeus—focus equally on Xiao’s fellow inmates (a local theatre director, a veterinarian, a university professor), and capture their mutual everyday struggle to survive their sentences with dignity intact.

The cruelties inflicted upon the Chinese population by the government are ongoing, and The Visiting Suit provides a unique and important glimpse behind the curtain.

Xiaoda Xiao is the author of The Cave Man, a novel.

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If you are affiliated with a media review outlet and would like to receive an advance reader's copy of The Visiting Suit, please contract Brian Obenauf at brian [at] twodollarradio.com.

Forthcoming: The Correspondence Artist (2011)

“The Correspondence Artist is smart, funny, sexy, knowledgeable, subtle, disturbing, light-hearted, obsessive, and tragic: a comedy that, I surmise, is wholly confessional and wholly imaginary. Readers are urged not to resent a wit superior to their own, since it is deployed entirely for their particular entertainment.”
—Harry Mathews

Vivian, a writer, is carrying on a relationship with an internationally acclaimed artist. There are those who stand to profit—and suffer—from the revelation of her paramour’s identity, so in the service of telling her tale she creates a series of fictional lovers.

There is Tzipi, a 68-year-old Nobel-winning female Israeli writer; Binh, a twenty-something Vietnamese video artist; Santuxto, a poetic Basque separatist; and Djeli, a dreadlocked Malian world-music star.

Largely through Vivian’s email correspondence, she divulges the story of their relationship, from their first meeting to their jumpy spam filter, which arrests the more explicit notes that result in Vivian captive in a tiger cage in a Berlin hotel/being chased by a Medusa-like woman on a Greek Island/imprisoned by a splinter cell of Basque separatists/in an African hospital with a bout of Dengue Fever.

Barbara Browning’s captivating wit and passionate intelligence make The Correspondence Artist a love story like none other.

Barbara Browning has a PhD from Yale in Comparative Literature. She teaches in the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She’s also a poet and a dancer. She lives with her son in Greenwich Village.

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If you are affiliated with a media review outlet and would like to receive an advance reader's copy of The Correspondence Artist, please contract Brian Obenauf at brian [at] twodollarradio.com.

A Common Biography

Kevin Sampsell, small press guy at Powell's, publisher of the stellar Future Tense Books, and generous critic who picked Joshua Mohr's Some Things That Meant the World to Me as one of his fav small press books of 2009, has a new book out called A Common Pornography. Here's a video offering tips for readers nervous about flashing a book in public with "Pornography" in the title:

Part II: Wurlitzer on Bookworm

Part II of Wurlitzer's interview with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm is spent discussing the novels Flats and Quake, as well as screenplays for Glen and Randa, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Walker.

2010 UK Catalog

On The Drift - Michael Silverblatt Interviews Rudolph Wurlitzer

Trailer for New David Simon Series, Treme

New Tees

We have some new tee shirt colors -- caribbean blue, mandarin orange, yellow, and green apple.

And! we've just started making baby onsies and toddler tees.

Check out the website for, you know, more...

Sometimes Rockstars Have Fun.

Seriously, they look so happy. And that's pretty cool.

What is Your Opinion of the Human Species?

I had planned to read Guns, Germs, and Steel over the holidays. (Appropriate, right?) I guess I imagined it as a quiet time to relax over a sprawling non-fiction book. I stopped mid-way through the first thirty pages, after Jared Diamond was busily pointing out for the millionth time why his book was important (and how it wasn't racist).

This is something that annoys me to no end, and seems to happen fairly often with non-fiction: authors feel the need to preface the actual book with a declaration of relevance. Why? Isn't it really just an extended cover letter or jacket copy? I'm assuming because the book made it into print (and won the Pulitzer) that it is relevant, necessary, and not racist - you don't have to beat me over the head with it. And I've already started to read the book, you don't need to sell me on it.

Moving on:

I recommend reading this interview that John Yau did with Rosalyn Drexler published by The Brooklyn Rail in the summer of 2007. Something I love about the Rail is that their interviews come off as conversational, they allow their subjects space to digress, to tell stories about their friends and their lifestyles. In a world where most media boil down interviews to the most pungent five questions, and then even further for a single blocked stand-out quote, flipping through the Rail comes across as incredibly honest and relaxing.

"I don’t know what the right thing means? Nothing is right and nothing is wrong in art. Maybe it’s a bad thing to be open. (laughs) Maybe you should not reveal too much. However there’s almost nothing left to reveal. Every recipe has been imitated. People don’t even care if the soufflé has fallen, or who first made it. Or even if the information is true or false. Or the art is true or false. What is the answer? What is the question? Ask me later. Right now I’m busy dying." -Rosalyn Drexler (her painting, The Dream, is above)

[See also, The Brooklyn Rail's interview with Sherman Drexler.]

For Christmas Eve we went to my cousin's house where her three daughters seemed to migrate from one electronic device to the next. It made me think of this recording that Studs Terkel did with StoryCorps in Chicago before he passed away, that lingers with me. It begins with Terkel asking, "What has happened to the human voice, vox humana, hollering, shouting, quiet talking, buzz?"

I recommend reading the transcript of the recording, or better yet, listening to it. What he says makes me feel sane.

Seattle's Antidote to the Kindle

I recently wrote a piece for the Huffington Post talking about why I felt independent presses should accessorize more and how this could help to subsidize their publishing efforts. I mentioned a couple of presses that I felt did a good job of this, carelessly omitting one of my favorite indies, our good friends at Chin Music (and they probably have the coolest shirts of all!). Their shirts are perfectly in line with my belief that they are the best designed press making books today.

While I'm on the topic, I may as well recommend a couple of their books:

Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, is a moving depiction of Katrina, made all the more soul-stirring because of the knee-jerk emotive pull evident in the writing (it was written, edited, and produced within the first few months following the catastrophe).

Goodbye Madame Butterfly is my favorite book they've published. Written by Sumie Kawakami, the book delves into the sex lives, marriages, and relationships of modern Japanese women. Most interesting to me, is the story of the youngest female interviewee, whose view of marriage and sex is the most traditional of all, perhaps indicating the cyclical nature of generational trends.

Their newest book is Big in Japan, by M. Thomas Gammarino, which I haven't yet read. Gammarino will be reading at KGB Bar in NYC on December 21 with our own Xiaoda Xiao.

The People Who Watched Her Pass By - Chapter 1

Scott Bradfield's fifth novel, The People Who Watched Her Pass By, is due out April 2010 in the U.S. and May 2010 in Europe. Here is the first chapter:

Interested media or booksellers can request a galley by writing to brian[at]twodollarradio.com.

Unhealthy Mental Excitement

For whatever annoying reason I can't locate the exact blurb that Donald Barthelme gave for Nog upon its original publication, though I do recall it being something to the tune of ". . . full of unhealthy mental excitement."

Bud Parr recently pointed out to me that Barthelme included Nog in a list he made of books he'd recommend reading, which he passed on to his class at the time at the University of Houston. I haven't read most of the books Barthelme lists, but those I have read I genuinely loved.

In particular, I've been reading Max Frisch recently. I loved Homo Faber, which I finished a short while back. I was inspired to read Homo Faber knowing that Rudy Wurlitzer had adapted the book into the screenplay for Voyager, a film directed by Volker Schlondorff and starring Sam Shepard. And I've started I'm Not Stiller, a used copy of which I picked up at Spoonbill and Sugartown, though recently reissued by Dalkey Archive. So far, I think its incredibly brilliant.

I'm looking forward to reading more Frisch, as well as the rest of those recommendations made by Barthelme. It is wonderful that his list survived.

If I Was in NYC I'd be at Philoctetes

Francis Levy, author of Erotomania: A Romance, is one of the co-directors of the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination. They host truly valuable panels, films, and discussions on a wide range of topics.

Here are some upcoming events:

Nov. 7 - The Future of Healthcare, with participants: Robert Doar, Jonathan Jacobs, Diane Meier, Helen Morik, Gregory Nersessian.

Nov. 8 - The Wingdale Community Singers (band that Rick Moody is in).

Nov. 12 - Poetry and Microgenesis, poetry reading and discussion with Jason W. Brown and Steven Meyer.

Nov. 14 - Mathematics and Beauty, with participants: Eva Brann, Brian Greene, Mario Livio, Barry Mazur, Elaine Scarry.

Nov. 15 - The Inventions of Bob Dylan, with participants: Christopher Ricks, Matthew von Unwerth, Sean Wilentz.

The Philoctetes Center is located at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, at 247 East 82nd Street in NYC.

Is It Contagious?

from Amy Koppelman:

I started a company called Is It Contagious? Books. We publish children's books designed to explain and answer questions about the most common diseases. Our first titles are "Is Cancer Contagious?" and "Is Epilepsy Contagious?" Our next title, "Is Diabetes Contagious?," will be available in December. While these topics may sound depressing, many families will face them at some point.

The book idea started several years ago, when a close family member got cancer. [My children] asked [my husband] and I so many questions, most of which we couldn't answer: "What is cancer?" " Why does it happen?" "How is it diagnosed?" "How is it treated?" "Is it Contagious?"... Later that night, I began looking for cancer books for children. There were several on the market, but they are either very childish (a story about a dinasaur's mother) and/or scary (pictures of tumors and children with bald heads). Our books are different.

Please visit us at: isitcontagiousbooks.com. There you will see sample pages of the books. I think you'll agree that the books are well written and Vern Kousky's illustrations are both engaging and informative. [from Eric O.: Vern Kousky is also responsible for the cover design for I Smile Back.]

This is more than just a business to me. My mother-in-law died a little over a year ago. Walking through the hospital hallways and seeing both children and adults stricken by cancer and various other diseases made me realize that I had to do more with my life than just write novels about unhappy women. My hope is that these books will help dispel fear and enable better dialogue between family members, doctors, and friends. In truth, there is no explaining the inexplicable. My mother-in-law was a vibrant, loving, devoted mother and grandmother. Is Cancer Contagious? couldn't explain her death, but it certainly would have made it easier to answer some of the complicated questions my children asked.

Please know that while Is It Contagious? is set up as a business, a substantial percentage of each sale goes to a like-minded charity.

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Amy Koppelman is the author of I Smile Back.