Barbara Browning + Keren Ann

Hot Shit: This Thursday, be sure to stop in and stake out a seat at Barnes & Noble's 'Upstairs at the Square' series, which will feature Barbara Browning and Keren Ann, hosted by Katherine Lanpher.

Barbara will be reading from The Correspondence Artist while Keren Ann will perform songs from her new album, 101.

'Upstairs at the Square' will take place at the Union Square Barnes & Noble (also known as Francis Levy's Barnes & Noble) on March 24 at 7pm.

This event promises to be super-fantastic. We hope to see you there!

Thought: Bookstores

"As paper books become a niche product, niche retailers will be the best place to buy and sell them. Book lovers will always want a place to gather and hear recommendations from a bookseller who knows their reading habits, and their community. . . we may have to go back to shopping for books in stores that let dogs wander through the stacks, and don't even serve coffee."
-Edward McClelland, 'How Borders Lost Its Soul,' Salon.com

While McClelland's piece very much looks back, Jack McKeown and Don Linn look forward at the "supply gap" resulting from the Borders closures in an essay at InVerso. They propose the development of a Neighborhood Bookstore Development Bank, "modeled after a similar initiative that has worked successfully for independent grocery stores. Its mission would be to spearhead the deployment of capital to a new generation of bookstore entrepreneurs, as well as existing booksellers looking to branch out or upgrade their spaces."

From a 2009 piece by Jack McKeown: "A thriving neighborhood bookstore is recognized as a key element in the social, cultural and economic fabric of any community. This is an opinion widely shared by urban planners, government planning boards, Smart Growth advocates, landlords and real estate developers around the country."

I went to see Andre Schiffrin speak at The New School last fall as part of a series of discussions sponsored by n+1. He shared the view of McKeown and Linn, asking the audience if they needed a Duane Reade on every corner, and said, "It's a question of preserving urban civilization."

Slow Fade

Drag City has just released an audiobook of Will Oldham with D.V. DeVincentis reading Rudy Wurlitzer's Slow Fade, which you can download as an mp3 or a 5-disc set.

Per the site: “The story alternates between [Wesley] Hardin in Santa Fe, Mexico, and New York — shooting a last-stand Western until the producer blows the whistle and shuts off the funds, generating a cinéma vérité chronicle of his own life — and A.D. and Walker writing their script on the road, so that each movement in the present is complemented by an additional piece of the past uncovered. Apart from generating a respectable amount of plot suspense, this narrative counterpoint allows Wurlitzer to pursue a satirical bent as he charts both fantasy trips, which becomes a contrast between the spiritual excesses of two generations: Yosemite Sam and Mr. Natural, each on a suicide mission.” — Jonathan Rosenbaum

Book: House of Leaves

This book provided an incredible experience. I took my time with it, maybe finishing it in three months or so. It reminded me in the basic skeletal premise to another book I loved, Jonathan Lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table, but much much darker and taken in an entirely different direction. House of Leaves is engrossing, substantial, and proves yet again the value of book as object.

Thought(s): Francis Levy

Francis Levy, author of Erotomania: A Romance and the forthcoming Seven Days in Rio has a parody of The New York Times' 'Corrections Column' in The East Hampton Star. Here are some favorites:

"In a front-page story our country was mistakenly identified as United States of America. The correct name is The United States of America."

"In Tuesday’s article about the budget, several erroneous statements were made. Offering Social Security benefits only to those in the highest income brackets in order to stimulate investment while eliminating Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements is not part of the current plan to reduce the trillion-dollar deficit."

"In Tuesday’s edition of Science Times, it was reported that the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, could create a black hole, which would swallow up the universe. This report was based on rumors among a poll of college art majors and has not been substantiated by particle physicists who have studied the project."

"The Times reported on Thursday that Congress was increasing N.E.A. funding tenfold to bring American arts funding up to the level of France and England. The sentence in question should have read: “Congress has approved a 10 basis points or one-tenth of one-percent increase in arts funding.”"

New Literature Wilderness Exploration Group

Spend an evening with two fiction authors whose new books you should know about! Grace Krilanovich and Jarret Middleton (An Dantomine Eerly) will read from their debut novels, and talk with the audience about the future of fiction, getting published on an indie press, death, food, the woods, and more! Enjoy bizarre book-themed gift-basket raffle, booze, and more talk and fun carried on to a nearby bar after the event.

March 11th: The Waypost, Portland, OR - 7pm
March 12th: Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA - 7pm
March 26th: Stories Bookstore, Los Angeles, CA - 6pm

Trinie Dalton Live

Trinie Dalton, author of the forthcoming Baby Geisha (1/12), will be reading Friday, March 4th @ 7:30pm in Los Angeles @ Pepin Moore in Chinatown with Sarah Manguso, author of The Two Kinds of Decay.

Pepin Moore (the old China Art Objects)
933 Chung King Road
LA 90012
7:30pm, Fri. March 4th

Here or There, by Jay Neugeboren

'Here or There' is a story from the forthcoming (May 2011) collection, You Are My Heart and Other Stories, by Jay Neugeboren.

'Here or There' was originally published in Columbia Magazine.

March 2011 Catalog

Music: Radiohead

Radiohead released a new album last week called 'The King of Limbs.' I do love me some Radiohead. Though this song might be better served sans Thom Yorke's creepy clown dance.

Film: Tree of Life

Terrence Malick is a fucking champ. I cannot wait to see this movie.

Book: Short

The bold caption at the bottom of the front cover to Short reads 'Wall Street Meets The Office,' which boils this debut novel down to the most convenient line for the agent trying to sell a film adaptation. I thought it read more like a Harry Crews/Hunter Thompson combo taking on energy trading. There's a devious plot (or two) (or three) to make the rich richer, but what makes the book most engaging are the characters, each distinct and boldly drawn.

Short is hilarious, seamless, and features one of my favorite characters I've encountered in recent memory, Milt Harkrader. I'd follow him anywhere.

"Milt, like many other ten-gallon-hat-toting brokers in Manhattan, heralded from New Jersey. He needed the hat more than most because his hairline now began behind his ears. Milt had always been a loudmouth. Sometime after his divorce he had to have his jaw wired shut, the outcome of a late-night brawl that had occurred at a 7-Eleven in Rahway. This helped Milt develop a new respect for strangers but didn't stop him from talking so loud in bars, especially around his coworkers and other people he suspected wouldn't take the time to kick his ass."

Milt's on-point when teaching his son the value of confronting a man who calls you a 'bankrupt' behind your back, passing out in the pool of the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, passing out in a snowbank in Vail, being thrown overboard on a deepsea fishing trip after he unclips his harness because he doesn't like the way the 'life jacket straps tug his gut,' and then using the story to later at the bar to get himself laid.

As Milt would say, 'Taste it.'

Thought: Thomas Frank

From the February 2011 issue of Harper's Magazine. Thomas Frank has just begun a regular column dubbed 'Easy Chair.' I already feel confident saying he's freaking awesome and it's fantastic that he has this forum.

This particular quote is from maybe his second piece, titled "Servile Disobedience," in which he encourages poor people -- the serving class -- to withhold their niceness for a single day:

"For decades we have attacked [the government], redirected it, outsourced it, and filled it with incompetents and cronies. Yes, it still works well enough when we need it to replenish the accounts of investment banks or bang some small country against a wall, but those branches of it designed to help out Americans of "lower socioeconomic status," as the scientists would put it, are now bare. The government fails the people of New Orleans when they are hit by a hurricane, fails to notice the cadmium paint in the marketplace, does a lousy job educating our kids, can't keep the libraries open or the park lawns mowed, overlooks the catastrophic shortcuts taken by its pals in the oil-drilling industry -- and all we can do to express our frustration is elect candidates who promise to hack it down even more."

Music: The Kills

The Kills have a new album coming out in April called Blood Pressures. 'Satellite' appears to be the first single. Badass.

Film: Rubber

I don't know what to say, other than that I will be seeing this.