The People's Library

Barbara Browning's The Correspondence Artist at Occupy Wall Street's library.

Brooklyn Book Festival

Be sure to stomp out to the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday. We'll be at booth #156.

Barbara Browning will be there! She gets to take the downtown train to appear on the 'Who? New!' panel, 11:00 A.M. @ The North Stage (conveniently located right beside our booth).

"Brooklyn Book Festival presents debut novelist picks Peter Mountford (A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism), Barbara Browning (The Correspondence Artist), Haley Tanner (Vaclav & Lena) and Samuel Park (This Burns My Heart). Introduced by Téa Obreht."

The Brooklyn Book Festival is Sunday, September 18, from 10 AM – 6 PM.

And be sure to check out the above promotional video, featuring Barbara Browning on the uke!

Barbara Browning Upstairs

Barbara Browning read from The Correspondence Artist last Thursday with musician Keren Ann as part of their 'Upstairs at the Square' series with host Katherine Lanpher. The good folks at B&N captured the event on video, which is now posted on their website for your viewing pleasure.

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!

A few more thoughts on obscenity

The first time my narrator, Vivian, actually encounters Tzipi Honigman in the flesh, they’re driving to a fancy restaurant in Tel Aviv and Tzipi asks her if she knows any of her poems by heart, and if she could recite one to her.

“With my heart in my mouth, I did – an unrhymed sonnet about failed love. It was called ‘Obscene.’ She looked over at me, smiling just a little. I felt extremely naked.” (p. 9)

I didn’t reproduce the sonnet in the novel, although I did include some of Vivian’s other poems. But I thought you might want to see the one she recited to Tzipi in the car. The epigraph is from Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse.

Obscene

“Discredited by modern opinion, love’s sentimentality must be assumed by the amorous subject as a powerful transgression which leaves him alone and exposed; by a reversal of values, then, it is this sentimentality which today constitutes love’s obscenity.”

No one would have raised an eyebrow at

the little sexual accoutrements

of their love. These might provoke a smile

but little more. She e-mailed him a file

called “dirty pictures” in which she appeared

in all her glory playing with sex toys.

Even that phrase, “sex toys,” goes to show

how innocent they were. He sent her back

a picture of his hard-on. She was charmed.

The thing that was obscene, the dirty secret,

was neither flesh nor fetish. It was love

itself. Bataille describes the sentiment

in all of its vulgarity—a massive

throbbing organ. An embarrassment.

Can we all say, "I love Karen Finley"?

The Feminist Press has just brought out The Reality Shows, a collection of her performance texts from the first decade of the millennium – commencing with “Make Love,” her response to 9/11 through a channeling of Liza Minelli which is, in Finley’s own estimation, “a complex amalgam of pee-in-the-pants humor, pain, and compassionate outpourings of sorrow” – and closing with “The Jackie Look,” which brings Jackie Kennedy Onassis back to ponder trauma, history, fashion and femininity as well as “the demands of being the first lady.” In between, Finley dwells with Terri Schiavo, Laura Bush, George W. Bush, Martha Stewart, Condoleezza Rice, and Eliot Spitzer. The texts are accompanied not only by photographs of Finley’s performances, but also by some of her own uncanny, disturbing and often very beautiful drawings.

I attended almost all of these shows, and each one stayed with me long after I left the performance space. In fact, the narrator of my novel went to see “The Passion of Terri Schiavo” and “The Dreams of Laura Bush” in 2007. She tries to explain Finley in an e-mail to her foreign lover. She recounts the NEA controversy, and the charges of obscenity. She says, “She is obscene. She is also fantastic and beautiful and sexual, and hysterical in the fullest sense of the term, and frightening and funny and deeply sad. I was very moved.” (p. 93) So was I.

The Reality Shows has a preface by Kathleen Hanna of the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, and an introduction by my friend the brilliant psychoanalytic theorist Ann Pellegrini. I. Love. Karen. Finley.

Narcissism

A few reviews have come out of The Correspondence Artist. So far they’ve all been pretty positive, although one guy wasn’t crazy about the images, and another wasn’t crazy about the end. When I read these things, mostly I’m just thrilled that the person actually read the book. Then I feel a little bad for a minute if they express some reservation, but I get over it pretty quickly.

The person, for example, that didn’t like the ending so much said it seemed a little “narcissistic” because the narrator is more in love with her own fiction than she is with her actual lover. But, being a narcissist, I decided to take this as a compliment.

My narrator has the same tendency. She writes an e-mail to her lover in which she quotes a passage from Nietzsche on women writers:

“The complete woman perpetrates literature in the same way as she perpetrates a little sin: as an experiment, in passing, looking around to see if someone notices and so that someone may notice.”

She says she knows the general consensus is that Nietzsche was a misogynist, but she finds some of the things he says about women kind of charming and totally recognizable in relation to her own person.

This may also explain why she put up for so long with Santutxo’s weird gender politics (see pp. 127-130).

Speaking of gender politics, I’m reading from the book and talking about feminist autobiographical fiction with Linda Schlossberg and Carmelita Tropicana on the 22^nd. Please come! Information here.

Why do I tell you these things?

There’s a poem by John Ashbery called “This Room.” It ends:

… Why do I tell you these things?

You are not even here.

I love this poem. I also love the name of the volume it’s in: Your Name Here. I thought of this book, and especially of this poem, often while I was writing The Correspondence Artist. One of the disconcerting things about writing is that sometimes you think you’re writing to someone, but then realize that person isn’t there: you’re writing to yourself. In the novel, I reflect on this in relation to Lacan, but you don’t really need psychoanalytic theory to understand it.

Anyway, whether you’re writing an e-mail or a letter or a novel, something funny happens when this fact dawns on you. It’s a little liberating, and a little sad.

As with so many things, Fats Waller probably said it best:

I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter

And make believe it came from you

I’m gonna write the words so sweet

They’re gonna knock me off my feet

A lot of kisses on the bottom

I’ll be glad I got ‘em

I’m gonna smile and say, “I hope you’re feeling better,”

And close with love the way you do

I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter

And make believe it came from you

This is like that letter I wrote to/from Djeli on pp. 108-109 in The Correspondence Artist.

Oh, but I should also mention one other song: the “Love Theme from Spartacus,” which I will always think of as the “Love Theme with Tzipi Honigman.” I mean the version on the Bill Evans album, Conversations with Myself. Improvising with oneself is a lot like writing letters to oneself. I explain why this song makes me think of Tzipi on pp. 90-91 of the novel.

Happy Valentine's Day

The Correspondence Artist is a book! That is, although the official release date is March 1, 2011, it’s printed and bound and you can order it here or you can go to your local independent bookstore and order it there (ISBN: 978-0-9820151-9-3) or if you really have to you can find it on Amazon or B&N but we all know you get extra karmic points for doing it the first or second way.

This being Valentine’s Day, I should mention that it makes the perfect Valentine’s gift. Buy four – one for each of your lovers!

If you are in or near New York City and are looking for something to do this evening, please come by St. Mark’s Church (10th St. and 2nd Ave.) at 8. Caroline Bergvall and Kim Rosenfield are reading poems (info here). Kim is reading from a new project called “I’ll Be Seeing You.” In honor of her reading, I made her this:



When I sing this song, I always cry a little when I get to the line about the moon. That’s because of that night that Djeli and I were looking at the moon from his terrace in Montmartre (p. 140). Or maybe it’s because of the night that Tzipi and I were looking at it from her terrace in Neve Tzedek (p. 150).

The Correspondence Artist GAME!

The narrator of Barbara Browning's debut novel, The Correspondence Artist, is having an affair with someone famous, and in order to protect her paramour’s identity, she creates four fictional identities through which to unravel her story. Imagine four flashlights, each a different color, shining inward to the central circle of our story. They combine to create a whitish light — “clever lies which secretly say the truth” — but there are still shades of hue and shadow. Browning offers commentaries on Fame, Gender, and Identity, and how those influence Love. Her deft passion and playfulness coupled with intellectual, psychological, and cultural analysis reminds me of Jeanette Winterson.

I’m sure many of you dream of meeting your favorite author (or musician or movie star). And I’ll bet many of you even dream of there being a spark that leads to a clandestine affair that spans years and continents. Come on, don’t lie to yourself. In fact, rather, INDULGE.

We would like to invite folks to write a mysterious love-letter/email about their fantasy celebrity paramour. Don’t actually name-drop the celebrity (just give hints submersed in the correspondence) and send it to twodollar[at]twodollarradio.com.

We’ll post the submissions on the Two Dollar Radio blog the week of February 21 and invite everyone to guess the celebrity they are addressed to. If your fantasy celebrity is on the scandalous side, we’re able to post your correspondence anonymously as well.

Barbara Browning Bonanza

These readings have been posted on our blog before but never in one tidy place. Here they are.

The Correspondence Artist

The Correspondence Artist, the oustanding debut novel by Barbara Browning, is now at the printer.

Earlier this week, Publishers Weekly raved about the book, saying "Browning relentlessly explores her theme of love's many faces, giving readers a rewardingly offbeat novel that's by turns sexy, humorous, and insightful."

For those who may have missed it, Bomb Magazine ran an excerpt last summer, and The Fanzine excerpted in the fall. There are plenty more good things on the way. Barbara's an extraordinarily graceful and witty writer, and I feel confident that this first novel will leave readers feeling satisfied.

Also, The Correspondence Artist marks the first time we will be working with a new printer -- Friesens, out of Canada. Who cares, right? The printers we've worked with in the past have been unable to print our books on 100% recycled paper content. Due to the size of our print runs, we have to print with paper stock the printer keeps warehoused, which is whatever the corporate presses use. So, beginning with The Correspondence Artist, all our books will be published on recycled paper. They'll still feature French flaps and deckle edges, and apart from the cool stamp on the copyright page (pictured below) you likely won't notice any difference. So you can read and feel good about it.

This is Mail Worth Rifling Through

Pics above from Bookshop Santa Cruz, Grace Krilanovich's hometown, where the book was a staff favorite for the year. For those who missed it, Grace had a great big essay on the LA Times website yesterday, talking about her experience publishing The Orange Eats Creeps and it's path toward her being selected as one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35.

W Magazine took '5 Minutes' with Xiaoda Xiao to discuss his new memoir-in-stories, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life. This is an intense, incredibly ambitious book -- tell your friends and friends' friends about it!

The Fanzine, a great site that regularly features the work of some talented writers like Kevin Sampsell, Dennis Cooper, Trinie Dalton et al, ran an excerpt from Barbara Browning's forthcoming novel, The Correspondence Artist, called 'La Rire de la Meduse.' It's a long-ish excerpt, which is the nice thing about the web and a place like The Fanzine, that they can publish longer pieces and disregard word and page counts.

So that's a truck-load of reading material that'll hopefully keep you busy for a while.

The Correspondence Artist Galleys

So, due back any day now from the printer, are galleys of Barbara Browning's debut novel, The Correspondence Artist (late-ish February 2011), a witty new comedy sure to delight fans of Nicholson Baker, Miranda July, and Charlie Kaufman.

The book was excerpted in Bomb Magazine this past summer, and will be excerpted in Knock this November.

Harry Mathews says, "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."

Here's the story: 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 sixty-eight-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 e-mail 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 being held 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.

Those interested in receiving Advanced Reader Copies of the book should write to Brian at brian[at]twodollarradio.com.

Here's an excerpt:

Open publication - Free publishing

Barbara Browning Reads Correspondence Artist!!!

Watch live video from Two Dollar Radio on Justin.tv

Barbara Browning Live!

Good news for people who like really fantastic news: Barbara Browning will be doing two readings next week from her forthcoming debut novel, The Correspondence Artist (February 2011).

On Wednesday, October 6 at 7:30, Barbara will be reading as part of BOMB's All-Stars Literary Reading Series at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. 'Santuxto Exteberria,' an excerpt from The Correspondence Artist, appeared in the summer issue of BOMB.

For those not in Fort Greene, Barbara will be reading, live, via Two Dollar Radio's brand spanking new video channel the night before, on October 5 at 8pm. Anyone will have the opportunity to pop in and ask Barbara questions about her new book. (I'm super-excited about this.) In the future, we'll be doing regular live web readings, interviews, and miscellaneous activities with our authors. It should be a blast, and plenty more opportunity for readers to interact with the writers.

kedjenou

Here's a recipe for kedjenou - the dish that Vivian and Djeli were eating at the African Grill in Bamako that first night when Mariam came storming in with her head-tie undone.

Ingredients:

1 chicken, cut up
2 or 3 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 eggplant, chopped
2 onions, sliced
3 hot chili peppers, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. ginger, minced
1 t. thyme
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 325˚. Put all the ingredients in a large pot with a tight-fitting lid. Place in oven for about 2 ½ hours. Jostle the pot a few times while cooking. Correct seasoning. Serve with foutou (mashed yams).

Tierno Bokar

Djeli's 2004 release, À Tierno Bokar, was one of the most politically trenchant and yet poetically sophisticated albums of recent memory. It was a complicated project for him to take on. He'd long ago openly stated his resistance to all organized religion and his specific concerns regarding Islam - not just fundamentalism, but even some moderate forms. He most frequently voiced his concerns in relation to gender politics and homophobia. But obviously, it was also important to acknowledge a figure of tolerance such as Bokar. Also, his sister Kadidia was deeply involved in Sufism. I'm sure this had an influence on the project.

Filles, filles, filles

In my novel, the narrator Vivian describes a field trip she once took with her son’s middle school rock band. They went to see a Mötley Crüe concert. The entourage consisted of her, a couple of tattooed, balding, ponytailed dads, plus the boys in the band:

“It was in Madison Square Garden. Somebody had snagged a skybox for our party. I tried to chitchat with the ponytailed dads. A guy brought in giant cups of soda for us, and potato chips, on the house. You know how rock concerts are. We were very far from the stage, but they have those huge video projections on the side. There were some women dancers with enormous, buoyant boobs making snarling faces at the audience. Tommy Lee rode onto the stage on a motorcycle and the crowd went wild. The biggest hit, which got the most enthusiastic reception, was their classic, ‘Girls, Girls, Girls.’

“Perhaps you know the lyrics to that one. They start out extolling the virtues of leggy, red-lipped beauties from the West Coast and the Northeast; then they reminisce tenderly about a certain sexual escapade in Paris, France. They manage to rhyme ‘ménage à trois’ with ‘breaking those Frenchies’ laws.’

“Their rendition of this little chestnut was accompanied by much snarling and gyration from the dancers. The dads drank their sodas and ate chips. So did the kids. So did I. I was wondering what we were doing there but thinking it was an educational experience for Sandro and me.”

Vivian also mentions this concert in an e-mail to Djeli. I think he understood the irony of her citing this particular song. Recently he posted an instrumental cover of it to his YouTube page:



I thought that was pretty sweet. At least Djeli has a sense of humor about himself.

I’d kind of hoped, though, that he would record the song with the words. It would be very pretty, really, in that haunting falsetto of his.

Filles, filles, filles
Les lèvres rouges, les bouts des doigts…

Raconte-moi une histoire
Tu sais laquelle…

Le Crazy Horse, Paris, France
J’ai oublié les noms, mais je me souviens de la romance…

Djeli Kouyaté

I’m back blogging this week about the last of my narrator’s lovers, Djeli Kouyaté. He’s a virtuosic Malian rock star - and a formidable intellectual. He studied political philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure. He generally keeps himself pretty busy.

In the span of just a couple of months in 2008, for example, he had a benefit concert for Cité Soleil with his best friend, Wyclef Jean. He also did a benefit performance at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. He was briefly back in Bamako for a private strategy meeting with Amadou Toumani Touré, the President. He spoke at the third World Congress Against the Death Penalty at the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris. He attended, though didn’t speak at, the Conference on Moral Particularism at Paris I. There was a documentary filmmaker who’d been following him around with a small crew. Djeli went back and forth between finding him entertaining and a pain in the ass. And of course, there was the regular media attention. This seems to flair up when he indulges himself in dinner dates with supermodels. Which happens with considerable regularity.

I haven’t spoken with him about Wyclef Jean’s possible run for the Haitian presidency. I’m sure he has mixed feelings.