Erotomania: In Transit (a reader's testimonial)

We received this through top-secret channels of communication. A reader of Erotomania: A Romance, novel by Francis Levy, on New York City's subway system.

"I started reading the book on the subway. People around me quickly noticed the effect the book was having on me and became curious. Soon, they were asking, hey man, what you reading. Then it was, hey man, read it out loud. The whole car was insistent. What choice did I have.

"So I started to read it aloud. I am no actor, but I read well. I read slowly, calmly, carefully. I did not ham it up. I did not overemphasize the racy parts. But then the writing doesn't need that, does it. Perhaps my calm reading only increased the effect.

"I was focused on my reading, nose in the book. So I didn't at first see what was going on. People stayed on, let their stops pass by. They become flushed and a bit squirmy. At first, they didn't know what to do. But then one man and woman who were not traveling together, moved to sit together. Soon the entire car had paired up. Some of the pairs were a bit weird, ages and styles that did not belong together, but no one wanted to be alone. I just kept reading. I was totally engaged and I guess became oblivious to those around me. When I finally came to a point where I needed to pause, I looked up. Every single couple, young, old, in between, mixed up, were lying back in post coital bliss. The car was now heavy not only with the words, but also the sounds, smell and taste of sex.

"It was like the old cigar factories. One worker would read stories while therest worked. I was the reader, they worked, so to speak.

"Though i had not participated, not had the satisfaction the others achieved, I still felt very good. I hadn't written the book and I hadn't had thepleasure of letting it take me over. But clearly I had helped increase the pleasure in the world by a small amount in one subway car.

"I left the car then to allow them all to put themselves back together and resume their anonymous travels. No one said a thing as I exited."

I'd like to encourage this sort of behavior. It's good for people.

As the reader notes, the book has a tendency to make you squirm. Anyone with an experience of reading (doesn't have to be aloud) Erotomania in a public place is strongly encouraged to either share by commenting on this blog, or emailing to twodollar [at] twodollarradio.com.

When I Grow Up, I Want to be Reviewed Like This.

Erotomania: A Romance, the first novel from Francis Levy:

The Village Voice
Read Francis Levy's Erotomania, Wash Hands.
Are golden showers the blowjobs of tomorrow? Just ask this satirical novelist.
Review by Zach Baron
[link: http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-05/books/read-francis-levy-s-erotomania-wash-hands/]

"[A] hilariously satirical debut novel: sex, leavened by comedy, shimmying enthusiastically in the echo chamber of a century of writing on the once-taboo subject. Miller, Lawrence, and Genet stop by like proud ancestors, godfathers of modern literature's pornographic impulse. But it's a more recent generation of mischievous, deviant writers (Nicholson Baker, Mary Gaitskill) that truly looms large—"

"Gaitskill and Baker's French-kissing cousin."

Exquisite Corpse
Review by Andrei Codrescu
link: http://www.corpse.org/content/view/127/40/]

"Erotomania is a spiritual quest: substitute the word "God" for "fuck," and there you have it, the silence filled with joy.

"It's a great book, written with flawless verve by a tremendous fictioneer and thinker, and it deserves glory. It is published by a small press that may yet become great if it manages to set Erotomania as the high-bar of its offerings. In any case, have it on my word, a reader, run and buy this book, it's a classic."

Amy Koppelman Will Be Required Reading in Schools One Day.

There feels like an amazing buzz of anticipation about the release of Amy Koppelman's forthcoming novel, I Smile Back.

Get giddy with these ringing endorsements:

"Amy Koppelman’s I Smile Back is amazing. There’s wit, speed, range, and complete authority here. Among other qualities, it has presence — you hold in your hands a pretty wild ride."
—Darin Strauss

“Amy Koppelman probes deeply into the dark and cavernous recesses of a picture-perfect suburban mom, and emerges with one of the most terrifying novels I’ve read in ages. It’s a glorious little explosion of a book.”
—Dani Shapiro

“Like the outlaw movies that Laney likes, Amy Koppelman’s unforgettable heroine is dangerous, raw and untamable. Like Laney, Koppelman refuses to tone down, be polite, or color in the lines - which is what makes I Smile Back so brilliant and devastating.”
—Susan Shapiro

“Amy Koppelman writes with beauty and precision about a life turned ugly and disoriented. Laney Brooks is a heroine on par with Joan Didion’s Maria Wyeth. She captivates not only because she recognizes the darkness closing in around her, but because a part of her welcomes it.”
—David Benioff

“One of today’s most fearless and brilliant writers, Koppelman peels away at the dark side of the suburban dream. The prose gleams like poetry, and she’s given us a heroine so original and disquieting, that I dare any reader to forget her — or Koppelman.”
—Caroline Leavitt

“Amy Koppelman’s portrait of a contemporary American couple will slash and burn every idea you ever had about marriage. Koppelman’s vision is both dark and ferocious; once you are in her grip, she’ll never let you go.”
—Yona Zeldis McDonough

(December is when I Smile Back will be released.)

(Check out Amy's pic, where she dons a TDR tee.)

2 Publishers Weekly "Big Books" Selections.

Both Erotomania: A Romance, by Francis Levy, and Crust, by Lawrence Shainberg, were included by Judith Rosen in her August 4th article in Publishers Weekly called "Big Books, On Campus and Off. Hot independent and university press titles for the fall."

Regarding Erotomania, Rosen says: "Three year-old Two Dollar Radio plans to launch this nontraditional love story, with traces of Bukowski and Henry Miller, at New York City's Museum of Sex."

Regarding Crust: "This novel stands out for several reasons, not least its subject matter, nose picking, but also its more than two dozen four-color illustrations."

One Thing That Meant the World to Me.

I'm pretty excited. We're going to be publishing a first novel by this writer named Joshua Mohr, a terrificly talented new voice.

The title alone packs a wallop: Some Things That Meant the World to Me.

Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby said this about the book: "A startling debut. Joshua Mohr takes us to a different city, but a city we know, populated by the dark side of ourselves."

Feast on this first paragraph from the novel:
I’d like to brag about the night I saved a hooker’s life. Like to tell you how quiet everything else in the world was while I helped her. This was in San Francisco. Late 2007. I’d been drinking in Damascus, my favorite dive bar, which was painted entirely black—floor, walls, and ceiling. Being surrounded by all that darkness had this slowing effect on time, like a shunned astronaut meandering in space.

It's sharp, it's potent, it will make you swoon.

Erotomania/Levy in the LA Times Book Review.

In a very discouraging piece of news, it was revealed earlier this week that the Los Angeles Times will discontinue it's standalone Book Review. The final supplement will appear in this Sunday's issue.

I was very happy to discover that in this past Sunday's issue (7/20 -- second to last issue ... ever), Richard Rayner reviewed Francis Levy's Erotomania: A Romance in his monthly "Paperback Writers" section.

This is what he had to say:
"[Levy's] excellent too, like Miller and Bukowski, on the mechanics and energy and animal filth of rumpy-pumpy, bringing to his sex scenes all the humor they need. There's a hilarious sequence in which the lovers use art criticism as a sex aid. Readers will never think of Robert Hughes or the abstract Expressionists in quite the same way. Sex is familiar, but it's perennial, and Levy makes it fresh."

The Los Angeles Times has been very supportive of our titles so far this year, but even had they not been, I'd be sad to see the Book Review go. I realized this when I randomly told my two-year-old daughter (jokingly), "You'll never know the Los Angeles Times Book Review in your lifetime," and I stopped because I imagined the lack of appreciation of the literary arts in the mainstream media, and where things could go during her lifetime. Something has to change.

The Neugeboren Train Keeps On Rollin'.

Steven Kellman, a greatly respected reviewer, contributed his insightful take on Jay Neugeboren's 1940 on The Huffington Post this past week.

There was this particularly convincing passage:

"The wisdom of Neugeboren's novel comes from its recognition that final solutions evade without answering questions. Bloch rejects facile attempts to explain Hitler and subdue Daniel. The advice he quotes from Rainer Maria Rilke, "to have patience with everything unresolved and to try to love the questions themselves," is as valuable in 2008 as it is in 1940."

Rudolph Wurlitzer Interviewed by Michael Silverblatt.

Rudolph Wurlitzer was interviewed by Michael Silverblatt on KCRW's Bookworm radio program.

The interview was broadcast in Los Angeles on July 24, and is available for download, podcast, or in other related mediums through KCRW's website.

Silverblatt provides a very focused, engaged forum for author's to discuss their work, and his take is always extremely thoughtful, prepared, and passionate.

This is worth checking out for anyone interested in the dynamics behind The Drop Edge of Yonder and background to the book.

1940 Review in Washington Post.

The Washington Post ran a wonderful review of Jay Neugeboren's masterful novel, 1940, in today's issue of the paper.

Tova Reich, author of the novel My Holocaust, wrote the review, titled "Diagnosing Hitler." Reich called 1940 "Intelligent and absorbing."

Also, excerpted from the review:
"Complexity is the underlying motif of Neugeboren's subtle and affecting novel -- the complexity of the human hearts Elisabeth draws, of the subway system her father helped create, of the subterranean world under the city streets that so attracts Daniel, and, most important, of the roots of evil hidden in Bloch's memories of Hitler."

Add to that, a splendid write-up in the Summer Issue of the Jewish Book World, which declared that "this well written ... novel merits a wide, appreciative audience."

Rudy Wurlitzer Blogs at Maud Newton!

Rudy Wurlitzer has succumbed to the digital age and contributed a guest blog at MaudNewton.com.

The really fascinating piece tackles Rudy's history in publishing and Hollywood, and is called "Rudy Wurlitzer regretfully declines the invitation to tap dance on your rubber raft."

You Know Neil.

In 2006, marking the launch of Two Dollar Radio con distribucion - a significant milestone in the history of our company - we released Anthony Neil Smith's second novel, The Drummer.

What makes the memory that much sweeter is that it happened with an amazingly talented author who also happens to be a great person.

In May, The Neil celebrated the release of his third novel, Yellow Medicine, with Bleak House Books.

Publishers Weekly called the book "well-written ... contemporary noir," and Booklist says "Smith has a powerful voice and delivers quite a romp."

Ch-ch-check it out.

Nog, the first novel by Rudolph Wurlitzer.

I have an uncontrollable erection as I type this: We're happy to annouce that we will be re-releasing Rudolph Wurlitzer's first novel, Nog, in 2009.

Nog was originally published in 1969 by Random House, and, throughout the years, has survived several incarnations. (Despite someone, somewhere dubbing it a "headventure". Ummmm.)

Here's what people said about Nog when it was first released:
"The Novel of Bullshit is dead. Rudolph Wurlitzer is really, really good." -Thomas Pynchon.

"Nog is to literature what Dylan is to lyrics." -Jack Newfield, Village Voice.

Plenty more to follow, so stay privy.

Crust the Hot Topic.

On Boston Globe's Brainiac Blog, Joshua Glenn has written a piece on Lawrence Shainberg's "hotly anticipated novel "Crust".

The Opening to the Article: "It's finally here! I'm talking, of course, about "Crust," the hotly anticipated novella by Lawrence Shainberg, author of "Memories of Amnesia" (a neurosurgically acute piece of fiction in which a brain reports on its own deterioration), not to mention one of the most entertaining books I've ever read about Zen Buddhism, "Ambivalent Zen." The literati have been buzzing about this book for a couple of years now, so I almost thought it was an April Fool's joke when it arrived in the mail.

"Published by Two Dollar Radio, Shainberg's footnote-laden, Vonnegut-worthy satire recounts how one Walker Linchak, a highly decorated but bored author in his late 40s, accidentally helps pioneer and promote a Scientology-like movement that combines science, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and theology. The movement is called Nasalism, for reasons which immediately become obvious, and George W. Bush is one of its fervent adherents. In the book, I mean; I don't know where the president comes down on this issue in real life."

And in Closing: "But what the book really satirizes is American culture and media -- the way trends are conjured out of nothing, thanks to a few blog posts here, a tenure-track academic looking for a hot topic to theorize about there, and of course, newspapers like this one.

"I can't reveal any more, at this time, because the book is embargoed until October. But let me just add my two cents to the excited blurbs contributed by the novelists Jonathan Lethem ("One of the most perverse and single-minded satires I've ever read") and Norman Mailer ("It's wild as sin and revolting as vomit and as exceptional as the lower reaches of insanity itself"). I think that Two Dollar Radio has picked a real winner."

Fun @ Pilcrow

We had a blast at the first inaugural Pilcrow Lit Fest in Chicago.

Here are some good folks whose acquaintance we made over the Memorial Day weekend: author Jami Attenberg, Zach and Jonathan at Featherproof Books, the future of books Kevin Sampsell, Jennifer and Willy of Impetus Press, Jon Resh of Undaunted design, author Timothy Schaffert, Lauren Cerand, among others. Be sure to check out their work.

Also, a sincere virtual congratulations to Amy Guth and Leah Jones, the masterminds behind Pilcrow who managed to raise $4,000 in support of the New Orleans Public Library. We should all be so inspired.

The Shanghai Gesture - New Gary Indiana Novel

We're pretty stoked (and I don't use that word lightly - I would never use that word lightly) to be publishing Gary Indiana's new novel, The Shanghai Gesture.

The acclaimed author of Do Everything in the Dark, Depraved Indifference, Let It Bleed, Resentment, Gone Tomorrow, and Rent Boy (among many others) returns with a modern take on Fu Manchu (beware!) that crackles with the sharp wit, nihilistic vision, and utterly original voice that have become lynchpins of the author's career.

When we know more, you'll know more.