Joshua Mohr Reading at Booksmith

Ecole de Nettoyage

Nettoyage is a French word that refers to house cleaning, but the modern école de nettoyage, which grants terminal degrees in house cleaning, generally has a school of continuing ed where you can attend non-credit courses on relieving oneself. Wouldn’t it be great to feel the next time you use an airport bathroom that you will know your way around the faucets, and the next time you hit a rest stop on the thruway you won’t feel that you need to worry about your husband or wife accusing you of having an illicit relationship when you contract an STD from the fowl waters shooting up into your asshole, vagina or penis? Have you ever gone into a bathroom at one of the airports and stuck your hand under the electric-eye controlled soap dispenser? Have you ever then stuck your hand under the electric-eye controlled water faucet to no avail? Have there ever been instances where neither the soap nor the water has come out, no matter how frantically you have waved your hand under the dispensers or faucets? Have you ever gone into a stall on The New York State Thruway and found that the electric-eye controlled flusher flushes while you are still sitting so that the unfriendly waters in the drain shoot up into your orifices? Have you ever been in one of those futuristic affairs where there are no electric eyes, but at the same time no recognizable soap, water or paper towel dispensers? Have you just had to go on your nerve in these strange bathrooms and has it ever seemed to you, once you have entered such an environment, that you are never going to be able cleanse yourself or even go to the bathroom to begin with? In today’s modern world, it is becoming increasingly necessary to attend an école de nettoyage.

[This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture.]

The Skin I Live In

The notion of the mad doctor or scientist, who kidnaps and imprisons subjects for his experiments, is a staple of horror films. It is a also unfortunately a recurrent staple of reality, where newspaper headlines routinely report cases of imprisonment. In one an Austrian psychopath, Josef Fritzl, actually fathered children with the imprisoned daughter he’d incested. If nothing else Pedro Almodovar ‘s The Skin I Live In exemplifies the director’s obsession with plot. Horror film plots, romantic plots crimes of passion are all gris for this plotmeister. He is the most plotty of modernists. No Bergman or especially Antonioni film was ever so heavy on plots as Almodovar's are and The Skin I live In takes the cake. The enormous reticulations of the plot in question lead to the simple conclusion that however much we change the surface, the inside of the human being is stubbornly unmalleable . The skin we live in is still an intransigent ego, no matter how much it’s tattooed or it the case of the term the film coins, transgenesized. It’s an anti-Pygmalion if you like or another version of Vertigo in which the protagonist falls in love with someone who doesn’t exist. What’s really interesting is the brute grief that lies at the heart of all the desire to remake and reshape reality--another curiously simple, but essential element that is like the sun around which the other planets of the complex story turn. Louise Bourgeois makes a cameo appearance in the form of a book of her work. Bourgeois’ sculptures are psychohistories and testaments to trauma. The appearance of the Bourgeois book also makes a cool art critical point in comparing plastic surgery with her preoccupations. Robert Ledgard (Antonion Banderas) the villainous plastic surgeon who drives the action has lost his wife (a burn victim who jumped out of the window on seeing her reflection) and a daughter (who has never recovered from the trauma of seeing her human cinder of a mother fall to the ground). There is yet another level of the movie having to do with other mothers, the mother of the plastic surgeon and the mother of the kidnapped victim, a young man who undergoes a vaginoplasty. To return back to Vertigo, the movie is vertiginous, highly flawed and much more powerful than some critics are crediting.

This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture.]

Stonewalled III: Post Modernist Sexuality

Sexuality is a biological drive, but it is also a figment of the imagination. If consciousness is ever separated from the body, with our species preserved as pixels of intelligence migrating through cyberspace, then the very notion of what it means to be male and female will revert to being a fiction.  Our present culture is obsessed with pornography, which has become infinitely ubiquitous and is still looked at as a virus which distracts unwary minds from a more innocent sexuality—which they might be more prone to undertake had they not become so infected. But is there reason to believe that pornography has become the fuel for migrating consciousnesses that are increasingly separated from the mother ship? We are still men and women, made of flesh and blood and hormones, but increasingly we find our functions usurped by technology. No wonder radically fundamentalist religions are so intent on shielding their followers from the influences of modernity. Enlightenment ideals of reason and equanimity have no  place amidst the brute inequities of biology. It’s no wonder that there is so much sexual dysfunction in the battered and defeated armies of heterosexual culture.  However, there is a hope. Once mankind has totally done away with its dependence on the body—Ray Kurzweil’s idea of immortality coming in the form of organs made from microprocesssors is only one of a number of possible outcomes—then sex will take its rightful place as one of a number of cultural institutions for which tickets are purchased say like for Lincoln Center or BAM.

[This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture.]

Stonewalled II

Early feminists had railed against pornography and the objectification of women, but feminism was evolving and succeeding generations began to reevaluate the role of the women in the context of  Enlightenment notions of freedom and liberty. It would be hard to consider the famous Italian porn star and politician la Cicciolina, who was the wife of the sculptor Jeff Koons, to be an example of a woman who was exploited by men even though she might, in fact, be the object of their fantasies. Entrepreneurial personalities like la Cicciolina and Madonna marketed their own bodies without the need of exploitative male pimps and were in control of their own destinies. By the 1980's Vagina envy replaced penis envy as the manifestation of covetousness between the sexes. As Camille Paglia would point out in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nerfertiti to Emily Dickinson women had superior powers, both physically (genitally) and metaphysically, of which men were in awe. Men’s need to compensate with increasingly violent pornography centering around the notion of submission, in particular gagging (deep throating) and defiling (facials), were signs of male jealousy rather than male desire (and ultimately exemplified the higher regard in which females were held by their male counterparts). Within the short period of time from 1969, in which the Stonewall riots occurred and gays had begun to assert their rights, heterosexual men and women had begun a journey of their own, characterized by a new dialectic in which self-realization and self-expression challenged both classical feminist and male chauvinist ideals.


[This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture.]

Mourir Auprès de Toi

An amusing short film by Olympia Le-Tan, Spike Jonze, and Simon Cahn.

Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side) from Veronica Christina on Vimeo.

Stonewalled

In the '50s and even '60s, it was still fun to be a heterosexual. You were part of a group. The guys watched football and maintained a double standard in which they worshipped or defiled the opposite sex depending on whether they were courting their ideal or preying upon unreciprocated love. On the distaff side there were a complementary set of affects, not so much having to do with the dichotomy between romance and lust as with the notions of beauty and femininity. Two of JFK’s love objects were thus Jackie, a lady, and Marilyn, a siren. Then the pendulum shifted and it became more fun to be gay. After Stonewall, gay people came out of the closet in droves and wreaked vengeance against their  tormentors. Now it was not only fun to flaunt and turn images of what it meant to be male or female upside down, it was a cause. Sexuality was not merely a matter of desire, but of rights, and so a whole class of gay and lesbian people who’d had to hide their inclinations fought for the right to be legally married (and call their male partner “wife” or their female partner “husband”) and join the military. Male heterosexuals were literally left walking away with their tails, or penises, between their legs, for masculinity, at least in its heterosexual form, was troubled and impotence was on the rise. If only impotence and loss of desire were a cause, some guys might have been able to walk away with shit-eating grins. But now the troubled heterosexual was in the position of the still-closeted homosexual of the '50s. Our new all-American male had something to hide. And how did  the post feminist heterosexual female fit into the picture? (To be continued.)


[This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture.]

Steve Erickson blurbs Radio Iris!

"Working for a company that might be called Kafka Ballard & Dickinson, bearing a kind of sonic witness to a world of static, Iris likes to listen the way some like to watch. Searching for home, she’s the passenger of her own voice. Anne-Marie Kinney’s Radio Iris is a novel of unsettling humor and elusive terror, a piercing loneliness and the strangeness of the banal, and a hushed power that grows in volume before your ears."

-Steve Erickson
=================

Radio Iris, a novel by Anne-Marie Kinney, is scheduled for publication May 2012. You can write to eric[at]twodollarradio.com if you're interested in receiving an advance copy for review.

Brooklyn Book Festival Sale

Stop by our booth at the Brooklyn Book Festival today - #156, conveniently located next to the North Stage where Barbara Browning will be appearing at 11am!

For those not in Brooklyn, from 10am - 6pm, we're offering the same deal online as what we're offering at the fest: any book for $10, any 2 books for $15! (Including pre-orders, which won't ship until book is actually published.)

Brooklyn Book Festival Sale!

We'll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival tomorrow (Booth 156!) hocking our wares, be sure to stop out and sale hello.

For those that aren't in Brooklyn, we'll be offering a Brooklyn Book Festival sale through our website from 10am - 6pm (the same hours of the fest), where you'll be able to buy any book online for just $10, or any 2 books for $15.

That's just tomorrow, Sunday, September 18 from 10am - 6pm.

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!

You're Invited!

THE COMMITTEE FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE FICTIONAL IMAGE OF RIO, EVEN IF IT MEANS BURNING BOOKS AND CREATING THREATENING EFFIGIES OF DESPISED WRITERS, INVITES YOU TO A READING AND PUBLIC RECANTING

WHEN: SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

WHERE:  THE SIDEWALK CAFÉ (94 Avenue A at Sixth Street NYC)

TIME: 6:15

Mr. Levy has allowed himself to be put in stocks for this reading so that he may demonstrate how sorry he is for offending not only the people of Rio, but mankind in general. Since publishing SEVEN DAYS IN RIO, Mr. Levy accepted an invitation from the Brazilian government to view the destruction that his novel has wrought. After touring devastated areas of the city, Mr. Levy described being shocked by all the untruths that his character Kenny Cantor perpetrated in the novel.

Mr. Levy saw no evidence of pickpockets anywhere and performed a test whereby he left $l0,000 in small denominations on a public bench near the Copacabana. When he came back from a walk on the beach, the money was all there and his frenzied attempts to find thieves or anyone who would take it were unsuccessful. One resident of the city suggested that the reason why the money wasn’t taken is that the Brazilian economy is booming and $10,000 American dollars is not worth the trouble for the city’s affluent populace. Eventually, Mr. Levy had to hire a cleaning service to sweep the money away— in order to avoid getting a ticket for littering.

As for prostitutes, Mr. Levy is not sure where Kenny got his ideas from. Mr. Levy found that the Copacabana, one of the most famous beaches in Brazil, was filled with nuns in habits. Not able to find any members of the world’s oldest profession in a city where women who might have sold their bodies now earn higher wages selling derivatives, Mr. Levy hired a private detective service, Three Guys, named after the popular coffee shop opposite the Whitney. Three Guys helped him to locate some alumnae working girls in the financial services industry.  But Mr. Levy was shocked to find that none of the former prostitutes he interviewed had ever heard of Susan Sontag. Through no fault of his own, Levy again found that he’d been duped by his own character.

“Basically, I was receiving misinformation from this fictional individual. I have no intention of shirking responsibility for my crimes. I’m not trying to say that I was just taking orders, but I’m clearly a victim too. I also think that Kenny’s attitude towards psychoanalysis is totally distorted. He treats psychoanalysts like whores who bilk their wealthy patients. Anyone who has ever been psychoanalyzed knows this is a myth. The average psychoanalyst is happy to listen to neurotic patients expressing the same fears four times a week without receiving a penny’s worth of compensation, and he or she is happy to work nights on the loading dock of a supermarket to support his passion for listening to repetitive drivel. In sum, I am more than ready to accept any punishment that the people of Rio and the profession of psychoanalysis wish to dole out. It is the only way to relieve me from the huge burden of guilt that I am carrying for my transgressions. I would suggest that I be spanked, lashed and crucified, with my naked body hammered to a cross, but I’m afraid I would enjoy those punishments too much. Instead let me be yelled at and nagged to death. Let the punishment fit the crime.”

COME EARLY SEATING IS LIMITED!

Big Ups, Caleb Ward!

A warm welcome to the 13th member of our tattoo club, Caleb Ward. Caleb got his tattoo at Port City Tattoo Co. in Wilmington, NC, from "Little" Brian Leebrick, who has to be thinking these radio tattoos are good for business.

According to Caleb:
I'm a twenty-year-old junior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. I'm a double major in both English Literature and Film Studies. I was just recently published for the first time and can't wait to see what the future holds. Two Dollar Radio is not only the reason why I'm planning to conquer the world, but it's also a great publishing house.

Unicorn-Level Tees Are Here

We now have tee shirts for sale through our website. A notch above Reindeer-Level, our Unicorn-Level Books Tee is sure to impress.

The shirts are American Apparel (made in the US, workers paid fair-wage), super-comfy, and will look super-good on you.

Unicorn-Level Tees are Unisex and available in Medium or Large sizes.

Through September 16th, we're offering tees for a discounted price of $16!

Order.

Brazilgate 2011

The most prominent daily newspaper in Brazil, O Globo, quoted government officials saying they'll request an apology for the US publication of Seven Days in Rio by Francis Levy, as well as write a letter to the US Embassy. The article elicited nearly 350 comments from readers of the paper, some outraged while others found the matter trivial. O Globo quotes Aparecida Gonçalves, the secretary for combating violence against women, a government body that reports to the presidency, insisting that all Brazilians must be "treated well, even in fiction."

We include a fiction disclaimer on the copyright page of all our books, but in addition, the author penned a prologue that kicks off the novel, stating:

"None of the characters in this novel are real, nor are the places or the psychoanalytic movements, even though the name Rio may conjure the real city of Rio de Janeiro. Lacanian analysis as described in the novel bears no resemblance to the branch of psychoanalytic practice initiated by the French analyst Jacques Lacan. Even the duration of time stated in the title bears little resemblance to what is commonly known as seven days. So don't start writing irate letters to my blog correcting this or that or asking for refunds."

We understand it to be natural for people to feel protective of their community. It was clear from the comments posted to the O Globo website that there is a greater cultural discussion ongoing, and we don't believe a work of satire by an American writer, never presented as anything other than fiction, belongs in that cultural discussion. It is also apparent from the O Globo article that the quoted official never read the book before demanding an apology, which is unfortunate.

Joshua Mohr pointed out to me that this all sounded familiar to when government folk in Brazil got in a tizzy in reaction to a Simpsons episode. According to BBC, "Simpsons father Homer was kidnapped by an unlicensed taxi driver, and he and son Bart were robbed by street children... Bart was at one stage swallowed by a boa constrictor, and Rio's slums appeared to be dirty and dangerous."