The Common Reader

Also this month we have Julie Powell coming in. That’ll be the evening of January 12th. Can you tell I’ve been working on our event publicity today? Anyhow, I want to link to this not-altogether-favorable review of Powell’s Cleaving by Rebecca Marx, not because I agree with it (I haven’t read the book) but because I think it’s interesting. And because I think you, readers of our blog, are smart enough that a bad review won’t make you dismiss a book, or a reading for that matter, but will may actually stoke your curiousity.

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Mary Jo Bang and Susan Wheeler will be reading for us on January 14th, about two weeks from now. Bang was just reviewed in the NYTBR, but more interesting, to me, is this piece from a summer issue of Bookforum about Wheeler’s recent Assorted Poems. Ange Mlinko, the reviewer, proves herself again and again to be my favorite critic of poetry.

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Here are some ideas I’m brewing up just now, as I type this. You’re welcome to them if you like:

A. Gregor Samsa’s sister from The Metamorphosis. What was her name again? Ah, yes, Grete. Thank you internet. I don’t really know what that would look like, but I think it’d be brilliant.

B. One of the men – there are three iterations – that Jacques imagines to be sleeping with his estranged wife back in Spain while he languishes (and gets in way over his head) in London in Javier Marias’ Your Face Tomorrow trilogy (the third book is out this winter). These would be easy costumes, you’d just have to look brutish or callous or entirely too respectable , and perhaps vaguely Spanish.

C. You could be A Film Adaptation of Your Favorite Book. So: shorter, dumber, but also sexier, with more kicks to the face, more explosions, and maybe a happier ending. (Don’t take the “more explosions” bit too literally, eh?)

D. A sexy cat!

E. A young John Ashbery, in a convex mirror. Wow, I love that one. Maybe I’ll do that. You can still do it, too. I think the more of us there are, the funnier it would be.

F. A giant heart, looking a bit sad, with a bow and quiver. Get it? You get it.

Man, I’m good at this. I’m so lucky that random overly-complicated Halloween costume ideas is such a growth business, right? It’s the new plastics. So, just humor me here, which of these do you think you’re most likely to use? Did you choose D? Awesome. Good choice. Say, why don’t you click on this adorable photo of the kitten?

Are they gone? Awesome. Okay, all you readers who picked the other letters, here’s the deal. This year we’re hosting another Halloween party and you are very much invited. It’ll be fun. We’re having food, drinks, a costume contest, a scary voice contest, a horror reading, paper crafts and more. There will be prizes! Even the Desk Set, the coolest librarians you know, are getting in on the party. The full event listing is here, but just remember this: Halloween party at McNally Jackson, Saturday, 10/31 at 7:00 PM. I’ll see you there. And remember, if you really must be a sexy cat, be a film adaptation of Bulgakov and impress the hell out of us all.

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Tonight’s author, Max Blumenthal, was met at his last meeting by a delegation of angry College Republican protesters, holding onto large placards and morally bankrupt ideologies. Color me excited.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr user foreverdigital.

If you happen to be a subscriber to the New Yorker (and it’s very much worth it if you aren’t — their subscriptions run about $40, but you can literally talk them down to $20 or so over the phone) or are near enough to the store to stop by, you should probably check out their latest issue or two. Not only because they’re just great, as usual, but because last week they featured Patricia Marx in a cute piece about buying bikinis. Somehow she held even my attention, and I’m not much in the market for a tankini, y’know?  This week and last they’ve also had a long two-part piece by staff writer Ian Frazier about traveling across Siberia. It’s great, and really plays with the whole masculine-adventurer thing I both love and loathe.  The problem, of course, is that the magazine has decided not to offer either essay online, meaning that your only option for getting a taste of these great writers is to get your hands on a hard copy of the magazine. Oh wait, did I say only choice? I forgot* that both those writers will be in our cafe tonight, Tuesday, to rock you and your socks.

They’ll be here as part of our annual Shrinks Are Away reading, hosted by Susan Shapiro. Both Susan and Jonathan Fast will also be reading some recent work, and there’ll even be wine and cupcakes afterward. Yes that’s right, four authors reading, plus cupcakes, plus wine. I can’t even do the math on that one, but I suspect with powerful enough computers, we could find that the answer is an approximation of awesome. Susan’s latest book, Speed Shrinking, even features cupcake addiction as a major plot-point, so you won’t need to be embarrassed if the cupcakes make you too giddy. Think of this as the birth of a new movement: the literary/saccharine support group. The event begins, as usual, at seven o’clock, but you might want to come a little early if you want a seat.  I’ll see you there.

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Another gin and tonic, for the love of god!

A quick event reminder: Sarah Stolfa, the photographer who took the image you keep staring at just above, is in our cafe tonight for the book launch of her new collection The Regulars. It’s a book of truly amazing portraits she took during a stint as a bartender at McGlinchey’s bar in Philly. I know, I wish that were the name of my local spot, too. Also, won’t somebody please buy that girl a goddamned drink already?  It’s making me thirsty just looking at her.  She probably won’t be here, but Sarah and the booze and the photos will, so stop by. It begins, as usual, at 7pm.

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Photo used under a CC license, courtesy of Flickr user Pirate Scott.

Let this gratuitous puppy photo serve as a reminder that Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain (a book in which dogs play a pretty prominent role) will be reading in the cafe tonight, July 13, at seven o’clock. Also, I should note: Awwwwwwwwww!

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Photo by Flickr user Steve Rhodes, used under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license.

So I assumed that everyone around me at any given moment had seen much of the work of the amazing Werner Herzog who, not incidentally, will be reading in our cafe this Friday, June 26. He’s the greatest poet of man v. nature we have right now, after all, the only real descendant of German romanticism’s fascination with alpine peaks and supermen. Turns out I was wrong. I met someone just yesterday who hasn’t seen a single one of the man’s films. Needless to say I won’t be associating with him anymore, because he’s a cretin and as a rule I only speak to other film-snob assholes. Also when I talk to them I like to make that rectangle with my thumbs and forefingers, like make-believe directors do. Also all my hats are always turned backward so that I can fit imaginary camera equipment up against my face, and I only sit in tall chairs and I’m so sorry and please love me. What? Okay.
If you don’t know then, let me just say that Herzog’s subject matter consists of, in no real order, flames, ice, crashes, madness, futility, bears, death, leeches, escape, more madness, film, opera, himself, the grandiose and the grotesque. It’s magnificent and, as much as the man is fascinated with myth and megalomania, it’s really inevitable that he write about the making of Fitzcarraldo, maybe his most mythic undertaking. That’s the movie, filmed in the Amazon, on whose set people were killed. He’ll be reading at 7, but I’ve invited all my film asshole friends so you might want to get here early if you want a seat in front of them and their tall canvas chairs. I’ll see (but not talk to you) there.

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This fantastic collage by Flickr user Javier Piraquata, used courtesy of a Creative Commons Share-Alike license.

You want to be better. You want to be more. You want more knowledge, more stamina, a tighter ass. You jog. You read. You strive. You are failing slowly. Maybe that’s inevitable. But maybe you’re just going about it wrong.
I say, start with a better imagination and work from there. Think big. First, think of a body that will outlive gene death — chrome if you like, or vat grown. Then think bigger, farther: something all vacuum hardened carapace or mite cloud. Then, forget the body and think of a mind that will outlive your ennui, a mind scattered or hidden, beyond human, certainly, but also beyond you. A mind better than you, more than you. And that’s what you’ve been working toward already, isn’t it? What tired ghosts, what cowardice, should keep you, keep us, from becoming exactly as magnificent as we can imagine?

I believe, on off days, in the transhumanist project, the idea that our brief meaty present need not define the limits of ourselves, that only imagination and the expanding curve of technological possibility should hold us back. Join me and a room full of like-minded (or loudly dissenting!) others here, this Thursday the 25th at 7pm for our third McNally Jackson Forum: Transhumanism Past, Present, and Future. Our panelists will include Stuart Dambrot, Clark Mathews and Shane Hope to give us three impressions on transhumanism, and the singularity. Our own Stuart Dawes will be moderating. Personally, I just want to know how, when the singularity does arrive, I can be an overlord and not a morlock.

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Welcome to the first test of our new McNally Jackson Is Working To Cram Books Into Your Head Through Every Available Means, Including Maybe Your Ears, Podcast Series*. I’m pretty excited about this.

For the past few months we’ve been recording almost all of the nightly readings and discussions we host in our cafe. Some are eventually hosted online by NPR, but we have some really spectacular events that they, for whatever reason, have slept on. It’s about time we began making the best of these available to you here.

The first of these was recorded this past March 30th and features Robert Pinsky, editor of the new anthology Essential Pleasures, hosting a handful of fantastic contributors. Listen to hear Sharon Olds, Philip Schultz, Mark Strand, C.K. Williams and Pinsky himself read from their own work and a selection of other greats from the book.

Listen to the podcast below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can also download the entire thing here. Or look at photos from the event here.

We hope to make this podcast a regular online feature, so watch for it. And be sure to come to your favorite events and wrestle for that microphone to earn your own share of internet fame.

Lastly, I have to thank our handsome, bearded** wizard of the boards Steve Colca for putting the audio together. He did a great job.

* I’m still working on the name. Suggestions?

** Beards are great conductors of sound. All true music professionals have them.  Your mother, for instance.***

*** That’s right.

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