Thursday Evening at Housing Works Bookstore Café: “Literary Magazines Go Electronic”

This was posted to Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Friday, September 14, 2007:

Thursday Evening at Housing Works Bookstore Café: “Literary Magazines Go Electronic”

Last evening at the cozy Housing Works Bookstore Café in Soho, I was one of about two dozen people in a mostly older crowd in the audience for the initial panel in the National Book Critics Circle series, "The Age of Infinite Margins: Book Critics Face the 21st Century." This panel was "Literary Magazines Go Electronic: Where's the Print Edition in the Library?"

First a staff member explained that Housing Works is a community-based, not-for-profit corporation providing housing, health care, advocacy, job training, and vital supportive services to homeless New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS, and she discussed the workings and activities of the Used Bookstore Cafe; for me, it's always been a wonderful place to visit.

Then the panel's moderator, Barbara Hoffert of Library Journal, an NBCC board member, was introduced.

Barbara, who got to stand at a podium with two rather rickety-looking raised platforms on either side of her, asked the panelists to take their seats and then introduced them. From the audience's left to right, they were:

Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space;

Karen Gisonny, Helen Bernstein Librarian for Periodicals and Journals at the New York Public Library;

Jeffrey Lependorf, executive director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses;

D.T. Max, author and former New York Observer book columnist;

Kevin Prufer, poet, NBCC board member, and editor of the literary magazine Pleiades;

Scott McLemee, columnist at Inside Higher Ed columnist and award-winning critic; and

Susan Thomas, Assistant Professor/Evening and Weekend Librarian, Philip Randolph Memorial Library, Borough of Manhattan Community College (where I'd be teaching this morning if not for the Rosh Hashanah holiday).

Barbara began the discussion by going to Kevin's article in which he described how he'd hoped to spend an afternoon at the University of Central Missouri's library catching up on his reading of literary magazines such as Virginia Quarterly Review, only to find that the library had canceled all print subscriptions and he was directed to get the journals on the online database. Barbara noted that this will be the "flip year" for many academic libraries – the year the majority of their holdings will become electronic rather than print-based. Serials (periodicals) are, of course, much more likely to be in digital form than books.

Barbara's first question for the panel was whether the electronic reading experience is measurably different than the print reading experience. Kevin said the obvious difference in terms of literary magazines is that they are edited lovingly and carefully, not just the content of the texts (stories, poems, essays) but also the layout: both the look of each page and how the contents are placed so that reading the journal from poem to story to poem, etc., is a continuous aesthetic experience – that is lost when the material is transferred to digital form.

A second issue is that the majority of book reviews of small press books, particularly poetry, appear in literary magazines, and readers will look through the latest issues to see what books are being published – something they're far less likely to do when the current reviews are available only electronically.

A third issue, Kevin continued, is that some writers refuse to give electronic rights to their works, so that a magazine's story by such a writer (Brigid Hughes gave Nadine Gorimer as an example) will not appear in the digital version, only in the print one.

Karen noted that people love to browse through new issues cover to cover, looking the ads and graphics that are lost electronically.

Jeffrey said online reading is simply harder; in addition, literary magazines – unlike research-centered academic journals – are a "curatorial experience." The only advantage electronic forms may have is in presenting the moving image, joking that can be gotten from print only accidentally when a reader is drunk.

Scott, who said that for the last two years he's written exclusively for online publications, said that while we may revere old literary magazines like Partisan Review, often the print artifact of journals isn't really necessary. An advantage to electronic text is that it is much less expensive since the cost of storage and upkeep is negligible if it even exists. Distribution is not a problem as it is with print publications. The old quarterlies relied on more expensive library subscriptions (sometimes several times the price of individual subscriptions), but in an age of shrinking library and academic budgets, when storage and shelf space is finite, electronic forms have a crucial advantage.

Jeffrey noted that literary magazines often have distribution problems, and just a few weeks ago, the leading distributor of literary magazines went out of business. Newsstand distribution has never been a revenue-generating business for periodicals, which are out of date after 90 days at retail outlets (some, like the weekly People, go out of date sooner than that) – at which point their covers are ripped off, sent back to the publishers for credit and the rest of the magazines are thrown away.

Susan noted that older journals like Kenyon Review and Antioch Review were the most likely to be available on online databases and therefore most likely to be cut from libraries. Newer journals, such as A Public Space, not so readily available online, were more likely to be ordered in print form. At BMCC, one goal is to promote reading among our students, and having journals around – Susan mentioned the new Bronx Biannual – encouraged that. But budgets are being slashed and so academic libraries are less likely to order newer literary magazines, whose extras like DVDs, CDs and flipbooks (easily found in bookstores like St. Marks) are just not in the electronic versions if they even exist.

Jeffrey remarked that people are trained to read on pages and said the "virtual page" was different. J-Store, which electronically delivers electronic journals with the scanned print pages in their original form, is branching out from scientific and academic journals into literary magazines. But J-Store is primarily an archival enterprise, with something like a three-year window for publications, so that current issues of literary magazines would not be available that way. Karen said that J-Store was good but limited, and there are really no others doing the same thing.

Brigid distinguished between magazines on online databases and the websites of magazines like A Public Space, which can supplement the print issues with all kinds of extra features, like an interview with an author whose poems are in the print version. But when she goes to universities with MFA programs, their staff and students want the current print editions in their libraries and never ask for the electronic version.

Kevin said that after his experience at the University of Central Missouri library, he emailed a number of people for their opinions. Other small state university library staff members also noted that they carried far more electronic versions of periodicals than dead-trees ones, but editors at places like Kenyon Review worried about the loss of income from $24-a-year library subscriptions. Some magazines, like Boulevard, actually charge libraries less than they do individuals because libraries provide vast exposure.

Barbara said that at Library Journal, they thought the print and web versions of the magazine were designed to do very different things, some of which are only feasible online. Brigid said online editions were a necessity now for literary magazines, and editors in their twenties were much more comfortable with using their website versions. It is older writers and editors having trouble making the transition.

Jeffrey noted that online versions of litmags can link to other pieces by the same contributor or to their books for sale or supplement the print edition in numerous ways. Karin said that the New York Public Library is still subscribing to print issues and that many people prefer to look at text in things they can hold in their hands.

Jeffrey said that CLMP now has far more literary magazines in its database than when they began compiling it in the 1980s, that new litmags are being created all the time.

Then he brought up the issue of blogs. So much literary discussion, as well as discourse in other fields, today takes place on blogs, yet who is archiving the contents of blogs to make them available to scholars half a century from now who will undoubtedly want to look at blogs to understand the present literary scene? Karen admitted that the New York Public Library is doing nothing with blogs except reading them (mostly discussions on library blogs), that someone may need to scan them to preserve their contents.

Scott pointed to a recent study about the need to archive blogs. One problem noted is that there is such an explosion of blogs, it is hard to figure out just which blogs should be archived. Who would make these decisions? It also would be very expensive to archive blogs and probably would require some not-for-profit organization like J-Store. In addition, there are numerous intellectual property issues raised by blog archival.

Scott noted this transition to digital text is much harder for older people, that younger people are much more comfortable with screen-reading and manipulating the texts; for example, college students may download complex texts and then add notes or commentary, while older people view screen-reading as a more passive activity.

D.T. Max said that books are not good online, that there's no market for electronic books yet despite years after their introduction. In the mid-1990s he wrote an article for The Atlantic on the fate of reading in an electronic age (which, ironically, is not available online); at that point people believed the transition away from printed text would happen much faster than it actually has.

D.T. went on to say that his own book about a family with a fatal insomnia disorder is part-science and part-story. Some readers more interested in more information about prion diseases and other technical material mentioned in the book might benefit from hyperlinks that could be available if the book were online; yet those readers more interested in the narrative about the family would not.

Reading novels online, D.T. said, was just "not fun." The aesthetic experience is lost. He also wondered about the financial benefits for writers to having their work online. D.T. emphasized, though, that change is coming and this will also change the way in which writers write and what they write about. No area more than literature is more sensitive in changes in form. D.T. doesn't compose by hand anymore. Jeffrey noted that even the change from pencil to pen can change what people write. How will the transformation of text change literature?

Jeffrey said that whenever there is a middle person, like a distributor, it means less money for the creators and first publishers. J-Store is a not-for-profit outfit, and importantly, they not only scan and make available pages for electronic distribution but carefully preserve in a library the actual physical pages of each journal; this is another important part of their mission.

Jeffrey thinks things will be different in just a few years. Very thin electronic "papers" will exist and store and display text so that people are reading books and journals they can hold in their hands, something very close to what we now think of as physical pages. We should not assume that digital reading means online reading. Twenty years from now, most material will probably be read in electronic form. Just as there is moveable type, there will be "moveable print." How this will change reading is something worth considering.

Kevin said that while he's not a technophobe by any means, he still composed poetry by hand and that perhaps things will change less than we now think, just as D.T's article from a decade ago featured prognostications about electronic text which have not yet been realized.

Susan said that for her, it can be a relief not to have to read onscreen; for that reason alone, print culture should be preserved. She finds it dehumanizing when libraries require patrons to access certain material at terminals rather than giving them access to the physical objects of books and periodicals.

Jeffrey said that printed text slows us down in our reading, and with literature, especially with poetry, that can be a good thing, as literature is often savored rather than consumed in a utilitarian way as information is.

D.T. said books will eventually migrate to electronic forms. Books are esteemed as the emperors of information, the top form, above periodicals. But, D.T. said, look around at the books on the shelves here; they're not interacting with each other, the way species on remote islands in the Galapagos couldn't intermingle and so produced forms found nowhere else on earth. Electronic books would have malleable text and therefore would become more accurate and probably would be cited more. He noted that when newspaper reporters wanted to reference a book for an article they are writing, they traditionally call the author for a quotation or ask her what her book means rather than reading the book themselves; that may change when the book is available digitally.

Scott said that the tendency to skim more online or to skip around more may be beneficial, noting that many 450-page books contain only 150 worthwhile pages. The current organic structure of books will almost disappear, though. Oddly, he said, when he writes for online publications, he does so by hand.

Echoing a recent statement by Steve Wasserman, Scott said that while online publications have the ability to contain material of any length, in reality people get more impatient and don't read long stuff [my interpolation: like this blog entry?] online. It's only in print periodicals like Bookforum that Scott can publish articles of 4000 words. With the advent of all electronic text, 2000-word articles will have to merit it.

There was a discussion of paper submissions versus electronic submissions to periodicals; Jeffrey noted that most litmags now took material online, and Brigid say that she did but they ended up printing out most submissions for easier reading.

Barbara asked what can be done to prevent the disappearance of literary magazines from library shelves. Should there be sit-ins or read-ins like NBCC's effort in Atlanta to protest the dismissal of the book review editor at the Journal Constitution? Susan said that in the case of academic libraries, readers who wanted print copies should go over the head of the library directors to higher-ups who control the budgets.

Finally, Kevin noted that the University of Central Missouri library, whose lack of print journals spurred this conversation, has actually decided to go back to subscribing to the physical issues of many magazines.

I got to ask one of the few questions, addressing my query to Jeffrey. I said the titles of literary magazines I'd heard during the panel discussion were all established names that nearly everyone has heard of. Yet there are hundreds of literary magazines put out by individuals and groups all over the U.S., most getting little distribution and no library coverage whatsoever. When I was starting out publishing my stories, the only place I could find many of the little magazines that I submitted to and got published by was in the small private library of the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines, the predecessor organization of Jeffrey's Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. I spent hours there, yet had I been anywhere but New York, I would not be able to find these litmags unless I ordered copies individually. Was this discussion relevant to the vast majority of small literary periodicals?

Jeffrey said first that he was happy to announce that the CCLM/CLMP library had now been given to the New York Public Library and was in the care of Karen and her colleagues and more readily available to the public. He also said that people who wanted to see literary magazines that might be more obscure should come to the Housing Works Used Bookstore Café during June because CLMP sends over many recent issues, all of which are available for just two dollars each. Karen noted that the NYPL has about a thousand different literary magazines available in print.

After a few more questions, Barbara thanked the panelists for their thoughtful comments, the audience for its attention, and especially John Freeman and Jane Ciabattari for their work on making the evening possible.

9/11 Memorial Service in East Williamsburg

Here is a post from Richard Grayson's MySpace blog for Wednesday, September 12, 2007:

I write about last evening's 9/11 Memorial Service in East Williamsburg at Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn:

After spending hours watching General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testify before the Senate on Tuesday, I walk down Conselyea Street to Graham Avenue – the street sign here also says Via Vespucci – by the side of Ralph's Famous Ices, where a plaque honors the eleven East Williamsburg residents lost on 9/11.

By 7 p.m., eighty of us have tiny candles lit in plastic cups as a bagpiper plays "Amazing Grace." High-pitched drilling from a condo under construction a few feet away competes with the hymn until a cop goes over and temporarily halts gentrification as we sing the national anthem.

Father Tony says a prayer; we all recite the Knights of Columbus "prayer for peace" and the pledge of allegiance; two neighborhood firefighters place wreaths by the memorial as names are read; we sing "America the Beautiful." Tears come only when I notice two skinny hipsters remove their caps as they pass.

We begin our candlelight procession to church two blocks down. Most people here have lived in this neighborhood all their lives. At 56, I am one of the younger marchers.

Six years ago I was living in the small Ozarks town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I had no TV and my radio could get only Christian and country music stations; on one, a DJ mourned, "They were Yankees – but they were our Yankees."

But sitting in a back pew in a Brooklyn church, I find myself thinking not to that day but to another evening in church: March 2003 at St. Maurice's in Dania Beach, Florida. Father Roger had called for an interfaith prayer meeting on the eve of the Iraq war.

Everyone there was from Peace South Florida: our leader Myriam, a Colombian immigrant; an old Jewish couple from Century Village; two elderly Quebecois snowbirds; three high school students; and two others I'd seen at futile meetings and marches.

Father Roger distributed prayers from various religions he'd gotten online that afternoon. For the first time since a 1964 performance at Flatbush Park Jewish Center, I got to recite something in a house of worship. That night, through the luck of the draw, I asked for peace about ten times in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

On this night, after church, I go home to find C-Span still on. A senator is asking a general if we are any safer now. I take the crumpled program out from my pocket and for the first time see tonight's memorial had a theme: "Looking Back, Looking Forward."

Thursday Evening at the Union Square Barnes & Noble: Junot Diaz

This post is from Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Friday, September 7, 2007:

Thursday Evening at the Union Square Barnes & Noble: Junot Diaz


I've just come from seeing Junot Diaz, probably my favorite American fiction writer under 40, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. I would not be surprised if he is still in the store, signing books for the crowds that lined up after his reading, remarks, and the question-and-answer period. Not only is he a remarkable writer, but in person Diaz is enormously likable: completely unpretentious but self-possessed, very funny and spontaneous and also thoughtful and incredibly earnest about writing, literature and art.

When I first read his stories in The New Yorker in the mid-1990s, I was hooked by his voice and how seemless his fiction appeared. I've read his 1996 story collection Drown about seven times, and I've also taught it, the first time when I was a visiting professor of Legal Studies at Nova Southeastern University for the 1999-2000 school year. Although I mostly taught constitutional history, political and civil rights, and other legal studies subjects, I worked in the humanities division and asked to teach a section of the core curriculum called Other Voices, Other Visions: A Multicultural Perspective. I used Drown as part of what I turned into a course on then-recent American immigrant and minority literature, along with books by Sherman Alexie, Edwidge Danticat (the Haitian-American author I also adore -- and so does Diaz, who said he's read "Edwidge's new memoir" three times, although it just came out; both their books got side-by-side rave reviews from Michiko Kakutani in Tuesday's New York Times), Bharati Mukherjee, Gish Jen and others that term.

Since then I've taught the book again, as well as stories from it (including the hysterically funny and poignant "How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie" even to kids at Phoenix's Jess Schwartz Jewish Community High School).

All of us who loved his stories were waiting for Diaz's long-awaited novel, and now we're rewarded with what sounds like something worth the eleven year hiatus, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

I got to Barnes and Noble by 6:25 p.m. for the 7:00 p.m. reading and already most of the 250 or so seats on the store's fourth floor had been taken. Even downstairs I could see his devoted fans looking through the books on sale, quoting passages to each other. It looked as if about 50 people were left standing behind the ropes once every folding chair in the audience was taken.

A couple of minutes before 7:00 p.m., after a B&N staff member had given us the usual drill about getting books signed, taking photos, shutting off cell phones, etc., I heard spontaneous applause, and I looked back (I was sitting on the aisle on the east side of the store) and saw Diaz walking to the front of the room. He wore a white guyabera and black jeans and was followed by (nobody seemed to mention this), Walter Moseley (in black shirt, pants and hat) and a few others.

Maria, the B&N events coordinator, said from the podium, "Junot Diaz, it's been a long, long, long time" as the applause got louder and louder. She then gave a formal introduction: born in the Dominican Republic, raised in New Jersey, his acclaimed stories and first collection, his numerous awards, and now this "novel that brought Michiko Kakutani to her knees," etc.

Diaz seemed kind of taken aback by the welcome, thanked everyone for coming, said as he walked up to the podium he'd seen "people I haven't seen in ten years and shit..."

"So how you guys doin'?" he asked. Lots of applause. "Lots of young heads here," Diaz said, and then he mentioned that the youngest was Kayla, only nine years old, daughter of his friends "who shouldn't even be here...Kayla, I'm sorry I dragged your family out and shit."

He said he'd do the standard thing: we'd hear a short reading, have a Q & A session and then get drunk: "Well, some of us will get drunk afterward."

And he began by reading a "footnote," not something by himself but by J.R.R. Tolkien ("Wish I could do a good British accent"):

'I am the Elder king: Melkor, first and mightiest of all the Valar, who was before the world, and made it. The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will. But upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of Doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair. Wherever they go, evil shall arise. Whenever they speak, their words shall bring ill counsel. Whatsoever they do shall turn against them. They shall die without hope, cursing both life and death.'

"I just wanted to hear that said aloud," Diaz said, and then mentioned that on his way to the store a street person had taught him a new word, meaning "the study of evil." He even called a friend who checked it out online, and the street dude was correct. Diaz asked if anyone in the audience knew the word. No one did.

"It's ponerology," Diaz said, then spelled it out and said it's weird that "nobody in the United States knows that goddam word, knowing how familar we are with evil."

Then he began reading an early passage from Oscar Wao: the narrator, Yunior, a Rutgers student, gets jumped on the streets of New Brunswick and beaten badly: "laid...the fuck out." The next day, hurting so bad he vomits when he stands up, he finds that only one friend will stay with him and take care of him till he gets better (just after the beating, he refuses a good samaritan's offer to drive him to Robert Wood Johnson Hospital because Yunior distrusts doctors after his brother's death from leukemia): Lola, an odd-looking but strangely charismatic sorority president and SALSA head, who -- unlike Yunior -- speaks "perfect stuck-up Spanish." There's a great scene of Lola sponge-washing Yunior's back as part of her ministrations to "sew...his balls back on" and get him better.

Then Yunior relates his history with Lola, how their brief affair ended when guilt made her feel horrible about cheating on her boyfriend. Like many in the audience, I thought the passage Diaz read was riveting; he got incredible applause, said a few words, got even more applause.

"You motherfuckas are so funny," he said. "If I do anything, you'll applaud." He hoped, he said, we were at least more discriminating than the previous night's live audience on The Tonight Show, who applauded everything "that new dude running for President" -- Fred Thompson -- said, even when he stated, "I don't feel I should apologize for anything America does."

"Oh shit," Diaz said about that. "Oh man, that is wild. That's some shit to teach kids: cold-stab your teacher and it's fucking good." He said most of the Presidential candidates were asking us to vote for their blind spots and urged the audience to see the Thompson clips on YouTube. (Diaz claimed he watched Jay Leno only because Agent of Love wasn't on.)

Then he brought things back to ponerology, the study of evil, before beginning his reading of a later passage in the book, when Yunior is rooming at Rutgers with Lola's brother Oscar, who's enormously fat and speaks Elvish ("A lot of my students speak Elvish," said Diaz.)

Diaz interrupted himself to ask if anyone in the audience went to Rutgers, and a few people called out enthusiastically. "That's really just three people," Diaz said, laughing. To them, he said, "They treat us so bad and we love them so much." He asked all the Rutgers alumni which dorms they lived in and while saying the school was "so bizarre," he made it clear that it played an important role in his development as an artist and a person and noted that "it's got a women's studies department the size of many colleges."

In the second passage Diaz read, Yunior -- a character who appears in many of Diaz's stories and who, one must assume, is sort of a stand-in for the author (there's a brief mention that Yunior writes stories -- like all college playboys around the beginning of October, gets bopped by his girlfriend after she catches him slutting around. She plays a tape of their phone call around campus, and Yunior is basically fucked for a while (if you think he's going to check into booty rehab, Yunior notes, "you don't know any Dominican men") -- giving him time to concentrate on changing the life of his roommate Oscar, Lola's obese, sf-obsessed, ungainly brother who uses words as huge as he is.

After they've watched This Island Earth, Project A and other weird movies Oscar's picked out, Yunior embarks on remaking his roommate, focusing on "something redemptive and easy."

(When Diaz interrupts the narrative, he gets back to it by briefly summarizing and then saying "blah blah blah" -- he's probably the funniest young novelist I've ever heard read.)

Oscar admits to Yunior he'd like to change but "nothing ameliorative" has worked so far. Yunior asks Oscar to put himself in Yunior's hands and Oscar says, "I swear an oath of obedience to you, my lord."

So at 6 a.m. the next day Yunior kicks Oscar's bed, tossing him sneakers, saying, "This is the first day of your new life." He forces Oscar (who admits he's "lacking in pulchritude") to, among other things, stop going up to random females with embarrassing conversation and run every morning (despite catcalls and one little girl saying, "Look, Mom, that guy's taking his planet out for a run").

Soon Oscar stops spending 24/7 at his computer writing sf and stops going up to girls and talking crap to them without ever touching one, though he's still prone to talk to Yunior about whether if they were Orcs, would real cool women still imagine him to be an elf.

Anyway, Oscar manages to get to the point where Yunior can take him out for a drink -- with a crowd, though, so he's not so obvious -- but finally the guy just stops running one morning and says he'll never shake his big black knees that way again: "I will run again no more." And from then on he bartlebys Yunior with "I'd rather not" at every suggestion to improve his status till eventually, in frustration, Yunior pushes his roommate to the point where he crashes against the wall, hard.

Lola, now in Spain, wakes Yunior up a few days later with a phone call: "What the fuck's your problem?"

"Go fuck yourself," Yunior says.

"Fuck you, Yunior," Lola says and hangs up.

"Motherfucker," Yunior screams and throws the phone at the window.

--Wow. Diaz's reading ends with a moment of silence, then lots of clappping.

Then he takes a few question from the audience. It's hard to hear the first question, but Diaz says, "Thank you," and then repeats it. A young man has asked how Diaz manages to come up with a perfect title.

"'Cause I couldn't come up with a better one," the author says. "All the way up to the end I was trying new titles." Sipping from a bottle of water, he says usually he likes one-word titles and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was basically his "surrogate title" all along.

Question 2: Does he worry about alienating readers with all the Spanglish and Spanish in the book.

Diaz said his biggest fear is that people will get mad at him because of this or that in a book or story, but that ultimately he can't worry about that. A number of his friends, he said, don't like his use of big words in the novel; others are offended by so much science fiction stuff because "that's not Dominican...we always knew you really weren't." Another friend complained: "You're using Cuban words, you dumbass."

To that, Diaz says: "Look, guys, I can't say it enough" -- at this point he spots a familiar face in the audience and shouts, "Amy!" -- "Fuck [the people who criticize your work]."

And then: "It bears repeating: when you spend a long time on an artistic project, you have to trust that product eventually. Whether people respond is not so important as taking risks... You're an artist -- the most important thing: take risks."

And then if your friends are pissed off by your using a French word, it doesn't matter because "if you can trust the damn thing, the rest won't matter... If you throw your heart out, some people -- even some little nerd, she's somewhere in southern New Jersey -- will like it."

Question 3 is the usual one about his literary influences and what he's reading now. Diaz mentions "being obsessed with" Patrick Chamoiseau's novel Texaco. "You've got to steal from stuff," he says. He mentions Edward P. Jones, "the greatest writer," saying he'd stolen the structure of his last book from Jones' Lost in the City. "Steal from people better than you."

He said he's also reading the "nightmare," World Without Oil as well as The Unnatural History of the Sea.

As far as literary stuff, he expressed extreme admiration for "Edwidge's memoir" (Brother, I'm Dying), which he's already read three times even though it just came out.

And then: "Guys, this is a hard gig, being a writer, even if you're one of those who knock out a book a year." It's the "tremendous comforting space" of "the company of other books" that "talk to you and teach you."

"Read as much as humanly possible," Diaz says finally.

The next questioner asks how long the characters in the novel have "been with" Diaz.

"However long something is," he says, "I'm strongly connected with it," then estimates that the characters have been with him for about seven years. He still "can't shake off" a couple of characters.

Then Diaz says that as a writer, you occasionally have to transform yourself into different characters, that it isn't enough to "just imagine" them" because your own limitations will prevent you from presenting the characters correctly.

He says that through writing some characters, he's had to learn to be more consiento or compassionate, and this "personal transfromation" has enabled him to write certain characters.

"Your imagination is not as strong as your humanism," Diaz says. Sensing that's a fine place to end, he tells the audience, "Thank you for coming," and after the applause finally dies down, the B&N staff explain the drill for the autographing sessions: being called up one row at a time, yes he will personalize the books (not all authors do), but no photos of yourself with Diaz -- you can take pictures before and after you leave the podium if you don't blind him with the flash, etc.

According to this excellent account at devour books. poop words, not just of the reading but of Angelle's encounter with Diaz -- "the nicest, most personable author I've ever met -- when he signed her book, Diaz stayed at the Union Square bookstore a really long time. I'm sure his fans appreciated it.

Tuesday Evening at McNally Robinson: Damon Linker & "The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege"

Here is the post from Richard Grayson's MySpace blog for Thursday, September 6, 2007:

On Tuesday evening at 7 p.m., I was one of about forty people in the audience at the wonderful Manhattan McNally Robinson bookstore to listen to Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. It was part of their (new?) First Tuesday series, featuring authors of books about contemporary politics, which presumably will run until we vote for a new President on the first Tuesday of November 2008.

The crowd was considerably older than at many of the readings I've attended at McNally Robinson, most recently a really nice evening celebrating the second issue of the literary magazine The New York Tyrant a few weeks ago. (Unfortunately, I had to leave early, after watching a lot of young people eat cheese and wine and and listening to a haunting story, "The Ex-Father," read by the amazing fiction writer Brian Evenson.)

On Tuesday night, from where I sat in the back of the crowd, I could actually see a lot of gray heads. Anyway, Damon was fascinating as he discussed the thrust of his book, a study of the mostly Catholic theologians and ideologues who have provided much of the intellectual ammunition for the dominant religious right wing of the Republican party, who seemed to reach their zenith with the re-election of President Bush in 2004. (Recall how all the post-victory pundits mentioned "moral values.")

Damon began his talk with anecdote mentioning President Kennedy's address to the nation in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, a time when nuclear war seemed possible and those of us in seventh grade at Meyer Levin Junior High in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, would say to each other at the end of every school day, "See you tomorrow -- if there is one." Even in that moment, JFK ended his speech simply: "Thank you and good night."

Damon contrasted that with President Bush's first address on the Friday after 9/11 during similar time of national crisis. Bush spoke not from the Oval Office as Kennedy did, but from the National Cathedral, and frequently invoked God, quoted St. Paul and other sections of the Bible and of course ended his speech with now seemingly obligatory closing line of Presidential TV talk: "God bless America."

Damon's book traces the changes as America went from a largely secular political culture to one infused with religion, though his work focuses on the ideas rather than the pure politics mastered by people like Karl Rove, who used the evangelical vote to win elections.

In particular, Damon looks at four conservative Catholic intellectuals, including his boss at the magazine First Things, where Damon worked for a number of years following a stint as a speechwriter for Mayor Giuliani. (He was forced to leave following an outcry caused by an article in which he spoke of wanting to be an active father to his newborn son, a position which the magazine's readers and staff felt went against the "Christian" notions of the rigid patriarchy of the "traditional" family.)

Damon's boss at the magazine was Father Richard John Neuhaus, who along with Michael Novak and other Catholic intellectuals, have largely provided the intellectual firepower behind the mostly Protestant evangelical right.

Interestingly, back in the early 1970s -- either 1970 or 1972 -- I worked for the very same guy. Back then he was Dick Neuhaus, a liberal Democrat, not a Roman Catholic priest but a Protestant minister to a mostly poor congregation here in Brooklyn near the neighborhood where I now live.

Neuhaus ran as a peace candidate against the longtime incumbent Congressman, John Rooney, a hawkish supporter of the Vietnam war. From his campaign headquarters in Brooklyn Heights, I'd fan out with other volunteers -- mostly college kids, old New York socialist types and liberal West Side young mothers -- to leaflet and canvas voters at the projects here in Williamsburg and in Bushwick. Neuhaus lost the primary.

Damon says that Neuhaus always wanted to change politics through religion, and when he failed to turn it more liberal -- like a number of those hungry for power -- he turned authoritarian, right-wing and ultra-conservative. Neuhaus has had many secret meetings with President Bush at the White House and apparently loves his grip on power.

I remember him as a slim, almost shy, idealistic young pastor with a passion for social justice. It's scary how some people can change.

Anyway, I can't wait to read The Theocons. Damon's answers to questions from the audience on Tuesday night were as interesting as his talk. He said the man we really have to be afraid of, one who could best continue and extend the religious right's hold on the White House is the affable former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who hasn't yet been able to get to the first tier of GOP presidential candidates.

Future talks in McNally Robinson's First Tuesday series look similarly interesting. Stay tuned.

Wednesday at Bryant Park: “We Love Chick Lit” Panel Discussion

This is from Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Thursday, August 23, 2007:

Wednesday at Bryant Park: “We Love Chick Lit” Panel Discussion

On Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. I was in the audience under the dark skies and unseasonably cool temperatures that have been prevalent in New York this week for a Bryant Park Reading Room panel discussion called (to the apparent surprise of some of the participants) "We Love Chick Lit." (The Bryant Park Reading Room is not really a room as far as I can tell but a space in the park – a place you really wanted to avoid 20 and 30 years ago but now a midtown Manhattan oasis: lunch spot, meeting place and hangout.)

The wry Ned Vizzini, author of Be More Chill and It's Kind of a Funny Story, was an inspired choice as moderator. The Bryant Park Bookworm, librarian Miriam Tuliao introduced Ned and the panelists:

Jennifer Belle, author of the novels Going Down, High Maintenance and the new Little Stalker;

Caprice Crane, who's followed her 2006 fiction debut Stupid and Contagious with the new Forget About It;

My friend Megan Crane, whose books include English as a Second Language, Everyone Else's Girl and the new Frenemies; and

Carrie Karasyov, co-author of Wolves in Chic's Clothing and The Right Address and author of the new The Infidelity Pact.

Ned's first question to the panel was about the "log line," the need to be able to summarize your book in a sentence or two. Did the authors think this was important and what's the log line for their latest book.

Jennifer jokingly said it was important for going to cocktail parties because when someone asked you to describe your book and you told them the log line, it would immediately stop the conversation. Little Stalker is about a one-time successful 33-year-old author who finds herself blocked; obsessed with a Woody Allen-like director, she pretends to be a 13-year-old when she contacts him, eventually healing a painful childhood experience in the process. (My notes are less articulate than Jennifer or the other panelists.)

Caprice said yes, you need to be able to tell your story in a sentence for commercial purposes, but while you're writing, you should forget about the log line and write aimlessly. Forget About It is about a girl who fakes amnesia in order to reinvent herself.

Megan said, also jokingly, that she would usually, "Um, my book is about a girl…" Frenemies, she said, is about figuring out whether someone is really your friend or your enemy or maybe both.

Carrie said as a screenwriter she's used to giving pitches like it's Silence of the Lambs meets The Parent Trap or it's Jaws meets When Harry Met Sally. The Infidelity Pact is about four married women in L.A. who agree to cheat on their husbands for one year – and the one who finds out ends up dead.

Ned then noted that an "elevator pitch" is an extended version of the log line, then segued into a discussion of how writers name their characters.

Jennifer said the rule is that you name characters what their parents would have named them and then not let naming slow you down in the writing process. For characters who resemble actual famous people, lawyers advise not to use the same first initial.

Caprice also wrote screenplays and by now she feels she's run out of names. She struggles with them and sometimes changes them.

Megan said names come to her in a flash or not at all, and even when she sees her published books, she feels some characters' names are not "still wrong" for them, but she's glad she didn't obsess over names.

Carrie said she's obsessed with names; when she wrote with a partner, she was the one who did the naming while her partner wrote the titles.

Ned's next question was about strategies for writing when you're blocked.

After saying she was freezing (and yes, it was mighty chilly for August), Jennifer said that she is gentle with herself and not like some authors who force themselves to start writing at 7 a.m. She writes in the afternoons on computers, in cafes, and does not allow the word "blocked" to enter her mind while working on a book.

Caprice said she gets distracted by TiVo, dogs and IMing but not blocked. She'll take herself out of the office and go write in Starbucks, where there are no dogs or TiVo – but she can still IM there. She forces herself to write something, anything.

Megan said her writing blocks clear up immediately upon contemplating her mammoth debt; presumably finishing the book will help get her bills down to size. She said she doesn't really have blocks but instead has panic attacks.

Carrie said she'll go into bookstores and see how many books there are and how many writers and contemplate that writing is not a gift, it's kind of a job that just needs to get done.

Ned said putting all his money directly into checking and watching the balances diminish motivates him to write. He asked Caprice if she's distracted at Starbucks by other people and their conversations. She said she wears headphones that block out all the noise but music. Nick then asked the panelists about distractions and if they listen to music when they write.

Jennifer, who won't go to Starbucks but goes to other cafes said she sometimes can't help being distracted by people walking potbellied pigs down the street; she has a lovely country house with a gazebo set up for privacy and contemplation – and she can't write a word there. She disagreed with Carrie and feels writing is indeed a precious gift.

Caprice said she listens to music a lot and on one book listened to the same recording artist practically nonstop; it's not distracting to her.

Megan said she can't listen to lyrics so has to rely on classical and instrumental music; she also needs to face a blank wall when she's writing.

Carrie said she can't write and listen to music. Although she once needed a quiet place, now she has two kids and learned to zone out the noise.

Ned noted that he worked in the Brooklyn public library and that he sometimes got distracted by psychotic patrons who repeatedly hit themselves in the face.

Then he asked the panel about writing as craft versus "precious gift" and how much of their writing comes immediately as perfect and how much they labor over.

Jennifer said she didn't really know, that she went to her computer with an open mind and heart, writing what she feels. Sometimes she gets it right immediately, but she's also constantly reworking her prose.

Caprice said that when her writing is really flowing, she doesn't even want to sleep. Sometimes that's her best writing.

Megan said some of writing is a gift, the rest is craft, and that in her final product she can't tell the difference between pages she struggled over and those that happened with little effort.

Jennifer said that while writing sometimes feel like hard work, she never looks at it as a boring job; it's a privilege to be a writer.

Carrie said writing is a precious gift but also a craft. There are tons of amazing geniuses but not all end up being working writers. Many people have brilliant ideas but can't express them. She quote the film Finding Forrester (not a great movie, she said): the most important thing is simply to write.

Writing isn't a divine gift, Carrie said. Your writing will resonate with some people and not others.

Ned mentioned Dostoevsky and how many of his great novels were occasioned by the urgent need to support his family and pay off his gambling debts. He asked the writers about their typical writing day.

Jennifer said she's not strict about it, that she'll go to a café, write in her journal and get on the phone to argue to someone that chick lit has set women's writing back hundreds of years. (This seemed to change the tenor of the discussion). Jennifer noted that she's got a baby and must be flexible because of that.

Caprice said she doesn't have a set schedule and often writes from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Megan said she doesn't have a set schedule either and likes being able to go to movies in the morning and never argues with anyone about chick lit. Carrie said she's had a partner and has kids so she can't have a set schedule either.

Ned then took up the question of chick lit.

Jennifer said her first and second books came out before the term chick lit was invented by a magazine writer and then it began being used, much to the financial detriment of women writers whose work is monetarily devalued as mere chick lit. She said she doesn't think anyone really sets out to write chick lit – not her students at the New School, whose meaningful books list show gender differences. Every woman student mentions books by men as well as women authors, but no male student ever mentions a woman author as his favorite. No man will ever buy a book marketed as chick lit, and Jennifer thinks that's sad. She's not a chick lit author but an angry writer girl.

Caprice said she was surprised to learn that this panel would be called "We Love Chick Lit": "Who knew?" The problem is that we are limiting ourselves to only half the potential audience. Chick lit, she said, is 8 letters that can be rearranged into two 4-letter words. One way of looking at it, though, is that women are the vast majority of book readers. She's written a book with an alternating point of view, male and female, saying she doesn't want to limit herself.

Megan said simply that she hopes everyone will read her books and that chick lit was just a marketing term; it's also allowed voices to be heard that were not before (Jennifer shook her head vigorously at this). Megan said chick lit gives insight into different women's lives and that's good.

Jennifer replied that there were just as many books by women published before chick lit existed, and Megan asked her to name some of them; Jennifer said she was one of many and that "you demean yourself" by calling yourself a chick lit author.

Carrie said she had no problem with chick lit, that one of her books was called "gossip lit" in the New York Times. Some people are offended by categories, but that's how things are marketed.

Megan said if chick lit creates a debate, that's good.

Ned asked about lad lit as a male equivalent, and the panel said there's not really such a thing, that men don't buy so-called lad lit books and women don't either.

Jennifer said she's just glad her new book doesn't have a cover with women's legs, and someone in the audience said she thought chick lit was all about the same story of an urban young woman in a shitty job trying to have a good relationship with a guy. That to her was chick lit.

Megan said no, that's how chick lit started but it has evolved. Jennifer again noted that chick lit allows publishers to pay women authors a fraction of what they pay men, but the others on the panel disagreed.

An agent in the audience said some of her "literary" male authors don't make as much as her chick lit authors. More women buy books, the agent said, and more buy chick lit books than any other genre, so it's a good way to get readers into bookstores. The agent noted that she gets a lot of chick lit manuscripts from would-be clients, but that lad lit doesn't work and writers themselves aren't really interested in producing it.

An audience member said she hated pink, fluffy chick lit covers. No guy, she said, would ever buy a pink book. Carrie said lots of people do love pink covers, that they have come back in fashion after a hiatus.

Near the end of the panel, an audience member asked what writers the panelists were inspired by.

Jennifer said Jean Rhys, Chekhov, Salinger, Tennessee Williams and others. Caprice gave a shout-out to J.K. Rowling and said she likes Jonathan Tripper a lot but was also inspired by early books like The Poky Little Puppy, and when she was a bit older, The Little Prince. Megan said she loved comfort books, like romances, which are predictable, and mentioned Nora Roberts and David Feinberg. Carrie said she loved Dostoevsky, Austen and especially Nabokov, but the book that most inspired her most to write was Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

Soon the hour was up and Ned thanked the panelists. All their books were on sale, and a number of the people in the audience went up to buy books and speak with the authors under the statue of William E. Dodge, the nineteenth-century industrialist, abolitionist and advocate of temperance, as a woman began to play a chartreuse piano and the rain, which had held off all day, started to come down a bit more heavily.

Sunday at the McCarren Pool: Ghostland Observatory

This appeared on Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Monday, August 20, 2007:

Sunday at the McCarren Pool: Ghostland Observatory

The L Magazine practically told readers to avoid the last McCarren Pool Sunday concert of the summer because of what it called "the retarded electro-pop sounds" of Ghostland Observatory, but I'm just an old man so what do I know? I stood in the rain (under an umbrella, but still got wet) for over an hour blissfully enjoying Ghostland Observatory's sound, which practically compels you to start dancing, or at least swaying.

I got familiar with them a few months ago via National Public Radio, which said of the Austin-based band at SXSW:

"Ghostland Observatory is a duo, made up of singer Aaron Behrens and producer/drummer Thomas Turner. Formed to indulge a love of rock 'n' roll, the band blends new-wave electronics, danceable beats, disco guitars and Behrens' uncompromising vocals for a sound that recalls Daft Punk and The Clash in equal measure. With a vocal presence not unlike that of Freddie Mercury, there's a grand sense of ridiculousness about Ghostland Observatory — but it's a fun ridiculousness that knows how to party."

Despite the steady rain, people -- mostly 30 years younger than I am -- clearly knew how to party. I watched the dancing, the soccer game at the south end of the field, the volleyball game at the north end, the crowd's tossing around a big blue-and-white beach ball, the tall blue JellyNYC (concert presenter) inflated stick man swaying in the wind, the VIPs dry under the Helio tents at the back of the pool, kids getting their beers at the Brooklyn Brewery stands (dayglo wristbands required), others getting Sparky's All-American eats -- you know, hipsters williamsburgis in their element. (Okay, I know how cheesy and corny that is, but I published in People twenty years ago and am still recuperating.)

Obviously, at my age I'm far from being part of this scene -- although the summer of 1969, when I turned 18, will always be my favorite NYC summer (yes, Woodstock was 38 years and 2 days ago), believe me, over 55 is a lot, lot more fun than under 30 -- but I've enjoyed going to the McCarren Pool concerts these last two summers. I haven't seen anyone being arrested, vomiting, passing out, fighting out or doing illegal drugs (I'm an elderly attorney, so I do look for this stuff). All I saw were people enjoying themselves and all I heard was loud music, much of which was very, very good. And I also never saw anyone give me or any other older person a second glance as an unwanted insider. Anyone can pretty much walk in to the Sunday concerts at any time.

It's not clear what the McCarren Pool's future will be. Recently declared a landmark and perhaps scheduled to return to what was its mid-20th-century glory as one of Robert Moses's classic WPA New York City pools, there may a change in the water by next summer. Some people have criticized using the pool merely for one segment of the community -- the newly-arrived hipsters -- rather than catering to Williamsburg and Greenpoint's older Latino, Polish, Italian and other longtime residents. Diversity would be a plus, as would other uses of this amazing structure.

The New York City Parks Department wants people's opinions on the pool's future. There are three guidelines that the new pool design will follow:

The bathhouse and entry arch must be preserved.
There must be a pool.
There must be a year-round recreation center.

Give your opinions at the survey here.

Thanks to JellyNYC and everyone connected with this summer's free Sunday concerts.

Saturday at the Fort Greene Summer Literary Festival

This is from Richard Grayson's MySpace blog for Sunday, August 19, 2007:

Brooklyn's Fort Greene has been home to giants of American literature like Marianne Moore (on Cumberland Street) and Richard Wright (on Carlton Avenue). An earlier resident of the neighborhood, Walt Whitman wrote a Brooklyn Eagle editorial calling for the construction of a local park, "[as] the inhabitants there are not so wealthy nor so well situated as those on the heights…we have a desire that these, and the generations after them, should have such a place of recreation…"

Late Saturday afternoon, several hundred New Yorkers flocked to that place, Fort Greene Park, for the third annual Fort Greene Summer Literary Festival, presented by Akashic Books, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, the New York Writers Coalition (NYWC) and others.

Gathered on a hill overlooking the lush foliage of the park, audience members sat on folding chairs or on picnic blankets or just stood listening to five established writers of poetry and fiction and about a dozen young Brooklyn residents, aged 8 to 16, who read work composed in Saturday creative writing workshops taught by NYWC members.

Laurie Cumbo, executive director and founder of the nearby Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), served as a genial and charming MC, gracefully overcoming any jet lag she may have felt from a plane trip from South Africa the night before. Cumbo kept an event-filled program moving briskly, and her introductions and appreciations of everyone who came up to the rather rickety-looking raised platform to read or perform were both informative and enthusiastic – though she did have a tendency to give all the women and even little girls the honorific "Mrs."

First up was a non-literary treat that proved the platform wasn't as fragile as it appeared, as it stood up to the dynamic exertions of stepping provided by The P.L.A.Y.E.R.S. Club Steppers in their I (HEART) BX" T-shirts. I've seen some fine stepping at the North Florida universities where I worked, but this group proved graceful and energetic as well as engagingly sweet. When they brought some of the young kids onstage to show them the moves, it was both funny and compelling.

In a serious moment, one member of the group talked about his time as a Bloods member and in lockup and how stepping with P.L.A.Y.E.R.S. turned his life around. If you haven't experienced a stepping performance or know it only from films like "Stomp the Yard," you should try to catch one of this Bronx-based group's live performances around the city.

Next up was the highlight of the festival, as it was last year: the kids from the park's NYWC writing workshops reciting their poems, stories and essays. First the 8-12 group – Samuel and David Adames, Nathan and Mahera Josephat, Christopher and Aleisha Small, Paul and Joseph Francois, Najaya Royal, Anjelika Amog, Rachel George, Jediael Fraser and Annelise Treitmeier-McCarthy – recited their work, often with amazing poise.

The little kids presented delightful poems about magic and the third eye, superhero stories, riddling rhymes and Najaya's tale – read on WBAI last Thursday – of how a tidy neighborhood cat used bleach to clean out the heart of Mrs. Poopyhead, a woman so mean she'd eaten her own husband one Halloween night. I was impressed with many of the poems, especially Christopher's "Hands," Jediael's "Magic Address" ("It's not on Pitkin Avenue") and Aleisha's invoking the "NYC Sights" one can see on "the A-to-Z train from New Lots to Nevins Street."

Up next were the teen writers from the NYWC Saturday workshops in the park: Shaquana Cole's odes to her African heritage and the music of Etta James and the O'Jays; Caitlin Garcia, back for the third year ("Writing is so amazing!") with her Ashberyesque "Caramel" and "Nefertiti"; Dmitriy Vovchok's exhortation to his literary "comrades" – specifically including bloggers, I have to note sheepishly – not to "go on and on" but to "destroy their work without pity" (OK, Dmitriy, next year I won't mention you); and Jessica Irizari's "Emotion Sickness" with its sophisticated use of enjambment and half-rhymes.

At the end of this segment, MC Laurie Combo, who'd worked beautifully with the kids, brought them all onstage for a huge round of applause. Then, after a reprise of the P.L.A.Y.E.R.S. stepping magic, five acclaimed literary writers, all with Brooklyn connections, probably knew they had some hard acts to follow but read and performed some amazing material:

Staceyann Chin, famous for her one-woman shows and appearance in "Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam," read some of her fiery, angry and very funny poetical rants with her usual passion and artistry. As always, attention must be paid – and it was on Saturday – to Chin's takes on economic injustice, gender and racial issues and the unexpected grace that plops unbidden into our lives. Her exploration of being a dog owner ("How strange it is to love something that needs you to be clean") was thoughtful and moving.

Roger Bonair-Agard, a native of Trinidad and Tobago and another "Def Poetry Jam" alumnus, came on saying, "What's up, Brooklyn?" and performed from memory, affecting a more pronounced Caribbean accent, a long and vibrant performance piece about the ever-present conflict between the pull of his native land and the "hot kitchen in Brooklyn" that the artist in exile finds himself. Then he read from his new book of poems about and not really about the game of cricket a remarkable longpoem about his guaybera-wearing elegantly-named grandfather that recursively maneuvered back to the poet's dilemma of how to achieve dignity out of "the nothing of which we sometimes thought we were made."

Jennifer Egan, a Fort Greene resident, read a tour de force of an early chapter of her acclaimed bestseller, The Keep, in which two cousins reunite many years after a troubled past to renovate an Eastern European castle into a hotel. Egan is one of the few writers I know who can deftly blend the technique and practice of metafiction into narratives so realistic that readers suspend their belief of disbelief. I've read the whole book and know that the story of Danny and Howie is profoundly moving because of, not despite, the magical manipulations of the author and her literary surrogate.

Chris Abani began not with a literary performance but a shockingly adept turn on the saxophone. Who knew this award-winning Nigerian poet and novelist was also a terrific musician? Well, maybe Johnny Temple of Brooklyn's Akashic Books, Abani's publisher, rocking an infant on the sidelines, as the author read from Song for Night, to be published next month. The novella is the story of a West African boy soldier in a brutal war. The nameless protagonist is part of a platoon that clears land mines; all the boys' vocal chords have been cut to keep from them from distracting others with their screams when they are blown up. Haunting and lyrical, Abani's spare first-person narrative kept the crowd hushed as afternoon turned into evening.

It had been a long day by then, but Gloria Naylor – whose phenomenal The Women of Brewster Place, written as a Brooklyn College undergraduate and famously made into an Oprah Winfrey miniseries – proved up to the task of keeping everyone's attention riveted with a chapter from a work in progress, a novel combining the stories of two newcomers to Charleston in the early 1800s – a man who emigrates from Norway and a woman from Senegal coming to America on a slave ship.

Naylor read a first person account of the woman's infancy, when she is abandoned and found by Ancient Man, leader of the Diallo clan, who overcomes his family's fear that the baby is a djinn who bring them disaster and gives the child to his youngest son's junior wife, who's recently lost her own baby, to nurse. Naylor's story, obviously carefully researched and narrated with a stately dignity, kept nearly all of the crowd in their seats despite the late hour as darkness fell.

Finally, after she received a tremendous round of applause – as had all the authors – MC Laurie Cumbo thanked the festival sponsors, performers and audience. I 'm already looking forward to next year's event in Fort Greene Park.

(For great pics of the event and interesting commentary, check out Hello, Babar, the Vibe blog of Brooklyn cultural critic Jalylah Burrell.)

Tuesday Evening at the McCarren Park Pool: "Bonnie and Clyde"

This was posted to Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Wednesday, August 15, 2007:

Tuesday Evening at the McCarren Park Pool: "Bonnie and Clyde"


"I am sorry to say that 'Bonnie and Clyde' does not impress me as a contribution to the thinking of our times or as wholesome entertainment."

So wrote New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther on September 3, 1967, in a mystified response to the many letters attacking his negative review of the movie.

Crowther's long reign as Times film reviewer would end that November. He never seemed to understand the sea change in American movies.

I first saw Bonnie and Clyde 40 years ago during its original run at the long-gone Brook Theater by Flatbush and Flatlands Avenues. On Tuesday evening, I got to see it on a big screen again as the penultimate film in the McCarren Pool's Summerscreen series.

As usual, most of the audience sat in folding chairs or blankets on the south half of the drained pool. With the recently landmarking and the Bloomberg administration's plans for the pool uncertain, 2007 could be the last summer for movies and concerts.

Everyone entering gets a sticker with a number. We're supposed to look for our "twin," someone wearing the same number, and if we find them, we both might win something. Wearing a number with the logo of Volkswagen (sponsor of the event along with The L Magazine and others) feels creepy to me, but several audience members are quite aggressive in trying to locate their "twin."

Blankets are placed a lot closer together than they would be at the beach, but no one seems to mind. I sit next to some film students at the School of Visual Arts, where I teach literature and writing, and one of them asks me if I had to be taken to see the movie by a parent, since I was only 16 in 1967 and it's rated R.

No, I went by myself, I say; the MPAA rating system wasn't implemented till later in 1968, probably because of movies like Bonnie and Clyde.

There's a vibrant pre-movie performance by Woodpecker!, a local bluegrass/punk/acoustic band who played the kind of music Flatt and Scruggs might be doing today if they were 25 and lived in Brooklyn.

As darkness descends, kitschy 1950s movie promos repeatedly tell us to head for the snack counter for delicious refreshments.

The film itself seems as fresh as ever, though probably not quite so startling 40 years after its debut. The crowd is quiet, with little talking, some picnicking, a bit of cigarette smoking, some chugging from oversized cans of beer. But basically everyone seems spellbound.

The biggest laugh among this mostly hipster crowd comes in the scene when Bonnie and Clyde's young accomplice C.W. Moss is upbraided by his father for getting a tattoo on his chest and defiling his body. The old man seems more upset by this than he is by his son's life of crime – pretty amusing in a crowd whose body art, if put on canvases, would take up a couple of floors of the Whitney.

The last Summerscreen movie of the summer is next week: Prince in Purple Rain. Anyone who knows what's the password can get in free.

Monday Night in East Flatbush: Heart and Soul with Anita Baker at Wingate Field

This was posted to Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Tuesday, August 14, 2007:

Monday Night at Wingate Field: An Evening of Heart and Soul with Miss Anita Baker

Back when I was a teenager during Mayor Lindsay's administration in the mid-1960s, when New York was called "Fun City," there was a slogan for tourists that went: "New York is a Summer Festival." I think it was to get people to believe there were fun stuff to do all summer other than get mugged or caught in a riot or smell the air after a two-week sanitation worker strike. (Just kidding! New York was truly incredible for a teenager in the 1960s! I loved it! Really...)

Now there's an incredible number of free or very cheap events outdoors nearly every night. When I went to see the Hold Steady at Prospect Park last Thursday, I had to give up seeing the Beastie Boys at McCarren Pool near my house.

Since then I've gone back to Prospect Park's bandshell on Saturday for the last event of the year's Celebrate Brooklyn! series, an African Festival that featured many great bands from the continent, foremost among them the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars. On Sunday at the McCarren Pool, I saw Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and Birds of Avalon.

Last night I took the B-43 bus from Williamsburg through Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights to Empire Boulevard and then walked down Brooklyn Avenue (downhill all the way -- thanks to the fact that the North American glacier stopped at Empire Boulevard thousands of years ago) to Wingate Field to go to a free concert, part of the 25th year of the Martin Luther King Jr. Concert Series.

The headliner was Miss Anita Baker. I am sorry I missed Lauryn Hill last week and I wasn't going to miss this. I stood on line for about half an hour with a huge crowd that must have eventually become, I don't know, 4000 people? (I noticed only about two dozen of these people were other Caucasians, and about half of them were a group of retarded adults who must have come from a residential facility.)

When we were separated into different lines for each gender, the men's line sailed through. I always carry my fragile reading glasses in a hard case in my right pocket, and when the security guard from the Nation of Islam did a body search, he felt it and jokingly said (jokingly, because of my age, I guess), "Are you carrying a deadly weapon?"

I showed him my reading glasses and said, "Yes, with these on, I can out-read anyone in Brooklyn."

He smiled and said, "That's not illegal -- yet."

Wingate High School opened when I was 4 years old and living in the neighborhood. My great-grandparents had a house not far away. The high school closed last year and was broken up into four specialized schools. Jackie Robinson came for the opening day ceremonies in 1955. The school's very modernistic, very 1950s luxe banjo shape afforded unique opportunities for ditching classes, I recall being told by kids who went there.

Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough President, was presiding onstage in a white sports jacket. I know him going back to 1970, when I was involved with undergraduate student government at Brooklyn College and Marty was the president of the graduate student organization. Even back in LaGuardia Hall, he was a great politican -- but tonight he's reading the names of about 700 people and businesses from page after page and the crowd wants to see and hear Anita.

We suffer through listening to the names of various winners of raffles for free meals at the Bed-Stuy Applebee's (at Restoration Plaza, a project of the community that Sen. Bobby Kennedy was involved with when I was an intern in his office the semester he was shot, in the spring of 1968) and for tickets to Cyclones games and BAM events.

We get to see people from WBLS (who doesn't love Steve Harvey?) and other local bigwigs and finally a Baptist minister comes on and tells us to all behave and be respectful and leave quickly and quietly at the end of the concert. He asks us to pray for good weather on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays ("Shabbos") and Sundays, and I wonder why there can be crappy weather the other three days. Then he says a version of the Lord's Prayer that includes "in the name of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

Finally our prayers are answered, the music starts, the red curtains part, and those of us standing in the back who can't see the figure onstage so well and have to rely on one of the two big video monitors (most smart people have brought those folding chairs and a few hundred get to sit in the bleachers) see her: Miss Anita, wearing a flouncy black gown, scatting and swaying. "I haven't brought anything but a bunch of old love songs," she says.

The show is sublime. She's very animated and her voice is good, though slightly distorted by the speakers, I think. Everyone has his or her favorite Anita Baker song. Some like "Fairy Tales," some "You Bring Me Joy" or whatever. My favorite is "Sweet Love."

I am tired, having woken up at 4:30 a.m. after four hours of sleep, and I leave after about seven or eight numbers. But on the corner of Brooklyn Avenue and Hawthorne Street, I discover the secret of the Wingate Field concerts, known already to the residents of that block just north of Kings County Hospital: you can actually see and hear things a lot better from that corner than you can from most of the further reaches of the crowd inside the field.

So I stick around for more songs. The night is breezy and not hot, and everyone looks happy. Sleepily, I make my way past lots of cops to New York Avenue, where I hop on the B-44 bus that will get me back to Williamsburg.

Thanks to everyone for this concert, especially to Anita, and to all the stupid white people who didn't show up for whatever reason: You missed a great show.

Thursday Night at the Prospect Park Bandshell: The Hold Steady

This appeared on Richard Grayson's MySpace blog on Friday, August 10, 2007:

Thursday Night at the Prospect Park Bandshell: The Hold Steady

It had been a while since I'd been to a show at the Prospect Park Bandshell. Celebrate Brooklyn! has been putting on these concerts for 29 summers now, and whenever I've spent the summer in the city, I've tried to go. I think the first time I went was in that summer of 1979, the last year I lived in Brooklyn with my family, the summer my first book came out, when Prospect Park and the bandshell were really funky and unsafe, and it seemed weird to go there at night. I can't remember who I saw, though I'm pretty sure it was a jazz band.

Last night the rain held off and I got to experience The Hold Steady. They were incredible. Craig Finn has more energy and idiosyncratic moves than just about any musician I've seen lately. The crowd was huge and very happy. It was a terrific experience.

I also liked the opening act, The Teenage Prayers, who were a bit quirky and fun.

Tuesday Evening at Bluestockings: Aaron Bollinger and "The MySpace Social Guide"

This is from Richard Grayson's MySpace blog for Thursday, August 9, 2007:

On Tuesday evening, I attended a fascinating presentation by Aaron Bollinger, author of The MySpace Social Guide, at Bluestockings, the wonderful radical/feminist/activist bookstore on the Lower East Side. He discussed the various innovative ways social activists and small businesses can use MySpace and Web 2.0.

Despite MySpace's technical difficulties and shortcomings (in attempting to post this, I've gotten one frozen screen and eleven frustrating "an unexpected method has occurred" messages -- you all have gotten them too), Aaron sees it and other Web 2.0 social networks, aggregators and other sites as ways people can connect with customers, other activists, and clients.

The big advantage MySpace had over an earlier social network like Friendster, Aaron said, was the ability to copy and post code into profiles; thus, any kid with a MySpace page could in effect become her own webmaster. This empowerment, along with the rise of social networking and user-generated content, is the essence of Web 2.0.

Aaron played this incredibly interesting YouTube video, mostly screens of statistics about the rapidly changing world of work, communication and technology, called "The Future of Technology." (Did you know that the U.S. Labor Department estimates that today's learners will have 10-14 different jobs by age 38? That India and China have more honors students than the U.S. has students of any kind? Or that the U.S. is 20th in broadband internet penetration? Actually, we've probably fallen behind even further by now.)

After discussing LinkedIn and Meetup.com, Aaron said not only the familiar "content is king" mantra but also "context is king." That is, people usually discuss religion in special places (for example, houses of worship), not at the ball game or the workplace. So where you post content is as important, if not more so, than what you are saying.

Aaron predicted that eventually every organization will have its own social network, that the complex designs of portals like Yahoo and CNN are very Web 1.0, that the future of web design is simplicity and ease of use. Then he discussed the future: Web 3.0 will be viral and nomadic, with content migrating to multiple places; for example, thanks to widgets, videos will not just show up on a site like YouTube.

He gave as an example of a "context aggregator" the mostly in-beta profile aggregators, where you can have all your social networking profiles (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) in one place. Other examples are Wink.com and Profilelinker.com.

Viral syndication will be made possible through widgets. Examples of widget-building sites can be found at Aaron's company, Kickapps.com, and also at Widgetbox.com and Widgetbuilder.com.

Some questions Aaron posed: How do smaller, specialized social networks get people to join? Will giant profiles like MySpace be where everyone spends their time in the future? How can we coherently organize content?

In meatspace, as we used to call it in Silicon Valley in the 1990s (well, some techtards like me did), people still go to general places to hang out and spend time: parks, malls, TV networks. But we also spend a lot of time at specialized places, of course, places where not everyone goes.

Aaron showed, a site for film lovers, the Four Eyed Monsters project on YouTube, as well as the twins playing the 90210 theme on guitar(whom I must admit underwhelmed me). These projects have a natural stickiness, Aaron claimed, user-generated content that a lot of people make meaningful connections with and send on to their friends.

He also had us look at simple, narrow sights like the light bulb site RelightNY.com and EQ.TV, which have eschewed the complexity of the old Web 1.0 portals for the plain and simple interface of Google -- "as simple as TV is," Aaron said.

Then he took questions, which included queries about wikis and content management systems for user-generated content. Throughout his presentation -- on a very hot and humid evening -- Aaron was articulate without being overly polished, informative and interesting.

Although I haven't yet read The MySpace Social Guide, it appears to have the same qualities and looks like a valuable tool you might want to get for information and future reference.

Hipster Book Club Reviews HIGHLY IRREGULAR STORIES by Richard Grayson

Marie Mundaca has reviewed Highly Irregular Stories at the Hipster Book Club:

Richard Grayson is a meta-fictionalist of the old school, where structure is often as important as narrative, where the story is sometimes hidden in structural tricks like diary entries, lists, and jokes. Grayson revels in finding stories in ephemera—descriptions of what happened to groups of people on dates throughout a year, a list of traits, stories about writing stories.

The stories in Highly Irregular Stories were originally published in the 1970s and 1980s, but Grayson has such a fresh approach to writing that these stories don't seem dated. In some ways, Grayson may remind readers of a younger Woody Allen—an intellectual who ponders the nature of existence yet is remarkably funny while discussing life, death, and capitalism.

Like much of the meta-fiction oeuvre, Grayson often writes stories about writing stories—he'll describe a story he wrote, or wants to write, or is in the process of writing. The trick with this genre is to make sure the reader can find the story. There is a narrative somewhere; It's not all jokes and lists. Grayson succeeds here—the lists and diary entries reveal his passion for finding new ways to tell a story. "The Facts Are Always Friendly" is a series of calendar entries that explore the complicated relationships among a group of friends who are at once affable and duplicitous. "My Twelfth Twelfth Story Story," a tale about a seemingly upright citizen writing a book of stories about living on the 12 floor, reveals that the protagonist has a preoccupation with gruesome murders. "Progress" is a tale of a young man who goes home with a very friendly clothing salesman and ends up alone, trapped in the salesman's circular apartment, afraid to leave.

The funny stuff in Highly Irregular Stories is not just mildly amusing but actually laugh-out-loud funny. Take these lines, from "A Disjointed Fiction":

My eye catches an unauthorized advertisement scrawled on the subway map across from my seat:
FOR A GOOD LAY CALL 969-9970
It's bad enough that this is my sister's phone number, but what really hurts is that the handwriting is unmistakably my father's.

"Eating at Arby's" humorously explores the lives of two Southern Florida residents, Manny and Zelda, through a series of Dick and Jane-style stories. For Manny and Zelda, a trip to a mall becomes an analysis of the wastefulness of the middle classes, a visit to the chiropractor, and an examination of race relations. What sometimes seem like stand-up routines on the outset reveal stories about the deep struggles of creativity and identity in the late twentieth century.

In the story "Innovations," Grayson takes revenge on a more successful writer by making him a character in a story and leaving him trapped in Miami Beach during the 1950s, specifically because the successful writer called Miami Beach America's armpit. However, "Innovations" is not about the successful writer, identified as D.L., being trapped in Miami. Rather, it is about some of the things he does that seem to annoy Grayson's character and how these annoyances lead to Grayson's character trapping him in Miami. "Innovations" is very typical of the tales in Highly Irregular Stories — there are stories within stories within stories that spiral inward or spiral outward towards their conclusions.

There is nothing lazy or superfluous in Grayson's prose. Every word is called into service. What seem like digressions are insights into the story or the characters. For example, Grayson starts "The Governor of the State of Depression" by writing, "The Governor likes to be treated like a baby. . . He has taken to eating baby food. His especial favorite is Gerber's Strained Vanilla Custard Pudding." The pudding is not only pudding, it's custard, and it's strained. It's practically pre-digested. Later, when the Governor is reading an editorial condemning his policies, he's eating the pudding in an obvious attempt to comfort himself.

Sometimes Grayson's self-effacing humor seems almost Vonnegut-esque, as in "Escape from the Planet of the Humans," where he writes,

If I were to write wonderful books and grow old gracefully and become a member of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, the headline on page 11 of The New York Post might read WRITER HONORED AT FORUM, but I doubt it.

For all the similarities to more mainstream writers, Grayson is firmly seated in the experimental realm and is much closer to writers like Donald Barthelme, Raymond Federman and Steve Katz. Readers in search of realistic plots and characters will not find what they're looking for here, but for the more adventurous reader who enjoys satirical and experimental fiction, Highly Irregular Stories is highly recommended.

(August 2007)

Wednesday Night at Tompkins Square Park: Ed Park, Lynne Tillman & Lore Segal for 100 issues of BOMB Magazine

This report by Richard Grayson first appeared on Jeff Bryant's blog Syntax of Things (go there for the original links) on Thursday, August 2, 2007:

So it was another Wednesday evening, another park: this time, Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. (These ParkLit events by the way have been sponsored by Open City, so thanks to Thomas Beller and company.) But no "literary death match" this Wednesday; instead, it was a celebration of a magazine I called "venerable" in a post a few days ago: BOMB, which has just published its 100th issue. And it featured readings by eminent or soon-to-be-eminent fiction writers of three different generations, befitting BOMB's role in the literary history of New York City. If BOMB were a building, the Landmarks Commission would make sure it would be standing forever (unless Donald Trump wanted to build on it).

BOMB first appeared in 1981, and while it's very much associated with the period of Lower East Side/East Village ascendancy in its early years -- best documented in Brandon Stosuy's excellent literary history Up Is Up But So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992 -- the magazine has remained indispensible as it continues to fulfill its mission of "facilitating conversations between artists of all stripes" and paying close and serious attention to new developments in art and writing, regardless of their commercial appeal.

With the East Village undergoing what appears to be a similar process of gentrification that previously undid Soho (see Richard Kostelanetz's Soho: Rise and Fall of an Artists' Colony), one of the few advantages is that Tompkins Square Park, in the 1980s filled with homeless people and lots of drug addicts (although the spectacle of seeing them gather by the monument to Temperance was pretty funny), is a much more pleasant place to hang out today than it was in the old days, when I avoided it.

The park is filled with people bicycling, strolling, watching their pets at the famous dog run (supposedly one of the best in the world), doing tai chi, hanging out. It's about 87 degrees and humid at 6:30 p.m., the scheduled start for the event. About forty white plastic chairs are set out in front of a microphone and a banner for Park Lit, just in front of one of the park's amazing American elm trees (a rare collection now that Dutch elm disease has decimated most of them in the U.S.).

There's a crowd of about 35 as BOMB's Paul Morris gets the festivities underway, but another 25 or so will join the group as the reading goes on. Paul says it's an appropriate setting for the 100th issue celebration, since the East Village is where the magazine began (it's now headquartered in Fort Greene, Brooklyn).

Nicole Steinberg, whose poetry I enjoyed last Friday evening, joins Paul for the first of a series of re-enactments of the interviews for which BOMB is famous. From its plastic container, they take out a 1978 issue and Paul, as interviewer Craig Golson, questions Nicole, as playwright Christopher Durang (a favorite of mine; I was in the first-night audience at The Marriage of Bette and Boo at the Public Theatre; it contains the classic line: "I don't think God punishes people for specific things; I think He punishes them in general for no reason") about who Chris hates and whether he considers himself whimsical ("I change from day to day.")

Then Paul introduces the first reader, the young dynamo -- founding editor of The Believer, former editor of the Village Voice Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Times Book Review's science fiction columnist and presidential adviser Ed Park, whose first novel Personal Days will be published next year by Random House. He's in the 100th issue, copies of which are being given away free this evening.

I've heard some truly great readings from novels which at the time hadn't been published -- at Bread Loaf thirty years ago John Irving's The World According to Garp and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon -- and I can't say if Personal Days will be a classic like those books but I haven't heard one I liked as much as I did Ed's book.

The little episodes --featuring a group of office workers who come to each other cubicles to speculate about co-workers' crushes, give unwanted back rubs, help with unwanted double lines popping up in MS Word documents (if it's your resume, you can't ask the IT people for help, can you?), Googling themselves and ex-lovers ("Every time you feel a tingle in your fingers, someone somewhere is Googling you") -- are insightful, hilarious and authentic. As one character notes, we spend a lot more time with our co-workers than we do with our friends or even with our significant others.

I anticipate reading the novel with pleasure. Its deadpan rhythms and knowing vignettes (you never want to be called into the boss's office to be told you're doing a fantastic job because it's sure to mean a layoff is imminent) remind me of a favorite novel of the 1970s, Renata Adler's Speedboat. As it would for the rest of the evening, the repeated bites on my legs of one or perhaps a series of flying insects didn't deflect my attention, though at the moment I am awaiting early signs of West Nile disease.

Just before Ed is finished, a young man comes through the crowd, handing out leaflets about an upcoming rally at City Hall Park to protest the new city policy on taking public photographs. Okay.

After Ed's reading, Paul and Nicole return to the mic and show us the four different versions of the magazine throughout 26 years. The BOMB I first knew was huge, perhaps even larger than Interview, and it's since gone through various formats. There's a funny re-enactment of a colloquy between Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth about why actors who look like they do often don't get the parts that go to Brad Pitt and then Paul introduces Lynne Tillman.

What can I say about Lynne Tillman? Many of us have idolized for years. Her Madame Realism stories have had a strong influence on me. I was introduced to Lynne and her work by my friend, the 1980s downtown scene writer/performer Peter Cherches, and I've never stopped enjoying reading her fiction, essays and art criticism. It especially gratified me when in this decade I met a number of younger artists and writers, like my friend novelist/filmmaker Brian Pera, who shared my admiration of Lynne.

For anyone unfamiliar with Lynne's groundbreaking work, here's a bio note that doesn't do her justice, compiled by me from various sources:

Lynne Tillman is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, one collection of essays, and two nonfiction books. Lynne’s No Lease on Life was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her novel, American Genius: A Comedy, was published by Soft Skull Press last year. Other novels are Motion Sickness, Haunted Houses and Cast In Doubt. Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including The New Gothic, New York Writes After 9/11, The Show I’ll Never Forget, The Penguin Book of New York Stories, and This Is Not Chick Lit. She’s a professor and writer-in-residence at the University at Albany, and last year she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Once the mic is lowered ("It's pathetic to be so short," Lynne says), she reads an excerpt from American Genius, A Comedy. The narrator is in an institution -- whether it's more like Yaddo or Rockland State, we're not really sure -- and she looks at the cosmetics sitting on the bureau, focusing on her anti-aging creams.

From there we have digressions on and meditations about belief in one's work (the narrator imagines that her Polish cosmetician trusts that her work actually helps her clients), imaginings of the lives of those who serve us, the nature of library solitude, and finally to some of the novel's riffs about American history: how John Winthrop's "City on a Hill" compares with his affectionate and even salacious letters to his wife, reflections on mythology, the songs of the past, Manifest Destiny, Bloody Kansas, the sanity of Mary Todd Lincoln, and more. If we don't wish to memorialize memory, the narrator asks, how do we perform our obligations to it?

-- I fear I am making some of the most exciting prose in recent American fiction sound tendentious by my inadequate description, so just let me say: read this book for yourself. Lynne is always a good reader in public; about a year ago I heard her in Bryant Park, along with other contributors to Elizabeth Merrick's anthology This Is Not Chick Lit, and Lynne's reading was equally powerful.

Before bringing on Lore Segal, Paul and Nicole re-enact part of an interview from issue #68, with Chuck D on the cover, by Albert Mobilio of Robert Altman, who discusses his then-forthcoming film Dr. T and the Women and wistfully says that one genre he hasn't attempted but would like to is a murder mystery. It's nice to know that he did get his wish.

I've known Lore Segal and her work for both kids and the rest of us since the early 1970s. I was introduced to her by my Brooklyn College undergrad and MFA professors Jonathan Baumbach (a continuing inspiration: his most recent book, On the Way to My Father's Funeral, is probably his best) and Peter Spielberg, then co-directors of the Fiction Collective, where I worked as an editorial assistant for several years.

I also helped coordinate a conference at BC -- directed by Jon Baumbach, Jack Gelber and John Ashbery -- called "Literature and Publishing: Can They Co-Exist?" at which Lore Segal was one of the panelists.

But it's her 1976 novel, the woefully underrated Lucinella that made me a Lore Segal fan. It seems to be out of print, but it's the best novel about the 1970s New York literary scene I know. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, John Leonard said of the eponymous character, a poet struggling to find her way, "the nicest person ever to appear in a novel about New York writers, yet she doesn't know it and she is, gently, cracking up."

Her 1985 novel, Her First American, is Segal's masterpiece. While there are some similarities in the backgrounds of the author and the character Ilka Weissnix (see also Other People's Houses), for me the most brilliant creation is Carter Bayoux, the brilliant, self-destructive and unforgettable black intellectual who is the book's hero. The Times Book Review said of Her First American: "Lore Segal might have closer than anyone to writing the Great American Novel."

Check out Han Ong's interview with Lore Segal in BOMB #99 for more. (BOMB's relaunched website will soon include the complete archive of 26 years of its famous interviews.)

After Paul Morris introduces her, Lore Segal comes to the stage, where a chair is placed for her. "There comes a time in life when you get to sit down," she says.

She reads from her new book, a collection of linked stories, most already familiar to her fans who read The New Yorker. It's called Shakespeare's Kitchen, again featuring her "Zuckerman," Ilke, here involved with the petulant and quirky intellectuals she works with at a maddeningly insulated think tank.

The passage is tenderly funny and sad as Ilke tries to connect, via a series of uncomfortable, pathetic phone conversations, with people who friends or friends of friends have claimed might make boon companions in her new isolated Connecticut setting. Segal's ear for dialogue, particularly that in family households -- especially when it's misunderstood by listeners who should know better -- remains as acute as ever.

As she gets up to enthusiastic applause, Segal offers the audience a sentence of advice: "Don't leave New York." When Segal herself was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, she refused to live in that city and commuted from New York. Similarly, Lynne Tillman's been an East Village resident since 1982 (see her novel No Lease on Life for presumed details) -- so I guess she doesn't have to go far to get home now.

But before we go, there's a raffle. Everyone's filled out these slips with their names and e-mails (so they can get on BOMB's mailing list, I guess) and Paul and Nicole pick the winners of five classic issues from the past. Once that's done, the Parks Department and the audience is given thanks, there's more applause, and the evening's over. Of all the events I've had the privilege of telling you about in the past couple of weeks, this is the one I've enjoyed the most.

Thanks very much to all for bearing with me. Thanks again, Jeff; it's been a blast.

(Oh, and as always, full disclosure: BOMB's repeated rejections of my submissions throughout the Reagan administration -- I had better luck with that other downtown-scene magazine, the shorter-lived dot-matrix-printout-in-a-plastic-bag Between C and D -- have perhaps unduly influenced my impressions of BOMB as a publication dedicated to bringing readers the best innovative work available.)