BEN KATCHOR: HOTEL & FARM LAUNCH EVENTS
Brooklyn Public Library for Arts & Culture
10 Lafayette Ave., L10 Building, second floor
Tuesday, October 6, free with advance RSVP, 6:30
Strand Books, 828 Broadway
Friday, October 16, $13.61 ($39.15 includes signed copy of book), 7:30
katchor.com
bklynlibrary.org
strandbooks.com
“At dawn, a battered pickup truck carrying 300 pounds of fresh manure emerges from the garage of a suburban home.” So begins master cartoonist and storyteller Ben Katchor’s latest graphic novel, Hotel and Farm (Pantheon, October 6, $32). The New York City native and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow has been detailing the trials and tribulations of average, everyday people with odd proclivities, often involving a disappearing past, for nearly forty years, having published such marvelous books as Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay, The Jew of New York, The Cardboard Valise, and Hand-Drying in America and written such musical theater pieces as The Rosenbach Company, Up from the Stacks, and The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or, The Friends of Dr. Rushower. His most beloved creation is grumpy real estate photographer Julius Knipl.
In Hotel and Farm, Katchor introduces us to Yalos Finger, Lillian Kurort, the Playfellows, Jug Oar, Randolph Prinzkoff, the Blossims, Echoic City, the Ottoman Crib, the Ruffyan Hotel, Parmysian Fields factory farm, Ecstatic Foods, and other people and places just getting through each day. Katchor is a superb raconteur and observer of life, with a love of old architecture and characters who exist under the radar.
He will be celebrating the publication of the new book on October 6 at 6:30 (free with RSVP) at the Brooklyn Public Library for Arts & Culture, in conversation with Afghan-born, NYC-based filmmaker and multimedia artist Jem Cohen, who has made such works as Museum Hours, Chain, and, with Katchor, the 1989 short Love Teller. Ten days later, Katchor will be at the Strand, speaking with Emmy-, Tony-, and Grammy-winning composer David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Buena Vista Social Club). Tickets are $13.61 for the event itself and $39.15 with a signed copy of the book.
If you don’t know anything about Katchor, this is a great opportunity to see one of the consummate chroniclers of another side of New York City and the world.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]