this week in literature

ART OF ENCOUNTER: GALLERY READINGS

Lee Ufan, “Relatum (formerly Language),” cushions, stones, and light, 1971 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Tuesday, July 26, $10, 6:30
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

“Infinity begins with the self but is only manifested fully when connected with something beyond the self,” Lee Ufan wrote in 1993. “I do not want to fix or represent the self as self, but to recognize the existence of the self in relationship with otherness and perceive the world in a place where such a relationship exists.” One of the many pleasures of the Guggenheim’s current dazzling retrospective, “Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity,” is the inclusion of many quotes from the Korean visual artist and theoretician, who has written extensively about his work specifically as well as the making, or “not-making,” of art in general. Scattered throughout the exhibit and translated on the audioguide, the quotes lend thought-provoking, illuminating insight into Lee’s creative process. On Tuesday, July 26, a group of artists and thinkers will gather among Lee’s Mono-ha (“School of Things”) “living structures” and paintings and read selections from his writings, including Laurie Anderson, Jonah Bokaer, Young-ha Kim, Larissa MacFarquhar, Andrew Solomon, and John Yau, followed by a reception. “Expression achieves externality that is simultaneously passive and active. I hope to cut into the controlled everyday reality of industrial society, breathing fresh air into it and stimulating an awareness of infinity that transcends the human, to awaken a world that is always open,” Lee wrote in 1970. This special program is being held in conjunction with the Korea Society exhibition “The Writings of Lee Ufan,” which continues through August 15; the Guggenheim show runs through September 28.

TWI-NY TALK: JOE SIMON

Joe Simon shows off his colorful autobiography in his New York City apartment (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

JOE SIMON: MY LIFE IN COMICS (Titan, June 2011, $24.95)
www.titanbooks.com

The potential summer blockbuster Captain America opens in theaters today, but that would not have been possible without Joe Simon. Back in 1941, Simon, a native New Yorker born and raised in Rochester, teamed up with Jacob Kurtzberg, better known as Jack Kirby, and created the red, white, and blue superhero. The villain for the cover of the first issue? They came up with just the right one. “Adolf Hitler would be the perfect foil for our next new character, what with his hair and that stupid-looking moustache and his goose-stepping. He was like a cartoon anyway,” Simon writes in his entertaining, intimate, and refreshingly honest memoir, My Life in Comics (Titan, June 2011, $24.95). “We knew what was happening in Europe, and we were outraged by the Nazis — totally outraged. We thought it was a good time for a patriotic hero. . . . And that’s how Captain America was created.”

Today the ninety-seven-year-old Simon spends most of his time in his cluttered apartment just west of the Theater District, surrounded by classic drawings, sketches, and comic book covers. His works line the walls, a veritable history of the industry in black and white and color. One of the many highlights is a grand depiction of the Last Supper populated with his characters, a painting he completed with his daughter Gail. Sitting in his large, comfortable recliner in the middle of the living room, Simon is thrilled to tell tales of his days serving in the Coast Guard with Jack Dempsey, meeting Damon Runyon and Max Baer while a journalist, riding horses in Forest Park, and mentoring such comic book legends as Stan Lee. As we talk, he pulls out stunning works accumulated from throughout his fascinating career. He pauses to congratulate one of his granddaughters for passing an important college test; seven of his eight grandkids were scheduled to fly to Hollywood to walk the red carpet at the star-studded Captain America premiere. Among the other characters Simon had a hand in either creating or developing were the Fiery Mask, the Fly, the Blue Bolt, Sandman, the Newsboy Legion, Manhunter, and the Boy Commandos. An engaging character himself with a sharp memory and a wicked sense of humor, Simon discussed his book and life with twi-ny shortly before the release of the Captain America movie.

twi-ny: What was the experience like going through your past to put together My Life in Comics? Were there any particular parts of your life that were more difficult to talk about than others?

Joe Simon: This was the first time I revealed some of the more intimate details of my life, talking about my wife Harriet and my family, and some of the challenges we’ve faced. It wasn’t really difficult, but it was something I’d never really talked about before.

I feel very lucky because I have my memory. There are things that happened to me ninety years ago — such as the time I met a Civil War veteran — which I remember clearly. I’ve had a lot of exciting things happen to me over the course of ninety-seven years, and it was wonderful to be able to get them down on paper, for everyone to experience.

twi-ny: In the book, you note that you and many of your earliest colleagues come from immigrant Jewish families working in the clothing business in New York City. Do you think that might have had some impact on your eventual career path, creating superheroes and villains dressed in fairy-tale costumes?

JS: That’s a good question. Since tailoring involves creativity, I suppose my parents influenced me in that way, and I’d never really realized it. They also influenced me with their attempts at true romance writing, as badly as they turned out, and with the sense that you stick to it, no matter what you’re trying to accomplish. So in both of those ways they helped me throughout my career. (And of course, thanks to my father, when I came to New York City, I was the best-dressed guy in the comic book business.)

twi-ny: The Captain America movie comes out on July 22. What was your involvement with the picture? What are your thoughts about the film, and about superhero movies in general as they continually get transferred from comic books to the big screen?

JS: Stephen Broussard at Marvel Studios has been keeping me up-to-date, and he arranged for them to film an interview with me. I’ve been liking everything I’ve seen, and am very excited to see how it turns out.

I haven’t seen all of the superhero movies, especially in recent years, but I understand that the Marvel films have been very good. I’ve always thought that Captain America would make a terrific movie and could never understand why all of the earlier attempts sucked so badly. This time, though, they’re sticking to the story that Jack Kirby and I created, so I think they’ll get it right. That’s always the best way to do it — stick with what works.

[Joe Simon: My Life in Comics is available through Amazon and in bookstores everywhere.]

THE FINE ART OF COMICS, WITH GARY PANTER, ART SPIEGELMAN, AND CHRIS WARE

Lyonel Feininger, “Wee Willie Winkie’s World,” from the Chicago Sunday Tribune, November 25, 1906, commercial lithograph, © 2011 Lyonel Feininger Family, LLC/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photograph © the Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday, July 20, $8, 7:00
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In conjunction with the splendid exhibit “Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World,” the Whitney is presenting the special program “The Fine Art of Comics” on July 20. The wide-ranging retrospective traces New York native Feininger’s career path, which began with such comic strips as “The Kin-der-Kids” and “Wee Willie Winkie’s World” for the Chicago Tribune. Discussing the work of Feininger and the state of the comics industry will be three living legends: Art Spiegelman, who started the highly influential RAW with his wife, Françoise Mouly, back in 1980 and won the Pulitzer Prize for his two-part graphic novel Maus; painter, designer, and commercial artist Gary Panter, creator of the Jimbo books and a two-time Emmy winner for his set designs for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse; and Chris Ware, who has released such complex comics as Acme Novelty Library and Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. The panel will be moderated by journalist John Carlin.

SEE A LITTLE LIGHT WITH BOB MOULD

Bob Mould will shed a lot of light on his life and times June 23 at 92YTribeca (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

AN EVENING OF READING AND MUSIC
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Thursday, June 23, $25, 9:00
212-415-5500
www.92YTribeca.org
www.bobmould.com

On his most recent record, 2009’s Life and Times, Bob Mould sang, “What the fuck, what kicked up all this dust / taking me back to the places I left behind / the old life and times.” The postpunk icon, who went from the seminal Hüsker Dü in the 1980s to the fierce Sugar in the ’90s to a solo career and nightclub DJ this past decade, further examines his life and times in his just-released memoir, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody (Little, Brown, June 15, $24.99). In the book, Mould discusses childhood abuse, his homosexuality, drug and alcohol addiction, and his deep love of championship wrestling and music; he began writing songs when he was nine and has, thankfully, never stopped. He’ll be at 92YTribeca on June 23, reading from his book, playing songs, and talking about his life in an intimate gathering that should be simply fascinating and extremely entertaining. Whether blasting loud music till black stuff oozes out his ears or revealing unique aspects of his life, Mould never disappoints.

ONE ARM

Larisa Polonsky and Claybourne Edler offer a different take on the kindness of strangers in Tennessee Williams’s ONE ARM (photo by Monique Carboni)

The Acorn Theater at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through July 2, $61
www.thenewgroup.org
www.tectonictheaterproject.org
www.theatrerow.org/theacorn.htm

Early on in One Arm, Moisés Kaufman’s adaptation of a 1940s short story and unproduced 1960s screenplay by Tennessee Williams, the main character, Ollie Olsen (Claybourne Elder), says, “Somebody tole me that if you stand in one place long enough near the sea or the Gulf, a sea gull will fly over and shit a pot of gold on you. Is that a fact or a fiction?” It’s a fact that there’s no pot of gold waiting for Ollie, a one-armed street hustler facing the electric chair. A onetime lightweight boxing champion of the Pacific fleet, Ollie gave up on life immediately after losing his limb. “Oliver couldn’t have put into words the psychic change which came with his mutilation,” Williams writes in the short story. “He knew that he had lost his right arm, but didn’t consciously know that with it had gone the center of his being. But the self that doesn’t form words nor even thoughts had come to a realization that whirled darkly up from its hidden laboratory and changed him altogether in less time than it took new skin to cover the stump of the arm he had lost. He never said to himself, I’m lost. But the speechless self knew it and in submission to its unthinking control the youth had begun as soon as he left the hospital to look about for destruction.” Elder plays Ollie as a matter-of-fact loser awaiting his ultimate fate, resigned that life has nothing left to offer, a far cry from his contemporary, Midnight Cowboy’s Joe Buck. Ollie has chosen not to care about what goes on in his new life, letting things happen to him instead of taking action as he moves from Los Angeles to New York and New Orleans; when he finally does react, it lands him on death row. Kaufman (The Laramie Project, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo) keeps things appropriately low-tech, dank, and dark. Instead of trying to come up with a way to hide Ollie’s right arm, Kaufman has chosen to keep it always visible, tied to the former boxer’s taut body with a black belt. “Think of it as an arm that doesn’t exist,” the onstage narrator (Noah Bean) explains. Derek McLane’s set and David Lander’s lighting offer excitements galore, as Ollie’s bed serves multiple purposes, including getting turned around and used as a car, while Lander employs a dangling lamp as an inventive spotlight. The ensemble changes costumes and roles in a flash; particularly impressive are Larisa Polonsky as Lila, a girl in the French Quarter, and a nurse interested in Ollie, and Greg Pierotti as Cherry the pimp, a man in the park, and a middle-aged homosexual. Unlike so much of Williams’s work, there are no passionately melodramatic scenes, no Stanley Kowalski screams, no Big Daddy speeches. Kaufman maintains a calm, relatively subdued atmosphere, although the inclusion of the narrator is a major flaw. For the most part, the narrator is either telling the audiences things they can figure out for themselves or filling in gaps in the story that would have been better acted out; it sometimes feels as if the narrator is being used as an excuse not to have to stage a specific scene. Since the play runs only eighty minutes, this gives it a rushed, at times unfinished feel. A production of the New Group in collaboration with Kaufman’s Tectonic Theater Project, One Arm might be minor Tennessee Williams, but even minor Tennessee Williams still packs a punch.

NORTHSIDE FESTIVAL: DAY THREE

Eleanor Friedberger will preview songs from her upcoming solo album tonight at Europa as part of the Northside Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Northside Festival
Multiple venues in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
June 16-19
www.northsidefestival.com

The Northside Festival is back June 16-19 following an outstanding launch last year. The festival features four days of indie music at venues all over Greenpoint and Williamsburg, in addition to film screenings and open art studios. There are hundreds of bands, so don’t get too frustrated if one of the shows you wanted to see is already sold out; festival badges are gone as well, but there’s still lots to choose from. We’ll be featuring highlights and recommendations every day of the festival; here are today’s:

East River Ferry, East 34th St. and the East River to North Eighth St. in North Williamsburg, approximately every twenty minutes from 9:00 am to 8:30 pm, free through June 24

The Whatever Blog presents Small Mountain Path (3:00), Hooray for Goodbye (4:00), Little Wolf (5:00), the Senors of Marseille (6:00), and Nico Blues (7:00), with DJ Jesse Elliott of These United States, Red Star Bar, 37 Greenpoint Ave., $8

Smorgasburg, Brooklyn Flea food vendors including Queen’s Dahn Tu, Shorty Tang & Sons, La Buena, King’s Crumb, Nana’s, Tin Mustard, Speedy Romeo, and more, 27 North Sixth St., free admission, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Ground Control presents the Babies (4:00), Surfer Blood (5:00), Wavves (6:00), Guided by Voices (7:00), McCarren Park, the Steve Madden Stage, $35

Sundance Selects presents Tabloid (Errol Morris, 2010), IndieScreen, 289 Kent Ave., $10, 8:00

Tell All Your Friends presents Emil & Friends, the Yellow Dows, Thee Oh Sees album release show for Castlemania, plus surprise special guest, $10, doors at 6:00

Northside Open Studios Launch, with Crest Fest and Brooklyn Street Art, featuring Snowmine, Balún, Merrickans, DJ Liam Andrew, Walrus Ghost, Home Land installation by Sara Sun, Honesty Box Facebook confessional by Eva Navon, Metaforeign screening series curated by Sasha Summer, Rooftop Bikini Reading Series by Boomslang, and more, the End, 13 Greenpoint Ave., $7, 7:00 – 12 midnight

POP Montreal presents Spectre Folk (7:00), Rebecca Gates (7:40), Ida (8:20), special secret guest (9:00), Eleanor Friedberger (9:40), Europa, 98 Meserole Ave., $17

GREAT SUMMER READS FOR TEENS!

Books of Wonder
18 West 18th St.
Thursday, June 16, free, 6:00 – 8:00
212-989-3270
www.booksofwonder.com
www.novaren.com

Back on May 18, Nova Ren Suma graced twi-ny’s tenth anniversary party at Fontana’s with the first public reading of her highly acclaimed debut YA novel, Imaginary Girls. The only problem was that the book was not available yet, so eager attendees were not able to purchase a copy at the event. Well, that changed yesterday (June 14), when the brilliant story of the close bond between two sisters in upstate New York went on sale across the country. Suma will be celebrating the release of Imaginary Girls with a reading and signing on June 16 at Books of Wonder, along with Tara Altebrando (Dreamland Social Club), Susane Colasanti (So Much Closer), and Sarah Mlynowski (Ten Things We Did [and Probably Shouldn’t Have]), who will all take part in a panel discussion as well. Don’t be scared off by the YA (young adult) designation; Imaginary Girls is a book for people old and young who love books, a stunningly beautiful work from a rising star in the literary world. (Anyway, the dirty little secret is out: Grown-ups are reading YA books for their own pleasure in droves.) For more on Suma, you can find our interview with her here.