this week in literature

MoMA PS1: SATURDAY SESSIONS AND MORE

Visitors can exhibit their success and failures at PS 1’s latest Saturday Session (David Lamelas, “Limit of a Projection I,” spotlight in darkened room, 1967, collection Walker Art Center, T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2009)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Saturday Sessions free with museum suggested donation of $10 (free with MoMA ticket within thirty days of MoMA visit)
Museum open Thursday through Monday from 12 noon – 6:00 pm
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org

Since the beginning of the year, MoMA PS1 has been hosting “Saturday Sessions,” a series of programs on Saturday afternoons with guest curators putting together special events. On April 2, Triple Canopy and Dalkey Archive Press present “An Afternoon of Failure,” celebrating the release of the Review of Contemporary Fiction’s “Failure” issue, with “attempted readings” by Eileen Myles, Helen DeWitt, Sam Frank, Travis Jeppesen, and Keith Gessen, “mangled covers of pop songs” by US Girls, “a malfunctioning tribute” to American literary classics by Elevator Repair Service, and Derek Lucci trying to resurrect William Gaddis. These works of fiction offer a direct counterpoint to several of the current exhibits at PS1, which turn the concept of participatory reality art and so-called truth inside out and upside down.

In “Only the Lonely” (through August 8), New York-based photographer and filmmaker Laurel Nakadate puts herself front and center as she meets strangers in parking lots and on the road and goes back to these older men’s rooms, taking pictures and videos with them, often involving her shedding much of her clothing. Laced with an overriding fear of potential danger that never happens, Nakadate’s work comments on femininity, loneliness, sexuality, and desire, centering on human contact that is disappearing in this age of social media. The exhibition also features the premiere of her overwhelming “365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears,” comprising photographs Nakadate took of herself crying every day for a year. The pictures line both sides of a long hallway and continue into a back room; just as we all find ourselves watching intensely personal videos posted on YouTube, it is difficult to take your eyes off of these intimate, private, yet clearly staged portraits. Nakadate might bare her body, but she does it with a knowing, tongue-in-cheek candor; interestingly, in her more recent work, she is no longer the main subject, instead directing other women in short films and feature-length narratives.

Laurel Nakadate catalogs her tears and more in intimate exhibition at PS1 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The viewer becomes more than just the subject in “The Talent Show” (through April 4), a collection of multimedia installations and performance pieces in which some artists let others help create the work, from making a drawing for Adrian Piper’s “Information” to coming up with slogans for Gillian Wearing’s “Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say” to placing the viewer at the center of the work, where they can stand in the spotlight of David Lamelas’s “Limit of a Projection I,” act for the camera while being beamed onto a screen in Peter Campus’s “Shadow Projection,” or posing atop Piero Manzoni’s “Base Magica — Scultura vivente.” Amie Siegel combines YouTube videos of people singing the same song, while Sophie Calle investigates the men and women listed in an address book she found. Presaging reality television, Hannah Wilke documented the last two and a half years of her battle with cancer on film, resulting in a stirring sixteen-channel installation that holds nothing back. PS1 pays tribute to other early female video pioneers in “Modern Women: Single Channel,” comprising seminal work by such cutting-edge artists as Lynda Benglis, Dara Birnbaum, VALIE EXPORT, Joan Jonas, Pipilotti Rist, and Carloee Schneeman, many of whom frequently turned the cameras on themselves well before there was any such thing as American Idol, Survivor, or The Amazing Race. And finally, Feng Mengbo gives the controls over to visitors for “Long March: Restart,” an enormous two-walled video game that mixes Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter II with Chinese militaristic propaganda imagery, allowing the player to succeed or fail in full view of others.

TWI-NY TALK: BEN KATCHOR

Since 1988, Brooklyn-born artist Ben Katchor has been exploring urban decay and disappearing aspects of culture and society in such comic strips as Hotel & Farm, The Jew of New York, and Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer as well as in such musical theater pieces as The Rosenbach Company and The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or, The Friends of Dr. Rushower. He focuses on old-fashioned characters who wander through cities mumbling and grumbling about the way things were, seeking out blue-plate specials and marveling at old signage from a bygone era. Katchor has just released his latest book, The Cardboard Valise (Pantheon, March 2011, $25.95), a collection of “picture-stories” published in Metropolis magazine that detail eccentric xenophile Emile Delilah’s surreal existence, including his journey to the Tensint Islands, an exotic land known for its rest-room ruins and boardwalk ice-cream licker. The book comes with fold-out carrying flaps, mimicking Emile’s valise, which is filled with an array of things, as is Katchor’s book. On April 2 at 2:00, Katchor will present A Checkroom Romance at the New School Presents Noir festival; the free musical production features text and images by Katchor and music by Mark Mulcahy. On April 9, Katchor will be signing copies of his books at the Pantheon booth at the MoCCA Festival of Comic Art at the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington Ave. and 26th St. Katchor recently discussed travel and the future of the book in our latest twi-ny talk.

Ben Katchor’s latest collection is another genius examination of eccentricity in a surreal, old-fashioned world (photo by Jeff Goodman)

twi-ny: Your previous book, The Beauty Supply District, came out more than ten years ago. Why such a long wait?

Ben Katchor: I got involved in working on music-theater productions over the past ten years. In collaboration with composer Mark Mulcahy, we produced four shows: The Slugbearers of Kayrol Island, The Rosenbach Company, A Checkroom Romance, Memorial City, and, premiering in October 2011, Up from the Stacks. All along, I continued my weekly and monthly picture-stories but didn’t feel the need to compile them into a book — until now.

twi-ny: In The Cardboard Valise, Emile Delilah packs a heavy suitcase and heads to the Tensint Islands. You’ve also taken readers on a journey to Kayrol Island. When you go on vacation, do you prefer bustling cities, dusty towns, or exotic islands? Are there certain items that you always pack that you don’t necessarily really need, as Emile does?

BK: I like cities and the countryside of Europe. I tend to bring along piles of research material that I rarely get to use.

twi-ny: One of the major themes of your work has always involved disappearing parts of culture — outdated factories, old-fashioned signage, and people lamenting the way daily life is changing, missing how things were. With the growing success of electronic books, there are some sounding the death knell for the physical book itself. What are your thoughts on ebooks, specifically as it relates to the kind of picture-stories that you tell? Are you afraid the physical book might be a disappearing part of American culture?

BK: The repurposing of physical books for electronic distribution is an awkward and limited activity, mainly for archival purposes. The possibilities of electronic storytelling go far beyond the confines of the printed book and I look forward to seeing what develops. Physical books will be around for a long time — I see them used as window and door props, and as structures to support laptop computers. I’m used to looking at picture-stories on large high-resolution screens; modern printed books seem to me like an unfortunate reduction of the information in the original digital file. The publishing industry began to dematerialize books with the introduction of the disposable paperback — the ebook is the logical expression of this impulse.

TENEMENT TALKS

Historian Jane Ziegelman will lead a pair of culinary tours with the Tenement Museum (photo by Andrew Coe)

Lower East Side Tenement Museum
108 Orchard St.
Tuesday, March 29, and Thursday, April 7, $25, 6:30
Wednesday, March 30, and Tuesday, April 5, free with RSVP
212-982-8420
www.tenement.org

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum will be hosting a series of interesting Tenement Talks over the course of the next ten days, beginning Tuesday night with “Free Lunch,” a tasting and tour with Jane Ziegelman and representatives of Edible Brooklyn and Brooklyn Brewery, looking back at the nineteenth-century staple of free food when you buy a beer. This twenty-first-century “free lunch” will cost you $25. On Wednesday, Paul Goldberger will discuss “Why Architecture Matters” with Kristen Richards, upon the release of the paperback edition of his book. On April 5, Joan Silber will host a panel on “Immigrant Daughters on Family & Literature,” with Myra Goldberg, Joanna Clapps Herman, and Kathleen Hill talking about classic books that influenced their work and life. And on April 7, Jane Ziegelman and James Beard Foundation vice president Mitchell Davis will lead ticket holders on the tour “97 Orchard: An Edible History” ($25).

TRIANGLE FIRE TRIBUTE: 100th ANNIVERSARY EVENT

Centennial tribute honors victims through music and poetry

Museum at Eldridge Street
12 Eldridge St. between Canal & Division Sts.
Sunday, March 27, $15-$20, 3:00
212-219-0302
www.eldridgestreet.org

On March 25, 1911, a devastating fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory at 29 Washington Pl. took the lives of 146 garment workers. The fire in the Asch Building led to significant changes in labor laws and to the creation of the American Society of Safety Engineers. There are special memorial events being held all over the city in conjunction with the centennial, including a commemoration on March 26 at the Museum at Eldridge St. that will include live music by Deborah Strauss and Jeff Warschauer, poetry inspired by the tragedy, and actors portraying the 146 victims, who were primarily Jewish and Italian immigrants. The event will be moderated by Caraid O’Brien and is cosponsored by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and the National Yiddish Book Center.

TWI-NY TALK: JENNIFER EGAN

National Book Critics Circle Award winner Jennifer Egan will be celebrating the release of the paperback edition of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD with a series of very different events in New York City in the coming weeks (photo by Pieter M. Van Hattem/Vistalux)

It’s almost impossible to overstate just how accomplished a writer Jennifer Egan is. Born in Chicago, raised in San Francisco, and based in Brooklyn, Egan has penned the short story collection Emerald City (1993) and the novels The Invisible Circus (1995), Look at Me (2001), The Keep (2006), and A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) in addition to numerous articles and cover stories for the New York Times Magazine and other publications. Her fiction writing and journalism have garnered a host of honors, the latest being the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award, which she won March 10 for A Visit from the Goon Squad, out in paperback today (Anchor, $14.95). Goon Squad is a swirling delight of a novel, jumping through time and space from chapter to chapter, each narrated by a different character and built around two engaging protagonists, kleptomaniac Sasha and record producer Bennie Salazar. Organized like an interconnected collection of short stories that can stand on their own, Goon Squad is a literary tour de force, a thrilling symphony that leaves readers breathless with anticipation at the conclusion of each chapter. Just before winning the NBCC Award, Egan talked to twi-ny about obsession, affection, obscurity, and chemistry.

twi-ny: Considering the daring experimental structure of Goon Squad and the tendency for works in progress to periodically threaten to fall completely to pieces, what helped you stay with this project through the years, especially during times when you may have been doubting it?

Jennifer Egan: The primary thing that held me steady as I worked on Goon Squad was an ongoing curiosity about—you might even say obsession with—the characters. They were in my head pretty much all the time. Also, since one of my goals was to make every chapter completely self-sufficient, I had a sort of built-in Plan B: If the whole construction didn’t combust in the way I was hoping it would, at least I’d have a solid story collection to fall back on. That was my hope, and although my goal was definitely higher than that, it was consoling to think that I would end up with some kind of book either way.


twi-ny: The novel is told from multiple POVs, with multiple narrators. Which one did you find most challenging to write from, and which was easiest? Which was your favorite, or did you have one?

Jennifer Egan: The character that came to me most easily was probably Bennie. I’m not sure why that is, but I had a special affection for him, and I also kind of identified with him—though I’m happy to say that we’re not alike! The most difficult character was probably Lou, because he has a lot of bad qualities, and there was a danger of his seeming like a monster, rather than a human. Personally, I feel a lot of sympathy for Lou—I see him as a tragic figure—but not all readers share that view, so it may be that I didn’t completely succeed at humanizing him.

twi-ny: You’re nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in the Fiction category with Jonathan Franzen, David Grossman, Hans Keilson, and Paul Murray, none of whom were finalists for the National Book Award. (You were previously a National Book Award finalist for Look at Me.) How do you feel about book awards in general, and how they relate to your career specifically?

Jennifer Egan: Being a finalist for the National Book Award saved Look at Me from complete obscurity (it came out the week of 9/11, when most fiction disappeared without a trace), so I know how helpful those little medallions can be! I’ve also been a judge of the National Book Awards (2009), and I think that probably cured me of any sense that awards are personal. It’s all chemistry; how a particular group of people’s tastes interact, individually and together, with a gigantic body of work published in one year. Judges are judged themselves on their choices, and I think they generally agonize in their effort to do a responsible job. When I think about last year’s National Book Awards, my first thought is not that I wasn’t a finalist but that they did us all a huge service by honoring someone of enormous talent—Jaimy Gordon [Lord of Misrule]—who was not widely known. I envied them for having pulled that off.

Jennifer Egan will be at BookCourt on Monday, March 28, at 7:00 (free), for a discussion and signing; at Symphony Space on Wednesday, March 30, at 7:30 ($15-$25) for a Thalia Book Club event with Siri Hustvedt and Margot Livesey revisiting Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; at BAM on Thursday, March 31, at 6:30 ($50) for an Eat, Drink & Be Literary dinner moderated by Deborah Treisman; at the April 14 Westchester Libraries Author Luncheon at Abigail Kirsch’s Tappan Hill at 12 noon ($75-$1,250) with David Shenk and Diane Mott Davidson; and at the New York Public Library also on April 14 at 7:00 ($25) for the Live from the NYPL program “Jennifer Egan in Conversation with Laura Miller.”

NEW YORK: A PHOTOGRAPHER’S CITY

New York is the most photogenic city in the world, serving as the subject of many of the greatest photographs ever taken since the advent of the art form in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. From its rising skyscrapers to its fast-moving denizens, New York offers picture takers an ever-changing, always engaging canvas. “Through all the ways it articulates itself, through its incomparable density of feeling and meaning, New York City remains a singularly vibrant place — and subject — that continues to captivate the eye, the mind, and the soul,” Steve Hamburg writes in the introduction to the new book New York: A Photographer’s City (Rizzoli, March 2011, $45). Collecting more than two hundred images from more than one hundred artists, the book features contemporary photos taken in a post-9/11 world, examining “New York’s shift from the centralized and vertical to the outward and horizontal,” Hamburg notes.

Larry Racioppo, “Sunbather and Giglio,” chromogenic color print, 1998) (courtesy the artist / © Larry Racioppo)

Meanwhile, in the foreword, Elisabeth Sussman looks at another development that makes these photos different from the iconic images of the past: color. “Previously, New York’s image had always seemed tethered to the beauties of black and white, to the chiaroscuro of the grayscale, as if lack of color was the equivalent of the grim, the dour, the tough, the architectural, the contrasts between night and day that became trademarks of the city’s psychology and geography,” Sussman explains. “The images collected here are a revelation of a very special sort because they force the viewer to register the hues of light, weather, night, day, streets, and stone, and the cacophony of products, signs, and building surfaces that constitute the kaleidoscope of urban experience.” Edited by Marla Hamburg Kennedy, the deluxe hardcover features photographs by a who’s who of the contemporary art world, including Jenny Holzer, Roe Ethridge, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Vik Muniz, Tony Oursler, Jeff Mermelstein, James Welling, Andreas Gursky, Wolfgang Tillmans, Catherine Opie, Lucas Samaras, Doug Aitken, Thomas Struth, William Wegman, Abelardo Morell, Ryan McGinley, Joel Sternfeld, and many others. The book is organized thematically, grouped into series of photos depicting bicycles, hands, masses of people seen from above, architectural structures, solitary figures, yellow panoramas, and “for rent” signs.

Vincent Laforet, “Coney Island, June 18th,” inkjet print, 2006 (courtesy the artist and Rizzoli / © 2006 Vincent Laforet)

Among our favorites are Pascal Perich’s “Seungling on the Manhattan Bridge,” a portrait of a young woman looking out over a barely visible city; Spencer Tunick’s untitled print of the top half of a man sticking out of a pothole in the middle of the street; Vincent Laforet’s “Coney Island, June 18th” and “Bryant Park, May 31st,” overhead shots of people relaxing on the beach and the grass, respectively; Andy Freeberg’s “Pace Wildenstein,” a shot of the nearly all-white front desk of the gallery, the top of an employee’s head just peeking out from behind a computer; Timo Stammberger’s “Underground #11 (New York City),” taken deep in the subway; and Richard Galpin’s trio of illustrative peeled photographs. One of the best things about New York: A Photographer’s Eye is that it eschews the obvious, instead compiling unusual and unexpected works that will appeal to native and adopted New Yorkers as well as tourists and other visitors.

JOE BOYD AND ROBYN HITCHCOCK: CHINESE WHITE BICYCLES

LIVE AND DIRECT FROM 1967
(le) poisson rouge
158 Bleecker St.
Friday, March 11, $25-$30, 6:30
212-228-4854
www.robynhitchcock.com
www.joeboyd.co.uk
www.myspace.com/lepoissonrougenyc

Since the mid-1970s, acerbic singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock has been regaling the world with philosophical, intellectual, and downright funny tales as a solo performer and with such bands as the Soft Boys, the Egyptians, and the Venus 3. His live shows, documented in Jonathan Demme’s 1998 documentary, Storefront Hitchcock, are always unusual and immensely entertaining, anchored by his often hysterically rambling between-song chatter in addition to his immense talent at writing a damn good tune. Always up to something different — in June he’ll team up with the Imaginary Band to play a one-off UK tribute to the recently deceased Captain Beefheart, performing the seminal album Clear Spot in its entirety — he’ll be at (le) poisson rouge on Friday night with longtime friend Joe Boyd, the legendary American producer who has worked with everyone from the Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan, and Kate and Anna McGarrigle to Toots and the Maytals, Richard Thompson, Billy Bragg, R.E.M., and ¡Cubanismo! Hitchcock and Boyd are in the midst of a brief tour dubbed “Chinese White Bicycles: Live and Direct from 1967,” in which Boyd reads passages from his recently rereleased memoir, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (Serpent’s tail, December 2010, $14.95), Hitchcock plays songs by the groups mentioned in the book, the music that influenced him when he was growing up in London, and the two just talk about stuff. “Joe had a hand in creating a world that revolutionised mine,” Hitchcock notes on his website. “If he is Dr Frankenstein, then I’m his monster. Or one of them…” Get ready for what should be one very groovy night.

Robyn Hitchcock gets down to the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “What a Day for a Daydream” at (le) poisson rouge show with Joe Boyd (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Update: It did indeed turn out to be one groovy night, as Joe Boyd told great stories about hanging out with such seminal figures as Zal Yanovsky and Joe Butler of the Lovin’ Spoonful, Robin Williamson and Clive Palmer of the Incredible String Band, Paul Butterfield (with Boyd suggesting he add Mike Bloomfield to the Blues Band), Nick Drake (not looking forward to his songs being overproduced), and Fairport Convention (as they decided to eschew American folk rock and turn to the English tradition after fearing they could never create something as special as the Band’s Music from Big Pink). He talked about putting together a Syd Barrett tribute that ultimately involved Pink Floyd, about losing out on a one-night stand to Bob Dylan, and about Maria Muldaur and Eric Muldaur falling in love. He gave the show a decidedly New York bent, mentioning many of the haunts they used to go to that were just around the corner from (le) poisson rouge; “This is the beating heart of the sixties,” he said of the city. He also apologized for convincing LPR that he and Robyn Hitchcock should perform in the round, resulting in their backs to much of the audience, which boasted Rufus Wainwright. After each tale, Hitchcock introduced and played a song by the respective musicians, including the ISB’s “Way Back in the 1960s,” Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do,” the Spoonful’s “What a Day for a Daydream” (flat on his back), Fairport Convention’s “Reynardine,” Drake’s “River Man,” and the Floyd’s “Bike.” The encore was a riveting tale of Boyd being at the center of Dylan going electric at Newport, as the evening concluded with Hitchcock offering up Bob’s spiteful “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” followed by Boyd and Hitchcock signing books, CDs, and posters. (For a slideshow of the event, click here.)