this week in literature

FIRST SATURDAYS: FRAMING OUR HISTORY

Hank Willis Thomas will discuss his long-term installation, “Unbranded,” at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday night (Hank Willis Thomas, “Why wait another day to be adorable? Tell your beautician ‘Relax me,’” chromogenic photograph, 1968/2007)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, February 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

For its February First Saturdays free program, the Brooklyn Museum is honoring Black History Month with its usual wide-ranging schedule of events. Kicking things off at 5:00 will be the Fat Cat Big Band, with Jade Synstelien leading a group of up to sixteen musicians through jazz and bebop. At 5:30, Denzel Washington’s THE GREAT DEBATERS (2007) will be shown, introduced by author Trey Ells (RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW), who will also participate in a Q&A following the screening. At 6:00, curator and writer Kalia Brooks will discuss the exhibition “Lorna Simpson: Gathered”: Simpson’s photographs will also be the focus of the 6:30 Hands-On Art workshop, and people are encouraged to bring their own photos to add to a collaborative interactive project as well. At 7:00, curator Sharon Matt Atkins will take visitors on a tour of “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera,” while at 8:00 a student guide will give a Young Voices gallery talk on the installation “American Identities: A New Look.” The always hot dance party gets under way at 8:00, hosted by DJ Stormin’ Norman, who will be playing hip-hop and soul tunes. And at 9:00, Hank Willis Thomas will discuss his long-term installation, “Unbranded,” while at the same time the Smalls Jazz Club All-Stars will take listeners back to the Golden Age of music.

LUNAR NEW YEAR AT MOCA: YEAR OF THE RABBIT

Artist, musician, storyteller, and novelist Mingmei Yip will lead a calligraphy demonstration as part of Lunar New Year Festival Family Day at MOCA on January 30

Museum of Chinese in America
215 Centre St. between Howard & Grand Sts.
Thursday – Monday, $7 (free Thursdays 11:00 am – 9:00 pm)
Reservations required for most Lunar New Year events
212-619-4785
www.mocanyc.org

The celebration of the Year of the Rabbit, 4709, is under way, with special programs and events scheduled for the next few weeks throughout Chinatown, honoring affectionate, pleasant, cautious, sentimental, obliging, superficial people born in 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, and 2011. At the Museum of Chinese in America, the talk “Decoding the Chinese Almanac’s Predictions for 2011” is scheduled for today at 2:30 ($15), with New Year Walking Tours taking place January 30 and February 5 ($18, 1:00). Tomorrow is Lunar New Year Festival Family Day, with storyteller Kam Mak, a noodle-making workshop, a gallery talk of the exhibition “Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Minds,” arts and crafts, a lion dance, a calligraphy demonstration with Mingmei Yip, and more ($10, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm). And on February 4, the Chinese Cinema Club will present Liu Jiayin’s 2009 sequel OXHIDE II, followed by a discussion on dumplings and the New Year with chef and writer Kian Lam Kho ($10, 7:00).

WALLS AND BRIDGES: TRANSATLANTIC INSIGHTS

Photographer Jen Davis will join Pierre Cassou-Noguès for “Picturing the Self: A Philosopher Discusses a Photographer’s Work” at the Aperture Gallery as part of Walls and Bridges festival (Jen Davis, “Mike, Del Rio, TX,” archival pigment print / © 2008 Jen Davis)


New York Public Library, Celeste Bartos Forum (and other venues)
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
455 Fifth Ave. at 42nd St.
January 27 – February 4, free – $15
www.wallsandbridges.net
www.nypl.org

From January 27 through February 4, the inaugural Walls and Bridges festival will seek to break down barriers and build new dialogues and thought processes with a series of fascinating programs held throughout the city. Organized by the Villa Gillet and the Conseil de la Création artistique, the first part of Walls and Bridges — it’ll be back in the spring and summer — begins January 27 at 7:00 with the round-table discussion “Art/Truth/Lies: The Perils and Pleasures of Deception,” which brings together Pierre Cassou-Noguès, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Glenn D. Lowry, and host D. Graham Burnett at the New York Public Library. On Friday at 6:00, Paul Holdengräber will moderate “The Magical Side of Celebrity” with Cécile Guilbert, Laura Kipnis, and Wayne Koestenbaum, followed at 8:00 by one of Walls and Bridges’ premier events, “Three Faiths in the Form of a Fugue,” a combination of art, poetry, music, and philosophy relating to the library’s current exhibition about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and featuring Salman Ahmad, Reza Aslan, Ala Ebtekar, Dan Fishback, Fabrice Hadjadj, Alicia Jo Rabins, Shirin Neshat, and Damien Poisblaud, hosted by Reza Aslan. Other programs take on “The End of Privacy: The State and Surveillance,” “The New Faces of the Enemy,” “Going Public: Embodying a Persona,” and “The Shapes of Space — The Shears of Time: Why Does Philosophy Need Art to Become Truly Experimental?,” with such participants as Maira Kalman, Daniel Handler, Philip Gourevitch, Cynthia Hopkins, Josh Neufeld, and Rick Moody at such venues as the New School, the Aperture Gallery, the Greenlight Bookstore, the Brooklyn Flea, Joe’s Pub, UnionDocs, and the French Institute Alliance Française in addition to the NYPL. The name of the festival comes from Sir Isaac Newton’s quote “We build too many walls and not enough bridges,” although we’d also like to think it relates to John Lennon’s classic 1974 album WALLS AND BRIDGES as well.

COUSIN CORINNE’S REMINDER: ISSUE NUMBER TWO PARTY

BookCourt
163 Court St. between Dean & Pacific Sts.
Wednesday, January 26, free, 7:00
718-875-3677
www.bookcourt.org
www.cousincorinne.com

In April 2010, the inaugural issue of the oversized trade paperback Cousin Corinne’s Reminder was published, released by an independent Brooklyn-based publishing group in conjunction with the Cobble Hill store BookCourt, whose manager, Zack Zook, served as executive editor. The biannual journal’s stated mission “is to widen the scope of artistic representation within the printed world by combining literary and visual presences.” The first issue included contributions from such notables as Charles Bock, Anne Waldman, Jonathan Letham & Dean Haspiel, Mark Borthwick, Kimiko Yoshida, Donald Moss, and James Frey. The second issue has just been released, bigger and better than the first, a compendium of fiction, poetry, comics, photography, art, and other ramblings from authors and artists who mostly hail from Brooklyn. Beautifully designed by Michael Fusco, Issue Number Two opens with, appropriately enough, George Emilio Sanchez’s “Shalom,” a brief story about his heritage, and includes such other highlights as David Hollander’s absurdist, futuristic “The Limits of Bioinformatics and the Problematic of Meaninglessness: A Case Study”; Stanley Crouch’s “A Darkie French Princess,” about a young man fighting the expectations that come with art, athletics, the quest for knowledge, and skin tone; and Stephen Elliott’s sex diary, “Selections from the Daily Rumpus.” Tierney Gearon’s “The Haircut” creates a touching narrative through a suite of six photographs of a naked mother giving her young son a haircut with a stunning vista behind them, while Anthony Barboza’s “Black Dreams / White Sheets” consists of ten photos in which ten black men, women, and a child are shown lying in different positions on a mattress, shot from directly above. Amelie Mancini’s talk about her newfound love of baseball is accompanied by her David Hockney-inspired paintings of such Hall of Famers as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Tom Seaver. And the Comix Blox, curated by Haspiel, includes tasty tidbits from Michel Fiffe, Tim Hamilton, and Haspiel himself.

The release of the second issue of Cousin Corinne’s Reminder will be celebrated at BookCourt on January 26 with a special program that includes an opening performance by Sanchez, readings by Crouch, Priscilla Becker, Todd Colby, Catherine Lacey, and Adam Wilson, a comix presentation by Haspiel and Joan Reilly, signings by comix contributors Jen Ferguson, Hamilton, and Fiffe, a painting by Mancini, free drinks, and other guests.

PAT COOPER IN CONVERSATION WITH COLIN QUINN

92nd St. Y, Buttenwieser Hall
1395 Lexington Ave. at 92nd St.
Tuesday, January 25, $29, 8:30
212-415-5500
www.patcooper.com
www.squareonepublishers.com
www.92y.org

On January 25, Pat Cooper will be making a special appearance at the 92nd St. Y, which should only lend more credence to those who are sure that the legendary Italian comedian, born Pasquale Caputo, is actually Jewish. “They believed that the skinny kid with the horn-rimmed glasses davened in the morning, did his routines on garlic and saints at night, and said the Shema before going to bed,” he writes in his intimate, revealing, and extremely funny new memoir, HOW DARE YOU SAY HOW DARE ME! (Square One, November 2010, $24.95). “He was circumcised, not baptized. He was bar mitzvahed, not given Holy Communion. He dropped out of law school, not trade school,” he continues. Cooper’s wide-ranging book tour brings him back to Manhattan on Tuesday night, where he will be in conversation with another hot comedian, Colin Quinn, the former host of TOUGH CROWD who just won a 2011 Nightlife Award for Outstanding Comedian in a Major Engagement for his one-man Broadway show, the Jerry Seinfeld-directed LONG STORY SHORT: HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 75 MINUTES, which is now extended through March 5 at the Helen Hayes Theatre. There’s no telling what kind of fireworks are liable to go off by putting these two highly opinionated tough guys together, so don’t miss this one-time-only event. (For more on Cooper and his book, you can read our twi-ny talk with him here.)

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: WRITERS ON FILM PRESENTS PAUL AUSTER

Paul Auster will present special screening of an American classic at Crosby Street Hotel

Crosby Street Hotel
79 Crosby St. between Prince & Spring Sts.
Monday, January 24, $35, 6:30
212-226-6400
www.crosbystreethotel.com

Throughout his career, Brooklyn-based author Paul Auster has written highly visual, cinematic novels, including THE NEW YORK TRILOGY (1985-87), LEVIATHAN (1992), and THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES (2005). He has also written several screenplays, including 1995’s SMOKE and BLUE IN THE FACE, 1998’s LULU ON THE BRIDGE (which he also directed), and the 1993 adaptation of his 1990 novel THE MUSIC OF CHANCE. The cinema plays a major role in THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS (2002), about the missing films of silent comedian Hector Mann, which led to Auster’s screenplay for THE INNER LIFE OF MARTIN FROST (2007). In his latest novel, SUNSET PARK (Henry Holt, November 2010, $25), about a group of people squatting in a house across from Green-Wood Cemetery, one of the main characters, Alice Bergstrom, is writing her dissertation on William Wyler’s classic post-WWII drama THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, allowing Auster to explore the film in great detail over the course of several long passages. Winner of eight Oscars, including Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Writing, and Best Supporting Actor, the film tells the story of three veterans returning home from the war and the difficulties they have readjusting to the American way of life, which they had just fought so valiantly for. On January 24, Auster will introduce a screening of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES as part of the Crosby Hotel’s “Under the Influence: Writers on Film” series. Following the screening, Auster will be interviewed by journalist and screenwriter Michael Maren, the host of the series, followed by a cocktail reception. The series continues April 11 with Jim Shepard discussing Werner Herzog’s AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972) and June 3 with Jennifer Egan presenting Quentin Tarantino’s PULP FICTION (1994).

THE MARCH BY E. L. DOCTOROW: A DRAMATIC READING

Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 97th St.
Monday, January 24, $15-$20, 7:30
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org

In 2005, E. L. Doctorow released THE MARCH, an intricate novel of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 march through Georgia. Doctorow and his wife, Helen Henslee (PRETTY REDWING), have adapted the bestselling book for a dramatic staged reading to be held January 24 at Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia. Performers from stage and screen playing multiple roles include Francesca Choy-Kee, Mia Dillon, Keir Dullea, Ron McLarty, Joe Morton, and James Naughton, who also directs the production. The reading will be followed by a conversation with Doctorow, Henslee and Naughton.