this week in literature

RAYYA ELIAS IN CONVERSATION WITH ELIZABETH GILBERT

HARLEY LOCO: A MEMOIR OF HARD LIVING, HAIR, AND POST-PUNK FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TO THE LOWER EAST SIDE by Rayya Elias (Viking, April 4, 2013, $27.95)
Barnes & Noble
97 Warren St.
Tuesday, April 9, free, 6:00
212-587-5389
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.rayyaelias.com

“Another eviction — this time, unavoidable. Kim and I had known it was coming, but we still weren’t ready to be thrown out of our home, no matter how much we deserved it. We were pathetic. Tired, sick, numb, strung out. It was 1987 and we were living on Second Street between avenues A and B.” So begins Rayya Elias’s poignant and brutally honest Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post-Punk from the Middle East to the Lower East Side. Born in Syria in 1960, Elias and her family escaped to Detroit when she was seven. She later moved to New York City and became a punk musician and hair stylist, indulging in sex, drugs, and rock and roll and spending time homeless and in jail before cleaning herself up and getting her life back on track. Elias, who has also created a soundtrack of original songs (“Star,” “Myself Without You,” “Miss You,” “Loaded Gun,” and “Fever”) to accompany the book, will be celebrating the release of Harley Loco at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble on April 10 at 6:00 with a reading, signing, audience Q&A, and conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and the National Book Award finalist The Last American Man. In the introduction to Harley Loco, Gilbert, who met Elias in 2000 in the East Village, writes, “Rayya, meanwhile, was a rough diamond — a black-clothed, raspy-voiced, tattooed dropout of a soul, and she owned a motorcycle, and she kept pit bulls, and she was gay, and she was of Middle Eastern descent, and she’d grown up in Detroit, and she fucking loved the NFL, and she’d been to prison, and she called everyone ‘dude’ or ‘baby,’ and she was trying to clean up her life after years of heroin addiction and decades of an absolutely Byronic free fall into rock-and-roll abandon. . . . It is my honor to introduce these pages — so gravelly, so straggly, so hopeful, bright, and true. Just like the dude herself.” We can vouch for all of that as well — and we’ve even gone to an NFL game with her, even if it was the Jets.

FIRST SATURDAY — “WORKT BY HAND”: HIDDEN LABOR AND HISTORICAL QUILTS

Elizabeth Welsh, “Medallion Quilt,” cotton, circa 1830 (Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Roebling Society)

Elizabeth Welsh, “Medallion Quilt,” cotton, circa 1830 (Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Roebling Society)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum celebrates the recent opening of “‘Workt by Hand’: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts,” which examines the craft and culture behind approximately three dozen masterpieces from the collection, at the April free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by Jessy Carolina & the Hot Mess, Adia Whitaker and Ase Dance Theater Collective, Jesse Elliott (These United States) and friends, and Brooklyn Ballet, which will present Quilt with violinist Gil Morgenstern. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art curator Catherine Morris will give a talk on “‘Workt by Hand,’” Robyn Love will share her knitting project “SpinCycle,” there will be a screening of Barbara Hammer and Gina Carducci’s Generations, followed by a Q&A with Carducci, a felt collage workshop, a book club discussion with Bernice McFadden about her latest novel, Gathering of Waters, and a zine-making cookbook workshop with Brooklyn Zine Fest and Malaka Gharib and Claire O’Neil of The Runcible Spoon. In addition, the galleries will remain open late so visitors can check out “LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital,” “Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the ‘War’ and ‘Death’ Portfolios,” “Fine Lines: American Drawings from the Brooklyn Museum,” “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” “Raw/Cooked: Marela Zacarias,” “Aesthetic Ambitions: Edward Lycett and Brooklyn’s Faience Manufacturing Company,” and more.

LORCA IN NEW YORK: A CELEBRATION

lorca

Multiple locations
April 5 – July 21, free – $25
www.lorcanyc.com

In 1929-30, Spanish poet and playwright Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (1898-1936) lived in New York City, where he studied at Columbia, writing the surrealist play The Public (El público) and the seminal book Poet in New York, which includes “Nocturne of the Brooklyn Bridge”: “No one sleeps in the sky. No one. / No one sleeps. / The creatures of the moon sniff and circle their cabins. / Live iguanas will come to bite the men who don’t dream / and he who flees with broken heart will find on the corners / the still, incredible crocodile under the tender protest of the stars.” In the preface to Pablo Medina and Mark Statman’s translation of the book, Edward Hirsch concludes, “The testament he left behind is a fierce indictment of the modern world incarnated in city life, but it is also a wildly imaginative and joyously alienated declaration of residence.” The great writer’s time in Gotham is being honored with “Lorca in NY: A Celebration,” more than three months of some two dozen special literary events being held in the city that was, for a brief time, Lorca’s home. The festival kicks off April 5 with the opening of “Back Tomorrow: Federico García Lorca / Poet in New York” in the New York Public Library’s Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery; running through July 20, the free exhibit features original manuscripts, letters, photos, drawings, and more. On April 7 at 7:00 ($10), La Bruja, Simply Rob, Los Gitanos Juveniles, Anthony Carrillo, Raphael Cuascut, Angel Rodriguez Sr., Julio Rodriguez, Mario Rodriguez, and Alex La Salle will gather together for “Lorca Extravaganza” at Bowery Poetry Club for an evening of musical and spoken-word interpretations of Lorca’s writings and his personal favorite songs. On April 8 at 6:00, Gonzalo Sobejano will deliver the free lecture “Memoria de Lorca, A través de mis años en la Universidad de Columbia (Memory of Lorca, Through My Years at Columbia University)” at Columbia, followed by a cocktail reception.

The legacy of Federico García Lorca and his book POET IN NEW YORK will be celebrated in wide-ranging multidisciplinary festival

The legacy of Federico García Lorca and his book POET IN NEW YORK will be celebrated in wide-ranging multidisciplinary festival

On April 9 at 7:00 ($15), Instituto Cervantes will host “Lorca’s Universe,” a concert with guitarist José María Gallardo del Rey and violinist Anabel Garcia del Castillo. On April 16 (and continuing through May 30), “Lorca in Vermont” opens at the CUNY Graduate Center, examining Lorca’s time spent in Vermont with Philip Cummings; in conjunction with the opening, Joan Jonas, Caridad Svich, Christopher Maurer, Ben Sidran, Mónica de la Torre, and Eliot Weinberger will come together on April 16 at 6:00 (free) for the panel discussion “Interpreting Lorca” in CUNY’s Martin E. Segal Theatre. On April 19 at 7:00 (free), Jose García Velasco will deliver the lecture “Lorca, Dalí, Buñuel & Eternal Youth: Life in the Residencia de Estudiantes” at Instituto Cervantes. On May 1 from 2:00 to 9:00 (free), “After Lorca: A Day of Poetry and Performance” at CUNY features LaTasha Diggs, Rob Fitterman, Eileen Myles, Judah Rubin, Sara Jane Stoner, Aynsley Vandenbroucke, and the Aynsley Vandenbroucke Movement Group offering their own responses to Lorca’s legacy. On June 4 at 7:00 ($25), Live from the NYPL director Paul Holdengräber hosts “Celebrating Federico García Lorca.” Overnight on June 4-5 (free), David Bestué will make his way through the streets of the city, creating “an echo to Lorca’s poems” in honor of the 115th anniversary of the poet’s birth. On June 5 ($25), “Words and Music: Patti Smith and Friends” will present “A Birthday Concert for Lorca” at Bowery Ballroom. On June 10 at 8:00 ($8), an all-star group of writers will gather at the Poetry Project for “Poet in New York: Reading Lorca”; among the participants reading from the book will be Paul Auster, Aracelis Girmay, John Giorno, Wayne Koestenbaum, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Mónica de la Torre, and Frederic Tuten. On July 9 at 1:15 at the NYPL (free), Sharonah Fredrick will discuss “Lorca, Jews, and African-American: From Romance to Racism or Simple Misunderstanding?” And if that weren’t enough, there are other events as well, including a walking tour, a film series, and more, all organized by the Fundación Federico García Lorca, which is run by Lorca’s family, and Acción Cultural Española.

SCOTLAND WEEK 2013

David Eustace’s captivating “Highland Heart” exhibit will be on view at Hudson Studios April 5-7 (© David Eustace)

David Eustace’s captivating “Highland Heart” exhibit will be on view at Hudson Studios April 5-7 (© David Eustace)

SCOTLAND WEEK / TARTAN WEEK
Multiple venues
Through April 21
www.scotland.org
www.scotlandshop.com

The sixth annual Scotland Week, also known as Tartan Week, kicks into high gear this weekend, celebrating Scottish art and culture with a diverse group of events taking place all over the city. On Friday, former minesweeper and prison guard David Eustace will unveil a new collection of photographs, “Highland Heart,” stunning black-and-white images of the Western Islands, at Hudson Studios in Chelsea. On Saturday morning at 8:00, some ten thousand people are expected to take part in the 10K Scotland Run in Central Park, followed by the Kirkin o’ the Tartan and Pre-Parade Brunch at the Church of Our Saviour and the Tartan Day Parade, which will make its way up Sixth Ave. from Forty-Fifth to Fifty-Fifth Sts. with bagpipers, Scottish clans, music groups, Scottish terriers, and more. On Saturday night, the Caledonia Collective at Webster Hall will consist of Stanley Odd, Rachel Sermanni with Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow, and Breabach. Stanley Odd will also share a bill with the View Saturday night at the Knitting Factory and Sunday night at Bowery Ballroom. On April 7, Alan Cumming begins a three-month Broadway run starring as the title character in the one-man National Theatre of Scotland production of Macbeth, set in a mental ward. On April 8, Scottish fashion will be on display at “From Scotland with Love: The Scottish Lion Meets the Asian Dragon,” a cocktail party and fashion show at Stage 48. On April 9, Ian Gow, curator of the National Trust for Scotland, will receive the Great Scot Award at the black-tie “Celebration of Scotland’s Treasures” dinner at the Metropolitan Club. On April 12, Ken Loach’s Cannes Jury Prize winner The Angels’ Share opens at Lincoln Plaza and the Landmark Sunshine. And on April 14, the Scottish Ensemble, a string orchestra highlighted by trumpeter Alison Balsom, will perform at Town Hall with a program that includes the U.S. premiere of James MacMillan’s “Seraph.” A h-uile la sona dhuibh ’s gun la idir dona dhuibh!

BEN KATCHOR: HAND-DRYING IN AMERICA AND OTHER STORIES

“Cole Pepser’s Bedroom” is one of many marvelous Ben Katchor strips that combine unique, old-fashioned characters and a changing consumer culture amid urban environments (© 2013 by Ben Katchor)

“Cole Pepser’s Bedroom” is one of many marvelous Ben Katchor strips that combine unique, old-fashioned characters and a changing consumer culture amid urban environments (© 2013 by Ben Katchor)

HAND-DRYING IN AMERICA AND OTHER STORIES (Pantheon, March 2013, $29.95)
Monday, April 1, NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium, Parsons the New School, 2 West 13th St., Bark Room, 7:00
Saturday, April 6, MoCCA Arts Festival, 69th Regiment Armory, 68 Lexington Ave. at 26th St. festival admission $12-$15
Monday, April 15, Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton St., Brooklyn, free, 7:30
www.katchor.com

In a March 2011 twi-ny talk, we asked Brooklyn-born cartoonist Ben Katchor whether he was afraid the physical book might be disappearing from the American landscape, and he responded, “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.” At that time, Katchor was promoting his first book in more than ten years, the graphic novel The Cardboard Valise, which came with a handle so you could carry it like a piece of luggage. For his latest book, Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories, Katchor has created an even larger, heavier hardcover without the handle, making it almost impossible to carry around, but it is no mere doorstop. Hand-Drying is a marvelous collection of more than 150 strips Katchor has drawn for Metropolis magazine, inventive and funny cartoons filled with the trademark old-fashioned characters, absurdist situations, and unusual city environments that Katchor has been detailing for several decades in such previous books as Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay, The Jew of New York, and Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District. In Hand-Drying, Katchor continues his exploration of disappearing elements of modern urban living, from architecture and design to advertising and consumer products — including books.

hand drying

In the front endpaper, investigative reporter Josef Fuss researches the severe environmental costs involved in the publishing process: “Each book is a minor ecological disaster,” he says to himself. In “The Tragic History of the Oversized Magazine,” Katchor is referencing Hand-Drying itself, tracing the development of large-scale magazines, explaining, “Their destiny is linked to the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, the porterhouse steak, the zoot suit and other material excesses of history.” In the last word bubble, a man holds a magazine that nearly matches his own size, proclaiming, “Wow, look at this spread!” Readers will be repeating those words over and over as they turn the pages of Hand-Drying, which features such other knockout tales as “Open House Season,” which follows people who are obsessed with visiting open houses even though they are not looking for a new apartment; “The Committee for Architectural Neglect,” in which a group of officials “see no reason for a building to relive its glorious past”; “2nd Thought Mail,” in which a company sets up a ten-day waiting period in case letter writers don’t want to send that missive after all (a fabulous take on that feeling one gets when instantly regretting sending an e-mail that can’t be recalled); and “Contiguous Control,” in which a man ends up in the hospital after refusing to use the remote control. “Who turns the pages of your books?” he asks his son.

But Katchor is no mere crank complaining of the failings of our modern, techno-driven, instant-gratification society, lamenting the passing of the days of getting up and walking to the television set to change the channel, friendly gas-station attendants who would engage customers in small talk while working the pump, and drying one’s hands with paper towels in rest rooms instead of having to use loud, abrasive hand-drying machines. Instead, he celebrates the unique and unusual in the past, present, and future, visualizing a fascinating societal underground that still exists in the nooks and crannies of our daily existence. In the back endpapers, freelance Chinese journalist Fallo Yank disputes Fuss’s findings, determining that “literary and coffee-table books account for an insignificant portion of the world’s print pollution,” that the real problem is the content of the books, including “a deluxe full-color edition of an esoteric literary comic strip.” Hand-Drying in America is no mere window or door prop but rather an endlessly entertaining and extremely funny and insightful look at human nature and our changing world as only Katchor can depict it. The self-deprecating cartoonist will be participating in a conversation with Gil Roth, host of “The Virtual Memories Show,” at the thirty-eighth meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium on April 1 at 7:30 at Parsons the New School, will be signing copies of his books at the Pantheon booth at the MoCCA Arts Festival on April 6 at the 69th Regiment Armory, and will take part in an illustrated discussion with writer Nicholas Dawidoff at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn on April 15 at 7:30.

NYC TEEN AUTHOR FESTIVAL

Nova Ren Suma will be celebrating the release of her second YA novel at this weekend's Teen Fair

Nova Ren Suma will be celebrating the release of her second YA novel at this weekend’s free NYC Teen Author Festival

The free NYC Teen Author Festival kicks into full swing this weekend with numerous special events featuring many of the best YA authors in the business. On Friday at 2:00 at the New York Public Library’s second-floor Margaret Liebman Berger Forum, Ted Goeglein, Gordon Korman, Lucas Klauss, and Michael Northrop will take on Susane Colasanti, E. Lockhart, Carolyn Mackler, Sarah Mlynowski, and Leila Sales in a “He Said, She Said” battle moderated by David Levithan, part of an afternoon symposium that continues at 3:00 with “Taking a Turn: YA Characters Dealing with Bad and Unexpected Choices,” with Caela Carter, Eireann Corrigan, Alissa Grosso, Terra Elan McVoy, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Elizabeth Scott, and K. M. Walton, moderated by Aaron Hartzler; at 4:10 with “That’s So Nineteenth Century,” with Sharon Cameron, Leanna Renee Hieber, Stephanie Strohm, and Suzanne Weyn, moderated by Sarah Beth Durst; and concluding at 4:40 with “Alternate World vs. Imaginary World,” with Durst, Jeff Hirsch, Emmy Laybourne, Lauren Miller, E. C. Myers, Diana Peterfreund, and Mary Thompson, moderated by Chris Shoemaker. Following that, a bunch of authors will be signing books at the Union Square B&N, from 7:00 to 8:30, including Corrigan, Elizabeth Eulberg, Hirsch, Levithan, Rainbow Rowell, and Nova Ren Suma. Saturday’s symposium in the Berger Forum begins at 1:00 with “Defying Description: Tackling the Many Facets of Identity in YA,” with Marissa Calin, Emily Danforth, Hartzler, A. S. King, and Jacqueline Woodson, moderated by Levithan, followed at 2:10 by a New Voices Spotlight featuring J. J. Howard, Kimberly Sabatini, Tiffany Schmidt, and Greg Takoudes; at 2:40 by “Under Many Influences: Shaping Identity When You’re a Teen Girl,” with Jen Calonita, Deborah Heiligman, Hilary Weisman Graham, Kody Keplinger, Amy Spalding, Katie Sise, and Kathryn Williams, moderated by Terra Elan McVoy; at 3:40 by “Born This Way: Nature, Nurture, and Paranormalcy,” with Jessica Brody, Gina Damico, Maya Gold, Alexandra Monir, Lindsay Ribar, Jeri Smith-Ready, and Jessica Spotswood, moderated by Adrienne Maria Vrettos; and at 4:20 by “The Next Big Thing,” with Jocelyn Davies, Hieber, Barry Lyga, and Maryrose Wood. From 7:00 to 8:30, there will be a Mutual Admiration Society reading at McNally Jackson on Prince St. consisting of Cameron, King, Northrop, Peterfreund, Victoria Schwab, and Suma, hosted by Levithan. And on Sunday, the weeklong festival comes to a close with nearly fifty YA authors taking part in “Our No-Foolin’ Mega-Signing” at Books of Wonder from 1:00 to 4:00, a smorgasbord of talent divided into forty-five-minute groups at 1:00, 1:45, 2:30, and 3:15.

THE LOST WEEKEND

Would-be writer Don Birnam (Ray Milland) battles his demons in Billy Wilder classic THE LOST WEEKEND

Would-be writer Don Birnam (Ray Milland) battles his demons in Billy Wilder classic, THE LOST WEEKEND

THE LOST WEEKEND (Billy Wilder, 1945)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, March 18, $12.50, 7:25
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org

Ray Milland won an Oscar as Best Actor for his unforgettable portrayal of Don Birnam in Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, starring as a would-be writer who can see life only through the bottom of a bottle. Having just gotten sober, he is off to spend the weekend with his brother (Phillip Terry), but Don is able to slip away from his girlfriend, Helen (Jane Wyman), and his sibling and hang out mostly with Nat the bartender (Howard Da Silva) and plenty of inner demons. One of the misunderstood claims to fame of Wilder’s classic drama is that it was shot in P. J. Clarke’s on Third Ave.; although the bar in the film was based on Clarke’s, the set was re-created in Hollywood, which doesn’t take anything away from this heartbreaking tale that will not have you running to the nearest watering hole after you see it. The Lost Weekend, which won three other Academy Awards — Best Screenplay (Wilder and Charles Brackett), Best Director (Wilder), and Best Picture — is screening March 18 at 7:25 at Film Forum and will be introduced by Blake Bailey, author of the new biography Farther & Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson (Knopf, March 13, 2013, $30), about the author of such books as The Lost Weekend and The Fall of Valor, and will be followed by a book signing. Bailey, who has also written biographies of John Cheever and Richard Yates, is currently working on a major bio of Philip Roth; the new documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked, will be playing at Film Forum for free March 13-19.