Who: Bob Rosenthal, Ada Calhoun
What: Celebration for the paperback publication of Cleaning Up New York: The ’70s Cult Classic (the Little Bookroom, March 2016, $12.95)
Where: Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway at 26th St., 212-759-2424
When: Wednesday, May 18, free, 6:00
Why: “$60. I needed $60 in three weeks’ time. I was out of a job so the idea of doing temporary work just popped into my head. I called a friend who had once done cleaning jobs and he told me to call up Everything for Living Space.” So begins Bob Rosenthal’s 1970s cult classic, Cleaning Up New York, which features the rather lengthy explanation on the front: “In which our hero coffees up with a pill, fortifies himself with some (pocketed) weed, and mops and waxes his way through weird vibes, domestic dramas . . . and seduction.” Rosenthal, who documented his time as Allen Ginsberg’s secretary for the Local East Village blog a few years ago, will be at the Rizzoli Bookstore on May 18 to talk about Cleaning Up New York with Ada Calhoun, the author of St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street (Norton, November 2015, $27.95).
As it turns out, 
A golden glow hovers over Sunset Song, Terence Davies’s lush adaptation of Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s seminal 1932 novel about family, land, war, and one young woman’s coming-of-age. Although it has the epic feel of a sweeping historical tale, the film takes place over just a few years in the second decade of the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn). Her father, John (Peter Mullan), is a brutish farmer who runs his household with an iron fist. He lashes out, literally and figuratively, at his strapping son, Will (Jack Greenlees), who stands and takes it, choosing not to fight back, and treats his wife, Jean (Daniela Nardini), like a housekeeper and baby-making machine. In one of the most wrenching scenes of the film, John drags Jean, who doesn’t want to have any more children, upstairs to rape her in order to increase the size of their family; Jean’s terrifying screams from the bedroom evolve into shrill cries as she gives birth to twins. Following a horrific tragedy, Chris is forced to give up her education — she was studying to become a teacher — and work on the family farm. Upon meeting fellow farmer Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie), friendship turns into something more as Scotland gets involved in World War I.
In 2010, French writer, actor, poet, and filmmaker Michel Houellebecq won the prestigious Prix Goncourt for his novel The Map and the Territory. The controversial Houellebecq — who has been accused of plagiarism, misogyny, and inciting racial hatred — then went missing in 2011, failing to show up for a book tour in Belgium and the Netherlands. As it turns out, the novelist merely forgot about the readings and claims he was unreachable at the time, by either phone or e-mail. But writer-director Guillaume Nicloux tells a far more entertaining story in the absurdist black comedy The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, which imagines that he really was taken hostage and held for a never-specified ransom. Even better, Nicloux got Houellebecq to play himself in the film, spoofing his image as an intellectual recluse. The fictionalized Houellebecq is taken captive by Mathieu (Mathieu Nicourt), Max (Maxime Lefrançois), and Luc (Luc Schwarz), who eventually bring him to a country house owned by elderly couple Ginette (Ginette Suchotzky) and Dede (Andre Suchotzky), where Houellebecq is almost always handcuffed and chained to his bed at night. His kidnappers engage him in literary discussions, talk about bodybuilding, bring him books to read, drink wine and smoke cigarettes with him, and even procure female accompaniment (Marie Bourjala) when he asks for it. The real Houellebecq (Platform; H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life) plays his fictionalized self with a deadpan comic turn worthy of Buster Keaton, never letting on whether anything that is happening is even the slightest bit true to who Houellebecq actually is. Nicloux (The Nun, Valley of Love) keeps the audience guessing all the way about the characters and their motives, but don’t expect any simple answers or trite resolutions. The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq is screening May 10 at 4:00 and 7:30 in FIAF’s “Creative Encounters” CinéSalon series, with the later show introduced by Albertine Books deputy director Tom Roberge, who has admitted to his