KGB Bar
85 East Fourth St. off Second Ave.
Wednesday, August 21, free, 7:00
www.kgbbar.com
KGB Bar’s latest Fantastic Fiction lineup should be a mutual lovefest, as Michael L. Printz Award winner Libba Bray (Going Bovine, Beauty Queens) teams up with rising YA star Nova Ren Suma (Imaginary Girls) for an evening of readings and discussion hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel. Here’s what Bray, who is a YA goddess — from her popular books to her band, Tiger Beat, which features fellow YA authors Natalie Standiford, Barnabas Miller, and Daniel Ehrenhaft, to her potentially lucrative Tampon Poetry™ — has to say about Suma’s latest novel, 17 & Gone: “Elegant, riveting, powerful, and poignant, this suspenseful, supernatural tale slips under the skin, inking out a haunting tapestry of menace and madness. Nova Ren Suma is, quite simply, a masterful storyteller and one of my favorite writers.” Suma is one of our favorite writers as well, and not only because we used to work with her and that she gave her first public reading of Imaginary Girls at twi-ny’s tenth anniversary party. She is also an expert craftsperson who agonizes over every word of the complex, fascinating worlds she creates, filled with wholly believable characters trapped in extraordinary situations. Here’s a tiny taste, from the first chapter of 17 & Gone (Dutton, March 2013, $17.99): “Abby Sinclair. There at the intersection. I’m not saying she was there in the flesh with her thumb out and her hair wild in the wind and her bare knees purpled from cold — it didn’t start out that way. The first time I saw Abby, it was only a picture: the class photograph reproduced on her Missing poster.” We know that makes us want to read a whole lot more, and it should do the same to you. Suma’s next book, The Walls Around Us, is due out from Algonquin in 2015.
Poor Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner). His mother (Geraldine Page) sends him locks of her hair and pays a prudish landlord (Julie Harris), aided by a tough cop (Dolph Sweet), to make sure no girls visit him in his new apartment. Bernard’s father (Rip Torn) rules over him with an iron fist in the basement of the New York Public Library. A nice, innocent young woman (Karen Black in her first major role) is interested in him, but he wants a psycho go-go dancer/actress (Elizabeth Hartman). Meanwhile, he is getting all the wrong advice from his best friend (Tony Bill). Francis Ford Coppola’s little-known romantic comedy — his second feature, following Dementia 13 — earned Page an Academy Award nomination, Kastner a BAFTA nomination as Most Promising Newcomer, and a Palme d’Or nomination at Cannes. Coppola uses the New York City settings with a charming intelligence and wit, whether Bernard is chasing a kite across the Sheep Meadow, wandering through the Times Square peep shows, or being chased through the New York Public Library. The Lovin’ Spoonful supplies the fabulously sixties soundtrack. Based on David Benedictus’s novel, You’re a Big Boy Now kicks off the Museum of the Moving Image series “Fun City: New York in the Movies 1967-75,” with guest curator J. Hoberman on hand to introduce the film. The festival, which runs August 10 through September 1, includes a wide range of works made in and about the Big Apple, from such familiar favorites as Rosemary’s Baby, The French Connection, Superfly, Midnight Cowboy, and Dog Day Afternoon to such lesser-known treats as Bye Bye Braverman, The Angel Levine, Little Murders, The Landlord, and Dick Fontaine’s 1970 documentary, Norman Mailer vs. Fun City.
