twi-ny talks

TWI-NY TENTH ANNIVERSARY TALK: NOVA REN SUMA

Nova Ren Suma will read from her highly anticipated YA debut, IMAGINARY GIRLS, at twi-ny’s tenth anniversary bash Wednesday night at Fontana’s

Fontana’s
105 Eldridge St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Wednesday, May 18, free, 7:00 – 9:30
212-334-6740
www.fontanasnyc.com
www.novaren.com

A self-described “easily distracted writer,” “daydreamer,” and “big sister,” New York City-based author Nova Ren Suma is making quite a splash with her debut YA novel, Imaginary Girls (Dutton, June 14, $17.99). Suma agonized over every sentence and every word of the stunning book, resulting in a beautifully written story of the deep bond between two sisters living in upstate New York, not far from where Suma was raised. “Ruby said I’d never drown — not in deep ocean, not by shipwreck, not even by falling drunk into someone’s bottomless backyard pool,” the slightly surreal novel begins. Suma’s first book, the 2009 middle-grade hardcover Dani Noir, was an engaging tale of a thirteen-year-old girl obsessed with film noir, Rita Hayworth, and a suspicious relationship. Suma, a charming young woman who loves talking about music, literature, food, and cats, will be appearing May 23 at the NYC Teen Author Carnival at the Mulberry Street Library, but before that she’ll be giving the first public reading from Imaginary Girls at twi-ny’s tenth anniversary celebration May 18 at Fontana’s, along with Dean Haspiel, Andrew Giangola, and Kyle Thomas Smith and live musical performances from Megan Reilly and James Mastro, Paula Carino and the Sliding Scale, and Evan Shinners. In preparation for the event, Suma chatted with twi-ny about her creative process.

twi-ny: After reading an early draft of Imaginary Girls, I told you not to let your agent or editor change a thing because I found it so beautiful. I’m now poring over an advance reader’s copy, and you have indeed made changes, which make the book even better. You were wise not to listen to me. What was the editing/revising experience like for you, especially when you had so many people lavishing you with praise?

Nova Ren Suma: Imaginary Girls is a surreal novel in which unexplainable things happen, and where reality is in question, which pretty much mirrors my entire experience getting the book published. My agent signed me on just two chapters, sent me off to write more, and then when I had a couple more chapters he quickly sold the novel unfinished to my dream publisher, which meant that I got to work with my editor very early on during the writing of the manuscript. It doesn’t sound real. My editor did say some extremely nice things about those early pages that made me blush, but she also worked me harder than I ever expected, seeing the potential in the story and finding ways to dig it out of me through quite a few revision letters, phone calls, and edit meetings. It was a thrilling, humbling experience to have the help of such a brilliant editor. Even now I suspect that she knows Ruby, one of the main characters, as well as I do. At one point I rewrote about two hundred pages in the middle of the book. At another point I cut about twenty thousand words. I was revising long after I thought I’d be finished. I pulled all-nighters like I haven’t done since college. I laughed, I cried, I wore pajamas out in the street. . . . It was intense. It was also the best experience I’ve ever had writing anything in my life. I love what the book became.

So I have to thank you for not just reading my manuscript at such a rough, raw stage but for saying just the right things. I was about to dive headfirst into a summer and fall of deep revision. I think I really needed that praise to make it through to the other side.

twi-ny: You have a strong online presence, on Facebook, your Distraction no. 99 blog, and other sites, connecting not only with readers but with other teen writers. What are some of the benefits you’ve gained from being part of this growing community of YA authors? What are the drawbacks?

NRS: The YA community online inspires me to no end and I am so grateful to be a part of it — everyone was so welcoming. But it’s also true that all the time spent connecting with other writers and readers and booksellers and bloggers and librarians is time not spent writing. It’s easy to get caught up in being online, to think you need to have a presence on every site, doing every shiny new thing in the way of social networking, and I’m easily swept away by that. I find blogging to be a great way to kick-start my writing — warm up my typing fingers, you know — but sometimes I think longingly of the years before Twitter was invented, wishing I could time-travel back there for a week or two, just to finish this manuscript.

Even so, I do think the benefits outweigh the distractions — at least, we authors have to hope they do. We tell ourselves they do. I happen to believe that if you’re writing for teens in this day and age and you’re not connecting with other authors and readers online, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. Then again, you probably wrote a hundred pages more than I did this month, so what do I know?

twi-ny: You have very eclectic musical tastes. Were there any specific songs or albums that got you going while writing Imaginary Girls? You’re now working on your next novel; has the song list changed for that?

NRS: I write to music, so Imaginary Girls is deeply connected to a series of songs I listened to while writing and revising the book. I often find a song that goes with a certain chapter and then I loop it and play it on repeat whenever I’m working on that particular piece of the manuscript. I play it until the words melt away and I can’t hear them anymore. I’ve been known to play one song over and over again for a week. Imaginary Girls is written in the voice of a sixteen-year-old girl, and the great majority of the songs on the novel’s playlist are sung by women. The first song to make an appearance was “Werewolf” by Cat Power. The first chapter of the book was written to “Hanging High” by Lykke Li — a song my little sister introduced me to. Other songs on the playlist include “Family Tree” by Bellafea, “These White Lights Will Bend to Make Blue” by Azure Ray, “Eighties Fan” by Camera Obscura, “Blinding” by Florence + the Machine, and “Never. Always. Good.” by Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun—a song you introduced me to while I was writing the book, if you remember. The only song from my own teenage years that made it to the playlist was an old Jane’s Addiction song, for nostalgia’s sake: “Summertime Rolls.”

As for my next novel — another dark, surreal story . . . but not a sequel — as I write, I build its playlist. Certain sections must be written to certain songs: “Zebra” by Beach House, “Lilac Wine” by Nina Simone, “The Spine Song” by Cake Bake Betty, “Stars” by the Xx. I’m always looking for new music because I never know what piece of the novel a new song might inspire.

twi-ny: As a full-time writer, you now have the freedom to decide when and where you write. So, when and where are your favorite places and times to write? Is it easier or harder to remain disciplined with fewer obligations outside of writing?

NRS: One of my favorite places to write is a particular café downtown. I only like to go in the mornings, before it gets too packed with NYU students. If you’re curious about what the café is, you’ll find it thanked in my book’s acknowledgments. I pick a table against the back wall, near an outlet, order a mocha — they have delicious mochas — and then dive in. The full-time writing life is still very new to me, so I have to treat going to write like I did going to my job. Even though I have a writing desk at home, I only let myself use it at night. I force myself to get up early, put on clothes and not pajamas, leave my apartment, get caffeine, and go to my “office.” That’s the Writers Room in Manhattan, where many other writers work. I like to visit my favorite café before going to the Writers Room because that is the very same routine I had while working my last full-time day job. I used to write in the café every morning before going in to work, so I go there to remind myself. The truth is that it’s harder to stay disciplined when time is so boundless, so if I can trick myself into thinking I don’t have very much time left in the day, I tend to write more.

There are some mornings now when I forget that I’m not supposed to be stopping at a certain point and rushing to the subway to get to work . . . and then reality washes over me: I have all day.

I have all day, I think excitedly. Then comes the weight of it, the responsibility, recalling how much I’ve always wanted this, and that washes over me too: I have ALL day. So I damn well better make good use of it.

TWI-NY TALK: WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge surveys his latest installation at Marian Goodman (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

OTHER FACES
Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 18, free
212-977-7160
www.mariangoodman.com

In early 2010, South African visual artist William Kentridge was the toast of the town; his large-scale retrospective “Five Themes” was earning raves at the Museum of Modern Art, his production of Shostakovich’s The Nose was shaking up things at the Metropolitan Opera, his unique artist book “Sheets of Evidence” was on display at Dieu Donné, Ensemble Pi played live accompaniment to several of his animated films for “Sounds from the Black Box” at the World Financial Center, and he performed his one-man multimedia show, “I am not me, the horse is not mine,” at MoMA. The Johannesburg-based Kentridge is now back in New York with his latest exhibit, “Other Faces,” which is built around the world premiere of the tenth film in his “Drawings for Projection” series, animated shorts that examine the history and changing sociopolitical landscape of South Africa, many of which feature wealthy industrialist Soho Eckstein and common man / artist-lover Felix Teitelbaum. As always, the film is accompanied by a collection of drawings, fragments, and prints used in its creation, highlighting Kentridge’s process: He makes a charcoal drawing, photographs it with a 35mm camera, then alters it slightly for the next frame. A separate room at the gallery is dedicated to sketches and drawings and a cabinet of miniature character figures from The Nose.

We met with Kentridge as he was examining the installation in process for that evening’s official opening; he was generous with his time and thoughtful in his answers despite having just gone through emergency dental surgery. He took numerous pauses to carefully consider each question, including one about imprisoned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose “Circle of Animals: Zodiac Heads” he had just seen at the nearby Pulitzer Fountain in Grand Army Plaza.

twi-ny: Last spring was quite a time for you here in New York City. What was that experience like? Is it more relaxing this time around?

William Kentridge: Well, I did have a sense that it’s not something that’s going to happen again. It was such a treat, such a privilege to have those together, and also I felt it’s the right way to see the work, which is about excess, about too many things jumping, shifting mediums, from drawing to sculpture to opera to performance. So very often, when they’re seen, you see one of those elements — you see just the performance, or just the opera, which is fine. They have to obviously stand up on their own. But to get a sense of the trajectory, what was here last year was, for me, a good way to look back and see how things were made.

twi-ny: You work in a myriad of media and disciplines, from films and drawing to tapestries and optics, from performance art and sculpture to theater and opera. What motivates you to try just about anything and everything?

William Kentridge: For many years, I followed the good advice of friends saying, “You have to specialize. If you try to do all these different things, you’ll just be an amateur and a dilettante; each one has its own specific set of skills, and traditions, and history. Just do drawing, or just do filmmaking, or just do theater.” I tried unsuccessfully to follow that advice, which seemed very sound, and then discovered that I was both working making drawings and making a piece of theater with some puppeteers, and there was projection behind it, and at a certain point I gave up. I said, “All right, I tried as hard as I can to just do one thing,” but temperamentally, it doesn’t work, and the only hope is that the sum of the parts will be more than the individual items. And not only that but that the drawings will be strengthened by the impulse that comes from the films.

In other words, images which are there at the service of something else apply to drawings, so you need an image for the narrative flow of the film, and that might make a drawing with an image that I would never have got to if I was simply saying, “Let me do a suite of drawings.” And there’s music that comes from a piece of theater which goes back to film, which suggests other images, so the direct pollination with the indirect provocation of different images, whether it’s in theater, in film, or in drawing, has been very productive.

twi-ny: Do you get different kinds of satisfaction from working in the different disciplines?

William Kentridge: The making feels very similar. The big difference obviously is that sometimes it’s me alone in the studio, or me with an editor, and a sound editor, and a composer; it’s just me if it’s drawings, a team of three of us if it’s an animated film, a team of five close collaborators and fifty other people if it’s an opera. So there’s that shift between working on one’s own and working with several people, which feels a good way to go up and down. They are different anxieties rather than different satisfactions with the different mediums.

Once an exhibition is done, there’s not an anxiety that the picture’s going to fall off the wall or the projector will switch off, whereas there’s an enormous anxiety that at the opening of a piece of theater the stage won’t move at the right place, the singers are going to forget where to stand, there’ll be a bad note here, the singer will miss an entrance there; there are four hundred contingencies that you have no control over, in the moment, whereas in the exhibition hall those contingencies have generally been before the opening. Once the pictures are up on the wall, you trust the nails will hold them. I suppose what all the projects have in common is that in some stage of their making, there are those nights where you lie awake saying, “If only I had said no to this project, then I could sleep calmly and be happy. . . . In the past, I’ve been able to sort of somehow pull the object out of the fire, but this one can only be a disaster.” So I would imagine that’s a kind of occupational hazard for being in the arts.

twi-ny: You were just walking around this installation; what are you most nervous about?

William Kentridge: Well, it’s the first time the film is being seen, so I’m most anxious about that which I can’t control, which is the balance between the sound of the audience looking at the exhibition and the level of sound in the room and the feeling that I really wish the sound mixer was here as the evening progresses to adjust the level and change things. I’m anxious about seeing the film through other people’s eyes. Particularly, this is a film that is very much set in Johannesburg, and it hasn’t been seen in Johannesburg, outside of the editor and the composer and myself, but to see if and what sense it makes to people outside of Johannesburg . . . That’s always been the case with the films, but usually they’ve been seen first in Johannesburg or somewhere else.

twi-ny: This is the first new film you’re showing since the retrospective at MoMA. So many more people are now familiar with your work —

William Kentridge: Yes, I haven’t thought about that. I have a sense it’s a finite size, this gallery. There are two lifts — How many people can fit in the lifts? — and the previous openings before the big MoMA and Metropolitan exhibition, those lifts were full. You can’t suddenly have three thousand people in here; even if they wanted to come, they don’t fit.

twi-ny: You are more of a celebrity now, more recognizable . . .

William Kentridge: I had two experiences of misreading the New York public last year. One was, I was about to cross Fifth Ave. and a woman in running shoes came up to me and said, “I’m sorry, I’m having a senior moment.” And I thought, “Oh God, she’s panhandling, she’s saying she lost her bus fare, can I give her ten dollars,” and I was about to say, “No no no no, I’m just arrived,” and she said, “You’re that artist from South Africa,” so it changed the conversation.

And then one evening I was going back to the hotel in deep Midtown and a woman in her forties or fifties came up to me, and I thought this was another person who would say I recognize you from your art, you’re Mr. Kentridge. I’m all ready to sign the autograph and she says, “Are you staying near here? Are you here for a while?” So I say, “Yes, yes, I’m just here for a while,” and then she says, “Don’t you want some company for tonight? I’m very good at it.” [Kentridge laughs.] So, two out of two misreadings, getting them both wrong.

William Kentridge checks out the sound level in preparation for world premiere of his latest “Drawing for Projection” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: Several of your works are included in MoMA’s current exhibition “Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now,” which looks at the melding of art and activism during apartheid. The show is filled with a tremendous amount of energy; where is that being channeled today in South Africa?

William Kentridge: First, you have to understand that South Africa is really a post-anti-apartheid society rather than a post-apartheid society. In other words, it’s off the map as a big international issue, but the legacy of three hundred years of discrimination has not been undone overnight. There are new tensions between a new small black elite that grows, a huge dissatisfaction from poorer black people, so there are enormous shifting currents of what the politics in South Africa are. There’s a sense among some of the white male artists in the show, like Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes, the two artists from Bitterkomix, which are about the Afrikaaner anxiety and displacement but done in a very scabrous and energetic and funny and powerful and moving way. Diane Victor has done a very powerful set of small etchings, “The Disasters of Peace” as opposed to “The Disasters of War.” It does feel a bit like here’s the patient open on the table and anybody can examine this part of this organ or that organ and go and do further dissections in different places.

twi-ny: In 2011, what does it feel like to still have artists being arrested and imprisoned because of their work, especially in regard to the current situation with Ai Weiwei?

William Kentridge: That’s not the surprising issue. That’s not the new configuration. The new configuration is the illusion of normality in dealings with China. So, for example, I’m interested to know whether the Hong Kong Art Fair [where Kentridge’s work will be shown in the Marian Goodman booth later this month] and all its sponsors — Hong Kong is now part of Mainland China; it has its own particularities — whether there will be a public statement from the art fair, from the sponsors, who are obviously doing huge business in China. There may well be; I may be completely misjudging that, but on their website, I’ve not seen anything. In China, the biggest exhibition in the hugest museum is an exhibition of the European enlightenment [“The Art of the Enlightenment” at the newly reopened National Museum], so the contradictions are there, not to say they’re not there in other places, but the question is whether the extraordinary financial and commercial connections between China and the West will allow the West to make the sort of statements they would make here. So I’m interested to see whether there’s a big banner outside the Hong Kong Art Fair saying “Release Ai Weiwei.”

twi-ny: In the majority of your work, the hand of the artist, as well as the creative process itself, is evident. Do you think this gets lost with the prevalence of digital technology in today’s art world? How has the digital process affected your own work?

William Kentridge: As all film editing does, it happens on a computer, as opposed to pieces of film being physically cut up and stuck down. I’m not a purist. If I think this looks too fast, I will slow it down, and it’s a digital slowing down. It’s not digital animation, but it’s not as if it flies in the face of any of the things that are part of the lexicon of digital editing. The animation for The Nose, for example, was done with a digital camera — not done in a computer but photographed digitally, which is much more flexible and much quicker, and you can see it immediately. Some people can think very well with a mouse, think on a screen, and think creatively with their hands not really being involved; they’re looking at the screen and their hands form the keystrokes but it’s not their hands thinking, whereas with the work that I do, there’s very much the belief that there’s a kind of independent intelligence of the hand, there’s a kind of muscle knowledge and memory. . . .

twi-ny: What’s on the horizon for you?

William Kentridge: There’s a continuation of the kinds of things that I did in lecture-performance, somewhere between live performance and lecture; there’s further work in that field, and things that are somewhere between a theater performance and installation, which I’m not quite sure what that becomes. And I’m sure there will be more theater and more operas.

TWI-NY TENTH ANNIVERSARY TALK: PAULA CARINO

Paula Carino will be rocking out with the Sliding Scale as part of twi-ny’s free tenth anniversary celebration May 18 at Fontana’s

Fontana’s
105 Eldridge St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Wednesday, May 18, free, 7:00 – 9:30
212-334-6740
www.paulacarino.com
www.fontanasnyc.com

“I am lucky in love / I don’t need your comfort or care / I am so lucky in love / even when life is unfair / Yeah, don’t tell me life is unfair,” Paula Carino sings on “Lucky in Love,” from her excellent 2010 album, Open on Sunday, which she financed through Facebook fan donations and released on her own label, Intellectual House o’ Pancakes Records. We’re not about to tell the singer-songwriter, yoga teacher, blogger, and pop-culture columnist that life is unfair, but we don’t mind saying that if life were indeed fair, Carino would be a star. The multitalented musician has been a fixture on the New York City music scene for the better part of a decade, whether playing acoustic shows at the Parkside Lounge on the Lower East Side or at Freddy’s Backroom in Brooklyn with her backing band, which she has given such names as the Better Mind Your Own Business Bureau, the Virtually Spotless, and the Scurvy Merchants. For twi-ny’s free tenth anniversary celebration on May 18 at Fontana’s, Carino will be playing with the Sliding Scale on a bill that also includes readings from Dean Haspiel, Nova Ren Suma, Kyle Thomas Smith, and Andrew Giangola and live performances from James Mastro and Megan Reilly and Evan Shinners. While taking a break from doing preproduction on a new record with the curious working title Chimp Haven, Carino chatted with twi-ny about her very busy life.

twi-ny: You recently wrote on your blog, “I want to tell you everything I’ve thought, read, listened to, experienced, and watched.” With all of the writing you do — music reviews and interviews, lifestyle pieces, and a personal blog — do you find that impacts at all on your own songwriting?

Paula Carino: Well, it’s funny — I started my blog as a promotional thing for my music after I released my first solo album, but the blog ended up just being me blathering on about other people’s music and other pop-culture stuff. There was a time when I was posting every day, and the downside is that afterward, my frontal-lobe reward system would be like “OK, you’ve been creative today, now go run along and play!” So the motivation to actually create something lasting, like a song, was diminished. I had to consciously scale back on blogging in order to devote more time and mental energy to songwriting.

twi-ny: If you could bring back one defunct New York City music venue to play at, which one would it be?

Paula Carino: I was just the other day reminiscing about Fez. It was comfortable and relaxing and had that swanky banquette seating that made you feel like Ricky Ricardo was gonna swing by your table singing “Babalu.” I would have loved to play to swellegant, seated people. . . .

twi-ny: You’re also a certified yoga teacher. What is the musical setlist like for your classes?

Paula Carino: Surprisingly, I don’t play music in my classes, or during my own practice. I think it distracts people from their immediate experience. But I do emphasize chanting. My students get to chant their hearts out at the beginning of class, because, aside from, like, karaoke, I think people do not get enough opportunities to sing together. Singing together is such a basic joy. It’s really gratifying to hear people let go and really get into it — it’s like a revival meeting.

TWI-NY TENTH ANNIVERSARY TALK: KYLE THOMAS SMITH

Kyle Thomas Smith will read from his debut novel, 85A, on May 18 at Fontana’s as part of twi-ny’s tenth anniversary celebration

Fontana’s
105 Eldridge St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Wednesday, May 18, free, 7:00 – 9:30
212-334-6740
www.fontanasnyc.com
www.85anovel.com

“Every detention, every chip of glass piercing my forearm from the inside, every minute the 85A is late drives me that much closer to London.” So begins Kyle Thomas Smith’s harrowing debut novel, 85A (Bascom Hill, August 2010, $14.95), the brutally honest story of Chicago teenager Seamus O’Grady, who is desperate to get out of a city, school, and family that relentlessly beats him down both mentally and physically. Although the plot of the book is not based on Smith’s real life — he was born and raised in Chicago and moved to Brooklyn in 2003, where he currently lives with his partner and cats — the setting is, and he does a marvelous job capturing the heart and soul of the dark underbelly of his hometown over the course of one long day in January 1989. Smith, a passionate, engaging young man with an infectious joie de vivre, has written for websites and magazines including Sentient City: The Art of Urban Dharma, Boston’s Edge, and The Brooklyn Rail, is an ardent Buddhist practitioner and meditator, and is a multidimensional, enthusiastic individual who feels right at home whether at a punk-rock show or a classical music concert, at experimental theater or an opera at the Met. Smith will read from 85A as part of twi-ny’s free tenth anniversary celebration May 18 at Fontana’s, which will also feature readings from Dean Haspiel, Nova Ren Suma, and Andrew Giangola and live performances from James Mastro and Megan Reilly, Paula Carino and the Sliding Scale, and Evan Shinners.

twi-ny: Seamus is a fascinating character who doesn’t quite understand that with actions come consequences, at least not always the desired kind. How much did you play with Seamus’s lack of/dawning self-awareness?

Kyle Thomas Smith: I was always careful to keep Seamus’s naïveté front-and-center. On the one hand, he’s a city kid who coolly assesses every environment he enters. On the other hand, he’s a misfit and a dreamer. He’s in a bad situation at home, he doesn’t have many friends, he’s not learning in school, so he copes by escaping into fantasy. He projects these fantasies on to the wrong people and builds all sorts of castles in the air. I have always been preoccupied with the notion that there are different types of intelligence. Seamus is hopeless when it comes to academics but his imaginative capacities are off the charts. Yet it’s his imaginative intelligence that could also plunge him headlong into an abyss. In order to illustrate that conflict, I had to constantly ground Seamus’s character in “ungroundedness.”

twi-ny: Music plays a key role in 85A, but you have said that the music that inspires Seamus is not the music that inspires you. What music inspired you when you were Seamus’s age, and what music inspires you today?

KTS: Well, when I was Seamus’s age, the music I listened to and the music that inspired me were two different things. In early high school, I let the scene dictate my tastes. So I listened to a lot of Skinny Puppy and Ministry and a lot of their industrial-goth side projects, but inside I was much more drawn to Bauhaus and Joy Division and even softer stuff like the Smiths, Cocteau Twins, and Robyn Hitchcock. But things changed for me when the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking surfaced. That was incredible shit and it inspired me to abandon what I was supposed to be listening to and go straight for what I wanted. I went way, way, way back to basics at that point and steeped myself in the Stones (pardon my orgasm), Bowie, Lou Reed, John Cale, and Dylan (especially) — my soul was much more in alignment with all of them. I still love them and I still love the Pixies, but I’m more hooked on Miles Davis and Nina Simone these days. My partner is an opera and classical music aficionado, so my ear has become trained on the Brahms and Chopin that he’s always playing. I keep going back in time. I’m afraid I don’t know much about what’s going on in music anymore, though I do like Gnarls Barkley and Danger Mouse a lot. That’s some deep, inventive stuff right there.

twi-ny: You’ve had readings in your native Chicago, where the book is set, as well as in New York City, your adopted hometown. Has reaction to the book been different in each city? Based on your personal experience, what are some of the major differences between the two cities?

KTS: 85A has been well received in New York. Maybe it’s because there’s been too much written about New York already and New Yorkers are sick of always reading about themselves; they want to read about another dynamic American city for a change. And a lot of nostalgic, homesick Chicago transplants in New York tell me how much the book brings them back.

As for Chicago itself, I can’t tell you how over the moon I was when the Chicago Tribune gave 85A a great review. It was one of those hometown-boy-makes-good experiences. But Chicago is another kettle of fish. It’s an extremely proud city, and people in its music, lit, and art scenes can be incredibly territorial. I recently saw a spot-on documentary about Chicago’s 80s punk scene called You Weren’t There. The title perfectly sums up that chest-thumping, I-was-there-you-weren’t attitude that some people still cop to this day. And that attitude was on flagrant display on this one major Chicago website that posted a poorly written review of 85A that bashes Seamus and completely misrepresents the book. It set off a shit-storm of parochial, internecine comments from people who admitted that they’d never even read 85A. The day it was posted, I had just come to town and was supposed to do a reading at Quimby’s Books the following night. I had no idea how I was going to get through it. But when I got up in front of the audience, a more confident spirit overtook me and people couldn’t have been more receptive to what I was reading. So . . . Chicago can be a tough crowd but it can give a lot of love too.

The difference between the two cities — that’s a damned good question. Chicago winters are never easy, but I never knew why they got such a bad rap until I first moved to New York and then went home for a visit. Holy witch’s tit in a steel bra! How I got through daily life for so many years in that town I have no idea. I like Chicago’s modern architecture better, but New York and Chicago are both world-class cities with some of the best cultural offerings on the planet. Many New Yorkers who have moved to Chicago say they don’t miss New York at all. They say they have just as good a time in Chicago and it’s much cheaper and more manageable. I would probably see Chicago the same way if I wasn’t from there, but there just seems to be more here and you never know what you’re going to stumble upon next when you explore New York neighborhoods, no matter how long you’ve lived in its boroughs.

TWI-NY TENTH ANNIVERSARY TALK: DEAN HASPIEL

Dean Haspiel will participate in twi-ny’s tenth anniversary celebration on May 18 at Fontana’s (photo by Seth Kushner)

Fontana’s
105 Eldridge St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Wednesday, May 18, free, 7:00 – 9:30
212-334-6740
www.fontanasnyc.com
www.deanhaspiel.com

For more than two decades, Dean Haspiel has been a comic book force all his own. A wildly talented and gregarious writer, illustrator, promoter, creator, and organizer, Dino works nonstop to build up his own expansive resume as well as the industry itself. In February 2006, he started ACT-I-VATE, a web-based comics collective that features such series as Josh Neufeld’s “Lionel,” Kevin Colden’s “Fishtown,” Nick Bertozzi’s “Iraq War Stories,” and his own “Billy Dogma” and “Street Code,” the latter a terrific semiautobiographical tale set in New York City, where Dino was born and raised. Along the way, he has collaborated on prestigious projects with Harvey Pekar (American Splendor, The Quitter), Jonathan Lethem (Back on Nervous St.), Michael Chabon (The Escapist), and Jonathan Ames (The Alcoholic), and he contributes drawings and illustrations to Ames’s HBO cable series Bored to Death, which features Zach Galifianakis playing a character inspired by Haspiel’s real life.

On May 14, Ames and Haspiel will be honored at the “100 Works on Paper” benefit at Kentler International Drawing Space in Red Hook, where attendees donate $200 and go home with an original work of art. On May 18, the Emmy-winning Haspiel will be presenting a new Street Code comic as part of twi-ny’s tenth anniversary celebration at Fontana’s, which will also feature readings from Nova Ren Suma, Andrew Giangola, and Kyle Thomas Smith and live performances from James Mastro and Megan Reilly, Paula Carino and the Sliding Scale, and Evan Shinners.

twi-ny: You’ve collaborated with such talented writers as Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Ames; who is your next dream collaborator?

Dean Haspiel: I’ve been itching to collaborate with author Tim Hall on an original graphic novel and we have something planned. I’d also like to collaborate with mystery writer Joe R. Lansdale on adapting his brilliant Hap and Leonard characters into comics form. Plus, I don’t think my career would feel satisfactory if I hadn’t collaborated with some of my favorite comic book writers, the likes of Mark Waid, J. M. DeMatteis, and a handful of others.

twi-ny: Who is your favorite character to draw, whether created by you or another artist?

DH: My favorite characters to draw are my creator-owned Billy Dogma & Jane Legit. But I love drawing Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s the Thing from the Fantastic Four, and I was recently afforded the opportunity to write and draw a short Thing story in an upcoming issue of Marvel Comics’ Strange Tales sequel.

Jane Legit shows her love for Billy Dogma in Dean Haspiel’s “Bring Me the Heart of Billy Dogma,” from THE ACT-I-VATE PRIMER

twi-ny: On Bored to Death, Zach Galifianakis’s Ray Hueston character is based on you. Is it easy to watch him, or does it hit a little too close to home?

DH: The Ray Hueston character on Bored to Death is loosely based on some events that happened to me, but I don’t think Zach Galifianakis was subjected to a parallax view of my life and my behavioral traits by any stretch of the imagination. So, I can safely declare that Zach and Jonathan Ames have wholly created Ray from spirited, albeit inspired, cloth. However, I was recently privy to the filmmaking of a certain scene in the upcoming season and I remarked how bizarre it was to watch my proposed doppelganger play out an important event, something I never got the opportunity to do in my own life, and how frustrating yet weirdly cathartic that was for me.

twi-ny How do you find the time to do all the things you do, including serving as a relentless promoter of the comics industry?

DH: Don’t even get me started. If everyone on their chosen social networking sites would just share what they liked with the simple click of a button rather than whine about this and that and publish what they had for lunch, I might be able to shrug off my self-imposed burden to cheer what is good and, instead, produce more stories and eat dinner before ten pm with the people I love to spend time with. Alas, the internet accesses a dark gene in humanity that encourages some folks to constantly complain and act like jerks and do things they wouldn’t dare do in front of real people. I don’t do anything that we all couldn’t do together if we just took a minute to think straight and understand our information and entertainment values.

TWI-NY TENTH ANNIVERSARY TALK: ANDREW GIANGOLA

Mario Batali, Andrew Giangola, and Rachael Ray party it up at Texas Motor Speedway

Fontana’s
105 Eldridge St. between Grand & Broome Sts.
Wednesday, May 18, free, 7:00 – 9:30
212-334-6740
www.fontanasnyc.com
www.theweekendstartsonwednesday.blogspot.com

We’ve known Andrew Giangola since we were kids, playing baseball in the street, sledding down what we thought were enormous hills in the local park, and going to semipro football games. Although New York is far from the center of the auto racing world, we did go to the track once, when a cigar-chomping family friend took us behind the scenes and into the pit. That apparently rubbed off on Giangola, who was the director of communications for NASCAR for nine years, traveling around the country chaperoning star drivers and meeting the fans. Last February he turned his adventures into an entertaining book, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans, which looks at dozens of NASCAR’s most dedicated fanatics, from movie icons and beauty queens to military heroes and astronauts, from news anchors and celebrity chefs to an acrophobic mountain climber and a dude who wears nothing but a tire.

“After sleeping in their buses, watching races in their homes, spending countless hours on the phone, sitting in the grandstands, and walking campgrounds on the circuit,” Giangola writes in the introduction, “I’m convinced NASCAR’s ‘core’ fans are a special, different breed…. I want to perpetuate a new stereotype of NASCAR fans. They are, at their core, very good people.” Giangola, who lives in New York City with his wife, daughter, and dog — and whose last driving ticket was for going zero miles per hour, blocking the box at the Holland Tunnel — will read from The Weekend Starts on Wednesday as part of twi-ny’s free tenth anniversary celebration May 18 at Fontana’s, which will also feature readings from Dean Haspiel, Nova Ren Suma, and Kyle Thomas Smith and live performances from James Mastro and Megan Reilly, Paula Carino and the Sliding Scale, and Evan Shinners.

twi-ny: You grew up on the South Shore of Long Island, not exactly a hotbed of auto racing. You’ve always been a huge sports fan, but tell the truth — what did you think of NASCAR when you first applied for the position, and how do you feel about it now?

Andrew Giangola: Your father took us to a stock car race at the old short track in Freeport, LI, when I was eleven and I loved it. (That track is now a strip mall.) I also watched [Richard] Petty and [David] Pearson and [Cale] Yarborough on Wide World of Sports when NASCAR snippets were shown between Ping-Pong and cliff diving. When I was exposed to the sport, I always liked it. But growing up on Long Island in the ’70s, you didn’t see a lot of NASCAR; the sport might as well have been racing on Mars. There was no ESPN or 24/7 sports coverage. I was by no means a fan.

When I got the job offer, after a quick web search it was pretty clear pretty fast that this was a big, powerful brand with a lot of company involvement. My real shock was at the first race; it happened to be Talladega, NASCAR’s biggest and rowdiest track, in the heart of Alabama. I was wearing black slacks and a black shirt. A fan gripping a large beer yells down from the top of his converted school bus, “When are the aliens coming?” It was immediately clear NASCAR fans were familiar with the film Men in Black and that I’d need to learn the rules of the road, so to speak. Seven years later, I was sleeping with those fans — not in the biblical sense; it was research — and published The Weekend Starts on Wednesday about the most amazing fan stories.

twi-ny: You’ve worked in communications for Pepsi and Simon & Schuster, spent nine race seasons at NASCAR, and now are brand new at IMG. What was the hardest part of the NASCAR job? You’re also a wise-ass who was once championed as the savior of the PR business. How do you get away with your sarcastic sense of humor at such giant, serious companies?

Andrew Giangola: I’m not sure anyone ever championed me as a savior but that’s awfully nice of you to say, and please let me introduce you to my new boss. At NASCAR, I really had a blast. Workplace humor is a dicey proposition. You have to pick and choose your spots and make sure you’re overdelivering, because a comedian who puts up weak numbers is nothing but a liability. Of course, we dealt with some serious issues at NASCAR. It’s such a decentralized, multifaceted industry. You have NASCAR the sanctioning body, teams, tracks, drivers, sponsors, licensees, media partners. In a sense, in my job in PR out of NASCAR’s New York office, I had to serve them all. It kept a man busy. I literally wore out about five BlackBerries. (When I left, I offered to donate one to the NASCAR Hall of Fame; no one got back to me.) My daughter, Gaby, once said, “If work were crack, you’d sell me for a bag of it.” The toughest challenge was keeping some semblance of family balance while attempting to make every man, woman, child, and dog in the US of A a stock car racing fan.

twi-ny: You’re a die-hard Rangers fan, but you’ve claimed on your blog and in the book that NASCAR fans are the greatest in the world. Is that a diss to the Garden Faithful?

Andrew Giangola: When the Rangers play on Saturday night, do the fans start sleeping in front of the Garden on a Wednesday? That’s what it’s like in NASCAR. But I think Ranger fans and NASCAR fans have a lot in common in their tremendous passion for their sports. (Go to a NASCAR track like Pocono Raceway or Dover and you’ll see a lot of cops and firemen in the infield who are big Ranger fans.) Remember, on any given Sunday in NASCAR there’s one winner and forty-two losers. Ranger fans can relate to that continual, gut-wrenching, seemingly endless heartbreak. All that said, I still tell my wife, Viviane, that the day we were married was almost as good as that warm night in June of 1994 when the Rangers finally won the Stanley Cup.

TWI-NY TENTH ANNIVERSARY TALK: EVAN SHINNERS

Evan Shinners will give an all-Bach solo upright piano recital at Barbès on May 10, then play twi-ny’s tenth anniversary party at Fontana’s on May 18 with a full band

Tuesday, May 10, Barbès, 376 Ninth St. at Sixth Ave., Brooklyn, strongly suggested donation $10, 347-422-0248, 7:00
Wednesday, May 18, Fontana’s, 105 Eldridge St. between Grand & Broome Sts., free, 212-334-6740, 7:00
www.evanshinners.com

Juilliard graduate Evan Shinners has been playing the piano since he was nine and made his orchestral debut when he was a mere twelve years old, with the Utah Symphony. But the Bach-loving New Yorker is not your average classical musician. In addition to having appeared at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, and other prestigious venues around the world, he leads a band that pounds away at aggressive pop music in smaller clubs. Shinners, who sees a melding of styles as the future of classical music, will be at Barbès in Park Slope on Tuesday night as part of the Upright Piano Brigade series being presented by the Concert Artist Guild, a Tuesday–night residency through July in which musicians will perform solo classical works on upright piano. Shinners will be playing an all-Bach program that includes Toccatas in E and D, a “wild” prelude and fugue in A, an early version of the triple concerto, a partita, and a few smaller rarities. Then, on May 18, Shinners and his band will be the closing act at twi-ny’s tenth anniversary party at Fontana’s on the Lower East Side.

twi-ny: You recently played Beethoven at MoMA in a mobile, cut-out piano followed by onlookers who were snapping photos in your face as you all moved around the space together. What was that experience like?

Evan Shinners: One of my goals is to bring classical music to people in a setting where they would not normally hear it. If someone hears Beethoven’s Ninth from that piano all hollowed out in an art museum and they appreciate it, it only proves the universality of the great classical composers and speaks volumes about how classical music can reach the masses anywhere outside the concert halls.

twi-ny: What are a bunch of Juilliard graduates doing playing punk rock?

Evan Shinners: Well, I wouldn’t call the band punk by any means, and I have my own theories about what classical music of 2011 is and what it isn’t. If I had to briefly touch on that, we play what is closer to classical than what classical pretends to be today. I could argue that for a while. . . . Essentially, it is important to know that most of the band did not get their first music lessons in classical or jazz. In fact, three out of five of them started learning rock/pop songs first before taking up their Juilliard “callings.” I am lucky that the members can play all styles, and I wouldn’t have it any other way as we often jump from Bach to rock within one piece.

Evan Shinners was one of six pianists who performed Allora & Calzadilla’s moving “Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano” in the MoMA atrium (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

twi-ny: Your upcoming album, @bach, which will be released later this month, is a collection of live Bach works performed on keyboard. What is it that draws you to Bach? What about other favorites?

Evan Shinners: The universality of Bach is it. No other music is so adaptable. Rappers rap over him, saxophones blow over him, I lift chord progressions directly from his cantatas and make rock songs based on him — his music is perfectly timeless. With Bach I can take up all my influences, from [Thelonius] Monk to Eminem, and have them come out in the same piece of Bach’s. . . . Try doing that with Schumann (no disrespect to ol’ Robert, though).

twi-ny: What is on your iPod these days?

Evan Shinners: On the iPod it is either [harpsichordist] Wanda Landowska or rap.

twi-ny: Do you get different types of satisfaction when playing classical music as opposed to when you play pop and rock? How do the very different kinds of audiences, and their energy levels, affect or influence your playing?

Evan Shinners: I love the rock audiences. I love getting yelled at, taunted, rushed, et cetera. I’m also tired of musicians complaining about noisy audiences — try being Bob Dylan (or anyone else who dealt with it) and get booed everywhere you go and still play your heart out; I have respect for those musicians who can. A goal of mine: all Bach in Carnegie Hall where everyone sits down with red wine in paper cups, claps between the pieces (gasp!), yells, taunts, boos, screams, riots, mosh pits in the aisles. . . . You want the classical audiences to start growing? Try that atmosphere for starters; Paganini’s crowds used to be a lot more rowdy than the crowds of today.