Author Archives: Emdashes

And speaking of great readings

I’m particularly jazzed about this Sunday’s Feast, which is free and features four super-talented poets: Kazim Ali, Paula Bohince, Katherine Dimma, and Robin Beth Schaer. This Sunday, November 13, 5-7 p.m., at CAMAJE bistro, 85 MacDougal St. betweeen Bleecker and Houston. Eats—by beloved chef Abby Hitchcock—are inexpensive, optional, and delicious. The special Feast menu includes popular favorites from the bistro’s dinner and dessert menus. Listen, eat, enjoy!

More about the readers:

Kazim Ali is the author of two books, The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award, and Quinn’s Passage, named by Chronogram as one of The Best Books of 2005. He’s the publisher of Nightboat Books and assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Shippensburg University. Here are some poems.

Paula Bohince received an MFA from New York University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Agni, Field, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Best New Poets 2005. She has won the Grolier Poetry Prize, held a residency at the MacDowell Colony, and received an artist’s grant from the Puffin Foundation. She is completing her first book. Here are two of her poems.

Born in Toronto, Katherine Dimma holds degrees in literature, photography, and creative writing from McGill University, The School of Visual Arts, and NYU, respectively. Her poems have appeared in several journals including Barrow Street, Hejira, Redactions, and Thin Air. Nightboat Books published her chapbook Wind in the Trees in the spring of 2004.

Robin Beth Schaer works at the Academy of American Poets and has taught writing at Columbia University and Cooper Union. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Rattapallax, Small Spiral Notebook, Denver Quarterly, and Guernica, and are forthcoming in Spinning Jenny. Here’s a poem.

She had a million dollars in nickels and dimes


Adam Golaski

I’m very happy to report that at last count (minus a few still-uncollected pledges), the CAMAJE/emdashes/Feast benefit for the MusiCares Hurricane Relief Fund—which helps displaced New Orleans jazz musicians get back on their feet (and, we hope, onstage)—raised $350 in donations. Thanks, fantastic performers and audience! A few highlights from the evening (click to enlarge):

Donation sign

Stephen Sheffer

Brandon Patton

Matthew Power

Adam Golaski

Susan Brennan and John Cotter

Oni Buchanan

Jon Woodward

Jeff Paris

Steve Roberts

Ernest and Eddie

Extra thanks to Abby Hitchcock and the rest of the CAMAJE staff, who are sweeter than a roast pear and honey crepe for letting me host Feast there month after month. If you want to kick up the MusiCares donation to $400 or even $500 before I send it off, let me know and I’ll see if I can get you a nice treat. As further incentive, here’s MusicCares’ description of how they use the money:

As our nation struggles to respond to the devastation and displacement wrought by Hurricane Katrina, MusiCares’ assistance is even more critical in ensuring that music people whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed can begin to rebuild. To that end, MusiCares and The Recording Academy have established the MusiCares Hurricane Relief Fund, a $1 Million dollar commitment of charitable funds to be distributed to musicians and other music industry people directly affected by this disaster.

How We Help: Hurricane Relief Assistance may include funds for basic living expenses such as shelter, food, utilities, cell phones and transportation; medical expenses including doctor, dentist, hospital bills and medication; clothing and toiletries; musical instrument and recording equipment replacement; relocation costs; school supplies for students; cell phone service; insurance payments and more. Applicants may also be referred to other resources, as needed.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to the high volume of applications, assistance will be provided on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. Grant amounts will be determined based upon individual need and available funds.

“Flames on a monster truck? Could you be more trite?”

Thanks to Daniel Radosh for alerting me to his fantastic new cartoon anti-contest, in which readers post captions they might prefer to the finalists’ in the magazine’s weekly caption contest. This is going to be the motherlode of all contest-tweaking challengers. As I (invisibly) said on the Eyebeam panel, a democratic internet can only produce better print captions. Or something like that.

Tonight, Emdashes on Display

Panel

You know what they say about fools’ names and fools’ faces. Here’s a chance to see mine in action:

Everybody’s A Critic, Or Are They?

States of Criticism, Credibility and Celebrity

November 3, 2005
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
540 W. 21st St.

With 9 million blogs, umpteen online message boards, thousands of shows on hundreds of cable channels, and an increased number of magazines on the newsstand, the number of outlets for expressing criticism has never been higher and the barriers to would-be critics have never been lower. Is this devaluing evaluation or does the shotgun approach result in better criticism? YOU be the Judge!

– Michael Atkinson, Village Voice Film Critic Link
– Emily Gordon, Critic of the New Yorker Link
– Jason Kottke, Author of Kottke.org and self-proclaimed dilettante critic Link
– Duncan Watts, Columbia University Sociology Professor Link
– Moderator Steven Heller, Senior Art Director of the New York Times Book Review, Graphic Designer and Author Link

Who’s playing the part of the evaluation devaluer in tonight’s performance? It could be me, although New Yorker criticism isn’t really a crowded field I’m likely to push anyone out of.

I think it’ll be fun, so join us if only for the glamour of the other panelists. As someone who arrived here somehow through a Google search yesterday put it, “how does it feel to be on your on with no direction home a complete unknown like a rowling stone.” Harry Potter and the Bloglet of Fire forever!

(11.07.05 issue) No good, very bad Old Day

With his energetic, appreciative Talk about the opinionated newsbarker and savvy Times analyst Carlos, Ben McGrath rights some of the balance jarred by that odd, embarrassing piece by Alec Wilkinson in last week’s section. That was the arm’s-length account of a young black guy on the subway—”Clearly he belonged to the tribe of extroverts”—who tries to sweet-talk an upstanding woman with Coldplay on her iPod. McGrath manages a nuanced, three-dimensional profile in 870 words. Wilkinson doesn’t do his subject much justice, and the results are dramatically unfunny:

“Barkley, he’s a basketball player. I didn’t think you could be listening to Barkley.” His smile was lavish and sympathetic, indicating that he was glad they had sorted out their misunderstanding. “Barkley didn’t make no recordings, far as I know,” he said. His remarks were addressed mainly to the side of her head. “He likes to talk a lot, but, see, he just plays ball, and don’t even do that no more. Unh-uh.”

The young woman turned halfway toward him and smiled, but the smile was brief and made no commitment.

The young man asked again what she was listening to. Her reply was barely audible. “Old Day?” he said. “I don’t know Old Day. Must be some new kind of thing. Have to find out about Old Day.” He leaned in. “I might like to know about Old Day,” he said.

The young woman smiled again. She changed the position of her hands on her bag.

An idea seemed to occur to him. “How about you tell me about Old Day,” he said. He put one hand under his chin and the other under his elbow, as if he were being judicious and patient in awaiting her reply.

And so on. It’s off-putting. Carlos is a real person with a context who tells his own mysterious story; the cajoling young man as Wilkinson sketches him is a throwback, not to mention a caricature, and all we have is a simplistic reaction to the idea of him, the wild, overfriendly dude from the hood who makes some people (who, I wonder?) uncomfortable and maybe even scared. I’m sure the story is meant to be one of those extraordinary ordinary moments, an Overheard in New York throwaway—I love this crazy town!—but Overheard doesn’t use stuff like this in a trifling way. It uses snippets like this not just to illustrate Life in Our Lovable City of Nuts but to insult everyone involved in a sophomoric, laughably crass headline. It’s a kind of humor, over the top and unabashedly mean, and I don’t go a day without it. If we knew more Carlos-ish details about this guy it might come off as more humane, even affectionately parodic. In any case, at the risk of sounding prissy, this guy’s circumstances aren’t likely to be so hilarious (can extroversion really be the whole story?). Anything can be made funny, of course, but this isn’t. It reminds me that I don’t much like “funny bum” cartoons, which I’ve written about. It’s a tired genre, and this Talk, too, feels uncomfortably out of place.

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Confidence D. Riblet

From Tom “Minor Tweaks” Bartlett’s Responsible Spam on McSweeney’s:

From: Maybelline Kane
Subject: What time is it?

Hey, you, I’m blond, gorgeous, and I just turned 18! I set up a webcam in my bedroom so people could watch me 24/7! However, the more I thought about it, the more the whole thing seemed kind of creepy and demeaning. So I scrapped that idea.

The others are great, too.

I recently got a message—about learning to build simple and clean websites that can bring in the dough—from Myrtle C. Grosbeaks. That’s my new pseudonym. I have one already (I mean besides emdashes), you know.

(11.07.05 issue) Racy stuff

for The New Yorker: Lauren Collins’ Talk on Scooter Libby’s titillating hoot, his icky-sounding 1996 novel The Apprentice. Here’s Libby talking to Diane Rehm about the book. The Kerouacian story of its composition, according to the WaPo: “‘I went out to Colorado, drank tequila and wrote,’ Libby told CNN’s Larry King in 2002 in a rare television interview, the bulk of which he spent discussing the 1996 novel, which had just been issued in paperback.”

But enough with the media elite. Let’s listen to the fans. On the MacMinute forums, a poster called lanovami writes:

I started reading up on Lewis Libby a while back, and found out that in his spare time he wrote a novel (just the one) published in 1996 about intrigue at a small Japanese inn that lies in the snow country of northern Japan. Having lived in Japan’s snow country for 6 years, I was intrigued myself, and ordered the book used.

Just finished reading it and it was pretty darn good! The atmosphere felt quite real to me as someone who has lived up there, and the story itself was very readable. The book is called the Apprentice. I liked it so much I am hoping Libby will write another. He may have some spare time coming up here pretty soon…

We are what we repeatedly do. -Aristotle

lanovami’s signature is so apt. Finally, Edrants has, um, an excerpt from Libby’s next novel: The Yesman.

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As he climbed across the table to disagee with Tom Reiss

First, this welcome news:

DreamWorks has acquired theatrical rights to the Jonathan Lethem novel As She Climbed Across the Table, a romantic comedy that takes place in the realm of theoretical physics. Lethem, who has also written such novels as Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, recently won the MacArthur Genius Award, which led to this deal. The book centers on a strange romantic triangle between an anthropologist, his girlfriend (who is a particle physicist), and Lack, a black hole in the universe that has come about as the result of an experiment with which the particle physicist was obsessed.

Then, in the current National Review Online, John J. Miller has a whole side of beef with Tom Reiss about his recent profile of Peter Viereck:

Did you know that America’s “first conservative” was an anti-capitalist poet who wanted Adlai Stevenson to become president?

That’s what The New Yorker claimed last week in a long profile of Peter Viereck, a man who is said to have “inspired” the conservative movement—before William F. Buckley Jr. and other ne’er-do-wells came along and caused us all to lose our way. (The article isn’t available online, but you can read this [Mt. Holyoke magazine notice about the piece; Viereck is professor emeritus of history there].)

The occasion of a major liberal magazine devoting nine pages to a figure from the early days of modern conservatism ought to be the cause of much rejoicing. Maybe in future issues we’ll get to read about the legacies of Frank Chodorov, Willmoore Kendall, and Albert Jay Nock.

But don’t count on it. The New Yorker‘s interest in Viereck does not arise from a sincere desire to explore the roots of the Right. Instead, the article by Tom Reiss is a transparent attempt to attack “the radicalism of the George W. Bush Presidency” by suggesting that the conservative movement, in its infancy, betrayed its founding father. The true story is that Viereck was on stage during the creation of modern conservatism, but only in the opening scene. Then he walked away, never to be heard from again, except occasionally as a heckler. Here’s the rest.

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