Although of Course, You End Up Becoming Yourself

This book consists almost entirely of transcriptions of conversations between David Foster Wallace and a Rolling Stone writer who was sent to profile him toward the end of his Infinite Jest book tour. It makes me want to put it down and pick up Infinite Jest again. Every time they talk about it I'm like "Infinite Jest -- now *there's* a book. Why am I reading this crap?"

Got some good holiday loot this year -- Big Girls Don't Cry by Rebecca Traister, Just Kids by Patti Smith (another New York story), Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges and some Laurie Notaro for the plane or for relaxing at cocktail hour in the suburbs.

Tomorrow: back to New York.

Super Sad True Love Story

Did not live up to the hype, but I liked it okay.

The author, Gary Shteyngart, managed to take subjects that can trigger a good old rant from yours truly -- stupid trendy NYC bars and their even stupider names, "the kids" walking around practically naked, overreliance on the Internet -- and, by satirizing them in what I thought was an alarmist, clumsy and tone-deaf way, make me downright defensive of young people today.

I am re-reading Female Chauvanist Pigs by Ariel Levy and when I'm done I'm going to have more to say about exactly how Shteyngart gets it wrong.

According to the records I keep on Goodreads, I read a book just about every two weeks. So I'll probably read about 25 books this year. It doesn't sound like a lot, does it?

I just finished An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel. I started reading it because a friend left it in my apartment, and also it's a lightweight paperback, perfect for schlepping back and forth to work for lunch break reading. It's extremely well written, but the affect is flat.

Here's a good example:
"They were brown lace-up shoes, like school shoes. The laces were very badly knotted. Julia picked at them. Her occupation made her look humble, like someone in the New Testament."

Mantel paints a beautiful picture. But everything in the book is like this. The main character describes the scene in front of her, nothing further.

New York stories

So much of what I've watched and read since moving to New York -- a year ago tomorrow! -- have been New York stories. That's partially because so much takes place here, of course. I would have read Freedom, where maybe 1/3 of the novel is set in New York, whether I was here or not. Probably still would have gone to see the Wall Street sequel. Maybe would have read Liar's Poker. But then, I definitely would not have read There's A Road To Everywhere Except Where You Came From, and probably not Super Sad True Love Story, which I started the other day, either.

Freedom and Liar's Poker are excellent books, and also universal stories. You don't need to have ever been to New York to enjoy them. Super Sad True Love Story is so far ... kind of an angry but not really on-the-nose joke about New York today. I have to think more about it. There's A Road To Everywhere rings completely true, and it should -- it's a memoir about the recent past.

But today I saw a movie that surpasses them all in terms of being so true to life it could be a documentary. It's called Tiny Furniture, and the set-up is a standard one: twenty-something returns home from college, directionless, to live with mom, takes up with crazy friend, meets bad news guys. Everything that is said and done I swear I have already seen said and done. Yet it feels original. Not-quite-right New York movies show people living in sprawling spaces with a sort of gleaming minimalist aesthetic. But this tony Tribeca loft was lined with storage cupboards and the daughters' rooms were really just one room with a fake wall down the middle. Young actors bitch about staying in Bushwick. A drug-addled daughter of privilege complains about how weird her mom's gotten since taking up with the Landmark Forum. One character doesn't know the difference between Ohio and Ontario. Manhattan dwellers take cabs home from Dumbo instead of the train. They never make little references to the 6 or the L to make it sound real -- they don't have to, because everything they say and do sounds real. Highly and completely recommended.

Cranksgiving

A tale of two readings in two nights in the same part of Brooklyn that one might think would appeal to the same crowd:

Tuesday night: The Best American Music Writing, guest edited by Ann Powers

The name Ann Powers has appeared in this blog before; I read her memoir Weird Like Us almost two years ago and on whole quite enjoyed it. So when I saw she was going to be part of a free reading in Brooklyn on a night where I had no particular plans, I couldn't think of a reason not to go. Next time, I will have plenty.

Ms. Powers had a generally likable demeanor (she just hosted, didn't read her own work) and the writing presented was fine. But the venue made the experience a none too pleasant one. It was way too dark, but with harsh lighting on the stage so you had to shield your eyes or squint to look at whoever was talking. Before the reading, which started late, a DJ (who turned out to be one of the writers) played loud, bad hip hop music to a crowd of largely 30-something white people who think they're still cool because they can wear jeans to work -- because they're writers and they work from home. I hate listening to all-hip hop playlists in 95% white crowds, especially white people with money like this bunch. These people would never consider going to an actual hip hop club for fun (going to a black neighborhood at night at all might be pushing it), but they can stand around with each other and nod their heads and pretend to be badass for liking music with swears in this specially created little safe environment. Bleah.

Pretty much everyone there had a hand in the book or was friends with someone who did, giving other audience members the feeling of being an uninvited guest at a party. A bad party.

Wednesday night: The Talent Show presents Cranksgiving

Once again, I took the C train to Fort Greene then hiked down to the same general area of Park Slope (technically Gowanus due to being west of 4th Avenue). Once again, I walked into the bar area of a concert venue filled largely with nerdy white people. But this time, a Talking Heads cover played at a reasonable volume, the lighting was pleasant, the crowd convivial and excited, arriving in twos and threes. I was able to order a beer at the bar and read until the seats started to fill up and I felt like I should go take one; at the other end of the bar, another woman by herself paged through a magazine.

I had scored a ticket to this event because I am Facebook friends or whatever with This American Life. They posted a link like "This American Life contributers performing in Brooklyn. Tickets are 5 dollars, here's the link!" and I jumped on it. So though I'm sure the performers had many friends in the audience, it's safe to assume that a lot of us were just public radio fans. The theme of the evening was "complaints and rants" or some such and they let audience members get up on stage and do 30-second rants between acts. One guy totally stole the show. His rant went something like this:

"So I get an email from my dad the other day, saying my mom had been in a car accident. She hit a light pole, and the light pole fell on her car. The car was totaled. She broke her sternum and had to be rushed to the hospital."

At this point the crowd is silent, cursing the questionable choice to encourage audience participation.

"And the subject line of this email is 'Say goodbye to the Prius'." Happy Thanksgiving Mom and Dad!" *raises drink* *leaves stage*

Thanks for that, guy, whoever you are.

I had had a terrible day and could only think of rants that were not funny in the slightest. It was only when I sat down to write about Tuesday night that I realized I had plenty of material.

Other highlights: Jonathan Hodgman did a really funny bit where he mediated a dispute between a woman and her boyfriend who criticized her writing because parentheses should not be used in fiction. This was an audience with opinions about punctuation.

Also I saw Ira Glass! After taking a seat I went back to the bar to get a beer and he was just standing around talking to someone like a normal person. Later Jonathan Hodgman made a joke about him babysitting his kids and like gestured toward him in the audience so it was definitely him. OMG. That's the only New York celebrity sighting I really wanted. Of course, it was a TAL-approved event and therefore possibly not a true celebrity sighting, like when Elizabeth Wurtzel was next to me in a crowd at a panel discussion, when she had been part of a different panel discussion as part of the same event earlier that day. Seeing Ira Glass in the grocery store or like walking his dog, that would be amazing.

There's a Road to Everywhere, Except Where You Came From

I must have been feeling a little self-indulgent tonight, because I visited what has to be one of the world's greatest bookstores and walked out with a memoir about moving from the Rust Belt to New York City. I'm maybe 65 pages in and already the author has twice referenced going to the store where I bought the book.

The store in question is St. Mark's Bookshop. I gather it is something of a famous landmark, but I had never heard of it or been to it before today. While my beloved Greenlight specializes in what I would call mainstream literary fiction, St. Mark's devotes a lot more shelf space to academic disciplines, art, architecture, and design. They also have a lot of cool magazines. Like Greenlight, it's a great place to walk in not looking for anything in particular and walk out with a book by an author you had never heard of. After my visit, I walked to Tompkins Square Park and called my uncle, who is a librarian and former bookseller. "There's an art criticism SECTION!" I said.

It makes me happy that someone found this Web site by searching for "the book and the bowl." Michael Lewis is awesome.