Date: Friday, May 23rd

Time: 7:00 pm, $1

Location: The Hideout

Participants: Kevin Sampsell, Diana Slickman

I was fairly ambivalent about posting a listing for this event, not because I don’t love the Dollar Store, but because any advertising could cause it to sell out even quicker now.  From the email:

The Dollar Store comes back for a onetime show as part of the Pilcrow Literary Festival, and a sort of big Chicago hello to friend Kevin Sampsell, author of the new Creamy Bullets, who’ll read a story inspired by a piece of Portland dollar store junk, making it the first piece of DS junk that’s been on a commercial airliner (The Show has sprung for an extra biz-class seat for it, if you must know).

And joining him is Diana Slickman, a Dollar Store favorite who was gracious enough not to say no when we asked her to do something again.

The event is a must-see for the same reason it’s bittersweet: another Dollar Store won’t come around for a long while.

This morning, the Tribune reports that while other big-name institutions like Harvard and Yale are storing their books off-campus, the U of C plans to build an underground library capped by a glorious glass dome. I kind of like the article’s opener in spite of myself:

At the University of Chicago, where the student hangout is the library and a prize is awarded annually for undergraduate book collecting, officials are expected to announce Monday plans to build another tribute to the university’s bookish character.

Almost as cool as the future existence of an underground library made of glass is that its major donor is the CEO of Morningstar, Inc., maker of the world’s greatest veggie corn dog.

Photo of E. Hand courtesy of Locus; M. Sharpe courtesy of Small Spiral Notebook

Date: Monday, May 12, 2008

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Location: The Book Cellar

Generation Loss and Jamestown were not only two of the most engaging American novels published last year, but also two of the more entertaining literary meditations on violence released in recent memory. 

Loss bears the distinction of being the only postpunk hardboiled mystery in existence (please correct me if there’s one I don’t know about). I would have loved it only for the way Hand seamlessly name-drops John Holstrom, but her queasy-making depictions of blood, guts, violence and decay send her off into Blood Meridian Land, and to really good effect. I’ve never read George Pelicanos, but I would think this is George Pelicanos for music geeks.

And Jamestown is just flat-out hilarious. I remember being really afraid to start it, since I lurved Sharpe’s first book, The Sleeping Father, and I feared a sophomore slump.  But it was not to be! It was great!

Don’t miss it, kids.  Super awesome double-headers like this don’t come along that frequently.

Photo courtesy of Alan Del Rio Ortiz

I have finally finished The Lazarus Project, Aleksander Hemon’s new novel. All those comparisons to Nabokov? Accurate. No, really.  I’ve read all his books, and although The Question of Bruno will always be my favorite, this came very close. 

Last week, I had the privilege to attend his event at the Stop Smiling storefront, and it was really charming. After thirty minutes’ worth of reading, Hemon talked about Europe and how old isn’t necessarily good, since old grudges sometimes lead to acts of genocide. The evening ended with a slide show by Velibor Bozovik, Hemon’s best friend and the photographer responsible for many of the images in the novel.  (There’s a really good interview with Bozovik here.)

Hemon himself is very tall, and there were several other very tall Eastern Europeans in attendance who did not get misty-eyed when confronted with the projected images of their homeland. Additionally, there were somewhere around 50 (?) others who gathered for the event, someone from WBEZ recorded it, and this guy was there.  If you missed it, there should be photos and audio available that we’ll link to once they’re up.

I’ll be there, although now when I think of American Apparel, I think of this video on Jezebel.com

Don’t ask me why I was looking at James Frey’s MySpace page, but I was, and I found out he’s flying right over Chicago on the tour for his latest book. I’d like to think he’s avoiding us because he knows we’re too discerning for him, but I know it’s really because he’s scared of Oprah.

From today’s Tribune:

When First Lady Laura Bush and daughter Jenna read to Naperville 2nd graders Monday for a national tour promoting their new children’s book, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience…”I see right now in the country there is so much competition for children: television, computers, video games. Children are not sitting down with a good book like I used to do. Reading is a wonderful way to improve yourself,” Laura Bush said.

I hate that I agree with Lar about anything.  Shudder.

I was watching a video of a David Foster Wallace lecture from 2006 (please don’t hate me) when I realized something deeply disturbing. Draw your own conclusions:

Mac Arthur-Sanctioned Genius David Foster Wallace (b. 2/21/1962)

Poison Frontman/Rock of Love Star Bret Michaels (b. 3/15/1963)

Whether it’s objectively disturbing or one in a series of signs of my decaying mental state is not for me to judge. I would like to say that Rock of Love takes irony to dizzying new lows, and I would like to take us back to this 1993 interview with DFW, where he says something that should serve as a warning to all we sneering Rock of Love fans:

Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.

In other news, Daisy is TOTALLY going to win.

I just read this article in the Times about “literary deal-breakers.” At least one of the interviewees made me sick in my mouth:

James Collins, whose new novel, “Beginner’s Greek,” is about a man who falls for a woman he sees reading “The Magic Mountain” on a plane, recalled that after college, he was “infatuated” with a woman who had a copy of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on her bedside table. “I basically knew nothing about Kundera, but I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh; trendy, bogus metaphysics, sex involving a bowler hat,’ and I never did think about the person the same way (and nothing ever happened),” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I know there were occasions when I just wrote people off completely because of what they were reading long before it ever got near the point of falling in or out of love: Baudrillard (way too pretentious), John Irving (way too middlebrow), Virginia Woolf (way too Virginia Woolf).” Come to think of it, Collins added, “I do know people who almost broke up” over “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen: “‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’”

I will say this on public record: James Collins, you are a dickweed, and anyone who likes you deserves you. If we were seven and we were on the playground together, I would throw sand in your face and give you a wedgie. You and your ilk are the reason nobody cares about literary fiction. That’s right, it’s all your fault.

Anyone this judgmental about literature is intellectually incurious, by far too preoccupied with the way others see their class standing to genuinely care about something as banal as literature itself. Guess what? The more you use taste as a wedge to position yourself above others, the more people will hate you. Well, people meaning me, because you couldn’t be more obvious. That’s right, I said dickweed.

Oh, and I’m so sure you totally didn’t sleep with that girl in college because she liked Kundera! Yeah! You’re that discerning! I believe you!

Date: Friday, March 28, 2008
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: SAIC Ballroom (112 S. Michigan Avenue)
Participants: Answer Tag Home Press, Cracked Slab Books, Dancing Girl Press, Featherproof, Books, Fractal Edge Press, March Abrazo Press, Puddin’ Head Press, Switchback Books

“Pyromaniac” by Yoshitomo Nara

Unfortunately for the as-yet-unannounced readers, this event simply cannot be as lively as the discussion about National Small Press Month on the Time Out Chicago blog. What did we learn from the comments on this post? We learned that there is a Chicago literary scene, but it only consists of writers feeding each others’ cats. We learned that some people hate corporations, but others do not. We learned that people seem to enjoy introducing themselves by title as much as they enjoy addressing others formally. We also learned that we are the snobbiest newcomers ever to attempt to capitalize on the sweat of legitimate writers. I can’t wait to see what I learn on Friday — I’ll be the one wearing a construction helmet.