P.S. Want details about the series? Contact Chris Bower at cbower54@gmail.com — he’ll hook you up.

Beer and Buffam will be joined by Whiting Award winning novelist Nami Mun, whose debut novel Miles from Nowhere has garnered her a great deal of industry buzz and established her as a writer to watch.

As always, the event is absolutely free, which means that you should come prepared to buy a book!

Click here for details!

And click here if you don’t know what ekphrastic means…

How to Wreck a Nice Beach

With three free events, author Dave Tompkins will discuss How To Wreck a Nice Beach, his exhaustive study of the vocoder. Featuring top-notch illustrations by Kevin Christy and a slew of lovely archival photographs and images, this 335-page volume chronicles “the story of how a military device became the robot voice of hip-hop and pop music.” Tompkins, a former columnist for The Wire, writes frequently on hip-hop and popular music. His work has appeared in Vibe, The Village Voice, Wax Poetics, and The Believer. Nearly a decade in the making, this is his first book.

On Thursday, May 6th, from 7-9 p.m., Tompkins will appear at the Stop Smiling Storefront, located at 1371 N. Milwaukee Ave, for a free slideshow and discussion that will be moderated by James Hughes (editor of How to Wreck a Nice Beach).

From 9 p.m. until the bar closes, Stop Smiling will host an afterparty at The Charleston, located at 2076 N. Hoyne Ave, and will feature DJ sets by Dante Carfagna, Courtland Green, and Dave Tompkins himself. Books will be sold at a discount throughout the evening.

On Friday, May 6th, from 4 p.m. – ???, Tompkins will be will be on hand at Dusty Groove, located at 1120 North Ashland Avenue, to sign books and play records.

Again, all events are free to the public. Afterparty is 21 and over, so don’t bring the kiddies.

Expect to be vocoded, pilgrims.

I am not Cornel West/I am Cornel West Side

Chicagoan Lupe Fiasco has established a reputation as one of Hip Hop’s most promising young talents. After his first two albums received near-unanimous adulation from both mainstream and independent critics, Fiasco has become the intellect’s MC, consistently displaying his cerebral lyrics, dynamic flows, and tight productions. And along the way, a brilliant intellect has emerged alongside the artwork. Fiasco’s debut album functions on a metaphorical level, articulating his vision of a world torn between good and evil, between conflicting desires to build up and to tear down, in his words, between “your food and your liquor.” His second album dissects the established notion of “Cool,” looking at how inner city archetypes such as the thug and the gangbanger have been popularized and questioning if “there’s a heaven for a G.”

Fiasco’s vision is complex and conflicted and garnered him a spot on Kanye West’s “Glow in the Dark Tour,” as well as gigs on Letterman and at last summer’s Lollapalooza. Just short of being a household name, Fiasco seems on the verge of making a lasting mark on the culture he so eloquently dissects. So it should come as no great surprise that on April 3rd, the illustrious scholar Dr. Cornel West interviewed Lupe Fiasco at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The two covered subjects ranging from the nature of finding a voice through an invocation of past voices to the legacy of an artist once (s)he has passed away, and mapped out connections between Jazz and Hip Hop as well as between Hip Hop and Punk. For us, the highlight of the interview is an exchange about the nature of existence and being true to a self that might ultimately be corrupted in which Dr. West draws a correlation between Fiasco and soul-singer Marvin Gaye, proclaiming that we can:

“Go back to Marvin Gaye’s album “What’s Goin’ On?” [and find that] he’s got some deep truth there. But [on] “Let’s Get It On” he’s got some deep truth there. “I want Ya,” Troubed Man,” we can go on and on. Marvin’s being true to himself, when he looks at himself he’s sees a lot of what is inside of all of us, what Samuel Beckett called ‘mess.’ Being in time and space and the death sentence in time and space, no one is in time and space a lie. You got a mess – I got a mess. Being true to that mess, couldn’t you still be misleading?”

Fiasco replies with a discourse on “the makeup of self,” explaining that he sees a stark contrast between the “initial self [which is] simplicity achieved…nothingness. When you were first born, you came out simple. The basic, most primitive urges of hunger and affection,” but goes on to note that over time the self becomes much more dynamic. Based on the lessons we draw from others, our notions of self become a “corrupted concept” that Fiasco sees banging against the world around it in a quest for clarity and actualization only to find that “There’s nothing pure about self in society.” Using Dr. West’s explanation of Beckett’s ‘mess,’ Fiasco brings his point home by proclaiming that “The world is a mess. We are products of the world, the world is not a product of us. The world is built from the chaos of the universe. It is more proof to me that there is a god. When I look up and see the chaos of the sky at night, I look at myself and think I am chaotic too.”

The hour-long talk winds up with a lively Q & A between the audience, Dr. West, and Lupe Fiasco, ending with Fiasco explaining what he wants from his audience. Sadly the performance following the interview is not available currently.

For those less familiar with Lupe Fiasco, and for those convinced that Hip Hop is littered with inarticulate misogynistic types, this interview will come as a pleasant surprise. For fans of Lupe Fiasco, like the staff here at Literago, it will serve to strengthen love of the self-proclaimed “Chi-Town Rivera.” Anyone interested in listening to the full audio of the interview can download it here. More photos from the evening can be viewed here