April 8, 2009
Kippenberger 's self-portraits; sidewalk fires; and literary risk-taking:
I had a chance to check out the Kippenberger show at MoMA this past weekend, and thought it was great---especially the Kafka installation on the second floor. I have mixed feelings about his work, but I admire his dedication to Beuys and other influences and his ability to carry that into new forms. I was surprisingly touched by the way he reckoned with Picasso's self portraits. On a screen (or subway poster), they just seem grotesque, and lacking the playfulness of Francesco Clemente, for example. But in person it's impossible to deny the artist's balancing act of aspiration and doubt.
On the weather front, I thought spring was here but yesterday I was shivering drinking a beer, even though the heat was blasting, and this morning I caught myself lingering near the Hasidics' noxious sidewalk Passover fires. Sunday's slow stroll through Central Park feels like last year, all of a sudden. At any rate, the interview with Wells Tower is up, and so is my review of Dunya Mikhail's incredible verse memoir for the Brooklyn Rail.
In yesterday's news post for Words Without Borders I mentioned a roundtable discussion that I caught at the library on 42nd St last week, which included a defense of not only Irène Némirovsky but Jonathan Littell. I won't deny that I haven't been intrigued by The Kindly Ones since it came out in French two and a half years ago, but I'm wary of long books that are purportedly convoluted when they come from authors that I'm unfamiliar with. It's different for 2666 and Tree of Smoke--I don't mind! I'm willing to take the risk that they're in the tradition of Moby Dick and Blood Meridian---specifically in the former's case, in the words of National Book Critics Circle fiction chair Marcela Valdes)--because their authors have earned my trust. I expect them to look beyond the self, to reach above the realm of clean, polished literary products.
Of course, as I write this, it's difficult to ignore the possibility that I might not be challenging myself enough. But there's so much to read; I tend to read only what I'm absolutely certain I can take something from. Also, controversy and hype can obscure a clearer understanding. I gave John Wray's Lowboy a mixed review because I feel like it's getting harder to tell what's real nowadays. I didn't hate the book; I just had a funny feeling sfter reading it. I wanted more, or perhaps, in a way, less.
March 17, 2009
Movie for Wells Tower story, "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned."
Not as good as reading the story itself, but pretty fun. The animator is a commercial person, but in the brave new world of peripheral book marketing, this is premier. Tip: the soundtrack's war drums go very well with Neil Young's "Tonight's the Night."
March 14, 2009
More thoughts on a book review, plus a much-needed day of art and reading.
I recently reviewed Cuban-born writer Achy Obejas's new novel, Ruins, for BOMB. It's been widely praised, and it had a lot of promise as I read , but it left me unsatisfied. Plot holes open up towards the end, and the protagonist's daughter is present throughout but only seen through the father's eyes and never heard from directly. Rigoberto Gonzalez, who I talked with about the book after the National Book Critics Circle readings at the New School this past Wednesday, and who reviewed it for the El Paso Times, agreed that the daughter is kind of an invisible character, but said that it works and that he loved the book. His enthusiasm gave me second thoughts, and I wondered whether wanting more from a book is always a bad thing or not. Rigoberto's review is archived now on the newspaper's site, but a clip is available at La Bloga, a great resource for Chicana/Chicino and Latina/Latino literature that I just found.
This past week has been incredibly busy; I was working around the clock and trying not to let deadlines pass too far behind. Not until today did I finally had a chance to catch up on reading. This morning I read half of Wells Tower's debut collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, and love it so far. More on the book next week, after I interview him for Bookslut.
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In the afternoon, I was invited out to Chelsea to see art---another treat.
First was Clytie Alexander's show at Betty Cuningham, which closed today. Along with some drawings, there were two series of Diaphans: aluminum hole-punched sheets that hung away from the wall and reflected light in interesting ways. The ones in the back were painted in varied shades of white, and the natural light suffused them in shadows where they were punched; from far away they looked like smudged parchment. The others series were given a complementary color to their backs, reflected in the shadows on the wall behind them.
After that we saw Erik Parker's paintings at Kasmin. The show was called "Crisis Creation," and the day-glo pictures had a combination of illustrative psychedelia with human/cartoonish morphs. Then there was the Manzoni show at Gagosian, which I'd seen a few weeks before but enjoyed going back to, especially to see the de Kooning again, Summer in Springs, 1962. The broad, flesh- and sun-colored strokes show early signs of the work he would do in Long Island in the 70s and early 80s.
Finally, we peeked into Dana Schutz's show at Zach Feuer, which I thought was incredibly fun (above, Typer, 2009). There was a group of early-twentysomethings, aspiring artists, who unabashedly marveled at the paintings, drooling over her techniques, her color and surface texture. They are well constructed and painterly, rare qualities in Chelsea when it comes to narrative-based paintings but especially important to her work, I think, because they feed the improvisational aspect. Not everyone agreed (though I didn't take the chance to voice this then); one of our company said, "Ten thousand years of human evolution and now this?"
March 2, 2009
French-Canadians at BAM, and French writers in America
Last week I saw some music that sparked a conversation about the definition of a composer, as opposed to asongwriter. I said it comes down to the difference between high and low art, and doesn't have anything to do with whether or not there are words (opera!) Others voiced the components of complexity and layers, claiming a song usually has only one idea. But there must be exceptions to that. And as I realize now, not all composers are engaging in high art. John Williams, George Gershwin, etc. If anyone has thoughts in this, please email. Here's a brief account of what we heard:
The concert was at the BAM opera house, part of Brooklyn Philharmonic conductor Michael Christie's ongoing series called Shuffle Mode, in which indie rock bands are invited onstage to collaborate with the orchestra. Thursday night's program began with the orchestra's rendition of a John Adams piece, which exponentiated a level of tension that wasn't resolved until the transition to Bell Orchestre (photographed above, I think in one of my favorite parks, Parc du Mont-Royal in Montreal), situated at the front of the stage with a number of instruments and noisemakers, and as they slowly built their simple tune with increased layers of horns, piano, drums and steel guitar, anchored all the while by Arcade Fire member Sarah Neufeld's violin, the music reached a state of orgasmic, 21st century, beginning-of-the-world-as-we'll-come-to-know-it sort of bliss. It was a promising beginning to their set, but unfortunately much of the other songs were shorter and never developed from their opening hook. The other band, Clogs, were even more song-oriented, often sounding like rock or folk, though they demonstrated influences from Bartok and Schubert. Most of their set was just too serious, and occasionally came out like fast-paced new age. Both of these bands have good ideas, and they played to intensity, but didn't seem fully formed. I referred to this as "unrestrained minimalism," over complimentary pickles at Juniors later, around the corner from BAM . Perhaps the problem is that they're both "side projects" featuring key members from busy, higher-profile rock bands. On Saturday, there was another concert in the series (this time with Grizzly Bear and Final Fantasy, and the review in today's Times contained similar sentiments.
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This past weekend in particular I wished I spoke French. NYU was host to a really incredible festival of conversations between French and American writers, and I was sent there by Words Without Borders to provide coverage (see today's post). They distributed radios with earpieces so we could hear the interpreters, but as I wandered through the hall in between the programs I felt a half-formed kinship in the collegiate atmosphere, amidst a festival that had already been going on for two days, and in which it seemed that nearly everyone was speaking French. There's so much I love about French literature, and it was exciting to hear the way our two cultures have influenced one another. As I walked out the doors I passed David Foenkinos passing a cigarette (Marlboro Light) to Emmanuel Carrere, and wished so badly that I could hang out with them.
February 17, 2009
Faces of the recession, and a closer look at Tehching Hseih:
Fifth avenue is different this year. There are more storefronts vacant or closing than ever, and people talk with a new (or perhaps an old) kind of urgency.
"I've got people depending on me," a short man in a suit says to the woman walking next to him. This was in the upper-40s, walking north. Offices, everywhere. The man's dark, casual shades and tan face would ordinarily suggest a carefree prickishness, and his words would sound like a brag, but what he said resonated as they passed and I realized that he had a conscience.
Then there were two men in gray suits with warm-colored ties and blue shirts walking quickly, their haircuts all business. "I told them what would happen if i lost 25 percent of my team," one says to the other. Again, two men who I might not have noticed through their suits, suddenly faced with real world problems and showing real human emotions.
Still, the most well-dressed are the mismatched, the tall young man who swept past a half-block later, with a rust and cream-colored hounds' tooth pork-pie hat and blue blazer, orange sweater and gray slacks. He walked alone and looked like the future.
I was in the neighborhood because I had a meeting with a staffing agency. It lasted two minutes, and then I was back outside. I decided to walk up to the MoMA, having been encouraged after posting last week about Tehching Hseih's installation at the Guggenheim to see his other show. "Cage Piece" is the first of Hseih's five One-Year Performances. When seen together, they represent a sort of life-cycle, aside from the clear message of the will to survive.
Hseih arrived in the United States illegally from Taiwan, by hopping the gangway of a ship he was commissioned on while docked near Philadelphia. That was in 1974, and he spent the next four years washing dishes before embarking on his year-long art projects.
The high white walls of the 2nd floor media gallery are lined with a chronology of daily photographs, simulating mug shots, and there is a series of larger photographs of Hseih in his self-made cell, where he spent a full year. At the rear of the gallery is the cage itself, in a separate room. It's cold in there; there's an actual draft from the outdoors, and this creates an especially uncomfortable feeling. Back in the main gallery are the posters for each of his performances, including "Time Clock Piece" (now at the Guggenheim), "Outdoor Piece" (for which he spent a year living next to the East River without ever going into any kind of shelter, "Rope Piece" (a collaboration involving the artist and Linda Montano tied together at the waist, without ever touching one another), and "No Art Piece," a simple declaration that he would live for one year without "talking, seeing, reading art, or going into art gallery or museum." Art Asia Pacific speculates that it was the constant exposure to the establishment with Montano that drove him into further isolation. Now that he's stopped making new art (according to information released to the public), he cooperates with the institutions he once alienated, presenting a narrative that suggests we are born into prisons and must work our way out of them, only to be married and isolated from our true calling.
February 11, 2009
AWP / Flannery O'Connor:
I'm wondering if it's going to be as warm in Chicago as it is here in New York this week. The idea of the Windy City in February was part of what kept me from going. Someone claimed recently that there's no point in going to AWP if you don't have a manuscript ready to shove into an agent's arms. But there are a lot of events going on there as well (see my post for Words Without Borders), and I don't know of much happening here this week. Really I just have a ton of work to do. Lots of deadlines, plus revisions and maybe some new writing, so I can get more stories out before the reading periods close. I've been reading Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners; she really helps with looking at everything freshly. I've got a Baader Meinhof thing going on with her lately: everyone's talking about her, I imagined a poem John Yau read last week was borrowing from "A Good Man is Hard to Find" --- as I wrote today for BOMB --- and then after the reading a friend made mention of "Good Country People." In addition, she kind of looks like my mom.
February 3, 2009
Welcome to Issue Four. Content will be added above on occasion; in the meantime, here are four subjects that have sparked conversation over the past weekend:
> Life is Very Long: Poetry (sort of) on Broadway
> Literary Detective Work: The new Roberto Bolaño
> Tehching Hsieh's "One Year Performance: 1980 - 1981" at the Guggenheim
> Lying Responsibly: Richard Price's Lush Life
Life is Very Long: Poetry (sort of) on Broadway
This past weekend I saw a Broadway production of a Pulitzer Prize-winning American drama, and even with two intermissions, extensive humor and lots of frank, clever sexual innuendo, something kept me from sitting relaxed in my seat. The play was August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts, and the problem was not in the writing necessarily; all of the elements for a perfect tragedy were employed and foreshadowed, and the language was sharp and distinct to the characters profiled: a contemporary family from the Oklahoma plains, educated in varying degrees, but no one fully emancipated from where they're from. And the first scene was absolutely brilliant; the aged paternal figure holding forth at his writing desk with piles of poetry books and a bottle of Jim Beam, as he explains to his new hire the domestic needs of the house. She's a young Native American woman, and she sits silently, allowing only the audience to see her smirk grow at his out-of-touch words, and she holds her questions to the end. The play opens with the words of T.S. Eliot: "'Life is Very Long'---T.S. Eliot," he says. "A lot of people have said those words, but you have to put T.S. Eliot at the end because he wrote it down." He goes on to claim that he identifies more with Eliot's poetry than Eliot the man, and fumbles for an edition of Berryman. "Ran to the bridge and dove off into the water, him and Hart Crane both. Didn't have the courage to live." It's subtle, but the sense of this man's inevitable suicide grows overwhelmingly.
The next two and a half hours are the aftermath, in which we meet the three daughters and get to know the mother and extended family, and watch their steady attrition of hollers, insults and screams. Much of this is quite funny, and whether the actors are playing for laughs or not, they lighten the material's blow. But Broadway being Broadway, many of the jokes carry on a beat or two longer than necessary: The sister's laugh hysterically as "Mom's vagina" becomes "Mom's cooch," and it's funny, but when they bring out "Mom's pussy," the focus on thestage narrows too much to their corner and it nearly devolves to a Vagina Monologue. Also, though the large ensemble scenes are perfectly blocked and the over- and under-speak well scripted, as they sit down for an explosive family dinner it looks and sounds too much like one of those holiday comedy-disaster films. The biggest groan comes after we've already discovered that a set of first cousins are about to elope, and the plot twists an extra notch. I'll leave it to the imagination, but trust me that the extra wring against their favor is unearned and borderline sensational. Basically, the play is art as entertainment; entertainment under the guise of art. And perhaps some of the audience left with a lesson on how not to repeat generational mistakes, but I'd guess that most emerged to the cool air of 45th Street with the relief that they are not like these unfortunate characters.
Literary Detective Work: The New Roberto Bolaño
Friday's Art Section of the New York Times ran a series of quotes from Bolaño’s new agent Andrew Wylie, insinuating that two of the author's key biographical aspects may have been auto-fictionalized. The unknown liver ailment that killed him in 2003 was attributed before his death to heroin use, though Bolaño’s widow is now reporting through Wylie that he never used heroin. Also, the already sketchy story of his time in Chile during the coup, during which, according to his account, he was briefly imprisoned but freed once he was recognized by one of the guards, a former classmate, is now being challenged. His version has him racing back to his homeland from Mexico City as a 23-year-old to support the resistance, but other accounts, from friends of his in Mexico City, suggest that he may have been in Mexico the entire time, or that he had a special diplomatic arrangement which would rescue him in case of arrest. For an author to create a persona or to lie is of course nothing new, and this current thread of posthumous reshaping shouldn't lose him many fans. And for his part, Wylie claims to avoid gratuitous "literary detective work." But still, it seems a bit sleazy for his agent to facilitate a redrawing of the image, now that the major books have all been sold and he's left with the unpublished novellas and poetry collections---unless of course this was Bolano's plan all along.
Tehching Hsieh's "One Year Performance: 1980 - 1981" at the Guggenheim
The Guggenheim has a new show that is alternately provocative and predicable, impressive and disappointing, and dense and sparse. But it's ever ambitious, and revisionary. The title, "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia," comes from a series of Zen Cut-Ups that William Burroughs did with Brion Gysin, and features a variety of American art in relation to a consciousness of (or obsession with) Asia. Too much is there to mention all at once, but along with obvious pairings: Franz Kline and Mark DiSuvero, Jasper Johns and Robert Raushenberg, John Cage and Nam June Paik, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, etc, there's some weird stuff ("good weird," according to Holland Cotter's review of the show in the Times)---but it wasn't all good weird. Some of the sound and light installations---particularly La Monte Young's "Dream House," a loud, trippy room full of kids and their parents rolling around on the white carpet, shoeless, under the flourescent lights---well, you get the idea. What redeemed everything for me was the last piece, created by Tehching Hsieh, which projects in 16 mm a series of snapshots taken three times a day for 366 days, and includes a punched time card for each day next to wallet-sized prints of the frames posted around the room. At the beginning of the project, one in a series of One Year Performances, the artist's head is shaved, and by the end it is overgrown and thick; he enters like a green-eared foot soldier, and leaves as an unkept rocker, but faces the camera with the same weary lack of expression throughout. The signed certificates of authenticity for the project from witnesses, along with a neat pile of his clothes and boots in a glass case add to this funny, meticulous, and mildly disturbing portrayal of the congruent passages of life and time within a non-changing routine.
Lying Responsibly: Richard Price's Lush Life
Last week, with a bit of stolen time on my hands, I finally read Lush LIfe, Richard Price's new book. I hadn't read any of his previous books, but I've seen Clockers a few times and love the writing, and I've been curious to see a couple episodes of The Wire. The critical response to the book, when it appeared last spring, was favorable and drew greater interest, because of his purported ear for dialogue and ability to "lie responsibly" (Bookforum). Film and television are certainly in play with Lush Life, but they're in the background. This is very much a literary construction, but the uber-crisp dialogue, clear settings, and Chandler-esqe mystery plotting power the book with the same addictive quality as a box full of TV drama DVDs. And that's in a good way; not in a Larry King, "It was a good read" kind of way. The Lower East Side claims the setting, and comes to life in such a way that could otherwise only be experienced by actually being there. Price's work doesn't read like journalism; it's realism, but it reads impressionistically. In the way a Van Gogh puts the viewer inside an olive grove, Lush Life puts the reader inside the Lower East Side. The dialogue, the movement, and the diverse labyrinth of people who never come in contact---all is captured perfectly. Most impressive is his ability to give equal and authentic voice to the varying worlds at play in the region: The Fujianese, the blacks and Hispanics in the projects, the Orthodox Jews, and the latest influx of hipsters. The central story, which involves a mugging and inadvertent killing of a hipster by project kids, is reminiscent of several real-life events, most recently the late-night murder of aspiring actress Nicole duFrense on Clinton Street in 2005, and plays with the irony of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the book's anti-hero, a reluctant witness to the shooting and a failed writer, struggles to face reality from behind his own cynicism. But the real theme, involving a thread of subplots, involves the redemption of absent fathers, as the lead detective on the case bonds with the victim's father and is eventually forced to take responsibility for one of his own estranged sons.