While it’s true that tickets are thoroughly sold out for this Sunday and Monday’s New Yorker Conference, the magazine is making several events available online. Stay tuned! Also, your punctuational, if not always punctual, reporter here will be attending at least some of the conference, so watch this space for commentary. I’ve found that live-blogging is not heart-healthy for at least this living thing, but I’ll play it by ear and by wi-fi signal.
If literary gossip is what you like—and you’re not getting it here, except about dead people—this will be fun: Richard Bradley’s sweetly juicy account of PEN’s black-tie event at the Natural History Museum. To paraphrase Lou Reed, who was there, and what did they wear? What did Calvin Trillin reveal about his grandchildren, what was up with moody Jay McInerney, and what did Bradley say to Henry Finder? As for Gore Vidal’s predictably saucy remark, Gawker has a slightly but notably different version. Ah, yes, these are the things we read instead of books, but only sometimes.
Monthly Archives: May 2007
The Current Cover Is by Ivan Brunetti, and So Is This Event and This Book
From Fantagraphics comes this welcome news:
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery Presents “Misery Loves Comedy: New Works by Ivan Brunetti”
May 19 through June 20, 2007, with Artist Reception June 8
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is pleased to debut the lively exhibition, “Misery Loves Comedy,” featuring new and recent work by Chicago-based artist Ivan Brunetti. The show opens on Saturday, May 19 and continues through June 20, 2007 at 1201 S. Vale St. in Seattle’s creative Georgetown arts community. The gallery hosts a festive reception for the artist on Friday, June 8 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.
This exhibition commemorates the publication of Misery Loves Comedy by Fantagraphics Books, an anthology of the first three issues of
Brunetti’s “Schizo” comic book and other works. Brunetti’s self-deprecating comic stories portray his emotional battles with depression, divorce and high anxiety, employing compelling dark humor and visual acuity. His therapist actually provides the book’s introduction. “I’m not going to explain things to readers,” Brunetti comments in a recent edition of Publishers Weekly. “I don’t know if I can explain them to myself.”
In addition to Brunetti’s new collection, Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books has published four issues of “Schizo” and two volumes of his gag cartoons, “Hee!” and “Haw!” Brunetti recently organized “The Cartoonist’s Eye” exhibit at the A+D Gallery of Columbia College Chicago and edited the companion bestseller “An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories,” published by Yale University Press. He has drawn comics and illustrations for The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and Spin, among many others.
“I enjoy watching Brunetti suffer.” —ART SPIEGELMAN
The Very Latest in Transportation Trends
From a Princess Cruises (I think) radio ad this morning, a loose paraphrase: “Cancel your flight to your vacation spot and take our boat! No waiting, no cancellations, no fuss! Get to the Caribbean the nicer way!”
So steamship travel is back—excellent—but surely cruise lines have security procedures, too? Oh well, I’m ready for my David Foster Wallace sensory overstimulation anytime. If obsequiousness bugs you (and it does me, too), just remember that after hours the cruise-line staff are debauching it up and making the Dirty Dancing set look like Mouseketeers. If you’re adventurous, you can seek them out and sing bawdy show tunes till dawn. Maybe not on the QE2, though, a solemn experience ostensibly promoted by the preppy (not to say tiny) mummies who appear in the ship’s New Yorker ads; after hours, the crew and passengers alike are safely stowed in their golden caskets. In the alternate QE2 ad strategy, regular folks have secret lives as onboard royalty. Indeed, the nautical romance of the neurotic has been well documented in psychoanalytic literature. That said, the boat looks absolutely fantastic, and I’m packed to sail. Luff up the tender!