I was the one who couldn’t stop coughing, though I tried to time my coughs to outbursts of laughter and onscreen gunfire. I’m not the TB guy, I promise.
Other than that, it was a stirring event, maybe something like Al Gore’s slide show would be like in person plus an attractively decorated set, but Wright has a significantly more engaging stage presence, stern and beseeching at once. I think Martin, who accompanied me, will post a review, since we both took notes but I believe his were more legible. Steer clear of Lawrence Wright’s CIA contacts, Nosey Parker New York Times!
Category Archives: On the Spot
Bridezillation Nation: Interviews With Rebecca Mead
I’ll be at the New York Public Library tonight with the brilliant and beautiful Newyorkette to see Rebecca Mead’s conversation with Henry Alford about her new book, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding. The talk’s sold out, I’m afraid, but the book isn’t. Read the top Amazon comment (“Inbel”); it’s pretty smart. Hey, Penguin, who did the jacket design? I like it.
Here’s an interview with Mead from the Wichita Eagle, or the San Antonio Express-News, or apparently both. A review I wrote for Newsday in 1999 turned up in the Moscow Times just the other day; perhaps all this repurposing is getting out of hand. Kelly Bare interviewed Mead (who says, “There is a culture of weddings that is conspiring to make bridezillas of us all if it possibly could”) for newyorker.com.
Other event news: Cartoonist John Donohue is giving a Mediabistro seminar on gag cartoons (those are the kind you see in The New Yorker (where he’s published) on June 12, reports Lusty Lady, a.k.a. Rachel Kramer Bussel.
And because I have very spotty television and no cable, I’m thrilled to see that Turner Classics is going to put a bunch of old movies online. Can the Benchley oevre be far behind?
“Addams Family” to be Musicalized
“The Addams Family,” a cartoon about an eccentric family that was made into a hit movie in 1991, is coming to Broadway as a musical.
The producers said “The Addams Family” musical was scheduled for the 2009-10 Broadway season. The libretto will be written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, writers of the 2006 Tony Award-winning musical “Jersey Boys.”
“The Addams Family,” featuring characters such Gomez, Morticia, the butler Lurch and their servant Thing, a disembodied hand in a box, is the best-known creation of cartoonist Charles Addams which first became popular in the 1930s.
The characters, who relish the macabre and grotesque, have already inspired several television adaptations as well as the film starring Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia.
Here’s a more extensive story from Broadway World, with biographies of the creative team. I reviewed Linda H. Davis’s recent Charles Addams bio for Newsday.
Tonight! William Trevor’s Radio Plays Premiere at 92nd St. Y
Talk about an excursion in the real world. From the Y:
Celebrated by The New Yorker as “probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language,” William Trevor is also a bestselling novelist and, in England and Ireland, well known draftsman of radio plays, many of which he himself has adapted from his fiction. On Monday, May 14, at 8:00 PM, the 92nd Street Y presents the American premiere of two of those plays: Going Home and Mr. McNamara, based on short stories Mr. Trevor wrote in 1972 and 1976, respectively. The event is part of the 2006/07 season of literary programs presented by the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased at the 92nd St. Y website and 212.415.5500. For full cast information and bios, please call 212.415.5455.
The New Yorker Conference, Through the Magic of Your Screen (and Me)
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.
Tonight, Tonight, You’ll See Gaiman, Wilsey, Ames, &c. Tonight
Take the cultural advice of The New York Times for once and do two New Yorker-y things tonight. From the Times‘s email newsletter UrbanEye:
Park yourself at 37 Arts, a gleaming new West Side performance complex, for a literary evening tonight. First up: the cartoonist Neal Gaiman, the African children’s book author Marguerite Abouet and Sean Wilsey, the author of “Oh the Glory of it All,” the poor-little-rich-boy memoir that Michiko Kakatuani called “by turns heartfelt, absurd, self-indulgent, self-abasing, silly and genuinely moving.” Then Mr. Gaiman joins Jonathan Ames, Pico Iyer and Edgar Oliver, the Poe of the East Village, to tell tales of home and travel for the Moth storytelling series. Just by staying in your seat you’ll seem erudite.
Sean Wilsey talk, 6 p.m, and the Moth readings, 8 p.m., 37 Arts, 450 West 37th Street, Clinton, (212) 560-8912; $15 and $30.
NYC 4/25: Jane Kramer Moderates “At Home in Europe”
An event co-sponsored by PEN and the NYU Creative Writing Program:
April 25 | At Home in Europe
With Marguerite Abouet, Geert Mak, Zafer Åženocak, Janne Teller, Ilija Trojanow; moderated by Jane Kramer of The New Yorker
When: Wednesday, April 25
Where: Hemmerdinger Hall at NYU: 100 Washington Square East
What time: 3–4:30 p.m.
Over the last decade, Europe has undergone some of the most radical changes in its recent history. These writers take a look at the impact of multiculturalism, migration, and economic and other social shifts, and discuss their implications for the stability of individual countries and the creation of a broader European identity. Ilija Trojanow has undertaken a reverse migration of sorts, leaving Europe to settle in various places in sub-Saharan Africa and then chronicling many of these far-flung corners of the world. Geert Mak is a journalist, historian, and author of the forthcoming In Europe: A Journey Through the Twentieth Century. While working as a macroeconomist for the United Nations, Janne Teller lived in Dar-es-Salaam, Maputo, Brussels, and New York and much of her writing focuses on European and multicultural identity. Zafer Åženocak has written widely on the issues of diversity in Germany, the Turkish diaspora, and the short distances and large fears of a globalizing Europe. Marguerite Abouet left Abidjan, Ivory Coast at the age of 12 to study in France. Her graphic novel Aya details the promising, prosperous period of the 1970s in Ivory Coast.
As always, if anyone can go (I’ll be at work) and can write up a quick review of the event, I’ll be delighted. Also, you’ll want to read my friend Kazim Ali’s galling account of a recent episode on his university campus in this free society of ours.
NYC: Art Spiegelman Event at Columbia, Monday 4/9
I spent a late night recently rereading the two books of Maus, drawn in by Spiegelman’s painstaking work and narrative craft, revolted by the cruelty represented and evoked there, and humbled by his parents’ resourcefulness and luck in their survival of the war. The books are part, but not all, of his histories and points of view, and you’ll want to make sure you get to this:
Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman is in residence at the Heyman Center for the Humanities for the Spring 2007 Semester. He will speak about “Comics–Marching into the Canon” on Monday, April 9 at 7pm.
This event, which is free and open to the general public, will take place in the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library. (Click here for a map.) [Columbia University, Broadway at 116th St. on the 1 train.)
Maus and other factual accounts of the Holocaust seem almost the only response to stories like that of Binjamin Wilkomirski, a faker whose compelling/appalling story is recounted by Blake Eskin in his eloquent examination of the tale (and tales) of Wilkomirski, who, for a while, appeared to be Eskin’s family’s long-lost relative. The book is called A Life in Pieces, and it stays with you; it’s another facet of the last century’s particular madness as well as another testament to the necessity and heroism of setting the record straight.
April Fool’s Reading: Di Piero, Svoboda, Simon, and You in the Audience
Please join Speakeasy Poetry Series for an April Fool’s Day reading with:
W. S. Di Piero, Terese Svoboda, and Rachel Simon
Sunday, April 1 @ 5:00 PM
The Bitter End, NYC
147 Bleecker Street (btw. Thompson & LaGuardia)
W.S. Di Piero’s most recent books of poetry are Shadows Burning, Skirts and Slacks, Brother Fire, and Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems (2007). He is the author of three collections of essays on literature, art, and personal experience: Shooting the Works: On Poetry and Pictures, Out of Eden: Essays on Modern Art, and Memory and Enthusiasm. He lives in San Francisco.
Terese Svoboda’s books of poetry include Mere Mortals, Laughing Africa, All Aberration, and Treason.
Rachel Simon’s first book of poetry, Theory of Orange, won the 2005
Transcontinental Poetry Award from Pavement Saw Press.
For more information: www.speakeasynyc.com
If You Think Life Is Sad, This Is the Instant Remedy
You might not have heard of Mike Birbiglia, but you’re in for a huge treat tomorrow night. He’s appearing at Mo Pitkin’s, and that is very lucky for all of us. People, don’t think. Just buy tickets (a mere $10, a small price to pay for the restoration of your faith in the healing power of laughter). If for some reason you need to be convinced further, listen to a few routines on his website or watch some Letterman, Conan, etc. appearances on YouTube. The details:
Mike Birbiglia’s Secret Public Journal Live
Tuesday, Mar 13, 2007 9:00 PM EDT (8:30 PM Doors) at Mo Pitkin’s, 34 Avenue A
Every week comedian Mike Birbiglia writes a new entry in his Secret Public Journal for thousands of subscribers online. Once in a while, he bring them to life with the help of special guests like Andrew Secunda and [completely absurd] Christian Rock duo God’s Pottery. This will be a very special night.
www.birbigs.com