Things I Ate That I Love

emilybooks:

If you’re in NYC on May 13, come celebrate Sarah Schulman’s novel Empathy, our April book club pick, with the author and Barbara Browning, who’s also the author of two Emily Books picks.  We’re also thrilled to be cohosting the event with literary event crowdfunding resource Togather, which is buying everyone’s first drink (Thanks, Togather!) 

By posing a big, unanswerable question we hope to spark a conversation that will leave everyone with more questions. We’re also excited to host a conversation between two novelists who, in very different ways, dazzle and tantalize readers and provoke lingering thoughts about identity.

We hope to see you there, and if you can’t make it, we’ll catch you up afterwards right here! 

Mark your calendars!

Last night I went to see Barbara Browning, Kate Zambreno and Matthias Viegener read and converse at McNally Jackson.  Barbara read the part from I’m Trying To Reach You where the narrator describes John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s relationship and Cage’s death, and also Merce Cunningham’s relationship with one of his longtime dancers and his compassion towards her when it was time for her to stop dancing. The passage ends with the words “People often know when they don’t say enough.”  Barbara cried a little bit and it was very moving. 

After everyone read they had a conversation that began with a suggestion that they start out by talking about “form and formlessness” in their work.  Uh oh.  But the conversation, though super duper formless, wasn’t boring. I did have just one moment of writhing in my seat, though, and this was when they talked briefly about “bloggy writing.”  This started to be an interesting conversation but was curtailed somehow.  The panelists talked about the affectations of bloggy writing they find irritating: faux-chattiness, “Hey guys,” phony intimacy.  Barbara and Kate said they liked “bloggish” writing but Kate said she hated the words bloggy, blog. All the panelists praised the merits of compression, which Matthias funnily misheard at one point as “confession.” (I’m sorry if I’m misstating any of this or compressing it too much, btw, but I have ten minutes to write this before I leave for work.)

ISN’T BLOGGING A FORM OF PERFORMANCE? I wanted to shout, but it wasn’t Q&A time yet. CAN BLOGGING BE A FORM OF DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART? ISN’T ONE OF THE WEIRDEST AND COOLEST THINGS ABOUT BEING ALIVE RIGHT NOW HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE USING WORDS AND IMAGES TO PERFORM AN IDENTITY ONLINE?  ISN’T THERE A REAL INTIMACY TRAPPED IN FAKE INTIMACY THAT IS SOMETIMES MORE INTERESTING THAN OVERT INTIMACY? 

But even I know that it is rude to ask yes/no questions/non-questions during a q&a so I didn’t do this.  I’d like this panel to reconvene and discuss only my pet themes, please. 

emilybooks:

A scene from The Correspondence Artist that I particularly appreciated because it is very funny, and because it reminded me of the scene in Terry Castle’s memoir where she is miserable at a dinner party where everyone is extremely famous, and because I have a feeling — an unconfirmed feeling — that everyone who lives in New York long enough eventually finds himself in some analogous situation.  Of course, because of the nature of The Correspondence Artist, this itself is an analogue of a similar situation that Browning found herself in with her real-life paramour.  (Probably.)  

The Correspondence Artist is our January pick, incidentally! 

“Binh and Matthew Barney exchanged some kind of special, complicated handshake.”