Recommended

Eat When You Feel Sad Book
Eat When You Feel Sad
Lately, been reading lots of things about things, like books, things about books, and as they say, afterwards the words have been taken out of my mouth, or head, or down to the fingers and so I may as well just link off to the good thing I read. So here ya go - Excited to see a Zachery Germain interview in Bookslut about his new book Eat When You Feel Sad, by soon to be no longer Germain roommate and rad writer himself, Tao Lin. Lin artfully gets some chaw out the craw of this stripped down, word wielder. Can laugh your ass to the crying bank after this one.

Amy Granat: The Sheltering Sky Art
Amy Granat: The Sheltering Sky
Amy Granat’s video exhibition creates an environment through projected images and the use of light. The show is inspired by (and takes it’s title from) Paul Bowel’s cult novel, “The Sheltering Sky”, which is about a couple’s journey to North Africa in an attempt to recapture their romance, but ends in tragedy and despair. This show is curated by Matthew Lyons and opens on Friday, January 29th, with a reception from 6 to 8 PM.  -ABP

Madras Press Book
Madras Press
‘Madras Press publishes individually bound short stories and novella-length booklets and distributes the proceeds to a growing list of charitable organizations chosen by our authors.’ Well if their mission and beautifully designed and packaged booklets don’t get you buying, their author’s brilliant (and generously given) prose will. First set of four includes work by Aimee Bender, Trinie Dalton, Rebecca Lee and Madras Press founding editor/curator, Sumanth Prabhaker.

Events

Monday, February 8, 10
MUSIC St. Vincent san francisco
MUSIC Yeasayer ny
ART/DESIGN Joseph Beuys: The Multiples la
ART/DESIGN The Early Works of Edward Kienholz la
ART/DESIGN MOCA's First Thirty Years la

Blog

Tuesday, Feb. 2

Underground Lobster Lair in Greenpoint

Sunday, Jan. 31

Wisdom From the Dead

Thursday, Jan. 28

RIP J.D. Salinger

Friday, Jan. 22

Stab Vests, Jesus Guns and Eating Human Hearts

more news...

Features

Rupaul's Drag Race

Bradford Nordeen

02.05.10

The growth of positive depictions of gay chracters and themes on television likely has as much to do with advertising demographics as recent shifts in public opinion and, true to form, Rupaul's Drag Race is packed with as many product placements as the other reality TV shows it mirrors. Bradford Nordeen, author of Fever Pitch, highlights the pleasures and frustrations that the show has to offer as well as how it literalizes Warhol's maxim about fifteen minutes seconds of fame.

Sport

Super Bowl XLIV Preview: Saints & Colts in Miami

Adam Underhill

02.03.10

I never thought about the double entendre of awfulness that would have fell on earth had Bret Favre beat New Orleans last week and gone on to (maybe even win?) the Super Bowl. No I'd forgotten about the cheeseheads and the humiliation that would haunt them had THEIR guy won on that damn Vikings team (I like Favre btw - CM). Was just pondering New Orleans, still Katrina repairing, rushing to their first Super Bowl ever by beating a fellow borne and bred gulf coaster... that game was a team vs an individual right? the twilight of a heavyweight? the phoenix-like rise of a city? or did I get confused? Well Adam Underhill, long time Green Bay fan didn't miss anything. Here's his preview for Super Sunday, 'tween the Saints and oh yeah, the Colts. And speaking of drama, keep an eye on Colts receiver Pierre Garçon, the Haitian descent player who played with incredible gusto in the AFC championship. Prediction? Well read on...

Poetry

Some Kind of Cheese Orgy by Linh Dinh

Kaya Oakes

01.30.10

Vietnamese-American author Linh Dinh's short story "Stewart Crenshaw" has to be among the oddest, most Borgesian slave narratives ever written. A pre-Emancipation southern white man commands his slaves to be his master. The community is an uproar over this arrangement and the slaves object to their circumstances but Crenshaw asserts that it is his right. The story revolves around the question of whether this southern gentleman is a heroic John Brown figure or the ultimate poseur until the narrative undoes itself in a final brilliant metafictional move. Kaya Oakes, author of Slanted Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, reviews the most recent collection of Dinh's poetry. Fans of his work will be glad to know that after several delays, Dinh's novel Love Like Hate will be published by Seven Stories in May.

Columns

86'd Stories: Interview with bouncer Frankie Clinton

Jennifer Blowdryer

01.27.10

George Orwell recounts his experience of being shot while fighting in the Spanish Civil War: "Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock––no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing." Here Frankie Clinton describes what it was like to be stabbed while working as a bouncer outside a Manhattan night club. His advice on human interaction is essential reading for any potential bouncers out there and for fans of workplace tourism. Learn more about Jennifer Blowdryer's 86'd project here.

Film

Rob Nilsson and Cine Manifest at Anthology Film Archives

Nancy Keefe Rhodes

01.22.10

This week (Jan 21. through the 28th) at New York City's Anthology Film Archive come the films of award winning director Rob Nilsson and Cine Manifest, San Francisco’s 1970s Marxist film collective. Nancy Keefe Rhodes gives an exhaustive yet breathless preview of the films screened at AFA. But even if you aren't in New York, you can get many on Netflix, from your favorite indie movie store, or buy them from the source; so read up, watch, and learn how Nilsson, the octogenarian everyman, demurs his stance over time, favoring art over politics.

Fiction

Unicorns

Joanna Ruocco

01.17.10

Joanna Ruocco's writing is packed with odd and intelligent linguistic adventures and has received praise from Robert Coover and Carole Maso. In her first short story for Fanzine, she addresses Derrida's football scholarship, drinking gimlets in body stockings, gluten allergies, the Cuban revolution and the self-conscious feeling that arrives when we become concerned that our thoughts and fantasies are determined by the power structure. "Unicorns" is from her forthcoming short story collection Man's Companions. The accompanying images are from Portland-based artist and designer Sarah Gottesdiener, who is also one half of the performance duo, The Gay Deceivers.

Film

The Last Station - Love, Copyright and Anarcho-Christianity

Amy Meyerson

01.14.10

It seems that L. Ron Hubbard wasn't the only writer to create a bizarre and zealous spiritual organization. In the later part of his life, Leo Tolstoy began a radical ascetic pacifist Christian movement. He swapped letters with Gandhi, advocated for anarchist zoologist Peter Kropotkin and extolled the values of Esperanto. Director Michael Hoffman's The Last Station offers a view on the last days of Tolstoy's life and the dispute over the ownership of the literary estate between his wife and his followers. While the film maintains a tight focus on its pair of lovers, Amy Meyerson offers insight into the historical events that loom just outside the frame. Starring Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren and Paul Giamatti, the film is based on a novel by literary critic Jay Parini, who having contemplated the influence of an author after their eventual departure in his writing, has perhaps appropriately been appointed literary executor to Gore Vidal.

Books

The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways in the Twentieth Century by Kathryn Bond Stockton

Aaron Nielsen

01.11.10

The suicide rate among queer youth is twice to four times that of their heterosexual counterparts depending on your source, and perhaps concern for that population formed the root of Kathryn Stockton's inquiry into the depiction of queer children in literature and film. But to take on such a project is inevitably to tangle with our social construction of childhood and its very problematic relationship to sexuality. Stockton, an intellectually fearless English literature professor at the University of Utah and a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, relies on a fascinating array of texts including Georges Bataille, Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, Supreme Court cases, Virginia Woolf, William Blake and Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Aaron Nielsen, a contributor to Dennis Cooper's Userlands anthology reviews.