GIGANTIC ISSUE 2

Gigantic America


This week marks the release of Gigantic Issue 2: Gigantic America. We're already in bookstores like McNally Jackson, Spoonbill and St. Mark's (New York), Prairie Lights (Iowa City), Shakespeare & Co. (Paris), Domy (Austin, Houston), Brookline Booksmith (Mass.), Powell's Burnside (Portland), Quimby's (Chicago) and many more.

We'll be celebrating this weekend with a launch party at PPOW Gallery with readings, performance art, cool hard-to-find merch from our contributors and cheap drinks.

Where: PPOW Gallery 511 W. 25th St. (bet. 10th & 11th Aves.), #301
When: 6:30 - 11:00pm
FREE

Flyer designed by Skyler Balbus

Literary Fashionables

On Style and Letters


In homage to Fashion Week in New York, this week at the Rumpus, we're devoting a post each day on the blog to celebrating two beloved writers who also demonstrated exquisite personal style and decorum. Thus far, we've got Samuel Beckett and Gertrude Stein, Susan Sontag and George Plimpton, William Burroughs and Joan Didion.

New Work from Gigantic Online

Stanisic, Willerton and Hurley

Gigantic has just published some great new work online: short fiction by Saša (Sasha) Stanišić and Brian Hurley, and new installments of Paul Willerton's Little Big Planet series based on Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, including an exclusive preview of his latest interpretation of Cremaster 3 replete with freemasons, car smash-ups, and the Chrysler building.

We're thrilled to have new short fiction from Stanišić, whose novel How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Grove/Atlantic May 2009)--about a boy who endures the war in Bosnia through the solace of language and stories--was the first debut novel to be short-listed for Germany's top literary prize when it was published there.

Listen to Stanišić discuss his novel.

The Rumpus and GIANT

At Broadway East

ONE YEAR LATER, the Rumpus Anniversary Party co-presented by the Rumpus and HTMLGIANT was a success. Caitlin Colford of Scallywag and Vagabond did a fantastic write-up of the event with some great photos by Shoko Takayasu.

TONIGHT, JANUARY 21

THE RUMPUS and HTMLGIANT present

ONE YEAR LATER

A celebration of the first anniversary of The Rumpus

A MULTI-MEDIA PRESENTATION

Readings by RIVKA GALCHEN, author of Atmospheric Disturbances, TAO LIN, author of Shoplifting from American Apparel, DEB OLIN UNFERTH, author of Vacation, JUSTIN TAYLOR, author of Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever, STEPHEN ELLIOTT, The Rumpus’s own editor and author of The Adderall Diaries.

Music by ALINA SIMONE, JEFFREY LEWIS and DIANE LOUVEL, DJ: LINCOLN MICHEL, Special Guest DJ: KHAELA MARICICH of THE BLOW, And video art installation by MONOFONUS PRESS curated by JILL PANGALLO

JANUARY 21, 2010

171 East Broadway BROADWAY EAST (nr. Rutgers)

View Map. Kitchen will be open with a light menu of snacks.

7:00pm – 10:00pm, show starts promptly at 7:30

$5

Advance tickets available here.

***

Original animation for event invite © André da Loba.

Favorite Things

Photographer Matthu Placek

Photograph by Matthu Placek.

The Whitney Biennial

A Preview

The Whitney Biennial will be coming to New York on 2/25/10. Here's a sneak peak of some of the artwork that will be on view, including the photographs by Tam Tram, who is--at 23--the youngest artist in the show.

Photograph: "Battle Cry" by Tam Tran

Some Recent News

I'm fortunate to have had a couple of new pieces published in the December issue of Everyday Genius, the web journal presented by Publishing Genius Press, alongside some great writers Amelia Gray, Mike Young, Jac Jemc, J.A. Tyler, Mathias Svalina and others. For more on PGP, see the interview I did with PGP's Adam Robinson about Shane Jones for The Faster Times.

Wall Street

The Rumpus, Faster Times and Gigantic Holiday Party

Bonuses are Back

The Faster Times, The Rumpus and Gigantic Holiday Party

As creative types, we tend to miss out on big corporate holiday blowouts complete with drunken co-workers embarrassingly making out beneath mistletoe. Those of us who work from home rarely even see other people, or wear "clothing."

So this year, let's don our Wall St.-inspired Holiday Best and get down like Bernie Madoff has yet to steal everyone's money.

Join us in celebrating another fun, if fiscally irresponsible year!

The Faster Times, The Rumpus, and Gigantic Present:

The 2009 Wall Street Holiday Party

Monday, December 14, 2009

7:00pm - 10:00pm

Glasslands, 289 Kent Ave (between 1st and Grand) Brooklyn

The Legacy of Wally Hunt

ABC3D




Waldo "Wally" Hunt, the pop-up book artist who is responsible for the pop-up art renaissance of which Andy Warhol, Maurice Sendak, and Jie Qi of MIT's Media Lab are a part, died this month. In homage to Hunt, here is a video of a pop-up book of the alphabet, ABC3D, by Marion Bataille.

Subjective Account

Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach at NYPL LIVE

I recently attended a talk with Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach at the New York Public Library, and a post-talk cocktail party. My Subjective Account of the evening, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach Sit in Chairs, is up on The Rumpus. Andre da Loba created the incredible illustrations for the piece.

Goings on About the Rump

Wu Ming

Notable New York is up on the Rumpus. Some things to look out for are Justin Taylor's reading with the Italian lit collective Wu Ming, Paul Banks (about whom I wrote a Subjective Account) performing, the Tim Burton exhibit, and films by Ingmar Bergman at BAM. (It was initially posted that Julian Casablancas would be performing with Paul Banks, but he will not be performing--Only Paul Banks. Sorry for the confusion).

Also, a very interesting read is Catherine Lacey's post on HTML Giant about Zadie Smith's essay about novelists writing essays: No Easy Cure for Novel Nausea.

The Rumpus and Tin House Present

Fun Fun Fun

Tonight at the Highline Ballroom, The Rumpus and Tin House present More Than You Expected, a variety show including readings by Rick Moody, Starlee Kine, Jonathan Ames, and David Rees, comedy by Todd Barry and Eugene Mirman, and musical guests Care Bears on Fire. Come out!

Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach Backstage

Video aT NYPL

Before the NYPL Live event last Monday, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach were videoed as they walked in rooms of the New York Public Library. They looked at maps, pointed at maps and talked to each other about Roald Dahl, pornographic poems and things I sometimes couldn't hear.

Corduroy Appreciation Day

A Fantastic Fabric for Fops and Fly Girls

Today, 11/11, is Corduroy Appreciation Day. In honor of this wonderfully textured fabric, the Corduroy Appreciation Club is holding a Grand Meeting at the Old American Can Factory with keynote speaker author Sloane Crosley.

I'm not sure whether corduroy connoisseur Wes Anderson, will be in attendance. But he and fellow filmmaker Noah Baumbach were in conversation at the New York Public Library on Monday, 11/09, an event for which I'll be posting a Subjective Account at the Rumpus. The filmmakers showed clips from their upcoming film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, an adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic children's book, a film which contains some idiosyncratic elements in true Wes Anderson style, such as the faux character Kristofferson made of real fur, and Mr. Fox in a bespoke corduroy suit.

Week in Advance

Wes Anderson, Ben Marcus and n+1

Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach will be in conversation tonight at NYPL, there's a Harper's Magazine reading on Wednesday with Ben Marcus and Rivka Galchen, and the Internet as Playground and Factory conference with n+1 magazine begins Thursday. Check these and other events at Notable New York at the Rumpus.

Also, keep your calendars open on November 17. The Rumpus is throwing a party at the Highline Ballroom--MORE THAN YOU EXPECTED--with readings by Starlee Kine, Jonathan Ames and Rick Moody, comedy by Todd Barry and Eugene Mirman, and musical guests Care Bears on Fire.

Gore Vidal

Snap Shots of the Spiffing

Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare, Gore Vidal's third memoir, and the latest project of my dear friend Kevin Kwan, got a great review in Vogue. The memoir collects photographs, letters and manuscripts from Gore Vidal's personal archives, telling of his time in politics, the film industry, and cafe society at large.

Photo of Gore Vidal with Anais Nin.

Interview with Kristina Born

And An Account of the CLMP Spelling Bee

At the Indie Books column at The Faster Times, there's an interview with a young word wrangling author Kristina Born by author Christopher Higgs who edits an incredibly cool site: Bright Stupid Confetti. Born's work is being published by YEAR OF THE LIQUIDATOR, a new press by Shane Jones and Blake Butler.

You can also view my piece on the CLMP Spelling Bee, where James Frey, Francine Prose, Michael Musto and Alex Kuczynski dazzled, got stumped, and mispelled some easy words, proving that it still makes me feel badly when big-name writers can't spell any better than non-reading humans. But all in "good fun." To be fair, many of the words "walked out" on were tough, which, I guess, is the point.

Original illustration by Andre da Loba.

Looking Ahead to Lust Weekend

Everyone I Have Ever Slept With

As part of Lust Weekend at the Performa 09 Festival in New York, Tracey Emin will be reading from her collection of poems, Those Who Suffer Love, and her autobiography, Strangeland. One of the YBAs (Young British Artists) who was part of Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that caused a fooferaw here in New York, she is not surprisingly known for her "sensational" artwork such as the tent above and My Bed, an installation of her own dirty and unmade bed that consisted of detritus such as body secretions, condoms and other junk that collected around her bed when she stayed in it for a while while having feelings of suicidal depression. At first I thought she was one of those artists that wants to shock you for the sake of shocking you. But then I heard her speak, and I think the ideas behind her work are sound and compelling. Listen for yourself here:





For more news about Performa 09, or other notable happenings around new york, check out my listings, Notable New York, at the Rumpus.