ok -- revised title of post

Hey guys.  We had a reading yesterday; somehow, as these things always go, the material that readers shared touched upon similar themes.  Jen Bartman and Eve Bates both talked about New York, lack of intimacy, and disconnection.  I suppose this is not an uncommon theme, but it rang out beautifully because it was reinforced by mutuality.  Martin Rock talked about his interest in form poetry, and Jen's book recommendations were all about form.  Speaking of form, Steven Karl has this way of reading his poems that involves lots of space around each word; sonically, the effect is lovely.  I hope you will go see him next week at Earshot with Joanna Fuhrman and 3 MFAs.  

For now, please check the BRS blog; all the readers' recommendations are up now.  Next month, I have a wonderful wonderful reading planned.  Stay tuned and I will let you know who is coming.

Is it still misting outside?  I don't like when it mists.  Reminds me of being in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disney.  I liked the ride, but hated the mist.  Anyone who's been outside should let me know.

César Aira

Let me sing to you the praises of César Aira.  Earlier this year, I read Ghosts, and now I'm in the middle of reading How I Became a Nun, his "autobiographical" novella, translated in 2007 and out from New Directions.  It's a weird little story: it's unclear right off the bat whether the child narrator is a girl or a boy, and pronouns rarely emerge, creating a sense of identity crisis from the start.  Also, in the story's macabrely funny beginning, the narrator's father beats an ice cream vendor to death and sets in motion the rest of the action.  

In the picaresque tradition, the little narrator has a tendency to lie to everyone and make inexplicable decisions not based on logic but rather on situation.  Aira, apparently, employs" an avant-garde aesthetic in which, rather than editing what he has written, he engages in a 'flight forward' (fuga hacia adelante) to improvise a way out of the corners he writes himself into." (Wiki)  This is evident, as the narrator's decisions often seem unfounded in the sequence of events but rather on flights of fancy or implausible gut reactions.  The result is often hilarious.

Another thing about Aira, at least in the two novellas of his that I've read: he tends to dwell on matters of architecture, and has a particular thing for the unfinished structure.  Characters often founder around construction sites: staircases without banisters; dry pools; the unrenovated wing of a prison, with its dead-end crannies.  The effect is eerie: since the setting is unfinished, it isn't concrete, and because of this it seems plausible for phantoms or other illogical phenomena to appear at any time (even if they don't). 

Aira rarely gives interviews, but here is an interview published in BOMB.  

Observations: or, Always a Plus-One, Never a Guest

Say you're a glamorous media type who gets invited to fascinating, star-studded events, and you need a buddy to bring as an accomplice.  A buddy who laughs loudly and wears an outlandish costume and/or matches your colors.  I am that buddy.  It's good to have me around, because I'm not competing for your job -- I'm just there to be agreeable.

Wednesday night saw me and Rohin at SoHo's Agent Provocateur for an inexplicable Wednesday night social.  I was unclear as to the purpose of the party -- did they have a new line out? -- but I do love looking at AP's pieces, which always wittily mix the humorous, sexy, and impractical. (Case in point: the Bullet Playsuit.  How is this a thing?  It blows my mind that this and the word "suit" can co-refer to one object.) That said, AP also does the Western traditional costume (that is, the brassiere and underwear duo) very well.  Add this to the eternally-smiling staff, who on Wednesday offered up chocolate truffles and champagne, and to the extremely killer soundtrack that seemed like it was straight out of my teens (Hole; Nirvana; Siouxsie & the Banshees; David Bowie), and it was a pretty good day to be in SoHo.  Much better, at least, than the random Abercrombie event we saw happening on the parallel street: some bored, shirtless dudes with shifty eyes.  I'd rather have a chocolate and speculate about how long it would take me to ruin a pair of Cuban-heel back-seamed stockings.  (Dollars to donuts I'd get a hole in one of them in ten minutes.)

Tonight, I came to the realization that anything based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses is fucking weird. I went to see Robert Wilson's Quartett at BAM with my as-of-now-former boss tonight, and just about had enough Gothic overdramatization (but not quite enough; never enough).  The production, written by German playwright Heiner Muller, is on as a part of the Next Wave festival, and stars Isabelle Huppert as that ice-cold bitch the Marquise and Ariel Garcia Valdez (pictured, in red) as a monstrously phlegmy Valmont.  The entire play is illuminated in a strange and what I'm told is a very Wilsonesque way: pinpoints of color-gelled light pointing out specific objects, body parts, and movements.  It was visually beautiful and textually perverse, full of gross overstatements of good and evil and detailed descriptions of lascivious and downright filthy acts.  At all times, everyone on stage is doing one of the following things: yelling and/or laughing insanely; staying completely still; talking and/or moving slowly.  The music, by Michael Galasso, is at times quietly backgrounded, and at others eardrum-blastingly loud.  In other words, very European.  Recommended -- this production has one more week to go at BAM.