Random Notes (2)

• I attended a good reading the other night at Skylight Books, featuring selections from Dzanc’s new Best of the Web 2009 anthology. There are selections from some of the more established online journals like failbetter and Juked, print journals like AGNI with online companions–and still others like Toasted Cheese and Hot Metal Bridge that are new to me. Dzanc is fast becoming a force in independent publishing–under their own imprint, as well Other Voices, Black Lawrence, Monkeybicycle, and their new online mag The Collagist.
• One of the featured readers was Lou Mathews, whose nominated story “Huevos” was published last year in failbetter. It’s also a Halloween story, which makes it timely–though not for the faint of heart, and not one to read to the kids.
• Great review (and well-deserved) in the LA Times the other day of Dylan Landis’ new collection Normal People Don’t Live Like This.

Finally, a few late additions to my October Literary LA Calendar:

• At Stories Bookstore/Cafe in Echo Park: Sat Oct 24 7-10, spooky stories, spooky sounds, pumpkin-carving, fortune-telling & more; Tues Oct 27 3pm, indie music faves Tegan & Sara will meet fan and sign merchandise
• Sun Oct 25 6pm, Tongue & Groove at the Hotel Cafe presents “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” with Rachel Resnick and Seth Greenland among others
• Finally, Sun Oct 25 3pm, Tod Goldberg has the official release party for his new collection, Other Resort Cities at Borders in Westwood

Tonight: Wells Tower at Hammer

I’m putting together my July literary listings, but wanted to get this out right away: Wells Tower, author of the collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (which has created more talk than any collection in a while) is at the Hammer tonight, July 1, at 7pm.

Literary LA–May ‘09

Busy month:

• On Friday 5/8 at 8pm, the New Short Fiction Series features the fiction of Patrick Tobin, who has been widely published in journals including AGNI, Kenyon Review, Gulf Stream, and the Dave Eggers-edited Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008. Check out his website for some of his stuff.

• Skylight Books in Los Feliz is packed this month: an LA noir night on Thurs 5/7–on Thurs 5/14, Laila Lalami (popular “Moorish Girl” blogger) with her debut novel Secret Son–Sat 5/16, the monthly Salon at 4 (an informal chat about independent press releases), and at 7:30, Eric Bogosian–Sunday 5/17 at 7, Jennifer Mathews (an anthropologist focusing on Mexico) with Chicle, her learned but punchy history of chewing gum–Sat 5/23 at 5, Dalkey Archive’s Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction

• Stories, the new bookstore/cafe in Echo Park, hosts a bluegrass night on their back patio with the Watertower Bucket Boys (and their own homemade veggie chili) Sat 5/16, 7pm–Thurs 5/28, 7:30, Justin and Melissa Gage’s Memphis and the Delta Blues Trail–and Thurs 5/28 – Sat 5/30, a special exhibit of art work by children with autism–plus:  ongoing series that include the Hollywood Institute of Poetics (HIP) hosting a poetry reading on the 2nd and 4th Friday of the month; and at 10:30am on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday, story & song for the kids–and remember, they’re now open at 8am with organic coffee and a range of breakfast items

• Book Soup in West Hollywood showcases the indie press Akashic (with Achy Obejas and others) on Friday 5/8–and on Tues 5/26, the provocative music writer Elijah Wald with How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll

• On Sunday May 10, join Word Theatre for a Mother’s Day brunch & reading at Warszawa in Santa Monica

• That same night at 6pm, Tongue & Groove hosts the 2009 PEN Emerging Voices at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood

• 826la hosts a fundraising screening of the new Sam Mendes-directed, Dave Eggers-penned film “Away We Go” on Thurs 5/7 at the Vista (with Mendes, Eggers, and star John Krasinski present)

• On Wed 5/27, the Hammer Reading Series presents Glen David Gould (Carter Beats the Devil) with his new novel Sunnyside

Engage with Grace

Engage with Grace is a project that encourages people to discuss end-of-life issues with their loved ones. What better time to do that than Thanksgiving–even if at first death & dying seem a poor fit with a holiday most of us have warm feelings about. But it makes even more sense when you consider that everything we give thanks for on this day, including one another, is something we’re eventually going to have to part with.

It further resonates with me because my mother was born on Thanksgiving, and her death was the first I was present for. It was as close to a perfect death as one could hope for, not sudden, not dragged out, my brother and me at her side, in a wonderful hospice filled with amazing caregivers. We were lucky. It was a long time coming; we were prepared; she had a great oncologist who referred us to the hospice. And when soon after my father was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, we had the oncologist and the hospice to turn to. A more sudden death this time, but again, in many ways, we were lucky.

But death catches others unawares, less prepared, the essential things not talked about. So talk it through. These are the people, as writers, we often tell stories about. Like all stories, they will at some point come to an end. Do what you can to make them good endings.

RIP Paul Newman

A lot of literary blogs have had remembrances for David Foster Wallace. His passing by his own hand was unbearably sad–and I feel awful (as I always do) for the person who must find him (in this case his wife). I exist largely through my imagination; that is something I cannot even begin to fathom.

Yet his writing didn’t really touch me. Paul Newman’s acting did. He got better as he got older. He embraced his wrinkles, his mortality, his fallibility. Life–its wounds, its lessons, its long haul–reduces us, and Paul Newman used that to his advantage. He didn’t press. He made more out of less. He limped. It’s a lesson for all artists.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what fiction writers can learn from the dramatic arts. One of them is the unimportance of backstory. And when I think of how unimportant backstory really is, I think of the opening of Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman staggers along a street with a pipe cutter, lopping off the tops of parking meters as he goes. Something has brought him to this place: we don’t know why: it doesn’t matter. Paul Newman sells that moment, that truth, in the unforced way in which he lived his life and his craft.