Adam Johnson Reading from The Orphan Master’s Son @ PowerHouse Arena
Who besides the guy in line behind me could know the correct spelling of stupefying?
February 1st, 2012 – Something about Adam Johnson struck me as instantly likeable. I’d tiptoed late into PowerHouse Arena, maybe halfway through the audience Q&A, and quietly purchased a copy of “The Orphan Master’s Son.” Set my dainty ass on the concrete slabs, peered out from behind my thick glasses to my first visit to PowerHouse Arena.
Standing behind a podium or, later, sitting at a table, Adam’s height was striking –- an attribute that likely turned heads in Korea. I pulled out my notebook and began taking notes as Adam continued reminiscing about the citizens of the most secluded country in the world. Overall, his assessment was of a people fully aware of the life they lived, no “people’s paradise,” despite the ban on any outside media or the 24-7 barrage of propaganda.
His government-appointed tour guide, or “minder,” as he put it, accompanied him nearly everywhere he went in North Korea. The sips of information we receive via home videos released to the internet largely corroborate Adam’s summation: a crippled, sad country whose so-paranoid-it’d-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-real government is determined to put on a rosy picture for what few Westerners make it across their border.
But that’s one of many problems in finding the truth about what really goes on behind the desperately cheerful “minders” and frowning soldiers – so much of what we hear about North Korea is an anecdote, a story, a rumor. Adam used the example of in-home propaganda, a hardwired speaker or low-fi radio found in every home, ostensibly installed to protect against an American air raid. Though nearly every emigrant confirmed their existence, there’s no video, no picture, no “official” confirmation.
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Joyce Carol Oates @ Mysterious Bookshop
Heart-shaped knocks
November 8th, 2011 – Dawn. I detested dawn. The grass always looked like it’d been out all night. I woke early with an all-percussion symphony playing in my head led by the empty bottle of scotch underneath my bed. Outside, the police sirens joined in with the garbage trucks to form a backup chorus that wouldn’t quit. Only a special dame could rouse these tired clichés from my cold, stiff fingers, and that dame was Joyce Carol Oates.
This wasn’t to be my first rodeo with Mrs. Oates. Almost two years ago, about the time I began this blog, Mrs. Oates was to sign books (no reading) in a back room of The Mysterious Bookshop. Because I couldn’t ask her myself, I approached the ridiculously accommodating Mysterious Bookshop employees about asking Mrs. Oates to insult me. After a quick explanation, they agreed. I was (and still am) incredibly grateful for their willingness to help a fellow book-nut in his pursuits.
I returned later that week, hopes high — they’d already helped me land an insult from a big fish like David Mitchell. And if David Mitchell liked the idea, I figured this insult idea must’ve been the best thing since mixed metaphors. Alack, it was not to be. While she laughed at the request, they later reported, insulting a stranger was something she couldn’t do.
Shocking! An author with novels like Rape: a Love Story was almost demure in real life. Rather than an insult, she drew a nice heart for my inscription, the most cheerful rejection I’d received.
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Posted in Insults, Readings
Tagged corn maiden, genre fiction, give me your heart, hearts, insults, joyce carol oates, myserious bookshop, new jersey noir, noir, non-insult, shuddering fall, tracer bullet
Chad Harbach Reading @ McNally Jackson Books
According to Harbach, my soul, composed of douchiness and tardiness, is both clean as a summer's eve and very often late
September 12th, 2011 – The night of Chad Harbach’s reading was to become for me a bizarre, painful evening, an evening whose anthropomorphic traits I, post-disaster, characterized with mildly self-flagellating images, such as nervous nose picking, mumbling, and shame. Oh, reliable old Shame! How the echoes of your approaching footfalls quicken my heart, send rivulets of battery acid to the welcoming lengths of my armpit hair, and call to standing attention on the base of my tongue the ghost of coffees past. It was an evening to remember for its inability to be forgotten.
Though anxiety and second thoughts were familiar feelings prior to asking strangers for insults, dark premonitions were not. For no particular reason I could see, I was suffering from the acute desire to skip the Q train to McNally Jackson and instead ride the L to domestic safety. But I’d humped the bricklike Art of Fielding up and down subway pee-ways and through the grimace of what was then my full-time job, so: dark thoughts circling my head or not, I set out to ask Mr. Harbach to look into my soul and laugh.
Harbach’s work on n+1 suggested he’d be happy to oblige. Happy insulters make for easy, rewarding nights. Add to that the apparent evidence that he was a fellow lover of America’s slowest, most unabashedly boringest game, and I just had to go. The Art of Fielding was a BASEBALL book, and how often can we self-identifying literati hold our heads up proudly in our favorite Brooklyn coffee shops with sports genre type books in our laps? It seemed that Harbach pulled a Chabon – genre subject, literary pedigree.
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Posted in Book Reviews, Insults, Read It.
Tagged all the literary young men, boot straps, chad harbach, douchetard, failure, insults, judas, keith gessen, novel, reading, the art of fielding, three months off
I Hate You, Kelly Donahue by Mark Svartz
Brevity is the soul of wit
December 15, 2011 — In theory, well-adjusted people should be glad when friends succeed. What kind of shotgun bro wouldn’t happily cheers tallboys of Natty Light with his wheelman after pulling an awesome donut in the Wal-Mart parking lot? What golfer wouldn’t share an atta-boy high-five with a pal who just knocked in a 15-footer for birdie?
It’s when those accomplishments stack up, however, when your bro pulls the donut in front of some admiring girls (driving his brand new Ferrari) or your pal birdied his fifth hole in a row to beat you by 16 strokes (in front of some admiring girls, in front of his new Ferrari), that the sweet taste of joy curdles into a lumpy reminder of your own shortcomings. We, or maybe just I, celebrate another’s accomplishments insofar as it approaches, paces, or laps my own.
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Posted in Insults, Read It.
Tagged book review, ferrari, great insults, i hate you kelly donahue, i hate you mark svartz, i see dead people, insults, mark svartz, my own shortcomings, pugilism
Adam Ross Reading Ladies & Gentlemen @ BookCourt
Sneaky, Adam. Very sneaky
It’s been a while, but not for lack of insults. I’ve been “away” from writing, doffing drams of whiskey in Scotland and pounding out words for my 10-to-6. Hopefully this fallow period will grow some fresh words, though all I can see right now is the pile of shitty compost. It hasn’t been all sofas and procrastination, however; during my lazy hours, I racked up another 20 or so insults from some of my most favorite authors. It should be an exciting time to get my ass back into doing the things I think I love. I’m restarting with Adam Ross, author of one of the first insults to grace this blog. Without further etc.
-b
July 19th, 2011 — Adam Ross has a bit of Mel Brooks in him (but which part? Ba-dum-pssh!). Shining eyes that look small, set underneath a gentle curling dollop of sandy blonde hair. His almost cocky smile says he’s thinking of a joke I’d probably not get, and he’s probably right. Read his books, however, and you start to imagine a David Lynch or John Carpenter. Maybe that makes sense, describing an author by way of pop culture filmmakers: humor and psychological horror, with a dash of humanity.
The author of Mr. Peanut and now Ladies & Gentlemen is no stranger to dark humor. Peanut is confounding and at times brilliant, a grim (or any of the other “dismal” synonyms various reviewers have used, like “bleak,” “dark,” or “ominous“) and often fucked-up-funny portrayal of love, marriage, and ownership set within a detective novel’s framework set within another detective novel’s framework. Or something like that. I finished Peanut thinking I’d “figured it out,” but further examination and discussion revealed that the story’s plot twists and multiple characters and even the way Ross played with the very tropes and language of murder mystery novels were often beyond my understanding. “Frustrating, but I’m probably not quick enough… very worthwhile!” would be my blurb. I’m looking forward to dissecting a more manageable frog in short story form.
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Posted in Insults, Readings
Tagged adam ross, bookcourt, grim, insults, ladies & gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, mel brooks, mr peanut, performer, powerful publishing women, reading, ross, the word fuck, whiskey
Sam Lipsyte @ McNally Jackson Books
I'd like a hug from Sam Lipsyte some day
May 9th, 2011 — I’m trumping my laziness and ignoring my backlog of insults. I met Sam Lipsyte at McNally Jackson last night.
He stared me down. He blankfaced me like I’d picked the dumbest fucking idea in the world out from between my teeth and flicked it on his lapels. And what was I even doing here, coughing out some stumbledrunk idea about insults. Plus, I had bad breath. Shit breath. Gargling turds and talking nonsense, why didn’t I just go home? Why didn’t I go to yoga instead? In the 20 seconds it took to mumble my usual introduction with decreasing volume and enthusiasm, I’d decided to run away on the opening lip-twitch of rejection like some frightened base runner going on the pitcher’s first twitch.
It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected, the blank look. It was theretofore inconceivable that Sam Lipsyte would be the type to spurn my insult. His books are the off-beat, dark kind of funny that’s right in my wheelhouse. This is the guy I’d loved like a literary Happy Meal during my toddler days of seeing myself as a capital-W Writer. Home Land was the book to pass along to friends I’d made in English and creative writing classes to prove my literary hipness. It proved I was the type of reader/Writer who of course read the classics and requisites fed to me but also found good books by looking. I sensed that his prose reflected back on me; by being the one to “find” his book — and it is a damn good book — it was somehow an affirmation of my taste, and by association, my skill as a writer. I got more traction in the undergrad literary scene out of Home Land, Hanif Kureshi’s Buddha of Suburbia, and my fake understanding of Barthelme than I had any right to.
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Posted in Insults
Tagged geoff dyer, great insults, holy shit, home land, insults, literary boner, mcnally jackson, poker face, sam lipsyte, the ask, the subject steve, venus drive
I'm particularly in love with my Denis Johnson collection, though I'm still missing Jesus' Son -- if anyone wants to sell me a copy... I FOUND A COPY!
I’m guessing that Thoreau’d sneer at me, but I take great comfort in being surrounded with the beautiful things I own. I figure most people collect something — DVDs, jewelry from ex-husbands, grudges. My love is 1st edition and signed books.
This past weekend, our household of hissing cats and beautiful women made the move from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The charm of living on the sixth floor of a six-story walk-up, with its rats, cockroaches, and garbage being stored indoors under the only staircase until the zero-hour of garbage day, had worn off after three years. We’ll miss the local color: the 2nd-story prostitute who cycled through Johns quickly and loudly enough to attract the attention and ire of her octogenarian neighbor, who called the cops when she heard through the building’s notoriously thin walls a John mouthing off about a gun; the two local “troubled kids” high schools, one of whose gangs I witnessed beat a kid with a hunk of 2X4 outside of the local McDonald’s, and who supposedly died from falling off the curb, busting his head open on the asphalt and bleed onto his screaming friend’s coat; the cute, middle-aged gay couple down the street who always let me take pictures of their corgi pups to save for later when I needed a boost of cute. There was no shortage of interesting people and great food.
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Gary Shteyngart Reading Super Sad True Love Story
I was wearing a T-shirt that read, Kentucky: Not Just Fried Chicken
August 2nd, 2010 – This write-up was another post that I’ve struggled to release. I wanted to write something interesting and preferably humorous about the evening because Gary Shteyngart and his novel, Super Sad True Love Story, are intelligent and funny. I found myself unable to create a coherent message about what I was reading, what I witnessed and felt, and how that interacts with who I was and what I was doing. Some sort of blockage was happening, as paralyzing as it was frightening.
I’m going to probably stray into maudlin territory. I apologize; this was the only way I could get something out.
My girlfriend, and sometimes co-writer, goes out of her way to share the things I enjoy: literature, readings, insults, corgis. She is my conspirator in many of these signings, sitting next to me in hard plastic seats, chatting and offering a little shove of encouragement to wait in line for an insult. She’s the extra motivation I often need to even board the train out to Brooklyn after a 9-6 day of wageslaving.
On what was an otherwise amazing evening, with Shteyngart sounding easy and relaxed, entertaining his Brooklyn neighbors, I’ll remember Gary Shteyngart’s reading as the first time I fucked up bad enough to make my best friend cry.
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Posted in Book Reviews, Insults, Readings
Tagged baby, book review, Gary Shteyngart, insult, misha, novel, self-improvement, Shteyngart, Super Sad True, Super Sad True Love Story
Karen Russell & Wells Tower Discussing Swamplandia!
My 5th grade psychotherapist did say I was a manipulative prick
March 15, 2011 — Karen Russell knows how to make a little blogger’s quiet heart squeal with joy.
Not only did she and Wells Tower engage in some hot back and forth over writing, novels, Florida, Southern Gothic, and Columbia University; not only did I get top-notch insults from two of the New Yorker Magazine’s “30 Under 40″ stud authors; not only did I eat crackers and cheese, with grapes and a bit of wine; not only were those vittles provided gratis by the NYPL and its Young Lions program; not only did I get yelled at only once for breaking some invisible line separating the cheese servers’ side of the buffet from the cheese eaters’ side of the buffet, mostly because my love of Brie demanded I get around the old lady taking her sweet time with a couple strawberry slices; not only did all of this go abnormally, amazingly well, but Russell sent me spinning by saying:
- I was wondering if/when (ed: can’t remember which) you would come for my insult.
- The people at Powell’s (awesome bookstore in Portland, OR) told me to watch out for you.
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Tao Lin Reading – Richard Yates
Tao Lin, darling of the sweatpants mafia
September 7, 2010 – What the hell is going on when Tao Lin reads at the same type of corporate bookstore from which his “protagonist” steals books in his new novel, Richard Yates? Why does Lin’s muddled, muffled, painfully awkward high school sophomore-on-Xanax voice sometimes feel like an act, and Yates is his alibi? How is it that none of this matters, that Richard Yates might be an important comment on modern life, or it might be a hybrid cash-in novel based on a copy/paste transcript of a melodramatic Gmail relationship?
I’m stumped. There seems to be something going on here, but I’m not intelligent enough to suss it out. Three weeks I’ve struggled with this constipated idea and now I need to shit it out.
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