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
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
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
Gary Shteyngart Reading Super Sad True Love Story
I was wearing a T-shirt that read, Kentucky: Not Just Fried Chicken
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
Tao Lin Reading – Richard Yates
Tao Lin, darling of the sweatpants mafia
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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More than a little Don Rickles
Fellow lovers of literature and audience members: shut up. I’m not interested. The author isn’t. Neither is your mom, your wife, or your dog. The audience is rolling its eyes and looking at its watch. More than likely, you’re not interested in what you’re saying, either.
You’re talking to hear/watch/feel yourself being listened to by Intelligent People.
Back when I was a cute, trim college student, living in a rotting shitbox near school with a fellow acolyte of youth, invulnerability, and alcohol, I fucking loved to hear myself being intelligent. To float above myself, mind’s eye steered by co-captains, Arrogance & Obliviousness, taking in the crowd’s appreciation of my interesting ideas. Like looking at myself in the mirror and managing to see studflesh and allure where there was nothing but a spare tire and the self-awareness of an autistic puppy. I’d peruse the author’s content, think of some unique position to take, back it up with pagination and direct quotes, and poof! I was out on the town, seen by some pretty girls and maybe some classmates, Being Intelligent w/ Other Intelligent People.
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Posted in Book Reviews, Insults, Read It., Readings
Tagged 192 books, don rickles, harding, hipster bitch, novel, old people, paul harding, rant, shut up
David Means wrote this insult with ink made from orphan tears
I bought two copies of Means’ new collection of short stories, The Spot. One for him to sign, the other to leave in the Kids’ section of my local library, looking innocuous if inconspicuous, its cover lacking the cheerful collection of primary colors and anthropomorphic animals one normally finds in the Children section of the local library. Ready to permanently scar some unsuspecting Eager Beaver Reader into wanting to become a short story author.
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Book Review of CD Payne’s Youth In Revolt
After reading the 400-odd pages of Payne’s overwrought fictional memoir, I doubt I’ll make the time to watch Michael Cera play the novel’s lead, Nick Twisp. I’d suggest you skip both.
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