cafe gitane @ the jane hotel - nyc

quoteworthy

I just reread Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (whom I miss so) recently and thought I'd share these favorites:

"Also I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favorite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it."

"I couldn't keep my hands to myself, the pastels in long boxes, the palette knives, the handmade papers hanging on rolls, I tested every sample, I wrote my name in blue pen and in green oil stick, in orange crayon and in charcoal, it felt like I was signing the contract of my life."

When the father is missing... "It makes me sick. Physical things Forty years of loving someone becomes staple and tape."

r.e.m. - nightswimming

If you are feeling nostalgic for REM or just all things beautiful, this video for "Nightswimming" makes me drool. The frames are so interesting from a slurpee machine, closed dry cleaners, sticking a hand in a ceiling fan, broom pushing, and swimming (at night). I used to sing this ditty for the grown ups at childhood pool parties.

rem & soul food - weaver d's

SoLost: Automatic! (A Day at Weaver D's) from Oxford American on Vimeo.

Lucky for me, I just ate some blueberry pancakes so this video does not make me want to fry something. I still have my cassette tape of Automatic for the People in my old room in Bama (that is, if my brother hasn't pawned it). I had no idea the title was derived from an Athen's soul food joint but it makes sense as the boys started out there. This video is amazing and yes, I'm going to have to go visit once I'm in Georgia. I love the cling wrap that's been tossed on the ice tea dispenser. I love that the owner has a cookbook named Automatic Y'all. I also love how big they pile those plates. In the south, if you are skinny everyone thinks you're poor. This video comes from a post by the fresh and exciting journal Oxford American. I just got hooked to it and now I have a big ole crush. I cruise this website about as much as I check on houses in Savannah. I recommend subscribing, web stalking etc. Their recent food issue has a photo by my friend Eric Ogden and it has amazing essays on the lore behind making cakes and eating dirt. Yes. I want to write for them.

jordana zeldin - best neighbor & shutterbug

Jordana is the best neighbor I've ever had and a brilliant photographer. Her photographs are so moving and channel that spirit you see in Eggleston's work. Once you explore her website, the collection up now (Open 7 Days) will confirm this as they are stunning shots of the seemingly mundane--grocery carts, a hose, and the housekeeping touch at a Motel 6 (above). Her website is right here: http://www.jordanazeldin.com/

The image of the clothes in plastic remains my favorite. It is a bit like a memory body bag. I've always felt a story there and when it's on an exhibition wall you can really see all of the different price tags, handwriting, and the coloring is just so seductive. One day I will buy it!

This double panel shot is really lovely and reminds me of work David Hilliard does although the eye remains totally Jordana Zeldin.

Lastly, we are collaborating as I was asked to do a postcard issue for Abe's Penny. The editor was at my KGB reading. I will let you know what we decide but it's a micro-story by me accompanying four images by Jordana to make a postcard book. If you start crushing on Jordana's snaps, you can follow her blog as I do: http://hereismytoday.blogspot.com/

william eggleston on shooting

I watched an awful documentary about William Eggleston recently called William Eggleston in the Real World. Apparently in the "real" world, you can't hear William talk! That element is just embarrassing for a documentary. In the more traditional route of complaints, It was poorly edited and shot but there were some moments that held me till the end like this one...

When asked by the documentary filmmaker why William only takes a shot or two per image instead of doing more coverage he says,

"Why would I take more than two? Any more than that just gets confusing."

malls of america

I have a new blog find that will make you want to find an old copy of the board game Mall Madness or just go to the sleepiest mega-store-complex in need of a fixer-upper and shoot till your camera's battery dies.

I don't even like malls all that much. I'm a big fan of outdoor shopping malls where you can park and leave. It's not lazy. I just don't want to have to pass all the other BS! And there's more--the wobbly-eyed dolls across from the piercing pagoda and wondering if it's safe to put your purse on the ground when you can see another person's feet three-hands away. Or, the fact that "Drops of Jupiter" will be in my head for lord knows how long thanks to a visit to Dillard's. I do like old arcade games particularly Skee-Ball.

Back on target though, I do weirdly enjoy the real folks of America people watching. There is something terribly beautiful and depressing watching elderly women in wind-suits power walk with their hair perfectly curled and blush dripping from sweat into the look of a skin-meringue. There is the opportunity to wonder if the Carousel is any fun at all or just exquisitely designed. What happened to those mannequin's dressed to the nines or even better live models pretending to be mannequins? I suppose the partial nudity at your local Abercombie & Fitch is the answer to that. Back in the day, we kids would bike to the food court to hang out. If you liked someone or they liked you, they were the last person you talked to. We practiced intense stares we mistook as sexy and none of us ever got anywhere. This was probably for the best. I stopped hanging out at malls when I was fourteen. I took up theatre instead.

So, at long last, here is a blog by Keith Milford that curates ghost town malls, closed malls, and on-their-way-out malls across America: http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

quoteworthy

"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."

- Andre Malraux

the great gatsby - perfect?

Selections from the novel in support of my case:

"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others - poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner - young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."

"One thing's sure and nothing's surer
The rich get richer and the poor get - children."

"Her voice is full of money."

"I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands."

"It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy - it increased her value in his eyes."

"In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year....Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"For a moment, the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened--then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk."

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

quoteworthy

"My subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil."

- Flannery O'Connor

john updike, bless him

I have so many posts to upload my friends, but couldn't resist an Updike teaser.

This is the link to a fantastic interview with the man in The Paris Review:
http://www.parisreview.com/viewinterview.php/prmMID/4219

Here's my favorite bit, especially since I have just left New York for an indefinite amount of time:

INTERVIEWER

You seem to shun literary society. Why?

UPDIKE

I don’t, do I? Here I am, talking to you. In leaving New York
in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of
agents and would-be’s and with-it nonparticipants; this world
seemed unnutritious and interfering. Hemingway described liter-
ary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each
other. When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but
toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the
books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a
countryish teenaged boy finding them, and having them speak to
him.

zadie smith's rules for writers

1 - When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.

2 - When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

3 - Don't romanticise your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.

4 - Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.

5 - Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.

6 - Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.

7 - Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.

8 - Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

9 - Don't confuse honours with achievement.

10 - Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.

See it officially here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/22/zadie-smith-rules-for-writers

the corrections

Why I love The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen:

“Chip sat on a freezing guardrail and smoked and took comfort in the sturdy mediocrity of American commerce, the unpretending metal and plastic roadside hardware. The thunk of a gas-pump nozzle halting when a tank was filled, the humility and promptness of its service. And a 99-cent Big Gulp banner swelling with wind and sailing nowhere, its nylon ropes whipping and pinging on a galvanized standard. And the black sanserif numerals of gasoline prices, the company of so many 9s. And American sedans moving down the access road at nearly stationary speeds like thirty. And orange and yellow plastic pennants shivering overhead on guys.”

“He realized why, on Monday night, Aaron had come and unilaterally apologized for having called him “horrible,” and why Caleb on Tuesday, for the first time in a month, had invited him to play foosball, and why Jonah, on Wednesday, had brought him, unbidden, on a cork-lined tray, a second martini that Caroline had poured. He saw why his children had turned agreeable and solicitous: because Caroline had told them that their father was struggling with clinical depression.”

“There’s bacon, you like bacon,” Enid sang. This was a cynical, expedient fraud, one of her hundred daily conscious failures as a mother.

“Brian had moved through the world like a golden retriever.”

This book is hysterical (pyramids of shrimp, mixed grill, salmon in pants) and Franzen writes better fights than I've read elsewhere. It is also incredibly brave knocking at stereotypes and taboo.

great openings

I've been paying a load of attention to how openings work and here are some favorites:

"Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 0627 hours on January 1, 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Muskateer Estate facedown on the steering wheel, hoping the judgment would not be too heavy on him."

White Teeth, by Zadie Smith

"The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium."

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

"In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper."

Invitation to a Beheading, by Vladimir Nabakov

"My friend Levine had only a few months to go on his doctoral dissertation, but when, one Sunday afternoon at Acres of Books, he came upon the little black paperback by Dr. Frank J. Kemp, he decided almost immediately to plagiarize it."

Title Story in "A Model World," a collection of stories by Michael Chabon

"Though I haven't ever been on the screen I was brought up in pictures. Rudolf Valentino came to my fifth birthday party--or so I was told. I put this down only to indicate that even before the age of reason I was in a position to watch the wheels go round."

Opening paragraph of "The Last Tycoon" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The talk was that a new face had appeared on the embankment: a lady with a little dog."

First line of the story "The Lady with the Little Dog" by Anton Chekhov

mystic, connecticut

As a Valentine's gift to each other, Mark and I took the train to Mystic and passed along the seashore for nearly two hours. We decided to go to this sleepy seafaring village because there is so little to do there. We figured we'd read and write and not go shopping. Well, we bought 21 books at Annette's Antique & Treasure Shop.

Some highlights: The Jackson Pollock is a 1967 exhibition catalogue from the MoMA. The show was supposed to be directed by Frank O'Hara (love him) but he passed away and was replaced by William S. Lieberman. It cost me $2 and is a chronology of his life and work. The Eureka book is an amazing book from the 70's all about inventions. From The Picture Press is another MoMA catalogue from 1973 with amazing photo journalism.

The food was really the highlight. I am a new burning hearted adorer of the lobster roll. Such a simple idea, such deliciousness! As for Mystic Pizza, yes, we did. It's far cheesier than you can even imagine and I'm not talking about the pizza. They play the movie on three different screens, sell merch, and there are little head shots of horse-laugh Julia everywhere. I may be ribbing her a bit thick but I once played a drinking game in Portland, Oregon with friends where we watched My Best Friend's Wedding and took a shot of tequila every time she did that laugh of hers. We got drunk fast.

Lastly, throughout my weekend I had to read Native Son by Richard Wright for my class with E.L. Doctorow. It's really not a blast to read about two grotesque murders before getting pretty for dinner but it is for the most part a good book as it's chilly voice is so frightening I couldn't put it down. I'd say more specifically but I'd be giving it all away. It is profound that the main character Bigger actually admires Hitler's ability to control others. He is so oppressed he does not consider that Hitler is just another white man as a threat but rather finds him a strange hero. It's disgusting and says so much of the confusion surrounding civil rights which is my blood, sweat, and tears with my book. I'm writing a book that I hope reexamines those issues through a family and it's chilling to think how little civil rights has progressed. So many assume it has but even the health care team in D.C. is facing abuse similar to the sixties; that means bricks flying through windows and hate signs. Civil rights is devastating territory as we just can't govern morality.

flannery o'connor - childhood home

Flannery O'Connor's childhood home in Savannah on Lafayette Square. It neighbors the Hamilton Turner Inn and from the upstairs window there is a terrific view of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.

Flannery's Crib. I'm sure you are curious. The screen was to keep the baby from contact with insects, yellow fever, and obviously from falling out. It's like an airy coffin or a display case for curiosities which Flannery of course was.

bonaventure cemetery

Bonaventure is a favorite place and I want to be buried here. If you think thats gothic, ahem, I've actually made out to Morrissey in this cemetery. It's lovely to come read by the river or just to walk amongst the ancient and gorgeous gravestones. The lovely redhead is my close friend Jesse whom I've known since high school and we were roommates freshmen year at the Savannah College of Art & Design. I just got a historical society book on the place so I will be updating this entry with some history soon.

savannah, i love you

I miss drinking tall PBR's at Pinkie Master's. I miss being knuckle deep in guache. I miss Spanish Moss drenched trees and ghost stories even when they're bad. I miss Bonaventure and the river. I miss Forsyth Park and porches. I miss excellent customer service and talking to strangers. I miss reading books at Gallery Espresso.

quotes from the fitzgerald's

“We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.”

 Zelda Fitzgerald

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

rich cohen - "closing time"

I love this essay on the automobile industry by Rich Cohen in The Believer and namely the talk of car salesmen:

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200909/?read=article_cohen

Some favorite passages:

"In my early years, between the ages of seven and fourteen, this meant a trip to Steve Foley Cadillac on Skokie Highway, in Northbrook, Illinois, which I loved, as the showroom of Foley Cadillac, unlike the shabby, product-stuffed showrooms of today, was glamour and glitz, with each new Cadillac raised on a white pedestal, where it seemed to drift, as in a cloud, above the everyday world. At some point, though, I would slip away from my father and the back-and-forth taking place in the office that salesmen, as I later learned, call “the pit,” or “the hole,” and wander among the Cadillacs, slide behind the huge steering wheels, breathe deep the new-car smell, play with the 8-track and cruise control. I look back on those occasions as Adam in his later years must have looked back on his lazy days of doing nothing and wanting nothing to do in the Garden."

"A few years later, he brought me to buy my first car. This was done as I imagine fathers in other, exotic, more interesting cultures bring their sons for that first trip to the whorehouse. I did not go to the Cadillac dealer, of course, but to the used-Honda lot a few miles down Skokie Highway. Did my father stand a foot behind me as I made this deal, nodding, frowning, monitoring? Of course he did. I narrowed the field to a 1984 Honda Civic, a hideous fishbowl of a car. It scored well in twenty of the twenty-three categories on the checklist my father had given me, hand-printed in all-caps. As I was talking numbers, eating up time, preparing “the nibble,” my father called me aside. We stood under the streetlamp, lit to dispel the midwinter Chicago gloom, as traffic whistled past."

"The room is bugged—know that. A manager in back is eating a sandwich as he listens to every word you say."

sorry readers & an opening

I am devastatingly behind on this. I've been on two trips and have an army's worth of blogs to get together. Sorry to those of you who are faithful readers. In the meantime here's a friends opening I recommend.