Mr. Microphone

From Jason Polan's Every Person in New York:

Tomorrow (4/29)! Book Culture!

Tomorrow night (Weds.) at 7, Ed reads from Personal Days and talks to Damion Searls, a noted translator (Walser, Rilke, et al.) and the author of a dazzling book of short fiction, What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going. This event is at Book Culture, 112th St. off Broadway. (Click here to see the poster.)

My blurb for WWD&WWG begins: "I've read books this pleasurable before, but most of them have been in my dreams..."

* * *

And next Monday (5/4), come hear Ed's talk, "The Amnesia of Influence," at the Columbia Alumni Association's Café Arts evening at PicNic (101st and 102nd)—$10 (includes free drink...you'll need it...)

Between 4th and 100th

Have you ever been a Starving Artist, and did it make you brilliant, or just hungry?

In my twenties I memorized the prices of the cheap meals I regularly ate — the lunch special at Taj Mahal on 4th Street, for example, or the big roast chicken at the now defunct Cuban Chinese place near 100th. I would make sure I had the exact change necessary for the tip, so that I could put the money on the table and leave quickly. I don’t know that this had any value beyond contributing to my ability to tell you this story now, years later.

—"Ed Park Regrets This Interview," The L Magazine

Reading this Thursday (4/29), 7 p.m. at Book Culture, with Mr. Damion Searls (What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going).

Which one was the "Good Starbucks"?

For as long as mankind has occupied New York, there have been two Starbucks locations on Astor Place, a block away from each other, which occasioned many predictable remarks. No more! This means everything. —Gawker

(From Mark.)

The EP rundown

I. Upcoming readings:
Tues., 4/21 Pacific Standard (with Nathaniel Rich)
•Weds., 4/29 Book Culture (with Damion Searls)
Mon., 5/4 Café Arts (talk)
(Click here for more details.)

II. Latest story:
"Untitled," in the debut issue of Gigantic (print only). Features work by and talk with/from Gary Shteyngart, Joe Wenderoth, Deb Olin Unferth, Tao Lin, Malcolm Gladwell, Lauren Spohrer, Doug Elsass, Justin Taylor, and many others.



III. Latest Astral Weeks column:
On Christopher Miller's The Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank

IV. Latest edition of Personal Days
Vintage (UK) paperback, only £7.99!

IV. Upcoming publications:
Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing From The Believer (McSweeney's, June)

Burn This Book, ed. Toni Morrison (HarperStudio, May)

"The Freud Notebook," in Post Road #17

"This Is the Writing You have Been Waiting for," introductory essay for Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works (UC Press, September)

Create-a-caption

This week's New Yorker caption contest — an island in a sea of cubicles.

(From Jenny)

OK!

Exciting news — Book Smart Tulsa, "a new way of looking at the role of books in our community," has selected Personal Days as its first title.

Here's an article from Tulsa World: "Book Pub Is Like a Book Club, Only Cool."

Can't wait to hear what people think!

"No comment"

Or, "Nice work if you can get it, Ch. XVIII":

Although she’s not yet sure exactly what she’ll be doing on her trip, she has some ideas. She would like to teach English to monks in Sri Lanka and possibly help bring solar power to remote parts of the Himalayas. She’ll probably hit 10 to 15 destinations around the world, most likely practicing not-for-profit law wherever she can be helpful.

The best part of all: Skadden is paying her about $80,000 to do it.

—Susan Dominus, NYT

Upcoming dates — 4/21 in Brooklyn, 4/29 in Manhattan

On April 21st at 7 p.m., I'll be reading at Pacific Standard in Brooklyn, with Nathaniel Rich (The Mayor's Tongue). More info here.


And...click this poster:



Or if you don't want to click: I'll be talking to (and reading with) Damion Searls, author of a wonderful new collection of stories, What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going (great title, too), at 7 p.m. on Weds., April 29, at Book Culture (536 W. 112th St.) in Manhattan.

My embarrassingly long blurb on the back of Damion's book reads, in part: "He can conjure a word like neodisjunctivist and make you like it."

Are you an Ernie or a Bert?

Remember birthdays

Loop

“ERROR: Error: An error occurred loading the first error.”

(From Erasing)

The final cut

Another dream:

I had a dream i was a secretary, or was playing one in a movie. i took notes on a pad of post-its, asked them what sort of “made-up title” a man i was asked to contact held. Everyone cleared their throats. I knew it was a misstep. Drew Barrymore was there and we shared little winks and laughs with each other in between takes; I took an immediate liking to her, but soon noticed her disgusting teeth, yellow brown, coming out of the wrong places— as I performed my lines i wondered if we were having a rehearsal, and these were just her real teeth the public never got to see, or this was the final cut and they were necessary to her character in some unforeseen way.

(More.)

Quietly skulking

Levi writes:

I dreamed last night that I was in some sort of Personal Days stage play immersion theater thing: as in, they somehow gave each audience member the chance to go up on stage and experience being laid off, and either quietly skulking out or tearfully saying goodbye to the office friends whose worth and importance they'd only now realized.

It was very strange, but it seemed to be successful; there were lines around the block.