Chipchase and Maltravers

At the National Book Critics Circle blog, the one and only Damion Searls not only said nice things about Personal Days, but mentioned it in the same breath as a book by one of my heroes, Anthony Powell. The question: What's your favorite comic novel? (Over to you, D.S.)

Can I name two? Anthony (Dance to the Music of Time) Powell's little-known third novel, Agents and Patients, is hilarious: rogue Freudian screenwriter-adventurers Chipchase and Maltravers try to take dim, well-intentioned, wealthy Blore-Smith of everything he's got. Somebody get this book back into print!

But only humor of your own moment can touch you to the core. The funniest book I've read from the past ten less-than-hilarious years--both deeply moving and literally-laugh-out-loud-in-public funny--is Ed Park's Personal Days, an office dystopia fizzing with formal and verbal energy.

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...)

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)

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."

No Lucky Jim?

At the Book Culture blog: What Ed Park's students are reading.

(EP appears at Book Culture for a reading and conversation with Damion Searls (author of the excellent What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going) on April 29.

PD news flashes

News flash!

Personal Days is a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award!

* * *

On April 29, at 7 p.m., Ed joins Damion Searls (What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going) in conversation at Book Culture on W. 112th St.

(Click here for other March and April appearances.)