Short Takes
December 24, 2015
Married Sex: the audio book
The audio book of Married Sex: A Love Story is finally available. May Wuthrich produced and directed, Tavia Gilbert read the female characters, I read the description and the narrator’s dialogue. I hadn’t opened the book in months, and I’d blocked the simplest fact — it’s drenched with emotion — and I certainly had no idea that Tavia could take the wife’s pain into the Streeposphere and that my response to those scenes would be to read, through tears, in a voice that cracked, but we decided to keep all of that. If you’re looking for a story about a married couple, some harmless sex and an unexpected aftermath, here you go.
December 22, 2015
“The Long Haul” — come for the story, want to flee, stay for the writing.
I met Amanda Stern at a publishing party. A few minutes before I had to leave, I was bored. So I asked her, “If I don’t hit on you, can we talk for 10 minutes?” About three minutes in, I knew I wanted to read her novel, “The Long Haul.” Key fact: It was published in 2003, when she was really, really young. As are her characters: The Alcoholic, who’s 20 but looks 17, and the narrator, his girlfriend, who looks 15. The book hits the hipster low points: drugs, rock clubs, chain-smoking, attempted rape, attachments to former shrinks, long road trips. A lot of that life strikes this old fart as appalling. But the themes matter at any age: In a relationship, “what about the future, the long haul?” and “Is life worth living when you’ve let someone else choose the life you’re to lead?” Along the way, there’s wit: “I am starting to love him a total of an hour a week.” And wisdom: “It’s like the day after someone dies, when you see everything as if for the first time, because the world has new meaning without them.” This novel marks the beginning of a writer with a future. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
December 15, 2015
Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger Poppin’ Daddies, Knock Me Your Lobes
The headline is from Lord Buckley, but it could just as easily come from the mouth of Chandler Brossard (1922-1993), who was the hippest American writer you’ve never heard of. I’ve read him, but that’s because I knew him. We met at LOOK Magazine — if you were born after it shuttered, LOOK was like LIFE, just with better photographers and a social conscience — when Chandler was 45, with an office and a byline, and I was an 18-year-old summer intern. He had heavy eyelids and an expression of cosmic weariness; he was the most cynical human being I’d ever seen, which, of course, I found fascinating. Chandler’s basic position was that he was a novelist, and a great one, and that this journalism gig was like playing piano in a whorehouse. Naturally, I inhaled his books. I was knocked out. We became friends.
“Who Walk in Darkness” is a street-level account of the Greenwich Village scene in the early 1950s. It was considered the first Beat novel, Kerouac before there was Kerouac, but that’s to date it, and in no way is this book dated. [To buy the Kindle edition of “To Walk in Darkness” from Amazon, click here.] “The Bold Saboteurs” is the story of a teen punk who has the soul of a poet. It’s a book you’d expect Albert Camus to write if he spent a season working in the crew of a young criminal. I’m delighted that Open Road Media, the publisher of my novel, is the e-book publisher of Chandler’s fiction and that “The Bold Saboteurs” is featured in its selection called For the Book Nerd Who’s Read It All. [To buy the Kindle edition of “The Bold Saboteurs” from Amazon, click here.]
November 28, 2015
Friends & Family: Some Recent Books I’d Like Even If I Didn’t Know The People
Eating Delancey: A Celebration of Jewish Food
In the introduction, Joan Rivers writes, “Jewish food makes Italian food seem like Lean Cuisine.” Potato pancakes! Jackie Mason jokes! Bagel and a schmear! Ratner’s! Real knishes from Yonah Schimmel!Lox, eggs and onions! Brisket with prunes and raisins! And stories — such stories! My youth comes back to me, my parents’ youth comes back to me, and, come to think of it, my grandparents’ youth comes back to me in this encyclopedia of book, rich in calories, recipes and lore. I worked with Jordan Schaps, the co-author, at New York Magazine, where he was the photography editor. He did great work there. He did even better here. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here.] 1576877221Roberta Kaplan and Lisa Dickey: ‘Then Comes Marriage: United States V. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA’
When her wife died, the IRS required Edie Windsor to pay $360,000 in estate taxes. As Windsor has said, if her spouse had been named “Theo” rather than “Thea” she would not have had to pay a nickel. Why was she billed? Because the marriage was legal in Canada but not in New York, where they lived. And why was that? Because the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — signed into law by Bill Clinton — prohibited the federal government from recognizing any same-sex marriages. And why is DOMA gone? Because Roberta Kaplan, Edie Windsor’s genius lawyer, sued on narrow grounds. My friend Lisa Dickey co-authored Kaplan’s book, which will be catnip for lawyers and anyone who loves justice.
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.Elizabeth Benedict: ‘Me, My Hair, and I: Twenty-seven Women Untangle an Obsession’
Short hair, long story. Long hair, ditto. And there are also revealing stories here about Hindu Bengali hair, Hasidic hair, gray hair, pubic hair. And Elizabeth Benedict’s hair: “The older I get, the more attention I pay to my hair, and faced with a scalp full of gray roots, the last thing I intend to do is let nature take her course.” Elizabeth Benedict, author of five novels and “The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers,” has been a Guest Butler. I can attest: Women will find humor, insight and poignancy here.
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.Ernest Beyl: ‘Sketches From A North Beach Journal’
Ernest Beyl, a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, has spent decades among the city’s more exotic citizens. Now he’s profiled its whores, poets, kooks, journalists, strippers, musicians, artists and beatniks in a book that will enrich any visit to San Francisco. Among the profiles: Carol Doda, who danced topless, sporting massive silicone breasts. Says Beyl: “It’s invigorating to live in a city where one of the most prominent citizens was a topless dancer.”
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.Cara Nicoletti: ‘Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way Through Great Books’
Cara Nicolletti “comes from a long line of butchers.” (Her illustrator is the aptly named Marion Bolognesi). She’s also a reader. Combining her interests, she digs into favorite books, extracts their meals — like the garlic soup from “Pride and Prejudice” and the cherry pie from “In Cold Blood” — and produces recipes that recreate them. I can’t help saying it: a delicious book.
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.Susan Cheever: ‘Drinking in America: Our Secret History’
We are a nation of drinkers — maybe of drunks. The Mayflower was awash in beer, then ran short, forcing a landing in Massachusetts. The colonists, Cheever estimates, spent 25% of their income on liquor. By 1820, Americans drank three times as much as they do today. Cheever: “The interesting truth, untaught in most schools and unacknowledged in most written history, is that a glass of beer, a bottle of rum, a keg of hard cider, a flask of whiskey, or even a dry martini was often the silent, powerful third party to many decisions that shaped the American story from the 17th century to the present.”
To buy the book from Amazon, click here.
For the Kindle edition, click here.November 28, 2015
Car Seat Headrest: Way ahead of the curve
Biting my clothes to keep from screaming
taking pills to keep from dreaming
I want to break something important
I want to kick my dad in the shinsI was referring to the present in past tense
it was the only way that I could survive it
I want to close my head in the car door
I want to sing this song like I’m dyingheavy boots on my throat, I need
I need something soon I need something soon….For The New Yorker (yes, The New Yorker) on Car Seat Headrest, click here.
To buy the CD from Amazon, click here.
To buy the MP3 download, click here.
For the tour schedule, click here.