Was the highlight of the event the flaming Volcano which brought the Philadelphia Fire Department to the event? Was it Mark Brunetti angering the crowd by reading politically incorrect poetry by Mike Noordsy? Was it Carnevolution antics by sideshow performers Matt, Eric, and Betty? Was it poet Steve McNamara of Walking English, or poet John Petrolini? Was it literary theater by Rebecca Roe with cohorts Alabaster and St. Scribbly?
There was a lot to choose from-- a rotating feast of underground art. Brunetti and Philly's Frank Walsh put on a fantastic event. I was proud to be part of it. A good time was had by all those who attended, who were by turns outraged and entertained, but not bored.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
See the Show!
Big ULA/Idiom show at the Rotunda this Saturday, March 7. I'm scheduled to read, among many others. Check it out!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Culture Shock
Here I am back in Philly for a visit-- for how long I can't say-- and am suffering from culture shock. Not just from the more amenable weather, but the realization that Philadelphia is in the middle of a boom. Yes, believe it. From the first sight of vibrant Chinatown from the window of a Greyhound bus, to the seeming new buildings and businesses everyplace, to people everywhere on sidewalks, the center of the metropolis is starkly different from the very stark city of Detroit. Hard to believe that the two cities were once of comparable size and prosperity. Count your blessings, Philadelphians-- stop comparing yourself to New York City and realize what shape you're in as one of the great American cities.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Library Tragedy
As I'm preparing a likely return to Philly after a year away, I'm surprised to hear of this properous city closing eleven branch libraries. What!? Many of them are in the poorer districts of the city, which most need their enlightenment. (I'm fond of libraries-- they're where I found my education.)
Even the downtrodden city of Detroit, in so much worse financial condition, has not stooped to such remedy.
Meanwhile I assume the planned expansion of the Main center, like a temple to affluence, continues apace.
Even the downtrodden city of Detroit, in so much worse financial condition, has not stooped to such remedy.
Meanwhile I assume the planned expansion of the Main center, like a temple to affluence, continues apace.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Local Contest
I've been requested to post this info:
City Paper Fiction Contest 2008
WHO: You, the short story writer who lives in the Philly area.WHAT: A short story written by you, previously unpublished, around 3,000 words or less.WHAT ELSE: Winner gets printed in CP and a $500 gift certificate to Joseph Fox Bookshop! Also there will probably be a public reading, details TK.WHEN: Your entry must be delivered to City Paper by Fri., Dec. 19, at 5 p.m. Do this. You can do this.WHERE: Stories should be e-mailed to gimmefiction@citypaper.net or mailed the old-fashioned way to City Paper Writing Contest, 123 Chestnut St., Third Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106.HOW: How about you send us your best story right now?Helpful links:http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2008/11/25/cp-writing-contest-important-prize-update/http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/11/20/give-us-fictionhttp://www.foxbookshop.com/--
City Paper Fiction Contest 2008
WHO: You, the short story writer who lives in the Philly area.WHAT: A short story written by you, previously unpublished, around 3,000 words or less.WHAT ELSE: Winner gets printed in CP and a $500 gift certificate to Joseph Fox Bookshop! Also there will probably be a public reading, details TK.WHEN: Your entry must be delivered to City Paper by Fri., Dec. 19, at 5 p.m. Do this. You can do this.WHERE: Stories should be e-mailed to gimmefiction@citypaper.net or mailed the old-fashioned way to City Paper Writing Contest, 123 Chestnut St., Third Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106.HOW: How about you send us your best story right now?Helpful links:http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2008/11/25/cp-writing-contest-important-prize-update/http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/11/20/give-us-fictionhttp://www.foxbookshop.com/--
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Novel of the Year
PRIVATE SCREENINGS by Lawrence Richette
--a book review by King Wenclas--
"She had become one of those beautifully unreachable women you saw on the Upper East Side wearing a secular halo composed of utter poise and a frightening lack of need."
"The usual gargoyles: God, it takes far less time to get tired of the rich than they would ever dream. Not that this bunch even looked particularly well-dressed: stripped of their plastic and their family names, they'd have rated, at best, a corner table at Wendy's."
"I walked home in an effervescent mood, the kind you enjoy even while you tell yourself it isn't going to last. The rain stopped by the time I reached One Hundred and Tenth Street. Broadway gleamed darkly in the light that poured out of the markets, through the windows of saloons."
I don't like giving quotes from novels, because novels count for their effect not on a well-written sentence, but an accummulation of sentences put together in the right way to create a picture; an experience. For Richette's latest novel, a love story set in New York City at the end of the 1980's, I could give a hundred such quotes which by themselves don't mean a great deal, but placed artfully in-and-out of a compelling narrative in short bursts they add a three-dimensional depth to the tale.
It's a story about a struggling young screenwriter and his struggling young actress wife; but really it's a story about New York, the variety of settings, people, incidents, jammed together like a mosaic; variety which gives the glittering island its appeal. Private Screenings captures this magical, awful place better than any novel I've read. Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City in comparison is an outline, a sketch; while Richette's, covering roughly the same time period, is a deep-hued painting.
The three things I loved about this book:
1.) The narrative voice of the main character-- the screenwriter-- falling in-and-out of love with several women, including his wife. The narrator has the mad unpredictable energy of an artist; doubts, analysis, scorn, sarcasm, jubilation, disappointment: temperament. The final stage: wisdom; appreciation of the things of life. The novel is first the voice: fast-paced nonstop wit and energy, like the city.
2.) I loved the characters, wonderfully portrayed; likeable, maddening, real. From Victor the quack filmmaker to Quentin the jaded friend to rich girl Jill and Holly the prize-- Tony's wife-- toward which he seems to be fighting the entire book; to other quirky types found only in New York like Manfred the Eurotrash pimp. All rendered humorously, as types, yet by the end of the novel becoming to us real people.
3.) This occurs through the novel's warmth, the quality I enjoyed most about the book; a quality obtained through the author's love of humanity, and, for all his satirical jabs at it, of the city he's writing about.
One can finally say it's an accomplished novel, a whole; carrying resulting aesthetic effect-- the artistic power of accomplishment. Form: the novel in balance, so that this incident in Chapter One touches that occurence in Chapter Fourteen, the harmony conveyed to the reader subliminally, not kicking-in fully until the end. Each part of the story, each character, fits, with nothing extraneous. Richette creates not flash, not smoke-bomb rock show pyrotechnics (though the story has pyrotechnics), so much as a sustained vibration of intensity and mood.
Most needed from the American novel today is this novel's optimism; a realistic optimism which comes from enduring the knocks of life. Tony the main character survives crazed and desperate scenarios to arrive back at the starting point of life that is the culmination of experience.
Brilliance is an effect that lingers after the object which created it has passed from view. Private Screenings achieves this.
(The book is available through Xlibris and Amazon. Buy it!)
--a book review by King Wenclas--
"She had become one of those beautifully unreachable women you saw on the Upper East Side wearing a secular halo composed of utter poise and a frightening lack of need."
"The usual gargoyles: God, it takes far less time to get tired of the rich than they would ever dream. Not that this bunch even looked particularly well-dressed: stripped of their plastic and their family names, they'd have rated, at best, a corner table at Wendy's."
"I walked home in an effervescent mood, the kind you enjoy even while you tell yourself it isn't going to last. The rain stopped by the time I reached One Hundred and Tenth Street. Broadway gleamed darkly in the light that poured out of the markets, through the windows of saloons."
I don't like giving quotes from novels, because novels count for their effect not on a well-written sentence, but an accummulation of sentences put together in the right way to create a picture; an experience. For Richette's latest novel, a love story set in New York City at the end of the 1980's, I could give a hundred such quotes which by themselves don't mean a great deal, but placed artfully in-and-out of a compelling narrative in short bursts they add a three-dimensional depth to the tale.
It's a story about a struggling young screenwriter and his struggling young actress wife; but really it's a story about New York, the variety of settings, people, incidents, jammed together like a mosaic; variety which gives the glittering island its appeal. Private Screenings captures this magical, awful place better than any novel I've read. Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City in comparison is an outline, a sketch; while Richette's, covering roughly the same time period, is a deep-hued painting.
The three things I loved about this book:
1.) The narrative voice of the main character-- the screenwriter-- falling in-and-out of love with several women, including his wife. The narrator has the mad unpredictable energy of an artist; doubts, analysis, scorn, sarcasm, jubilation, disappointment: temperament. The final stage: wisdom; appreciation of the things of life. The novel is first the voice: fast-paced nonstop wit and energy, like the city.
2.) I loved the characters, wonderfully portrayed; likeable, maddening, real. From Victor the quack filmmaker to Quentin the jaded friend to rich girl Jill and Holly the prize-- Tony's wife-- toward which he seems to be fighting the entire book; to other quirky types found only in New York like Manfred the Eurotrash pimp. All rendered humorously, as types, yet by the end of the novel becoming to us real people.
3.) This occurs through the novel's warmth, the quality I enjoyed most about the book; a quality obtained through the author's love of humanity, and, for all his satirical jabs at it, of the city he's writing about.
One can finally say it's an accomplished novel, a whole; carrying resulting aesthetic effect-- the artistic power of accomplishment. Form: the novel in balance, so that this incident in Chapter One touches that occurence in Chapter Fourteen, the harmony conveyed to the reader subliminally, not kicking-in fully until the end. Each part of the story, each character, fits, with nothing extraneous. Richette creates not flash, not smoke-bomb rock show pyrotechnics (though the story has pyrotechnics), so much as a sustained vibration of intensity and mood.
Most needed from the American novel today is this novel's optimism; a realistic optimism which comes from enduring the knocks of life. Tony the main character survives crazed and desperate scenarios to arrive back at the starting point of life that is the culmination of experience.
Brilliance is an effect that lingers after the object which created it has passed from view. Private Screenings achieves this.
(The book is available through Xlibris and Amazon. Buy it!)
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Book Festival
ROUND UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS
I'm informed that this weekend's Poetry Pavilion feature at the Festival of the Book in Philly is busing in the usual establishment poetry retreads, from Jorie Graham to Gerald Stern to Lloyd Schwartz to John Hollander. It appears there remains much work in Philadelphia for the Rebellion to do!
I'm informed that this weekend's Poetry Pavilion feature at the Festival of the Book in Philly is busing in the usual establishment poetry retreads, from Jorie Graham to Gerald Stern to Lloyd Schwartz to John Hollander. It appears there remains much work in Philadelphia for the Rebellion to do!
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