NY ART BOOK FAIR (9/30-10/2, NY)
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave at the intersection of 46th Ave, Long Island City, NY 11101
Presented by Printed Matter, this three-day exhibit of artists’ books, zines, and periodicals kicks off a month jam-packed with literary festivities. Includes artist-led workshops, symposiums, screenings, signings, readings, and special projects from international and independent presses and booksellers. Check out the program for a list of readers, exhibitions, and workshops. Free.
ROGER EBERT, LIFE ITSELF (10/1@1PM, CHGO)
The Newberry Library, 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL 60610
The walking synecdoche for American film criticism introduces and signs his memoir, Life Itself, which the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist structured as a series of vignettes or self-contained essays–never far from, but never dominated by, his notorious love of the movies. Free.
DOC (10/1@7:30PM, NY)
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Harold L. Humes’s daughter Immy Humes directs this documentary about the Paris Review founder and author, which will be shown alongside Dan Drasin’s Sunday, documenting Humes’s protest against the suppression of folk singing in Washington Square Park, as well as excerpts from Humes’s unfinished film Don Peyote. Alternate showtimes 10/2@6PM and 8:45PM. $9 ($7 students).
LITQUAKE (10/7@8PM-10/15@6PM, SF)
San Francisco, CA
The city by the bay, whose citizens spend twice the national average on books, unites in a week-long celebration of literacy spread across her picturesque hills and waterfronts. With a formidable list of authors including such diverse figures as Jennifer Egan, Robert Polito, Oscar Villalon, Ishmael Reed, Alice Sebold, Christopher Moore, and Andrew Altschul, there’s something here to pique everyone’s interest, including sub-quakes for kids and teens. Schedules for the main festival, as well as the concluding Lit Crawl, are online. Those who can’t make it out west might be interested in a follow-up Lit Crawl in Austin on 10/22. Free (tickets required for some events).
STEPHEN PINKER (10/13@6PM, CHGO)
Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S State St, Chicago, IL 60605
The prize-winning author of The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought discusses and signs his newest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The latest in Pinker’s popular explorations into human nature and cognitive linguistics suggests that the world might be a far nicer place than we give it credit for. Free (registration required).
&NOW FESTIVAL: TOMORROWLAND FOREVER (9/13-9/15, SD)
UCSD, 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA 92093
&Now truly is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. A creative/critical festival/examination of all things incipient, ingenious, indefinite and intractable, festivities include conferences, multimedia performances, literary rituals, and a book fair hosted by the Rubber Rose adult boutique. You could paint an elephant with the list of Black Clock friends, contributors, and fellow-thinkers who will be presenting and have plenty of names left in the bucket. Don’t wait until tomorrow to start marking up your calendar: The schedule is packed tighter than a fallout shelter on doomsday. $100 Registration Fee.
UGLY FEELINGS (10/16@7PM, LA)
REDCAT, 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Jack Halberstam (Female Masculinity, The Drag King Book), Wayne Koestenbaum (Hotel Theory, The Queen’s Throat), and Maggie Nelson (The Red Parts: A Memoir; Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions) read from new critical works on the theme of failure, cruelty, and humiliation. Halberstam will be reading The Queer Art of Failure, an examination into the notion of failure in children’s animation, while Koestenbaum’s Humiliation is a meditation on the nature of shame. Nelson’s critically-acclaimed The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning questions the role of cruelty and violence in avant-garde art. $10 ($5 students).
MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI: THE FIFTY YEAR SWORD (10/31@8:30PM, LA)
REDCAT, 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
The award-winning, typographically challenging novelist, author of House of Leaves and Only Revolutions, conducts a polyphonic multimedia theatrical presentation of his limited-edition ghost story, The Fifty Year Sword, reprising last Halloween’s haunting performance. A live shadow play, arranged by Christine Marie & Ensemble, adds unexpected depth to Danielewski’s words, and audiences should come prepared for other audiovisual surprises from the man who often charts the limits of narratological structure. $20 ($15 students).
