We at FWR are big fans of (and frequent linkers to) David Gutowski’s LargeheartedBoy.com, a music-lit-culture website whose Book Notes column gives established and emerging authors the chance to create and discuss music playlists connected to–or inspired by–their books.

Now a new Largehearted Lit series, curated by Brooklyn-based fiction author Jami Attenberg (Instant Love, The Kept Man, The Melting Season), actualizes these playlist interviews into live readings with musical performances.

In this interview, David and Jami talk to Jason Diamond at Vol. 1 Brooklyn about their collaboration in bringing some of the Book Notes columns to life.

And here is info on next weekend’s event, via Largehearted Lit’s Facebook invite:

READING ON DECEMBER 6: “I BELIEVE THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE”
Two young, bright, and shining debut authors from independent presses entertain North Brooklyn in the second event of Largehearted Lit.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born in California to a Japanese mother and an American father. A graduate of Columbia University, she lives in New York City with her husband. Picking Bones from Ash (Graywolf Press) is her first novel, of which the L.A. Times said, “Firmly anchored in a sensuous reality…puts the taste of breakfast in a small mountain village of Japan in the mouth of the reader.” (mariemockett.com)

Emma Straub is the author of Fly-Over State, a novella published by Flatmancrooked. Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply, called it, “a great inaugural to a literary career that is full of promise.” Her short stories have appeared in Juked, Barrelhouse, The Saint Ann’s Review, Five Chapters, and many others. Emma was the 2008-2009 Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she also received her MFA. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. (emmastraub.net)

Special musical guests: Claudia Gonson (The Magnetic Fields) + Jon Natchez (Beirut, The Bishop Allen) + more!

So, too, are the stories in this plump new anthology: Arkady Babchenko’s beleaguered soldier returns to Chechnya a page away from German Sadulaev’s lyrical descriptions of Chechnya’s devastated countryside. The binding is a veritable trench, across which both narrators peek at each other warily.

A less tangible illness-at-ease pervades the stories of Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia (Tin House, 2009), and it does so in a fashion atypical of characters firmly rooted in their homeland. We expect this discomfort in immigrant characters—their awkwardness, their failed mimicry of the natives’ dress and habits, their attempts to pass the time or get laid. The poignancy and entertainment value of the immigrants’ shortcomings are, in part, derived from the fact that we know where to point the finger: things are not happening for this character because his clothes are all wrong and his English is terrible. But what to make of a baseline discomfort within the boundaries of one’s own country?

A post-Soviet antiseptic wafts into these stories just a bit too far upwind to identify. Editors Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker, also employ the olfactory metaphor: they explain that the writers in this volume are too young to remember much of Soviet rule, but some vestigial memories return to them like “air they’ve never breathed before.” They are no strangers to bureaucracy: a portly passport clerk takes tea breaks in front of a swollen line; Soviet-era clerical errors leave two Chechen villages named after the wrong river; and an obsessive-compulsive young boy creates his own system of rules governing his footfalls on the sidewalk and the bric-a-brac in his home. In the latter, bureaucracy and its highly variable rewards system reaches its most profound fulfillment: regimentation is literally bred in the bone, organic.

Relationships seem unattainable, but the ones we do see aren’t particularly desirable. Most people are locked away in their own apartment units, nursing their quirks. Permutations of fundamental twitchiness of self, the inability to get find a cool spot on the pillow, to keep from fidgeting, recur in the narrative voices. For “It All Depends on Who You Believe,” Maria Boteva employs barely punctuated run-ons with all the hedges and afterthoughts of a one-sided phone conversation; in this process of extracting the story from the narrator, one is tempted to hang up. Equally challenging is Ekaterina Taratura’s “Seventh Toast to Snails,” a numbered series of fifty vignettes wherein characters of narrator and listener are suggested but never defined. We are frustrated, but never bored, in our efforts to mold what we are given into the familiar Freytag’s pyramid. Our precarious position as readers is similar to that of a novice at a modern art gallery: we’re not sure what we’re looking at, but we don’t want to be the last to get it.

In any collection, there is a natural tendency to seek the common thread through which the disparate pieces are united. We think we know something about Russia—whether it be from grainy films, an undergraduate affair with Dostoevsky, or a leggy Muscovite ex-padruga—and we are looking for confirmation of whatever we have glimpsed. With a territory so large you have to turn the globe twice to see all of it, it’s silly to think that we’ll close the book having learned anything fundamental about Russia or Russianness. If we collected twenty-two stories from all over America, would we expect them to say something cohesive about “our people”?

Another anthology from the same editors (Dalkey Archive Press)

But, like any fetish, the specifics are only an entry point to substance, not a prerequisite: Russophilia, whether ancestral or assumed, is just one vehicle for the discussions of the self and its messy intersections.

Further Resources

- Hear Rasskazy’s editors’ thoughts on the anthology–and contemporary Russian literature–in this interview with both Parker and Iossel at Bomblog, and in this Q&A with Parker in The Afterword.

- The same editors also collaborated on this anthology: Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States (Dalkey Archive Press).

- Find out more about Jeff Parker’s novel, Ovenman (Tin House), and his story collection, The Back of the Line (DECODE).

- If you’re shopping for any of these titles, click here to buy from your local indie bookseller.

NYC-based writers, head to Brooklyn’s newest bookstore, Fort Greene’s Greenlight Books (686 Fulton St., at S. Portland), tonight (Monday, November 23) at 7:30 PM for a special event featuring local authors and the editor of Mentors, Muses, and Monsters, a book that we at FWR are excited to read.

This is also the bookstore’s first installment of what promises to be an exciting series of events featuring both authors and lit bloggers.

On a personal note, I’m thrilled at Greenlight’s birth, if a bit heartsick that I had to leave Fort Greene about a month before it opened; when I head back to the east coast for the holidays, I will make a pilgrimage.

But for those of you lucky enough to live a short train ride or jaunt away, here’s the skinny (via Greenlight’s newsletter):

Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives (The Free Press)
Featuring editor Elizabeth Benedict
With contributors Alexander Chee, Mary Gordon, Martha Southgate, and Lily Tuck
Hosted by Beatrice.com’s Ron Hogan

A cavalcade of local authors kicks off our new series of Blogger/Author Pairings, in which a literary blogger hosts a real-world reading.

Pioneering blogger Ron Hogan, creator of Beatrice and book industry journalist for GalleyCat, hosts this event for a new anthology exploring the varied relationships of writers with those who have influenced them, for better or worse.

The book’s editor Elizabeth Benedict (author of The Practice of Deceit and others) will discuss the project of Mentors, Muses & Monsters, and her own relationship with Elizabeth Hardwick.

Alexander Chee (author of Edinburgh) will read from his essay on taking a class with Annie Dillard.

Mary Gordon (author most recently of Reading Jesus) will talk about her two Barnard mentors, Elizabeth Hardwick and Janice Thaddeus.

Martha Southgate (author of Third Girl from the Left) reads from her piece on an influential book, Harriet the Spy.

And Lily Tuck (National Book Award winning author of The News from Paraguay) talks about the influence of Gordon Lish on her own work.

Join us for a lively conversation about influence, identity, and the writing life.

You can RSVP on Facebook for this event; RSVPs are appreciated (to help us get an idea of attendance), but NOT required, and seating is first come, first served.

And if you can’t make the event but still want a signed copy…

We want to make sure every reader has a chance to enter the fascinating and ongoing conversation between generations of writers by reading the fabulous essays in Mentors, Muses & Monsters, whether or not they attend Monday’s event. If you can’t make it and you’d like a signed copy of the anthology (or any of the other titles by these authors), just send an email to info@greenlightbookstore.com indicating the books you’d like, any particular inscription, and the best way to reach you. We’ll have the books signed and hold or ship them to you as you prefer.

Break a leg, Brian and company!

For $15, writers will get the following: daily writing prompts; a daily reading-writing exercise; a “riff word” of the day; a podcast of the day from an editor or writer; a quote of the day from a famous writer; weekly craft talks from established writers; a free copy of the new issue of the Southeast Review (vol. 27.2); membership in a web forum to share work and get feedback; and access to the SR’s online literary companion (featuring interviews with a wide variety of writers and podcasts from the Warehouse Reading Series).

Click here to learn more and sign up. If you prefer to set your own writing regimen, you can still get inspired with a copy of the newest Southeast Review (27.2) for $8, or a year-long subscription for $15.

If you’d like to submit your own work to the journal, wait until after September 15 and follow these guidelines.

cartoon by John Campbell, from his Hourly Comic Journal (January 9th, 2008)

Join endurance bibliophiles from around the world in reading Infinite Jest over the summer of 2009, June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages1 ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat.

1. Plus endnotes^a.
a. A lot of them.

Posts range from in-depth analysis of Wallace’s themes to close readings of favorite passages to humorous accounts of how people react when they see you toting around this giant book. (Really!) If you want to join in the fun, you’ve still got almost two months to catch up.

More short story love, this time with actors: Symphony Space presents “Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story,” in which “spellbinding short stories by established and emerging writers take on a new life when they are performed by stars of the stage and screen.”

Hosted by Isaiah Sheffer, performances often focus on a theme; for example, “Living Life to the Fullest” included Neil Patrick Harris reading “The Canoeists” by Rick Bass and Mia Dillon reading Pam Houston’s “How To Talk to Hunter.” And the series features plenty of stories by young/emerging writers, too, including Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, Kiran Desai, and Kevin Brockmeier.

New Yorkers can catch upcoming shows live at the Peter Sharp Jay Theatre (buy tickets here). Luckily for the rest of us, shows are also available on public radio, online, and by podcast (go here to subscribe).

And here is a schedule of upcoming readings; this page also features a link to find Selected Shorts on your local public radio station. (On WNYC, it airs Saturdays and Sundays at 4:00pm on AM 820.)

Symphony Space also offers a 3-CD set (or download) Readers and Writers, selected recordings from Selected Shorts of the past.

THE *NEW* DIXON PLACE PROUDLY PRESENTS
In the tradition of Jacques Brel, Dixon Place presents a groundbreaking musical theater experience: the staging of composer Chris Rael’s Araby.

ARABY

By Chris Rael

ALL SHOWS ARE LOCATED at The New Dixon Place
161 Chrystie Street (b/w Rivington & Delancey) New York, NY 10002
212-219-0736, www.dixonplace.org

Wednesdays-Saturdays, April 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16*, 17 & 18 at 7:30pm
Fri & Sat, $20 (general), $15 (student/senior)
2 Matinees added! – Sundays, April 12 & 19 at 3:00pm
$15 (gen) $12 (stu.sen)

*April 16 – Special Araby Event! – Composer and ensemble talk back with post performance reception. $30.

“Irresistible” -the New York Times
“Brilliant” -Billboard
“If otherworldly rock exists, surely this is as lofty as it gets” -All Music Guide

Araby is a uniquely structured “chamber musical” inspired by James Joyce’s Dubliners. Chris Rael re-imagines the 15 narrative short stories with lyrics when Irish nationalism was at its peak in the early 20th century. Araby is accompanied by a 9-piece chamber ensemble and video projections from contemporary Dublin. The composition reflects Rael’s rich world music orchestral background. The libretto is impressionistic, recounting characters’ internal experiences- an approach inspired by the depth of Joyce’s psychological portraiture.

Singers: Dudley Saunders, Nancy Magarill, Carlos Ponton & Chris Rael.
Chamber Ensemble: Rima Fand, Ina Litera, Pinky Weitzman, Matthew Goeke, Maria Jeffers, Reuben Radding, Brian Geltner & Chris Rael.
Directing Consultants: John Kelly & Eric Wallach
Vocal coach: Barbara Maier
Dramaturgy: Dudley Saunders & Penny Arcade

CHRIS RAEL is the singer, sitarist and founder of renowned New York Indo-pop ensemble Church of Betty. Incorporating sitar into western composition, he traveled the world with Church of Betty, and has been a mainstay of the downtown music scene since the late eighties. Church of Betty has performed in the Knitting factory, the Bottom Line, Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Prospect Park Band Shell, the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Jewish Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and virtually every music nightclub and public radio station in Manhattan during the last 20 years. Composer of more than 300 songs, he has also performed all over the world, including Sydney Opera House and New York’s Town Hall. He has worked with artists such as Penny Arcade, Bow Wow Wow, and Oasis. Drawn to theatre and film in recent years, he won the Outstanding Score Award at Outfest Film Festival in LA.

Araby is made possible with generous support from the Mary Flagler Charitable Trust, The Greenwall Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & the Peg Santvoord Foundation.

Hey, Boston-based writers! If you like western-themed mad-libs, raffles, and good short fiction, don’t miss this Sunday’s Dirty Water Reading Series event.

$1 suggested donation.