paperhaus May 29th, 2008
I’ve gone to Book Expo twice before, and still I feel entirely unprepared for BEA 2008.
The first year, it was in Washington DC. I stayed at an unfortunately expensive shitty hotel; I had to wait in line as an intense guy checked in before me. I had never seen him before. But somehow I knew it was Ed Champion, and when he turned away from the desk, I tried saying “Ed,” loudly. He turned. Yep, it was Ed. This year, Ed will not be at BEA. Seems wrong, somehow.
Last year, in New York, I stayed with non-book friends in Brooklyn — they provided a welcome dose of sanity even though NY transit added hours to my travel time. (Strangely, those same friends will be in LA this year just in time for BEA. Maybe they’re all bookish after all). Last year, the LBC had a party, and I got to meet more fellow litbloggers and publishers and a logjam of authors. Running late the next morning, I worried that I’d miss the panel I wanted to see, but realized one of its members — Christopher Hitchens — was standing right in front of me on the escalator. I followed him. He was grumpy about morning. I walked onto the floor and was dazed by the enormity of it — or maybe by the heat (the air conditioning in Javitz was on the fritz). I had a marvelous time, sort of full-to-overflowing, all of it, including my bags, with books.
This year I have planned. I have a schedule. I am in my own town (yes, I am here, in LA, which I have reclaimed, by the way). I know when William Shatner is supposed to be signing his new book, that Alec Baldwin is speaking at a breakfast, that George Hamilton is throwing a party. That Salman Rushdie is going to be hanging out, cracking jokes. But there’s so so much that I don’t know. I might even see you there.
paperhaus February 26th, 2008
I’m very excited to be blogging over at the Los Angeles Times’ book blog, Jacket Copy, starting, well, yesterday. And continuing daily, along with contributions from the paper’s book review staff. So add to your rss reader, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Pinky’s Paperhaus will continue, with more about what’s up in Pittsburgh, grad school, teaching, non-book-related rants, and perhaps even a podcast or two. With authors. Who are good. Oh, yeah.
paperhaus February 19th, 2008
Longtime Los Angeles literary nonprofit Beyond Baroque may lose its lease. It’s been in its location, in Venice, for decades.
This isn’t simply a matter of changing real estate realities. Apparently the organization is in a city-owned building, and their city councilman recommended a 25-year lease extension. With these nonprofit leases, Beyond Baroque’s website says, a rep’s recommendation usually holds. But Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is recommending against the extension.
I’m not sure what Delgadillo is thinking. He had trouble this summer — including covering up an accident his wife had in his city-owned vehicle — and for some reason this has compelled him to … crack down on literary nonprofit leases?
As I tended to be an LA eastsider (Pittsburgh=very east), Beyond Baroque, way across town, never became my favorite lit place; their claim that they’ve been LA’s “only literary center for four decades” is certainly hyperbole. But the organization certainly deserves to go on, and I don’t see why they should be evicted from their current location. I hope Delgadillo has a good reason for countering the city councilman’s recommendation to extend Beyond Baroque’s lease. Either that, or that he soon changes his mind.
paperhaus December 1st, 2007
Tony Pierce, the enthusiastic, wild, obsessive, peerless* editor of LAist is moving on to manage the blogs of the Los Angeles Times.
Congratulations, Tony!
Photo: That’s Tony in the center, mid-Skooby’s hot dog, telling Rob Takata and Cecil Castellucci what’s what.
* not predecessor-less, though: his predecessor was me.
paperhaus November 30th, 2007
The coolest thing I’ve read all day:
Mark Sarvas’s first novel is funny and sad, rueful, wised-up and curiously moving. A remarkable debut. - John Banville, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Sea.
Although perhaps it should read John - fucking - Banville. The book is Mark’s upcoming debut, Harry, Revised.
Bukowski’s home will be saved after all. Eh. I like him as a dissolute icon, I do; but literary talent, not so much.
Tod demonstrates how to get on an FBI watch list.
Antoine Wilson is interviewed at Please Don’t, a new online quartlery. He describes his ideal audience — “I write to a version of myself, a literary doppelganger. I’d like that doppelganger to pick up my novel, read it, and say, ‘I wish I’d written that.’” — which is entirely appropriate for a guy who’s written a book about someone with an alter ego. Did I say excellent book? It is: The Interloper.
Truth is stranger than fiction, part 7,135,087: in the 1920s, a Memphis woman ran a sordid adoption ring. She’d trick unwed mothers into signing away their infants, bribe nurses to lie and say babies had been stillborn. One of her ill-gotten infants became Joan Crawford’s daughter (and you know how well that turned out). The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption sounds too good to pass up.
paperhaus August 10th, 2007
So a bunch of us went to Musso & Frank’s for a martini, then across the street to Skooby’s for a hot dog. We see that they’ve got one framed thing on the wall - it’s a picture of Cecil’s book Beige with an excerpt (about, of course, Skooby’s) and WE LOVE CECIL CASTELLUCCI! in big letters. We’re all like Hey, Cecil, that’s your book! She was like, Oh my god! That’s me! That’s about when this photo was taken.
Still, they made her pay for her hot dog.
paperhaus May 10th, 2007
The LA Times has been book blogging this month. The paper still has some details to work out (like getting the posts up the day they’re written, not 3 days later), but it’s still a welcome entry into the litblog sphere. Say hello to Jacket Copy.
Mark Sarvas reports on Michael Chabon’s LA Public Library appearance. Chabon, apparently, threw out his first 660-page draft of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. He told the capacity crowd, “There’s always more where that came from.”
Callie Miller is looking for LA short story collections. Nope, not essays, the woman already knows her Didion.
Speaking of essays, Ruined Music publishes true stories of songs that have been ruined (by breakups, overplaying, illness, appearing in an Adam Sandler movie). (via)
It’s that time of year again: the storySouth million writers award has announced its notable stories for 2006.
paperhaus May 6th, 2007
Two days before 55 of our founding fathers wrapped up the first Constitutional Convention, they…
adjourned to a tavern for some rest, and according to the bill they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of port, 8 of hard cider and 7 bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new Republic.
That’s from The Joy of Drinking by Barbara Holland, which sounds like a mighty fine book. Holland has also written of the wonders of naps and bacon, so she’s got the right perspective on these things, as far as I can tell. (And she’s 70. You go, Barbara.)
paperhaus May 4th, 2007
Meet the latest fan of the Los Angeles Public Library, Bookduck. She and her boyduck (that’s his name, from what I can tell) have decided that the shallow fountains in front of downtown’s central library are, yes, just ducky. They are not shay about asking for snacks — in order to get this photo, I had to offer her my fingers, which she tried and rejected.
There are many pigeons and swallows in the garden plaza in front of the library, but these may be the first ducks to really hang out — library staff were charmed, and chased them around with a camera of their own.