Tuesday, May 19, 2009
7:00 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, NYC

* * *

DONALD BRECKENRIDGE is the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail and the editor of The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology (Hanging Loose Press, 2006). He is also the author of more than a dozen plays as well as the novella Rockaway Wherein (Red Dust, 1998) and the novel 6/2/95 (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002). His second novel, Arabesques for Sauquoit is forthcoming from Autonomedia, and this third novel, You Are Here, from which he’ll be reading, is published by Starcherone.

You Are Here is part Fassbinder anti-theatre, part cheap heartbreak à la Brenda Starr, part intertextual hall of mirrors. Donald Breckenridge’s stunning prose spins into life a world of ideas and art—which nevertheless can come to a dead halt in a heartbeat.

“Breckenridge, a playwright, here turns the novel [6/2/95] into a dramatic form. Fifteen characters—among them a painter, a Salvadoran immigrant, an alcoholic, a single mother, and an unemployed writer—travel through New York City on a single day in 1995. As they pass each other on the street, speak on the phone, make love, argue, cheat, and stand each other up, their paths intersect or narrowly miss in a finely choreographed Altmanesque dance. Breckenridge’s paragraphless, interlocked text is at times brilliant, at times confusing, but always surprising, and his bumbling, struggling New York is one we can all recognize.”
—The New Yorker

with special guests

LEWIS WARSH is the author of numerous books of poetry and works of fiction such as Agnes & Sally, A Free Man, and Money Under the Table, The Origin of the World, Touch of the Whip, Debtor’s Prison (in collaboration with Julie Harrison), and Ted’s Favorite Skirt. With Anne Waldman he coedited The Angel Hair Anthology. Warsh is editor and publisher of United Artists Books and director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Long Island University in Brooklyn.

“The unobtrusive powers of this extraordinary writer make a cautionary tale of all too familiar real lives. Meshed in a web of deadpan cliche, this world is forever all dressed up with no place to go. Mr. Warsh should be our next President. He really knows the People.”
—Robert Creeley

and

SUSAN DAITCH is the author of three works of fiction and her work was the subject of a recent issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction. Her short fiction has been included in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern Fiction, Bomb, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s, The Brooklyn Rail, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. Her work has been the recipient of a Vogelstein, a semifinalist for a Creative Capital grant, and the Donald Barthelme Prize. She teaches at Hunter College.

“It’s always a delight to discover a voice as original as Susan Daitch’s”
—Salman Rushdie

* * *

Please e-mail

pageseries [at] gmail [dot] com

to arrange payment for the book(s),

being sold at a PAGE discount,

and to receive a special gift.

Thank you!

*

DIANE WILLIAMS

It Was Like My Trying to Have
a Tender-Hearted Nature: A Novella and Stories
$17.95 $15.00

*

CHRISTINE SCHUTT

All Souls
$22 $15

* * *

Other books by Williams:

• Romancer Erector
• Excitability: Selected Stories
• The Stupefaction
• Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in Which God Might Choose to Appear
• This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate

Other books by Schutt:

• A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer
  
• Florida
• Nightwork

* * *

Please join PAGE in welcoming
two brilliant writers
to start off the new season!

* * *

DIANE WILLIAMS
will be reading from new and recent work,
including It Was Like My Trying to Have a
Tender-Hearted Nature: A Novella and Stories
(Fiction Collective 2)

and

CHRISTINE SCHUTT
will be reading from All Souls
(Harcourt)

* * *

Friday, September 5, 2008
7:00 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, NYC

Please join PAGE in the last reading
of the 2007–08 season,
honoring the best of
literature and music
with Eugene Drucker.

* * *

Violinist for the glorious Emerson String Quartet, Eugene Drucker makes his debut as a novelist with The Savior, the story of a non-Jewish violinist forced to play for the inmates of a Nazi concentration camp. Drucker will accompany his reading by playing music found in the novel—Bach’s “Chaconne” from the Partita in D minor for solo violin. A reception and book signing will follow.

Beautifully conceived and gracefully written, The Savior is a complex and illuminating character study of a man severed from his past expectations and an artist struggling with his identity in the face of human catastrophe.

* * *

PRAISE FOR EUGENE DRUCKER AND
THE SAVIOR

“One of our finest musicians has now distinguished himself in this graceful work of fiction. Eugene Drucker has created a poignant tale of heartbreaking paradoxes and one man’s efforts to solve them through art in the darkest of times.”
—Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and author of The History of Listening

*

“With The Savior, Eugene Drucker has written an elegant, smart, and knowing novel that delves into darkness and explores its many shades.”
—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Position and Surrender, Dorothy

*

“Eugene Drucker brings a musician’s understanding of tempo, tone, and interpretation to this book. He’s an artist in two fields; maybe more.”
—Paul Newman

*

“Violinist for the magnificent Emerson String Quartet, whose interpretations of Beethoven and Shostakovich are unparalleled, Drucker has written a haunting novel of the waning days of WWII. When a Kommandant orders him to play the violin for an audience of near-death concentration camp detainees, young musician Gottfried Keller is forced to participate in a ghastly experiment with hope. Repelled, Gottfried reluctantly complies: ‘It would have been easier to face a row of corpses in a morgue.’ Over the four days he serves as camp musician, Gottfried reminisces about his treatment of his Jewish former girlfriend, Marietta, and of his Jewish schoolmate friend, Ernst, a violinist who fled as the Nazis took power. (Drucker’s own violinist father emigrated to the U.S. in 1938.) As the days wear on, Gottfried attempts to separate himself from the nightmare of the camp by trying not to comprehend what is taking place there, and it is here, Drucker intimates, that his culpability lies, especially as Gottfried begins to draw inspiration from his audience. Drucker writes lyrically about the music Gottfried plays (including Ysae’s ‘L’Aurore’), and his morality tale has bite.”
—Publishers Weekly

* * *

Thursday, June 19, 2008
7:00 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, NYC

Please join PAGE in welcoming
three spectacular writers and performers.

* * *

EDWARD DOCX, author of
Pravda: A Novel
(Houghton Mifflin)

and

VINCENT KATZ,
author most recently of
Judge (Charta/Libellum)

and

ANDY FRIEDMAN, musician,
author of Drawings and Other Failures

* * *

Thursday, April 10, 2008
8:00 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, NYC

BEFORE THE READING

the audience

paying attention

Jim and Jeremy

Dawn Raffel holds court

Dilettantsia and Wayne Koestenbaum
discuss Jackie O.

* * *

INTRODUCTIONS

Fran Gordon introduces Raffel,
then Wah-Ming Chang introduces
Koestenbaum and Shepard

* * *

THE READING

Dawn Raffel reads from
Further Adventures in the Restless Universe

*

Wayne Koestenbaum reads from
Hotel Theory

*

Jim Shepard reads from
Like You’d Understand, Anyway

* * *

AFTER THE READING

Jim signs a book

Jessica and Jeremy

Fran and Dawn share a confidence

Ken and Wayne

Jessica and wmc

bright lights

* * *

books for sale

Please join PAGE in welcoming
three stellar talents.

* * *

DAWN RAFFEL, author of
Further Adventures in the Restless Universe: Stories
and Carrying the Body: A Novel (Scribner)

and

WAYNE KOESTENBAUM, author of
Hotel Theory
(Soft Skull)

and

JIM SHEPARD, author of
Like You’d Understand Anyway: Stories
(Knopf)

* * *

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
7:00 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, NYC

BEFORE THE READING

chatting

Felicia Sullivan and Ellis Avery chat

Fran and Jeremy

Jeremy and Fran listen to David

* * *

INTRODUCTIONS

Wah-Ming Chang introduces Sullivan,
then Fran Gordon Gordon introduces
Teicher and Friedman

* * *

THE READING

Felicia C. Sullivan reads from
The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here

*

Craig Morgan Teicher reads from
Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems

*

David M. Friedman reads from
The Immortalists

* * *

AFTER THE READING

David and Newt chat behind wmc

Fran Gordon and Marion Ettlinger

food

Katy Brennan and Ellis Avery

Jeremy buys a book

* * *

books for sale

Please join PAGE in welcoming
three extraordinary voices.

* * *

FELICIA C. SULLIVAN, author of
The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here:
Scenes from a Life
(Algonquin)

and

DAVID M. FRIEDMAN, author of
The Immortalists:
Charles Lindbergh, Alexis Carrel, and
Their Daring Quest to Live Forever
(Ecco)

and

CRAIG MORGAN TEICHER, author of
Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems
(University Press of Colorado)

* * *

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
7:00 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, NYC

from “I Bought a Little City”

So I bought a little city (it was Galveston, Texas) and told everybody that nobody had to move, we were going to do it just gradually, very relaxed, no big changes overnight.

* * *

BEFORE THE READING

getting started

Dawn Raffel and Wah-Ming Chang

getting seated

Justin Taylor and Fran Gordon

a full house

* * *

INTRODUCTIONS

Fran Gordon introduces the evening

Justin Taylor discusses Barthelme’s work

* * *

THE READING

Patricia Volk

Dawn Raffel

from “Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby”

Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby for a long time, because of the way that he had been behaving. And now he’d gone too far, so we decided to hang him. Colby argued that just because he had gone too far (he did not deny that he had gone too far) did not mean that he should be subjected to hanging. Going too far, he said, was something everybody did sometimes. We didn’t pay much attention to this argument. We asked him what sort of music he would like played at the hanging. He said he’d think about it but it would take him a while to decide. I pointed out that we’d have to know soon, because Howard, who is a conductor, would have to hire and rehearse the musicians and he couldn’t begin until he knew what the music was going to be. Colby said he’d always been fond of Ives’s Fourth Symphony. Howard said that this was a “delaying tactic” and that everybody knew that the Ives was almost impossible to perform and would involve weeks of rehearsal, and that the size of the orchestra and chorus would put us way over the music budget. “Be reasonable,” he said to Colby. Colby said he’d try to think of something a little less exacting.

Ben Greenman

Ed Hirsch

from “The School”

One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn’t death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of—

I said, yes, maybe.

They said, we don’t like it.

I said, that’s sound.

They said, it’s a bloody shame!

I said, it is.

They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? We know you like Helen.

I do like Helen but I said that I would not.

We’ve heard so much about it, they said, but we’ve never seen it.

I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.

They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.

Fran Gordon

Justin Taylor

from “A City of Churches”

“This town is a little creepy, you know that?”

“That may be, but it’s not for you to say, is it? I mean, you’re new here. You should walk cautiously, for a while. If you don’t want an upper apartment, I have a basement over at Central Presbyterian. You’d have to share it. There are two women in there now.”

“I don’t want to share,” Cecelia said. “I want a place of my own.”

“Why?” the real-estate man asked curiously. “For what purpose?”

“Purpose?” asked Cecelia. “There is no particular purpose. I just want—”

“That’s not unusual here. Most people live with other people. Husbands and wives. Sons with their mothers. People have roommates. That’s the usual pattern.”

“Still, I prefer a place of my own.”

“It’s very unusual.”

“Do you have any such places? Besides bell towers, I mean?”

“I guess there are a few,” Mr. Phillips said, with clear reluctance. “I can show you one or two, I suppose.”

He paused for a moment.

“It’s just that we have different values, maybe, from some of the surrounding communities,” he explained. “We’ve been written up a lot. We had four minutes on the CBS Evening News one time. Three of four years ago. A City of Churches, it was called.”

“Yes, a place of my own is essential,” Cecelia said, “if I am to survive here.”

“That’s kind of a funny attitude to take,” Mr. Phillips said. “What denomination are you?”

Cecelia was silent. The truth was, she wasn’t anything.

Matthew Sharpe

Donald Antrim

from “Chablis”

My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says “Momma,” & she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly. I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.

David Gates

Ted Mooney

* * *

PANEL

Taylor, Gates, Hirsch, Sharpe, Mooney, and Antrim
discuss the impact of Donald Barthelme

The Not-Knowing

* * *

from “How I Write My Songs”

In the case of “Rudelle” I was sitting at my desk one day with my pencil and yellow legal pad and I had two things that were irritating me. One was a letter from the electric company that said “The check for $75.60 sent us in payment of your bill has been returned to us by the bank honored etc. etc.” Most of you who have received this type of letter from time to time know how irritating this kind of communication can be as well as embarrassing. The other thing that was irritating me was that I had a piece of white thread tied around my middle at naval height as a reminder to keep my stomach pulled in to strengthen the abdominals while sitting—this is the price you pay for slopping down too much beer when your occupation is essentially a sit-down one! Anyhow I had these two things itching me, so I decided to write a lost-my-mind song.

When I lost my baby
I almost lost my mine

* * *

AFTER THE READING

bright lights

* * *

from The Dead Father

Great wreaths of every kind of flower standing about on stands.

No Fleece? asked the Dead Father.

Thomas looked at Julie.

She has it?

Julie lifted her skirt.

Quite golden, said the Dead Father. Quite ample. That’s it?

All there is, Julie said. Unfortunately. But this much. This where life lives. A pretty problem. As mine as yours. I’m sorry.

Quite golden, said the Dead Father. Quite ample.

He moved to touch it.

No, said Thomas.

No, said Julie.

I’m not even to touch it?

No.

After all this long and arduous and if I may say so rather ill-managed journey? Not to touch it? What am I to do?

* * *