ZYZZYVASPEAKS

Singing in Sign

2009-07-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

Perhaps since the late Pina Bausch was a choreographer, her interpretatation of Gershwin's "The Man I love" should be considered as Dancing with ASL.

I encourage you to stick around for the second act of this video.

Tiziano Terzani

2009-07-05T02:16:00.000-07:00

This lovely signage across the street from our favorite margarita & enchiladas place reminded me of Tiziano Terzani, the Italian journalist I met while he was studying at Columbia in 1969.

I would have liked to have seen more of him but I left for Stanford that August.

In 2003, I said hello when he gave a reading at Stacey's for his book against the Iraq war. He seemed to have entered what I took to be a Himalayan phase—long white hair and beard, white kurta....

I didn't realize he was battling cancer.

And would soon write, with his son, Folco, a huge bestseller about his acceptance of death, The End is My Beginning.

There's a good interview with Folco in English and a better one in Italian, which is slow but offers photos that give a good idea of how charismatic Tiziano was.

Having just come back from retirement, I, too, in my own uncharismatic way, feel I have learned to accept death. I feel like a soccer player going on after the 90th minute—the referee has allowed extra "stoppage" time (to make up for all the interruptions and delays), although he hasn't specified an exact amount.

So I will play on. I know who's going to win, but I haven't lost yet.

Salutations

2009-07-04T04:05:00.000-07:00

Happy Fourth and Happy Birthday, Madison!

Shoe laces

2009-07-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

I bought some shoes laces for the first time in centuries.

They're not easy to find, and when you do there's not much selection.

Because shoe laces never wear out, although the ends can get frayed; usually, we just chuck the shoes.

But my laces were gordianknotted. And they were too long because I don't lace them up the way you're supposed to.

My new ones are perfect, although they make my tennis shoes look as decrepit as they are.

For a hundred dollars I could have bought a halfway decent pair of shoes.

Blogged

2009-07-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

Alan Bamberger has taken blognote of our show at Mina Dresden, which is open on Thursday evenings from 5-8 and on Saturday evenings from 5-8 and of course by appointment.

[In today's Chronicle, Mary Eisenhart calls the show a "Don't Miss."]

And Drew Myron has blognoted our recent comments on tech.

And Shrey Desai has asked the world to judge whether I should accept the poems he has submitted.

Tom Christensen

2009-07-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

Putting together a museum catalog is a special challenge; Tom Christensen, publications director at the Asian Art Museum, explains it all.

Beautiful Beach

2009-06-30T03:48:00.001-07:00

A long weekend in L.A. can seem like a dream we've dreamed before,
where anything goes
nature is benign,
and the sun sets gently on Western Civ. [click on image to enlarge]

Peripatetic Poetics

2009-06-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

Hazlitt in "My First Acquaintance with Poets":

Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed more dramatic, the other more lyrical. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copsewood, whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight gravel-walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruption.

Emerson on Thoreau:

...from a box containing a bushel or more of loose pencils, he could take up with his hands fast enough just a dozen pencils at every grasp. He was a good swimmer, runner, skater, boatman, and would probably outwalk most countrymen in a day's journey. And the relation of body to mind was still finer than we have indicated. He said he wanted every stride his legs made. The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house he did not write at all.

Eheu fugaces

2009-06-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

As Horace might have said, the year has been deeply discounted.

And Matthew Kerbow at Lincart leafs little to the imagination. [click on image to enlarge]
And to take a picture of a working poet without paying him is to be cursed out.

White Shoe

2009-06-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

In as much as it's summer, we offer this example of white bucks, as in "white shoe law firm."

They were the preppie shoe of daily choice in my day, and, apparently, according to a slightly older informer, even at Amherst before my time. I don't know when they went out of style, circa 1958, I think.

Whenever I got a new pair, I thought they were so beautiful I would try to preserve their lovely, fuzzy whiteness. [click on image to see the delicate texture]

My peers, of course, whose white bucks got grungy very fast, took delight in smudging mine.

The pinkish rubber heels were soft and would wear down quickly, and the buck would absorb water when it rained, and dust...and lose the soft surface, leaving a mucky, broken down shoe as the ultimate fashion reality.

Tut tut

2009-06-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

At the King Tut press preview Wednesday morning at the de Young, a pyramidal mousse was served. I ate three. And five dainty, cream-filled date sarcophagi. The grape juice was vintage.
A replica Golden Throne goes for $1,895.

There are plenty of other takeaways.
The great Zahi Hawass, Egypt's Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, asked for our help in getting Nefertiti back from Berlin. FAMSF director John Buchanan, FAMSF President Dede Wilsey, the Mayor, and the Egyptian consul general commented, using body language. [click on image to enlarge]
BTW, correct is tut-ank-a-MOON.

The Mayor, Dede, and I remember the Tut show from 30 years ago. We were younger then.

This go-round is infinitely more glamorous. Beautifully installed, exquisitely lighted, filled with treasures that were fun to see with no hoi polloi swarming around.

There's something for everyone.

Wendy Keys

2009-06-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

In early July 1964, I finished my six-month stint in the Naval Air Reserve and moved back home. My brother was already living there while he finished up at Columbia.

He was hanging around with the Columbia theater crowd and with the Sarah Lawrence film crowd (Brian De Palma, Jill Clayburgh). And one night he invited me to come along to a party in the Village.

I met James Blue, who had just returned from IHDEC, the hot Paris film school, where he'd made a feature about the pieds noir in Algeria.

He'd been invited to show it at the Montreal Film Festival. I told him I thought I could borrow my stepfather's car and drive him up; I was eager to see the National Film Board of Canada—I wanted to make documentaries, their speciality.

So we drove up together.

In fact, I decided I would do a profile of the Film Board, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary, for The New Yorker. A lot of people talked to me under that pretext, but it was my first attempt to write a magazine piece...and it eventually ran in Film Comment.

At a dance the second night of Festival, I met Wendy Keys, whose first film (after years of working at the Film Society of Lincoln Center) I saw last night. It's about Milton Glaser, the great graphic designer: I heart NY; the Bob Dylan poster....

I met Milton a couple of times because I was a friend of one of his helpers, Sarah Polk. (My Great Uncle Arthur has been her grandfather's valet.)

Sarah and I were kind of a foursome with Maggie Paley, who was going with George Plimpton, and Jill Krementz, who would marry Kurt Vonnegut. Sarah was living with the great illustrator Tomi Ungerer.

But I digress.

It's a wonderful film; it closes tonight at the Roxie.

Great Books Lite

2009-06-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a summer reading project and thought that, as a child of the canon, I might do the Great Books.

Maybe one volume a day, one hour a day...since it's summer, after all, and reading the entire series has already been done—over the course of a year.

As it turned out, the 60 official volumes of the Great series don't circulate from my local library (USF), so I settled for Gateway to the Great Books, in ten volumes, which hadn't been taken out since 1979.

I skipped the intro volume and the three volumes of Imaginative Literature—I get enough of that at the office—and plowed into Critical Essays.

It immediately become obvious that I would not be able to get away with an hour a day, because Matthew Arnold stopped me in my tracks.

Weighing the gravitas of Chaucer vs. Dante on the basis of a single line:

O martyr souded in virginitee!

vs.

In la sua volontade e nostra pace...

That's the way I was trained; and do you remember Godard insisting he could tell...by looking at a single frame?

Then there was Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869), "What Is a Classic":

Happy those who read and read again, those who in their reading can follow their unrestrained inclination! There comes a time in life when, all our journeys over, our experience ended, there is no enjoyment more delightful than to study and thoroughly examine the things we know, to take pleasure in what we feel, and in seeing and seeing again the people we love; the pure joys of our maturity. Then it is that the word classic takes its true meaning, and is defined for every man of taste by an irresistible voice. Then taste is formed, it is shaped and definite; then good sense, if we are to posses it at all, is perfected in us. We have neither more time for experiments, nor a desire to go forth in search of pastures new. We cling to our friends, to those proved by a long intercourse. Old wine, old books, old friends.

BTW, I've decided that after the next, totally retrospective issue I'm going to publish only writers I haven't published before: new friends.

P&W Interview

2009-06-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

Poets & Writers interviewed the editor . [click to visit]

In the same issue, Jonathan Galassi of FS&G:

...some of the salesmen were saying that neighborhood bookstores are doing better in the economic crisis because people are more interested in buying locally and supporting small businesses.

I hope that's true.

Saturday's Opening

2009-06-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

Mingling with the artists of ZYZZYVA Saturday: Debbie Kvant, Tamim Ansary,
gallerist Mina Dresden, and a zombie who straggled over from Jillian Mcdonald's show at Michael Rosenthal Gallery across the street.

No kidding

2009-06-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

The goats of USF have been doing their job, chomping down Baja Lone Mountain. [click on image to enlarge]
Even the cops were impressed.
And the kids, of course.

The artists of Mina Dresden

2009-06-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

This is the price list for the seventy or so artists who are in the Mina Dresden ZYZZYVA show, opening tonight:
. Anderson, Laurie; Stack; Ink wash on paper; $300
. Avery, David; The Anatomy of Melancholy; Etching; Zerkall Laid Cover Cream Paper; Ed. 20/30; 2008 $400
. Babcock, Jo; Bombshell, St Louis, MO; gelatin silver original print; 2009; $300
. Bacon, Linda; Shaping Market, Yunnan, China; photograph on watercolor paper; 1991; $450
. Balisle, Jenny; JBD.3.6.258; Pen and Ink on Paper; 2006; $500
. Barnes, Richard; Murmur 1; photograph; 2005; ask the artist

. Barrios, Eliza O; To Change; photographics, image source by Megan Wilson; 2009; $500
. Barth, Ann; Untitled; Cut Paper; 2009; Ask the Artist
. Basset, Richard; Artifact #3; Graphite on paper; 2005; $350
. Blau, Meredith; Sassy; ink on paper; 2009; $425
. Bovenzi, Eva; Untitled; Acrylic on paper; 2009; $350
. Brown, Lawrie; Alex with Frogs; Inkjet print; 2009; $350
. Buckwalter, Timothy; Untitled; Acrylic Ink on Polypropolene; 2009; $30
. Carner, Deric; Rock; Drawing; Ink on Paper; 2008; $200
. Chong, Albert; How Dire The Times; Photograph; 2008; $800
. Clausen, Alex; Witness; drawing; 2009; Not for Sale
. Cooper, Alika; Bianca; gouache on paper; 2009; $650
. Crossman, Marshall; Untitled; archival pigment print on 100% rag paper, ed. 3/99; $220
. De Jesus, Veronica; Leonard Shlain; drawing; 2009; digital print available upon request.
. Delgado, Luis; Lemon; K3 Epson Fiber Gloss Photograph, ed. 2/15; $250
. Dennis, Stephanie; Untitled; Charcoal on paper; 2009; $175
. Dubovsky, Anthony; Analect 2.480; artist’s print; April 23, 2009; $100
. Dunne, Jessica; Backlit Tree; Oil on Paper; 2009; $650
. Du Tiel, Katherine; Alchemy #1 (from the “Alchemy” series); photograph; $375
. Eanes, Mark; Tire Pile 2; photograph; $200
. Edwards, Gregory; The Pitch With Chop; black and white print on paper; A/P; 2007; $500
. Fischman, Helene; Whiskeytown is Burning (Controlled fires spin out of control), Whiskeytown National Park; photo mounted on board; 2008 October; $200
. Foosaner, Judith; Untitled; charcoal on paper; 2009; $1500
. Fracchia, Elizabeth; Gazing; acrylic and gouache; 2009; $150
. Friedman, Mitchell; The Evening Star; solar plate etching; 2009; $475
. Frohsin, Kim; Give More Good News; oil on paper; 2009; $575
. Gambill, Jeff; Study (Pocari Sweat); mixed media collage; 2009; Ask the Artist
. Gilhooly, David; Alone; scanned print; 2009; $50
. Gottschall, Bret; Triplips… at your service; charcoal on paper; 2009; $700
. Gottsegen, Dan; Winter Raise; woodblock print with pastel on paper; 2009; $500
. Hammond, Deborah; Balance; photograph; 2009; Ask the Artist
. Hayes, Randy; Staircase, Baby Doll House; oil on photograph; 2006; $300
. Hazelwood, Art; Patriotic Tune; woodblock print, AP; 2008; $75
. Holdway, John; Holding a Raven; artist’s print; 2009; $45
. Jackson, Zig; Homage to Emmett Till, Byrant Store, Money, Mississippi; photograph; $350
. Johnson-Williams, Judy; American Woman, 2008; carved cardboard; $500
. Jordahl, Kate; Boats, San Sebastian, Spain; photograph; 2001; $500
. Kane, Bill; Urban Landscape; B&W pigment print, 1979; $300
. Kenna, Michael; ___; 2006; $2000 | courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery
. Kuser, Olivia; Heaven; etching, ink on gessoed paper; 2009; $500
. Letbetter, Dennis; Swollen Book; Gelatin Silver Print; 2008; $200
. Lubliner, Malcolm; Standing Inquiry; photograph; 1988; $600
. Majewska, Margo; *; 2009; $___
. Mako, Nancy; Deminished Capacities; digitally constructed archival digital print on Rives white BFK; 2009; $350
. McElhiney, William; Still Life; pencil on paper; 2009; $100
. McKim-King, Melani; Portrait, nail, 2009, graphite on paper; $500
. Millea, Tom; Garapatta 1998; ultrachrome print; $500
. Minick, Roger; Man in Surf, from Extraction Series; Artist’s Print; 2008/2009; $500
. Mitchell, Margaretta; Untitled, from Live Oak Tango seriew; pigment print; 2008; $800
. Mulvey, Colleen; Handcarved; graphite frottage detail; 2009; $25
. Obermaier, Natalie; Recoil; Silver gelatin framed, ed. 10; 2008; $1,000 | Courtesy of Room for Painting, Room for Print
. Paulini, Laura; The Van Gogh in Chicago; ink on paper; 2009; $200 | Courtesy of the artist and Eleanor Harwood Gallery
. Perlman, Joan; Glow; inkjet photograph; ed. 2/5; 2009; $250
. Robertson, Barbara; Radiant; archival pigment print and acrylic on Somerset paper; $250
. Roeder, Ben; Study of Self Portrait of Samue Palmer; charcoal on paper; 2009; $300
. Ruane, Kay; Mystery Piano; graphite and ink on paper; 2009; $1600 | Courtesy of Jenkins Johnson Gallery
. Rudolph, Glenn; Warrior, Earthhaven; 2003; Inkjet; $600
. Sanchez, R.E., Ready Or Not – Disaster Is All Too Near; graphite on paper; 1994-2009- $110
. Scholz, Zachary Royer; All My Blacks Pens; pen on paper, ed. 1/4; 2009; $200
. Seborovski, Carole; Face with Beads; gelatin silver print; 1996 / 2009; ask the artist
. Singer, Andy; Bunny Car; drawing; $125
. Sollins, Amy; Ersatz; linocut on paper, AP; 2009; $250
. Stern, Pia; Spooky Action of a Distance; etching, aquatint, & drypoint; 2009; $45
. Sugita, Toru; Passer-by; etching, aquatint, & drypoint, ed. 2/20; 2008; $200
. Tanaka, Gayle; Out to Lunch; digital print; 2009; $250
. Temple, Brook; My Mama Done Told Me; pencil and watercolor; 2009; $900
. Teraoka, Masami; AIDS Series/Condom Pillow Book 1987; ed. 50/52b; chine collè etching; $750 | Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery
. Thomas, Lew; Punching Beckett; photograph; 1995-2009; $500
. Thorsen, Niels Helvig; The Aleph; photograph; 2008; $200
. Tomb, David; Collard Forest-Falcon Study; pencil on paper; 2009; $75
. Thurston, Jacqueline; Arapaho Crazy Society Dancer, 1983; final print in the Dioramas portfolio published in 1986; Not for Sale
. Uchin, Andrew; Untitled archival inkjet print from the Reader Series; $150
. Vanderveen, Kimetha; Untitled; monotype (oil on paper); 2005-6; $450
. Verba, David; The Lesson; acrylic paint on board; 2009; $350
. Wainwright, Matt; Prisoner of War; charcoal and ink on paper; $175
. Walker, Sandy; Untitled; ink on paper; 2008; $200
. Wilcoxon, Heather; The Economist; drawing with sharpie and charcoal on paper; $200
. Wilson, Noah; Aberdeen, Washington; 2009; ask the artist
. Xylor, Jane; USA Number One; typewriter drawing on lined paper; 2000; $1000
. Yamrus, Frank; "Untitled (June)"; pigment print from digital file, ed. 1-11; 2009; $950

. Zellen, Jody; Alone in the Crowd; pen on paper; 2009; $250

Dixon Long

2009-06-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

Dixon Long came by yesterday with his new novel, A Very Rich Man.
We went to see Mina Dresden installing the ZYZZYVA show, which opens Saturday.
Then we went stopped by Receiver Gallery, which is next door to Anthony's Cookies, where we got a Semi Sweet Chocolate Chip.
Then we checked out artist Hilary Pecis at Triple Base,
and, after more gallery hopping, grabbed some supper at Canteen,where a key decor element is well-stocked bookshelves.

Consult the Editor

2009-06-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

I read submitted manuscripts for free, but I don’t offer comments or suggestions.

However, earned and contributed income being what they are these days, I’ve decided to try to sell my advice and counsel.

If you’re willing to pay me to work with you on a manuscript, please give call: 415.752.4393

Please note: Writers I work with will not be eligible to publish in ZYZZYVA.

Scent-free edition

2009-06-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

We recently received a library renewal order via EBSCO, a subscription service.

Its "Special Instructions/Comments" asked us to send the "scent-free edition."

Some readers might feel that a lot of our content stinks.

But, usually, they just don't renew. (Hardly anyone ever cancels.)

In any case, I don't see much chance of us improving our product line.

Unless this desire for "scent-free" is a reaction to how I sometimes respond on panels when asked if I read the entire manuscript before making my judgment.

On the first go-through, I say, I just sniff them.

Margaret Anderson

2009-06-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

Speaking of advertising, don't ask.

Fall/Winter, which closes today, will have the fewest pages since we were still ramping up in 1987.

Which reminds me of Margaret Anderson, whose memoir, My Thirty Years' War, I pulled off the shelves a couple of weeks ago when I had nothing to read. It always cheers me up.

I had forgotten that before she started the Little Review, before she serialized Ulysses—what a heroic achievement—she had paid her dues running a newspaper's literary page and working for The Dial. (Literary Chicago was happening just before WWI.)

In any case, in 1914, refusing to believe she needed a Big Patron to launch, she took a friend's advice and went to New York and Boston to hustle ads:

I demanded ads—and got them. I may not be exact but I think I collected $450. Scribner's gave me two pages—also Houghton Mifflin. At Appleton's I met Compton McKenzie (good-looking, charming). At Scribner's I met Scott Fitzgerald (also good-looking, charming, smiling, blond, nervous). Scribner's had just moved into their new building in upper Fifth Avenue and Scott Fitzgerald was in Mr. Perkins' office looking over the proofs of his first book, This Side of Paradise. We talked Little Review and I announced what was to be in the first number. Scott regretted with blushes that his new stuff was too popular to be solicited by a magazine of the new prose. When I next saw him two years later he was still blushing because he was receiving checks from Harper's Bazaar, while good writers like Djuna Barnes had to give their stories to the Little Review for nothing.

[Of course, Anderson has mixed things up: in 1914, Fitzgerald was just getting started at Princeton; he delivered the ms. of This Side in 1919.]

PS: One summer, Anderson (and her lover Jane Heap) worked out of a cabin in Muir Woods:

...maddened by the interest of our conversations and by the lack of interest in the manuscripts that came in, I decided that I would not contribute to the perpetuation of the uninteresting. The only gesture of protest I could think of was to publish an issue of the magazine made up of 64 empty pages...

Let the record show that, in the middle of the blankness, Jane contributed two pages of cartoons depicting their piano playing, "anarchist meetings, horse-back riding, fudge breakfasts and intellectual combats."

Black Oak Closes

2009-06-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

It's no secret why Black Oak Books had to close: it stopped advertising in ZYZZYVA.

The new owner would not even take a meeting with me. He was clearly doomed.

Same thing happened with Cody's. When they cared about the community, they advertised.

When they started expanding (to the hind end of the 4th St. mall), they stopped.

And when they hubristically decided to open a branch in a basement off Union Square, a seven iron from Borders, they were doomed.

Those bookstores that have continued to support us have continued to thrive, in as much as anyone is thriving these days.

What happens when things fall apart, however, is that things fall apart. For example, on Black Oak's website. Nobody, apparently, could be bothered to proof it:

By July 1st, we will open a small weekend retell presence, for GREAT DEALS on the latest releases, plus the oldies but goodies. In the mean time....

Faux Locavoring

2009-06-14T08:39:00.000-07:00

I should have known better, but the thought that I could just mosey down to Mountain View yesterday, to the Shoreline Ampitheatre, just past the architecturally challenged Google campus, and get some Elgin, Texas brisket, some Katz's pastrami, some Graeter's ice cream, some Anchor Bar Buffalo chicken wings, some echt Philly cheesesteak...prompted me to fork over $35 for a ticket and put $30 on my electronic bracelet, since only the first edible was "free." [click on images to enlarge]

Curses upon the promoters of this event, which, to be fair, included some hot bands, like Little Feat, that I didn't stay for.
The lines were so long that I was reduced to trying the with-good-reason-only-a-short-line Michigan BLT (the bacon was raw) and then, to use up my e-money, a no-line "best peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the world," created by some Berkeley jam maker.

By the time I got to the PBJ counter, the administration had acknowledged that the computer system didn't work and was telling vendors to give bracelet-wearers whatever they wanted and just write their orders down by hand.
I came away with an original ZZang chocolate-covered peanut bar (from Michigan) for Rozanne and a somewhat compromised view of the East Bay hills.

The Game

2009-06-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

I went to the game last night. It wasn't expensive for me, because a friend who'd been given two tickets by his company for leading a team of employees in painting a homeless shelter invited me.

There was plenty to read. [click on image to enlarge]
The Gay Men's Chorus sang the National Anthem.
And I realized that the Big Glove I've always hated was just like the glove I wished I had, instead of a (split-fingered) Pete Reiser.
Meanwhile, pirates sailed the cove, and gangbangers, wearing their (Giants) colors, had paid $10 to get onto the promenade where they hung out as if it were their mall. (I was afraid to take a picture.) Security was intense. Lincecum was awesome.

Oh, and did I mention, they now have guys going around the stands selling hot cocoa. With whipped cream.

Birl

2009-06-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Having recently come off the road myself, I thought I'd revisit Kerouac to see if he's gotten any hipper.

I tried his North Beach adventure, The Subterraneans, published by Grove in 1958.

It's murky, but I liked his coining the word birl:

Out of the bar were pouring interesting people, the sight making a great impression on me, some kind of Truman Capote-haired dark Marlon Brando with a beautiful thin birl or girl in boy slacks with stars in her eyes and hips that seemed so soft when she put her hands in her slacks I could see the change—and that face....

What I especially like about birl is the "boy slacks."

Kerouac was so into genderblending.

I think he was deeply conflicted. In The Subs, our hipster hero debates whether he should move in with his mulatto girlfriend or continue to live with his mom.

I also liked it that the name "Ferlinghetti" (among others) has been deleted from the Wikipedia "character key" (name of character = real-life name).

(Ferlinghetti declined to publish both On the Road and Naked Lunch.)

I also liked it that the catalog librarian at USF had slashed through the author's first name and penciled John above it.