Yusuf Hawkins was killed twenty-five years ago in Bensonhurst. “The N Train,” an essay I wrote about discovering evil through that tragedy, is up today at TROP.
And, on a not altogether unrelated note, my review of Willy Vlautin’s The Free, a beautiful novel that tries to make sense of injustice, is up at Los Angeles Review of Books.
Buy a signed/personalized copy of The Free here.
1. Thanks to Will Byrnes for this kind & thoughtful review of GRAVESEND. Made my day.
Especially appreciated this part:
“While the bulk of the story is dark, there are some rays of light. Good can be found, although more in thought than deed. Hope digs its way back up to the surface, allowing for some second chances. Alessandra’s affection for a particular painting at the Met can be seen both as an artistic inspiration and an omen. Her participation in various forms of Manhattan life lifts her spirits. After all, she did manage to make it out to the west coast. But hope had better move quickly before another body lands on it.”
(And thanks so much to everyone who has taken time to write a review.)
2. My favorite writer in the world, Willy Vlautin, read here in Oxford on Thursday night. Got to meet him finally – I’ve been a huge fan since I found The Motel Life and Northline at a bookstore in the Bronx in 2008, and we’ve e-mailed back and forth over the last few years, ever since I interviewed him for the Yalobusha Review. Goddamn, he’s the greatest guy I ever met, and I was trying not to geek out on him too much. He read on Thacker Mountain Radio, which was great, but I selfishly wish he’d done a solo reading, so he could’ve read longer and played a few songs and done a Q&A. But he read one of my favorite scenes from The Free, Jo opening up to Pauline in the hospital, and he played “The Kid from Belmont Street,” (the first song he plays here), which is about Jo. (Also check out “43”and “A Letter to the Patron Saint of Nurses” from We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River, songs that reveal where ideas for The Free originated.) We hung out after the reading at City Grocery with Willy – pals Tom & Beth Ann, Jimmy, Andy, Brendan, Cody were there too – and then a few of us went to dinner at Bouré. Man, what a great night. We talked about Jim Thompson and David Goodis and Charles Willeford and Ann Patchett and Pink Floyd and Tom Petty and The Motel Life movie and so mu ch great stuff it’s hard to call it all back up. Jimmy, Andy, Brendan and I walked Willy back to his hotel around midnight, and one of my favorite things was Jimmy asking Willy if Jo was alright. “No, man,” Willy said. “I don’t think she is. I’m sorry.”
Here’s a picture that Jimmy snapped at Bouré of Willy, Brendan, and me:
3. I read at the public library here in Oxford on Thursday. Thanks to Laura Beth, Sarah, Andy, and everyone who came out – I had such a great time. I was nervous as hell about doing my first Q&A, but I think it went pretty well. Here are some pictures the library posted (my son, Eamon, was the real attraction as usual.)
4. I made a soundtrack for Gravesend on Spotify a while ago. You can find it here.
Pal & hero Jimmy Cajoleas interviewed pal & hero Jack Pendarvis over at Lent Magazine. I was there. It was a great night. We got drunk and talked for six hours and had a tape recorder going, which made it different from all the other times we’ve gotten drunk and talked all night.
Jack says so much great stuff about writing and living but my favorite thing is his response to my question about whether or not it’s wrong to encourage people who aren’t very good writers: “I don’t really see the harm in encouraging someone who is not good. So what? Some of the best things I’ve ever read were not good.”
Also:
I’m reading at the Oxford Public Library on 2/19/14 at 12 PM. Here’s the Facebook event page.
I’m reading at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville, Arkansas on Saturday, 3/8/14 at 6:30 PM.
The new Angel Olsen LP is streaming on NPR this week. I’m melting in a puddle of boners.
Oxford’s first Noir at the Bar happens tonight at 9 PM at Proud Larry’s. Here’s the Facebook event page.
Oxford folks: Mary reads at Off Square today at 5. Here’s the Facebook event page.
Read a lot of great books in 2013. My three favorites, which I read in the last few weeks, won’t be released officially until early 2014: Willy Vlautin’s The Free; Mary Miller’s The Last Days of California; and Dave Newman’s Two Small Birds.
From this year, I loved:
Sara Gran, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway
Owen King, Double Feature
Richard Lange, Angel Baby
Dave Newman, The Slaughterhouse Poems
Daniel Woodrell, The Maid’s Version
Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
Joe Hill, NOS4A2
J. David Osborne, Low Down Death Right Easy
Lori Jakiela, The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious
Dan Fante, Point Doom
Scott McClanahan, Crapalachia and Hill William
Derrick Harriell, Ropes
Poe Ballantine, Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere
William Todd Schultz, Torment Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith
Hosho McCreesh, A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst
Scott Phillips, Rake
Ace Atkins, The Broken Places
Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly, The Tilted World
George Saunders, Tenth of December
Shawn Vestal, Godforsaken Idaho
Michael Kimball, Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)
Noah Cicero, The Collected Works and Go to Work…
Jamie Quatro, I Want to Show You More
Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove
Mike Tyson, Undisputed Truth
George Pelecanos, The Double
Stephen Graham Jones, The Least of My Scars
Jedidiah Ayres, Peckerwood
Pearce Hansen, Street Raised
Red Hammond, XXX Shamus
David James Keaton, Fish Bites Cop!
Jamie Iredell, I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac
Stephanie Barber, Night Moves
Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal
My to-read pile includes some of the best of 2013 I haven’t gotten to yet: Mary Ruefle, Trances of the Blast; James Sallis, Others of My Kind; Barry Gifford, The Roy Stories; Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers; Ivy Pochoda, Visitation Street; Kelly Braffet, Save Yourself; Alissa Nutting, Tampa; Vicki Hendricks, Fur People; Tom Perrotta, Nine Inches; Marisha Pessl, Night Film; Lindsay Hunter, Don’t Kiss Me; Steve Weddle, Country Hardball; John Langan, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies; Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch; Matt Bell, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods; Tom Piccirilli, The Last Whisper in the Dark; Laird Barron, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All; Matthew Revert, Basal Ganglia; Kevin Sampsell, This is Between Us; Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped; Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane; Steve Lowe, You Are Sloth!; Morrissey, Autobiography; David Shoemaker, The Squared Circle; David Gilbert, And Sons; Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens; Paul Auster, Report from the Interior; Dan Fante, Point Doom; so many more I’m forgetting right now.
Links to my reviews of some of my favorites here.
Still a lot of movies I want to see from this year that I haven’t had a chance to see yet, especially Her, Blue is the Warmest Color, The Wolf of Wall Street, Go For Sisters, Nebraska, The Counselor, A Single Shot, Dallas Buyers Club…
Based on what I’ve seen so far, these are my favorites of the year:
1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. Spring Breakers
3. Before Midnight
4. The Spectacular Now
5. Mud
6. The Place Beyond the Pines
7. Enough Said
8. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
9. Frances Ha
10. Only God Forgives
11. American Hustle
12. Prisoners
13. The Way, Way Back
14. Gravity
15. The Motel Life
Others I really liked: To the Wonder; Stoker; Pacific Rim; Prince Avalanche; The Conjuring; Passion; Shadow Dancer; Room 237; The World’s End; Drinking Buddies; Don Jon; Blue Jasmine
Albums:
1. Water Liars, Wyoming
2. Jason Isbell, Southeastern
3. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Push the Sky Away
4. Phosphorescent, Muchacho
5. Bill Callahan, Dream River
6. Volcano Choir, Repave
7. Okkervil River, The Silver Gymnasium
8. Bonnie Prince Billy, s/t
9. Hiss Golden Messenger, Haw
10. Mutual Benefit, Love’s Crushing Diamond
11. Neko Case, The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You
12. The Hunt, The Hunt Begins
13. Chris Forsyth, Solar Motel
14. William Tyler, Impossible Truth
15. Yo La Tengo, Fade
16. Run the Jewels, s/t
17. Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt
18. Alela Diane, About Farewell
19. Kurt Vile, Wakin on a Pretty Daze
20. Little Wings, Last
Reissues/Live Albums/Etc.:
1. Songs: Ohia, The Magnolia Electric Co.
2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Live from KCRW
3. Bob Dylan, Another Self-Portrait
4. Human Expression, Love at a Psychedelic Velocity
5. Nirvana, In Utero
6. Sorrow Come Pass Me Around: A Survey of Rural Black Religious Music
7. Roky Erickson, The Evil One; Don’t Slander Me; Gremlins Have Pictures
8. Irma Thomas, In Between Tears
9. The Birthday Party, Live 81-82
10. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, In Cambridge
Best Discoveries: Bill Fox, Shelter from the Smoke (Thanks, David); Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
Other stuff I really liked: Cian Nugent & The Cosmos, Born with the Caul; Nathan Salsburg, Hard For to Win and Can’t Be Won; Charles Bradley, Victim of Love; The National, Trouble Will Find Me; T. Hardy Morris, Audition Tapes; Oblivians, Desperation; Arcade Fire, Reflektor; Cannibal Ox, Gotham; Overseas, s/t; Dirty Beaches, Drifters/Love is the Devil; Richard Buckner, Surrounded; Cass McCombs, Big Wheel and Others; Chastity Belt, No Regerts (sic); Mick Turner, Don’t Tell the Driver; Hayden, Us Alone; Low, The Invisible Way; The Handsome Family, Wilderness; Willis Earl Beal, Nobody Knows; Steve Gunn, Time Off; The Gunshy, Silent Songs; Dead Gaze, Brain Holiday; Mazzy Star, Seasons of the Day; Patty Griffin, Silver Bell; Kanye West, Yeezus; Bass Drum of Death, s/t; Ugly Heroes, s/t; Josh Ritter, The Beast in Its Tracks; Anna von Hausswolff, Ceremony; Mark Kozelek & Jimmy LaValle, Perils from the Sea; David Bowie, The Next Day; Tindersticks, Across Six Leap Years, Joanna Gruesome, Weird Sister; Janelle Monae, The Electric Lady; Camera Obscura, Desire Lines; Laura Marling, Once I Was An Eagle; Bombino, Nomad; William Onyeabor, Who Is William Onyeabor?; Dent May, Warm Blanket; Elephant Micah, Globe Rush Progressions; Duquette Johnson, Rabbit Runs a Destiny; The Paranoid Style, The Purposes of Music in General.
1. I’m reading in Brooklyn on Friday, January 3rd. 5 PM at Boulevard Books & Café in Dyker Heights. If you’re around, come on out. Here’s the Facebook page for the event.
2. Gravesend is now available on Kindle.
3. Orhan Pamuk wrote this great piece on C.P. Cavafy in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Cavafy’s “The City,” included in full here, is one of my favorite poems – the last few lines serve as the epigraph to Gravesend.
“The City” by C. P. Cavafy
You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.
From C. P. Cavafy’s Collected Poems (Princeton University, 1992).
4. Here’s my soundtrack for the holidays (off one of my favorite records of the year):
William Boyle 