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Monday, May 19, 2008

Reading Tonight

posted by on May 19 at 10:09 AM

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And a Happy Bright Shiny Morning to you. There are a ton of readings in town tonight, including an open mic, a talk by local doctor Emily Transue, and a book called Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy, which kind of has the thesis in the title.

Let’s discuss the Bright Shiny Elephant in the room. James Frey reads at Town Hall tonight, from his new novel Bright Shiny Morning. He is joined by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, who reads from the reissue of his book Candy Everybody Wants. Kilmer-Purcell is doing kind of an opening act thing, I guess. We didn’t review Bright Shiny Morning in the paper this week—really, do you want to read another rehash of the stupid James Frey stupidness?—but Ari Spool reviewed Candy Everybody Wants, and here’s the beginning of that review:

I’m going to come right out and admit this: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a gay man. Nor have I ever been a gay male teenager with a desperate hankering for fame, a trailer-trash bohemian for a mom, or a retard for a brother. Is that why I hated Candy Everybody Wants?

Fuck, no. There’s so much more to hate than just the characters. There’s also the plot! And the setting! And, most of all, the writing!

The rest of the review is here.

I do not recommend you go to the Frey reading
. Instead, you should check out Preeta Samarasan, reading from Evening is the Whole Day at Elliott Bay Book Company, if debut novels set in Malaysia are your thing. Or—perhaps most excitingly—Nancy Kress, the author of Beggars in Spain, is reading at the Hugo House. It’s a pretty great sci-fi novel, and she’s going to be reading new work.

If fiction isn’t your thing, Stuart Kauffman is also at Town Hall reading from Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion, which seems to posit that there is room for religion in science. I remain skeptical.

Those with questions are directed to the readings calendar.

RSS icon Comments

1

And that there use of discourse-initial "and" was darn prosaically kind of you, Paul. Were you being self-consciously Irish there, or did it just "sound cool"?

I do mean that curiously, not snarkastically...

Posted by Jeff Stevens | May 19, 2008 10:17 AM
2

Jeff: I saw a play set in Ireland this past weekend; I think it must've stuck.

Posted by Paul Constant | May 19, 2008 10:45 AM
3

I like Josh Kilmer-Purcell's "I Am Not Myself These Days" though so you guys should go anyway to see him and leave when Frey comes on.

Posted by EssBee | May 19, 2008 10:52 AM
4

Paul, I shouldn't go, even if I get a personal invite on myspace from Josh Kilmer-Purcell? I think I'm gonna check it out.

Posted by jhell | May 19, 2008 11:34 AM
5

@3: I am totally in favor of people going to see Kilmer-Purcell and then walking out before James Frey. I think that would be awesome. I love it when opening acts trump the main show.

@4: See @3. Although, I would like to point out that 'personal invites' on MySpace aren't all they're cracked up to be. I think that Robert Downey Jr. personally invited me to see Iron Man, too.

Posted by Paul Constant | May 19, 2008 11:38 AM
6

Wouldn't Margaret Seltzer make a better opening act for James Frey?

Perhaps we can arrange, by analogy with all those Ozzy-Metallica-Judas Priest sorts of mega-things that seem to manifest themselves locally every summer, a Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am Grand Slam Creative Fiction Summer Jam, at the Gorge if it's available, with James Frey and Margaret Seltzer as the headliners.

Who else would fit on that bill? We'll need at least seven creative fiction superstars and/or also-rans to make it truly Flick-yr-Bic-worthy, no?

Posted by Jeff Stevens | May 19, 2008 12:08 PM
7

I'm going to throw eggs at him while screaming obscenities in Hungarian.

Posted by Frey = Fuckwad | May 19, 2008 2:40 PM
8

I listened to Stuart Kauffman on KUOW this morning, and he is not religious, in that he specifically stated that he does not believe in God and that humans create gods, not the other way around. I didn't get a "posits that there is room for religion in science"-vibe from him AT ALL. He was actually a pretty interesting interviewee, if not quite adept at explaining his ideas in layman's terms.

Posted by Aislinn | May 19, 2008 3:00 PM
9
Kauffman is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection. His new book, Reinventing the Sacred—A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion, proposes that divinity can be found in a scientifically based understanding of the world and urges that we rethink everything from how cells manage work to how economies grow.
Well, that's his blurb from the Town Hall site. Color me wrong. That still didn't sound like what his interview was about, though.
Posted by Aislinn | May 19, 2008 3:09 PM

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