Archive

Friends,

below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)

Thursday, June 10, 7:30 PM
JIM WOODRING
Weathercraft

For over 20 years now, Jim Woodring has delighted, touched, and puzzled readers around the world with his lush, wordless tales of “Frank.”

Weathercraft is Woodring’s first full-length graphic novel set in this world — indeed, Woodring’s first graphic novel, period! — and it features the same hypnotically gorgeous linework and mystical iconography.

As it happens, Frank has only a brief supporting appearance in Weathercraft, which actually stars Manhog, Woodring’s pathetic, brutish everyman (or everyhog), who had previously made several appearances in “Frank” stories (as well as a stunning solo turn in the short story “Gentlemanhog”).

After enduring 32 pages of almost incomprehensible suffering, Manhog embarks upon a transformative journey and attains enlightenment. He wants to go to celestial realms but instead altruistically returns to the unifactor to undo a wrong he has inadvertently brought about: The transformation of the evil politician Whim into a mind-destroying plant-demon who distorts and enslaves Frank and his friends. The new and metaphysically expanded Manhog sets out for a final battle with Whim...

Weathercraft also co-stars Frank’s cast of beloved supporting characters, including Frank’s Faux Pa and the diminutive, mailbox-like Pupshaw and Pushpaw; it is both a fully independent story that is a great introduction to Woodring’s world, and a sublime addition to, and extension of, the Frank stories.

“The ancient myths and folk tales of all cultures which have been preserved for so many centuries have meaning for us today because the fantastic elements in them are rooted in immutable reality. The Frank stories belong to this class of literature.” – Francis Ford Coppola

Jim Woodring was born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California and enjoyed an exciting childhood full of poetry and paranoia among the snakes, rats and tarantulas of that enchanted realm. He eventually grew into an inquisitive bearlike man who has had three exciting careers; garbage collector, merry-go-round-operator and cartoonist. His work has been collected in several books and in various toys, fabrics, prints and urban legends.

Woodring’s cartoons chart a course through some of the most surreal imagery ever seen in any artistic medium, drawing visions from the realms of the subconscious to create a graphic world of dreams. But while his work may speak in the language of dreams, Woodring’s life has often led him into nightmare territory.

As a child, Woodring was plagued by both schoolmates and by waking nightmares accompanied by “voices” — a condition which would haunt him through childhood and much of his adult life. After enduring drug and alcohol abuse and homelessness, he worked as an animator for several major studios.

At the same time, Woodring worked on his own cartoon visions, self-publishing them in minicomic format. In the mid-’80s, Woodring was introduced to publisher Gary Groth by mutual friend Gil Kane (who worked with Woodring at Ruby-Spears), and Groth agreed to publish Woodring's work. In 1987, Woodring quit animation and moved with his wife Mary and son Max to Seattle, where they live to this day. In addition to his critically acclaimed comics and books, Woodring also works in canvas painting and 3-dimensional objects, many of which have been featured in gallery exhibitions from Seattle to New York.

“Woodring is fantastic... his stuff will outlast all but one in a thousand of his peers. His stuff is a revelation.” – Scott McCloud

“I promise to spare you all my worst visions.” – Jim Woodring

Friday, June 11, 7:30 PM
SASHA POLAKOW-SURANSKY
The Unspoken Alliance:
Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa

A senior editor at Foreign Affairs considers how Israel’s booming arms industry and apartheid South Africa’s international isolation led to a secretive military partnership between two seemingly unlikely allies.

Prior to the Six-Day War, Israel was a darling of the international left: socialist idealists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir vocally opposed apartheid and built alliances with black leaders in newly independent African nations. South Africa, for its part, was controlled by a regime of Afrikaner nationalists who had enthusiastically supported Hitler during World War II.

But after Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, the country found itself estranged from former allies and threatened anew by old enemies. As both states became international pariahs, their covert military relationship blossomed: they exchanged billions of dollars’ worth of extremely sensitive material, including nuclear technology, boosting Israel’s sagging economy and strengthening the beleaguered apartheid regime.

By the time the right-wing Likud Party came to power in 1977, Israel had all but abandoned the moralism of its founders in favor of close and lucrative ties with South Africa. For nearly twenty years, Israel denied these ties, claiming that it opposed apartheid on moral and religious grounds even as it secretly supplied the arsenal of a white supremacist government.

Polakow-Suransky reveals the previously classified details of countless arms deals conducted behind the backs of Israel’s own diplomatic corps and in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews with former generals and high-level government officials in both countries,The Unspoken Alliance tells a troubling story of Cold War paranoia, moral compromises, and Israel’s estrangement from the left. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Israel’s history and its future.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs and holds a doctorate in modern history from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar from 2003 to 2006. His writing has appeared in The American Prospect, the International Herald Tribune, The New Republic, and Newsweek. He lives in Brooklyn.

WRITERS & READERS VIP TOUR:
Monday, June 14, 7:30 PM
BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE PARIS REVIEW
An Evening with Managing Editor CAITLIN ROPER
And Summer Issue Contributors JEFF ANTEBI and MATTHEW ZAPRUDER

Whether you’re a published writer, a would-be writer, or simply an avid reader, you have a rare opportunity to see the inner workings of a literary magazine. The Paris Review’s managing editor, Caitlin Roper, talks about submissions, editing, curation, how art is chosen, how production works, the review’s redesigned website (debuting this month), author interviews (so wonderfully collected in the four volume Paris Review Interviews series), and the effect of The Paris Review’s use of Twitter. Roper’s look at what one critic called “one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world” gives us unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to this cultural institution.

Joining Caitlin Roper this evening are photographer Jeff Antebi, whose portfolio of photos taken in Haiti is featured in the Summer 2010 issue of The Paris Review, who will show slides and talk about his experience of shooting in that country, and poet Matthew Zapruder, who has a long poem featured in the Summer 2010 issue, will offer a short reading.

Founded in Paris by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton in 1953, The Paris Review began with a simple editorial mission: “Dear reader,” William Styron wrote in a letter in the inaugural issue, “The Paris Review hopes to emphasize creative work—fiction and poetry—not to the exclusion of criticism, but with the aim in mind of merely removing criticism from the dominating place it holds in most literary magazines and putting it pretty much where it belongs, i.e., somewhere near the back of the book. I think The Paris Review should welcome these people into its pages: the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they're good”

Decade after decade, the Review has introduced the important writers of the day. Adrienne Rich was first published in its pages, as were Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward P. Jones, and Rick Moody. Selections from Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy appeared in the fifth issue, one of his first publications in English. The magazine was also among the first to recognize the work of Jack Kerouac, with the publication of his short story, “The Mexican Girl,” in 1955. Other milestones of contemporary literature, now widely anthologized, also first made their appearance in The Paris Review: Italo Calvino's Last Comes the Raven, Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus, Donald Barthelme's Alice, Jim Carroll's Basketball Diaries, Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Virgin Suicides, and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections.

In addition to the focus on original creative work, the founding editors found another alternative to criticism—letting the authors talk about their work themselves. The Review’s Writers at Work interview series offers authors a rare opportunity to discuss their life and art at length; they have responded with some of the most revealing self-portraits in literature. Among the interviewees are William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Joan Didion, Seamus Heaney, Ian McEwan, and Lorrie Moore.

CALLING ALL WRITERS!
Tuesday, June 15, 7:30 PM
KATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK AND SAM BARRY
Write That Book Already!
The Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now
"How do I get my book published?"

Good question. Lucky for you, publishing insiders Sam Barry and Kathi Kamen Goldmark have laid out the blueprint for what you want -- your book. From transforming an idea into a manuscript to finding an agent to working with an editor to marketing your book, BookPage's Author Enablers are here to assist you every step of the way. And they've brought some backup with original insight from literary superstars like Stephen King, Amy Tan, Rita Mae Brown, and more.

It's everything you would ever want -- and need -- to know about the industry from the inside out.

Sam Barry is a marketing and promotions manager at HarperOne as well as an author and musician. Barry offers advice to aspiring writers as one half of BookPage's Author Enablers team, and tours the country as a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders. He is also the author of How to Play the Harmonica and Other Life Lessons.

Kathi Kamen Goldmark has worked "on the inside" of publishing as a media escort and publicist for nearly every major publisher. She's also the other half of the Author Enablers column and the founding member of the Rock Bottom Remainders. She is also the author of And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You.

"[T]he joy they promise in their prose makes me glad that I and other writers have been willing to make good writing our aim, and even great writing our dream." – from the Foreword by Maya Angelou

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