Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
Monday, October 1
7:30 PM
CRACKING THE NEWS WITH PROJECT CENSORED
Join Mickey Huff of Project Censored to discuss the role of the news media in modern censorship and to review the most censored news stories of the year. This event is part of Banned by the Bay, a festival celebrating Banned Books Week.
Co-hosted by the HuffingtonPost Book Club San Francisco:
Tuesday, October 2
7:30 PM
A Launch Party for
SCOTT HUTCHINS
A WORKING THEORY OF LOVE
Help celebrate a wildly inventive, major literary debut about a disaffected man who learns – with the help of a sentient computer that speaks in his deceased father’s voice – to make peace not just with his past but with his future.
Settled back into the San Francisco singles scene following the implosion of his young marriage just months after the honeymoon, Neill Bassett is going through the motions. His carefully modulated routine, however, is soon disrupted in ways he can’t dismiss with his usual nonchalance.When Neill’s father committed suicide ten years ago, he left behind thousands of pages of secret journals, journals that are stunning in their detail, and, it must be said, their complete banality. But their spectacularly quotidian details were exactly what artificial intelligence company Amiante Systems was looking for, and Neill was able to parlay them into a job, despite a useless degree in business marketing and absolutely no experience in computer science. He has spent the last two years inputting the diaries into what everyone hopes will become the world’s first sentient computer. Essentially, he has been giving it language -- using his father’s words. Alarming to Neill -- if not to the other employees of Amiante -- the experiment seems to be working. The computer actually appears to be gaining awareness and, most disconcerting of all, has started asking questions about Neill’s childhood.
Amid this psychological turmoil, Neill meets Rachel…remains preoccupied by unresolved feelings for his ex-wife…and discovers a missing year in the diaries -- a year that must hold some secret to his parents’ marriage and perhaps even his father’s suicide. Everything Neill thought he knew about his past comes into question, and every move forward feels impossible to make.
Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master’s Son, writes, “Incandescent with humor and insight, Hutchins’s portrait of human longing falls as warm and slant across these pages as a California sunset. Original, wise, full of serious thinking, serious fun, and the shock of the new, this book is astonishing.”
And Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan, writes, “A brainy, bright, laughter-through-tears, can’t-stop-reading-until-it’s-over kind of novel. Fatherless daughters, mother-smothered sons, appealing ex-wives, mouthy high school drop-outs—damn, this book’s got something for everyone!"
We think you won’t want to miss this!
Scott Hutchins, a Truman Capote Fellow in the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford, received his MFA from the University of Michigan. His work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Rumpus, The New York Times, and Esquire. He currently teaches at Stanford.
Spotlight on Comedy
Sunday, October 7
7:00 PM
MICHAEL IAN BLACK
AMERICA, YOU SEXY BITCH
&
YOU’RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT:
Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations
Michael Ian Black (very famous) is a popular comedian who began his career with The State, a sketch comedy troupe he co-founded at New York University in 1988, which went on to have a successful run on MTV. He then co-created the Comedy Central television series "Viva Variety," a fake European variety show. From there, he appeared on several television shows before landing the role of Phil Stubbs, the quirky bowling alley manager on NBC's "Ed," which ran for almost four seasons. His next project was "Stella," a television show he co-created with Michael Showalter and David Wain, which ran on Comedy Central. Michael has appeared in several films and is a popular contributor to VH1's "I Love the..." series. In 2005, he wrote and his directed his first film, "Wedding Daze," which starred Jason Biggs and Isla Fisher. His screenplay "Run Fat Boy Run," starring Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton came out in 2007. Michael is also a stand-up comedian, who regularly tours the country. His first album of stand-up comedy "I Am a Wonderful Man," was released in 2007, and his first book of humorous essays, My Custom Van (and 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays That Will Blow Your Mind All Over Face) came out in 2008. His comedy series “Michael and Michael Have Issues” followed in 2009 on Comedy Central. He’s the author of Chicken Cheeks, a children’s book, You’re Not Doing It Right, and, with Megan McCain, America, You Sexy Bitch.
About that most recent book: In the summer of 2011, McCain and Black embarked on a balls-out, cross-country tour. Along the way, they spoke to politicians, gun lovers, abortion-rights advocates and opponents, gay parents, flag burners, Muslims, poker players, Tea Partiers, Minutemen, veterans, teen moms, bikers, fast food workers, and a hooker or two. They toured the White House. They fired semiautomatic weapons. They stopped and ate at every Olive Garden along the way. But mostly they talked to each other about their differences, their similarities. It’s Chelsea Handler meets Hunter S. Thompson in a political cannonball run across America.
Who knows what he’ll talk about tonight…
The Booksmith at Litquake!
Tuesday, October 9
8:00 PM
TWO GUYS FROM CHICAGO: AN EVENING WITH DANIEL CLOWES AND DAVE EGGERS
Litquake welcomes the creative minds of Daniel Clowes and Dave Eggers, who between them have earned the titles of publisher, editor, journalist, cartoonist, philanthropist, educator, illustrator, author, screenwriter, and graphic novelist, as well as former resident of Chicago, The Windy City. Tonight the two discuss the vagaries of the creative process, their favorite comics, books, and movies, anything else that might come up, and which Chicago hot dog is better: Vienna Beef or Red Hot Chicago.
At Z Space (450 Florida Street, San Francisco)
$15; tickets available here
An Evening in Praise of the Excellent Comic
Thursday, October 11
7:30 PM
GABRIELLE BELL
The Voyeurs
TOM KACZYNSKI
Beta Testing the Apocalypse
NOAH VAN SCIVER
The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln
About Gabrielle Bell’s work:
“The Voyeurs is the work of a mature writer, if not one of the most sincere voices of her literary generation. It's a fun, honest read that spans continents, relationships and life decisions. I loved it."--Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library
"As she watches other people living life, and watches herself watching them, Bell's pen becomes a kind of laser, first illuminating the surface distractions of the world, then scorching them away to reveal a deeper reality that is almost too painful and too beautiful to bear."-- Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother?
"A master of the exquisite detail, Bell provides a welcome peephole into our lives."--Francoise Mouly, The New Yorker
The Voyeurs is a real-time memoir of a turbulent five years in the life of renowned cartoonist, diarist, and filmmaker Gabrielle Bell. It collects episodes from her award-winning series Lucky, in which she travels to Tokyo, Paris, the South of France, and all over the United States, but remains anchored by her beloved Brooklyn, where sidekick Tony provides ongoing insight, offbeat humor, and enduring friendship.
Gabrielle Bell's work has been selected for the 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Best American Comics and the Yale Anthology of Graphic Fiction, and has been featured in McSweeney's, The Believer, and Vice. Cecil and Jordan In New York, the title story of her most recent book, was adapted for the screen by Bell and director Michel Gondry in the film anthology Tokyo! She lives in Brooklyn.
About Tom Kaczynski’s work:
It would be easy to call Tom Kaczynski the J.G. Ballard of comics. Like Ballard, Kaczynski’s comics riff on dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments. Yet while Kaczynski shares many of Ballard s obsessions, he processes them in unique ways. His visual storytelling adds an architectural dimension that the written word alone lacks.
Kaczynski takes abstract ideas capitalism, communism, or utopianism and makes them tangible. He depicts and meditates on the immense political and technological structures and spaces we inhabit that subtly affect and define the limits of who we are and the freedom we as Americans presume to enjoy. Society and the individual, in perpetual tension. Once you've read Kaczynski’s comics, it should come as no surprise to learn that he studied architecture before embarking on a career as a cartoonist.
Beta Testing includes short stories, most notably The New, set in an un-named third-world megalopolis. It could be Dhaka, Lagos or Mumbai. The city creaks under the pressure of explosive growth. Whole districts are built in a week. The story follows an internationally renowned architect as he struggles to impose his vision on the metropolis -- a vision threatened by the massive dispossessed slum-proletariat inhabiting the slums and favelas on the edges of the city. From the fetid ferment of garbage dumps and shanties emerges a new feral architecture.
Tom Kaczynski learned to read English by reading American capitalist comics in communist Poland. His comics have appeared in The Drama, Punk Planet and Backwards City Review. He lives in Minneapolis.
About Noah Van Sciver’s work:
The debut graphic novel from Noah Van Sciver follows the twentysomething Abraham Lincoln as he loses everything, long before becoming our most beloved president. Lincoln is a rising Whig in the state’s legislature as he arrives in Springfield, IL to practice law. With all of his possessions under his arms in two saddlebags, he is quickly given a place to stay by a womanizing young bachelor who becomes his friend and close confidant. Lincoln builds a life and begins friendships with the town’s top lawyers and politicians. He attends elegant dances and meets an independent-minded young woman from a high-society Kentucky family, and after a brisk courtship, becomes engaged. But, as time passes and uncertainty creeps in, young Lincoln is forced to battle a dark cloud of depression -- brought on by a chain of defeats and failures -- culminating in a nervous breakdown that threatens his life and sanity. This cloud of dark depression Lincoln calls “The Hypo.”
Dense crosshatching and an attention to detail help bring together this completely original telling of a man driven by an irrepressible desire to pull himself up by his bootstraps, overcome all obstacles, and become the person he strives to be -- all the while unknowingly laying the foundation of character he would use as one of America’s greatest presidents.
"Noah Van Sciver has brought new soul to this hard, weird time in Lincoln's life. The Hypo is a story of suffering & yearning, artfully told." — Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy
"Noah Van Sciver has developed a storytelling style that I find enormously appealing. In this book he's used that style to create a vivid and engaging portrait." — Chester Brown, author of Louis Riel
Noah Van Sciver was born in 1984 and raised in a large Mormon family in New Jersey. He first came to comic readers' attention with his comic book series Blammo, which earned him an Ignatz nomination in 2010. He currently lives in Denver with his cat Gertrude, among stacks of books.