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December 2
Another item for mid-Hudson residents: Nina Shengold has written a profile of me in the December Chronogram. Despite what you might think from the photograph, I am not actively engaged in making bombs or waging any kind of campaign against civilization. Or, hm, at least I’m not making bombs.
November 12 (bis)
If you’re in the mid-Hudson Valley this week, maybe you’d like to come hear me read at Vassar? I'll be there on Wednesday 11/16 at 5:30 p.m.. Building and room info TBA.
November 12, 2011
Commuters, take note: a review in the Economist’s blog describes Luminous Airplanes as a “high-concept novel worth reading.” And “its central concern—the mystery and possibility of unexpected encounters—is just right for commuters,” notes the reviewer, which is something I hadn’t thought of. Read the full review here.
The Boston Globe also ran a good review just before Halloween—only total mental collapse has kept me from mentioning it until now. Most of the review is locked behind a paywall, but: “captivating,” they call it. “A wry, provocative, and often hilarious coming-of-age tale.”
October 18, 2011
The department of not-quite-shameless self-promotion has been off making props for Occupy Wall Street, but it returns just in time to announce two events: on Wednesday, October 19, I’ll be speaking with the novelist and editor and nearly omniscient person Ed Park, about Luminous Airplanes, hypertext, World War I naval simulation games, and other topics of general interest. McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, NYC, 7pm.
Then on Saturday, October 22, I’ll be reading at Oblong Books, 6422 Montgomery St. in Rhinebeck NY, at 7:30 p.m. Upstate NY residents take note!
Looking into the hazy distance of next week, I will be reading at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera CA, on Wednesday, October 26th at 7pm. On Thursday, October 27 at 7pm, I’ll be at City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway, in San Francisco, CA. And on the 28th at 7:30pm, I’ll be at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90027.
October 8, 2011
Of all the images from last week’s book party, the one that I’m still coming back to is this short video, which Samantha Hunt shot in the darkened stacks of the Center for Fiction:
October 7, 2011 bis
Also, two upcoming events: I will be reading with Gary Shteyngart at the Hudson Opera House on Sunday, October 9, at 6pm, as part of Columbia County’s ArtsWalk. I’m also going to be talking with the amazing Ed Park at McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, NYC, on Wednesday, October 19th at 7pm.
October 7, 2011
The New York Times is running a positive review of Luminous Airplanes in this week’s Sunday Book Review. Author breathes sigh of relief.
October 4, 2011
Luminous Airplanes is officially published today. I started thinking about this book in the winter of 2000, started writing it in the fall of 2003, finished editing it in late June 2011. I hope you will like it. Also, I have an article in Salon about the future (and the past) of hypertext fiction: here. Also also: for those of you who were not at the Center for Fiction event, the New York Observer has some good things to say about it (and some photos).
September 29, 2011 bis
Also, the October 4th book launch at the Center for Fiction is the #1 critics’ pick for book events in Time Out New York this week. It should be quite something. Please come.
September 29, 2011
Luminous Airplanes has a book trailer—not only does it have a book trailer, but it has a book trailer directed by Hal Hartley, who has made some of my favorite films: Trust (1989), The Unbelievable Truth (1990), Henry Fool (1997), etc.. Here’s the trailer, in which I talk about the immersive text with the novelist, Happy Endings host, and all-around great person Amanda Stern:
September 20, 2011
Luminous Airplanes is one of Esquire’s Best Fall Books of 2011. It’s in good company: books by Colson Whitehead, Haruki Murakami, Jeffrey Eugenides, José Saramago...
September 15, 2011
There’s a long and very cogent write-up of Luminous Airplanes in the New York Observer this week. “The website is not just a dump for B-roll footage,” writes John Williams. “it’s a project all its own, distinct from the bound pages.” Indeed.
September 12, 2011
A couple of Luminous-Airplane-related items: first, a nice interview in Time Out Chicago, which begins, “Paul La Farge might be the greatest American writer you haven’t read, but now there’s no excuse.” Read the whole piece here.
And some upcoming events: on Tuesday, September 20th, I’ll be reading with Amitav Ghosh at the Russian Samovar, 256 W. 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019, at 7pm, as part of the FSG Reading Series. The reading is free, but the space is not enormous—come early! And then stay afterwards and drink vodka, why not.
On Tuesday, October 4th at 7pm, there will be a mysterious event at the Center for Fiction, 17 E. 47th Street, New York, NY. Details to be disclosed shortly.
Then on Wednesday, October 5th, I’ll be reading in the Happy Endings series at Joe’s Pub, with Seth Fried, Jesse Ball, and musical guest Anni Rossi. 425 Lafayette Street, NYC, NY, at 7pm. The reading is $15, and you might want to buy your ticket in advance.
August 15, 2011
Luminous Airplanes got another starred review, this one from Kirkus Reviews, which calls the book “An open-ended, postmodern fable that somehow delivers the satisfaction of the novelistic conventions it subverts. [...] Where so much experimental fiction seems pessimistic or even cynical about its possibilities, this novel sustains a spirit of innocence and wonder.” Thanks!
The review will appear in the print edition of Kirkus on September 1. And I can’t help observing that both this review and the one in PW quote lines from the book which I wrote after I turned in the final draft of Luminous Airplanes, a fact which will, I hope, encourage anyone who wants to keep tinkering with their novel.
August 4, 2011
Just got the cover for the paperback edition of The Facts of Winter. It looks like this:
Nice, yes? Apparently the gray will be silver (or silvery) on the actual book.
August 2, 2011
But then so, I am apparently the pick of the week on the Publishers Weekly web site. Thanks again, PW people!
August 1, 2011 (bis)
Here’s the first of many upcoming reading announcements: I will be reading in a special Hudson Valley edition of Happy Endings. Co-readers: the amazing Mary Caponegro and Rebecca Wolff. Musical guest: the equally-although-in-a-different-way amazing Cynthia Hopkins. Damn! I would go, if I weren’t already going. Saturday, August 20, at 8:30 pm, in the Spiegeltent on the Bard College campus.
August 1, 2011
Luminous Airplanes got a starred and boxed—and very nice—review in Publishers Weekly. (I had copied the review & pasted it on this page, then I realized it would be more elegant to link to it: here.) Thanks, PW!
July 23, 2011
I’m very happy to announce that my novel Luminous Airplanes will be published by FSG in October. The novel is one part of a project which I’ve been working on since the end of the twentieth century: the other part is an online “immersive text,” a branching fiction about which I will soon have lots to say.
By a happy coincidence, McSweeney’s Books is publishing a paperback edition of The Facts of Winter, with all-new illustrations, in September! I should probably have announced all of this sooner. But I was so busy working on Luminous Airplanes that I neglected my self-publicizing duties. No more. Expect many Luminous-Airplanes-related anmouncements in the weeks to come.
Feb 21, 2011
Are you by any chance in Cincinnati? Come here me lecture on The Novel and the City, as part of the University of Cincinnati's Ropes Lecture series. Tuesday, February 22, at 7 p.m. in Room 427 of the Engineering Research Center (the Michael Graves building). Thank you, Michael Griffith, for inviting me!
Jan 30, 2011
This, er, not just in: I have a review of Kevin Brockmeier’s The Illumination in the Feb/Mar issue of Bookforum (alas, not available online). In the same issue: Rivka Galchen vibrating at the upper end of the smart spectrum on Lydia Davis’s Bovary translation, and a great essay on Jonathan Coe by Ed Park, among other things.
Dec 6, 2010
Thanks to everyone who came to the Conjunctions reading at Book Court on Friday. There were ... many of you! Sorry about my tubercular-frog voice. I hope you had a good time anyway, especially you people who were standing all the way in the back. For those of you who missed it, Electric Literature has photos of the event on its blog. (Thanks, Anna and Julia!)
Dec 1, 2010
Infinite City, Rebecca Solnit’s book of illuminating (and illuminated) maps of San Francisco, is at #2 on the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list, right behind Patti Smith’s memoir. It’s an incredible book (see reviews in the SF Chronicle and NY Times), and I take some tiny sliver of the credit, having contributed a map (and essay) on “Phrenological San Francisco,” illustrated by the awesome Paz de la Calzada:
Check it out, if you can find a copy.
Nov 3, 2010
Between 1996 and 2001, the Paraffin Press published nineteen books, seventeen of them by me. Each had an edition of two copies: one for me, and one for the person for whom I’d written the story. For years they have been languishing in my attic, so I thought I’d put some of them online here.
Oct 17, 2010 (still)
Also, I have news. The short story “The Count of Monte Cristo’s Daughter,” which I wrote longhand last spring in the Kingston Public Library, in the company of the surpassingly great novelist Emily Barton, will be published in the fall issue of Conjunctions (#55). It, the story, has to do with Rosicrucians, and contains adult themes and language.
Also: Conjunctions has organized a reading from the issue, on December 3, 2010 at 7pm, at Book Court, 163 Court Street in Brooklyn. I’ll be reading with the excellent writers Karen Russell, Stephen O’Connor and John Madera. Brian Evenson will emcee.
Oct 17, 2010
So, as an author who once worked as a Web designer, I thought it was time I made a Web site. Actually, I thought of doing this months ago, and spent a long time experimenting with various unworkably complicated designs before settling on this one, which was more or less the simplest one I could throw together, this afternoon, in bed, while fighting some strange interminable cold-like sickness. I hope you’ll find it useful, or entertaining, or possibly both.