Check it out here.
Sometimes I think we should have picked a different cover, since so many reviews tend to focus on how the cover gives off a more inappropriate vibe than the writing. Then I scratch myself somewhere all intimate-like and think about what to write next. I am glad the reviewer liked the Gene Simmons/Terry Gross piece, since that one tends to elicit the strongest of reactions.
From a lost roll of film that old friend Dan Long is scanning ever so slowly. Some observations: Wow. Look how tan I am. This is the famed Summer I Was More Tan Than My Sister, which I mention here.
“You were so happy that summer,” my mother always used to tell me. Probably because I partied every night. I was 20.
I lived in the top floor of a rooming house on Moorlyn Terrace with four other guys from Rutgers-Camden. I am sure the building was eventually demolished, and for good reason: the place was decrepit already and filled with the mojo of all the evil stuff we did in there. Evil, evil things.
That’s John P. in the middle of the frame. He was a strange cat. Worked at Wendy’s, as I recall, and I am wearing his cap. The guitar was met a Pete Townshend-El Kabong-type end by August. Note the milkcrate of CDs, my plaid shorts, and oddly spread legs.
I wrote this up really quick a couple days ago, and I’d be remiss not to link to it over here.
As part of a project/offer/stunt, writer Mickey Hess has offered to blurb any book within 24 hours. He made his offer on The Rumpus, the online magazine for very smart people. I should have given him one of my unpublished manuscripts, but instead he looked at How to Be Inappropriate. Here’s his blurb; I think I will place it next to all the others on the book page.
Books, and their characters, are treasured and entertaining. In his fourteenth cookbook, How to Be Inappropriate, Daniel Nester renders striking, thoroughly civilized, tales for special occasions. Nester brings us through the lonely exigencies of human wreckage, forging connections with Kosher exactitude. If you are a long-time convert, you’ll find How to Be Inappropriate appetizing, and quite appropriate. “–Mickey Hess
Stephen Elliott reads for Frequency North on September 16.
All Frequency North readings are free and open to the public. So please come if you live in the area!
Thursday, September 16
7:30pm
Stephen Elliott
Location: Standish Rooms, second floor of the Events and Activities Center, Standish Rooms, which are on the second floor of the Events and Activities Center, 420 Western Avenue, Albany, NY.
Stephen Elliott is the author of seven books including The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder, which has been described as “genius” by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Vanity Fair. The Adderall Diaries was the best book of the year in Time Out New York, a best of 2009 in Kirkus Reviews, and one of 50 notable books in the San Francisco Chronicle. His novel, Happy Baby, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lion Award as well as a best book of the year in Salon.com, Newsday, Chicago New City, the Journal News, and the Village Voice. Elliott’s writing has been featured in Esquire, Spin, The New York Times, The Believer, GQ, Best American Non-Required Reading 2005 and 2007, Best American Erotica, and Best Sex Writing 2006. He is the editor of The Rumpus.
Website: http://www.stephenelliott.com
Posters [pdf]
Just up on McSweeney’s: New Criticism Literary Theory Book Title or Self-Aggrandizing Male Genital Nickname?
Just up on McSweeney’s: New Criticism Literary Theory Book Title or Self-Aggrandizing Male Genital Nickname?
Try your hand at this quiz-list here.
(Hint: I just gave away one answer to your left.)
Three family portraits from last weekend.
My sister Meri, as drawn by my mother.
My mother, as drawn by my sister Meri.
And yours truly, as drawn by my sister. She seems oddly focused on my hair, you might say. She’s always been that way growing up. Still: WTF?
Two Queen song cues from Observe and Report, of all things.
Check it out here. Begins with “It’s Late” from News Of The World, then midway there’s “The Hero” from the Flash Gordon soundtrack.
“Catching Up With Joanna Scott” reprinted in paperback edition of her newest, Follow Me.
An old profile of mine from Poets & Writers magazine, “Catching Up With Joanna Scott,” has been reprinted in the paperback edition of the fabulous fiction writer’s latest novel, Follow Me. And if that isn’t incentive enough to go out and buy it, the book itself is getting rave reviews, too.
Bohemian Rhapsody: the flowchart.
via Bunnyman Chris Adams
