ALICIA KENNEDY

An essay on Daphne Carr’s Pretty Hate Machine 33 1/3 book and being a Goth-inclined tween in Catholic school at Specter Magazine.

A review for PANK.

A review for PANK.

Second Talking to Translators column for The Awl.

Interview with translator of César Aira’s The Seamstress and the Wind at The Awl. The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog linked the story in their daily news roundup. Words Without Borders quoted it on its Dispatches blog.

MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN

by Alicia Kennedy

When I start to think about a movie seriously—especially one I did not like—I have a tendency to drag myself down a particularly useless hole of thought by worrying that I read it wrong, that its problems were intentional and doing something…

brightwalldarkroom:

by Alicia Kennedy

Before Night Falls, Julian Schnabel’s film about the life of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, is a gift to my sensibilities. Taking it in feels indulgent: a writer I love portrayed by an actor (Javier Bardem) whom I’d watch read the paper, directed by the man who made …

Review of Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and A Common Pornography, from blog after attending reading by respective writers Justin Taylor and Kevin Sampsell.

Last night I went to HarperPerennial night at WORD bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I overheard an employee say 80 people came out to pack the tiny basement where there were only 39 chairs (spelled out in my notebook as 6x6+3). We were there for two recently released works of dirty working-class Americana, Justin Taylor’s short story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Kevin Sampsell’s memoir A Common Pornography. It was a straightforward reading, with a heartfelt introduction from their editor, but it illuminated much about the writing for me to hear them read pieces aloud (as it always does). The Q&A was painless, with only one person asking them what they’re working on now (Sampsell: chapbooks for Future Tense Books; Taylor: handed in a novel manuscript a few weeks ago, an anthology of literary tattoos). I had read both books over the past two weeks and was, honestly, surprised by how original and sentimental and funny they both were, in different but complementary ways.

Taylor is someone whose posts and comments on HTMLGiant I loved, yet for some reason thought maybe his fiction would be over-the-top happy with itself in an inaccessible way. Everything Here proved me wrong over and over. Each story has layers, different roads it could travel, and his prose has poetic rhythms. It wasn’t surprising to learn he “revises by ear.”

Nobody knew Estrella’s real name was Anne. Even the ones who had been with her didn’t know. She was that good. Sometimes she almost forgot she had a real name—she was that good.

Whether the character is an anarchist, a hedge-funder, a regular lost soul, there is a youthful restlessness and slight nihilism that is palpable but never smug. The voices he brings to life are experiencing a dull terror, giving the name of the collection the air of a prayer rather than being yet another long-winded cutesy title (maybe that was how I first read it…). This became clear in the story “Tetris,” where video games, relationships, and the Bible intermingle at the end of the world. Just that brief description captures our “generation’s” collective preoccupations; the piece itself makes your heart sink.

At the reading he read “A House in Our Arms,” in which the aforementioned hedge-funder chases a not-exactly girlfriend from college and gets into a second nebulous relationship with an older gay art critic. There is sex and humor, there is desperation. There is stuff about the subway that got a lot of laughs (“Do I get on here or walk five blocks and have one less stop?”), and was all the more relevant in a bookstore you have to take the G train to get to.

Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography is a memoir written in the form of memory, short pieces that feel like they were just set off by a sight or smell a moment ago but are fully formed. Its title may be jarring (and there is a tutorial on how to obscure it for public reading), but works. There is the literal pornography of innocent pubescent curiosity and the adolescent reality of sex, but mostly there is the common experience of life’s confusing vulgarity, indifference, and unpredictability.

Fatherhood and masculinity—how one becomes a man, what is a man—are basically the book’s reason for being. “I would call my son honey,” he writes, hoping to never be his own callous, creepy father. Unapologetic honesty about all the things we did in secret as kids— Sampsell made paper records with his song titles written on them, and when Reagan was shot he hoped he would die because he “craved a tragedy for everyone”—makes you cringe and go “aw” simultaneously. The openness about all the things lots of people probably haven’t done—slept with a prostitute, dealt with a disgusting family secret—make it interesting as narrative. The plain tone sometimes gets monotonous, but it brings you back in and doesn’t end with any easy redemptive flourish. It’s the porn that is life, not a classic memoir, and it’s good. And also makes you think, “A major publisher put this out?”

After the reading I browsed books and eavesdropped, and from what I gathered it seemed most people there were in publishing or critics or writers in general. The books aren’t esoteric, though: they appeal to something just under everyone’s skin.

A review of Alejandro Zambra’s second novella.

Big Shot, an electronic music and DJ magazine I copyedit.

For PANK, I copyedited the 222-page annual issue, PANK 4, that included fiction and poetry, as well as their chapbook contest winner, How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew by Aaron Burch.

This is a review from my old blog.

Filmmaker Astra Taylor proved with 2005’s Žižek! that with the proper balance of theory and celebrity, a challenging and engaging film about philosophy can be made. Her new film Examined Life takes a step back from that documentary’s one-star focus and brings us eight philosophers giving their answer to the fundamental question of what it means to live the “examined life” prescribed by Socrates.

The question of celebrity is not entertained in this film, and so to keep an audience visually interested in a film about that which is usually written or spoken from beyond a podium, she keeps it moving at all times. Cornel West speaks from the backseat of the director’s car; Avita Ronell walks through the park; Michael Hardt rows a boat. We are able to silently bridge the philosophy and the every day as shoppers pass by Peter Singer on Fifth Avenue while he argues that buying designer shoes is immoral. Having Kwame Anthony Appiah discuss cosmopolitanism in an airport is an obvious idea, but Taylor executes it in a way that makes not engaging with his proposal for a global citizenry that finds the middle ground between universalism and cultural relativism impossible.

Though eight philosophers are featured in the film, it runs only 88 minutes. With 10 minutes to speak, each must give a simplified response to the central query, but despite this manage to present challenging concepts. Cornel West is the only exception to the 10-minute segments, and also the philosopher who speaks most broadly about the discipline’s nature, use, and application. The star of Taylor’s first film, Slavoj Žižek, speaks about ecology as ideology in a garbage dump, calling it the “new opium of the masses.” Predictably, he doesn’t quite address the matter at hand, but in doing so illustrates how philosophy’s ceaseless interrogation of all facets of life offers new approaches to our most pressing political problems.

Only Judith Butler’s segment of the film does on screen what would be truly impossible to communicate on paper. She takes a walk through San Francisco with the director’s sister, Sunaura Taylor, who is disabled. Taylor is an accomplished artist and activist, and speaks to our cultural notions of what constitutes able-bodied. By discussing the convergence of gender and disability,  and how it all goes back to a conception of what the body “should” be, Butler is able to bring this around to her work in the end. She says that we have to be “re-thinking the human as a site of interdependency.” The concept of a  functional interdependency arrived at through the individual’s act of living consciously (examining life) is a common thread throughout each piece in the film.

Stimulating visuals, a few certified academic celebrities, and each philosopher having space to speak to their interests combine to make Examined Life a powerful case for dragging philosophy further outside the walls of academia. And for anyone left unconvinced of the viability of such a pursuit, the final scene is a shot of Cornel West exiting the car, unable to make it across the street before being approached by fans.

This is a review from my old blog.

I stood up—the pain beginning to set in—and unpacked my mother’s chicken-and-pepper sandwich; it was stale, the pepper mushy and bitter. I turned on the lights, found my notebook, and after biting into the sandwich and staring at the blank page for a long time, wrote a poem that I titled “Love and Obstacles,” the first lines: There are walls between the world and me,/and I have to walk through them.
-”Everything”

Literature is a constant and storytelling is necessity in Aleksandar Hemon’s Love and Obstacles, a collection of interlocking stories about the growth of a nameless Bosnian writer. It begins and ends with stories that include American storytellers—Spinelli the conman and McCalister the Pulitzer winner—and between these are many Bosnians who approach the act of writing in vastly different ways—from poetry, to straight nonfiction, to aggressive notes to roommates, to film. Through it all, the protagonist is evolving, bringing the lessons from each storyteller he meets into the next experience.

The protagonist has in common with Hemon all the skeletal aspects of life—birthplace, vocation, and ultimate life as a not-quite-exiled writer in the US. This is the case in each of his books, and as in the others it takes nothing away from the work. English is Hemon’s second language and he takes no aspect of it for granted; from using words we don’t hear in ways we couldn’t have imagined to his perfect use of the oft-maligned semicolon. He often gets playful, with “atwitter,” “asparkle,” and “adrizzle” all making appearances.

“The Conductor” is the collection’s best moment. Placed between stories of the protagonist’s youth in Bosnia and his life in America, it encompasses the chronological trajectory of the collection and gives it its shape. At the beginning, the protagonist is a student of literature in Sarajevo who goes to a café to hang out with the famous poets, including the most famous of them all, Dedo. Eventually, after the war in Sarajevo when they are living in the States, they are both invited to speak on the same panel and end up sleeping in the same bed. It, like the entire book, is a gorgeous, seamless ride from youthful stupidity to wise uncertainty.

What is most refreshing is that through it all, we’re not wrestling with whether or not his Bosnian nationality is important to him, or whether Americans aren’t to be trusted, or if his father’s hatred of fiction means anything grand. There is no tossing and turning over politics or relevance, it’s just human characters, living and being portrayed in writing that is both palpable and meditative.

This is a review from my old blog. It’s quoted on the book’s page on the City Lights Books website.

Much is made of Mario Bellatin’s “mischevious” (as the New York Times put it) manner, but with the recent translation of his 1994 novella Beauty Salon, his astounding mastery of the short form is what begs to be discussed. Through just 63 pages, a singular narrative voice that is equal parts haughty and heartbroken tells of how his beauty salon has become “the Terminal,” a place where he watches over ravaged men suffering from an epidemic so that they can die off the streets.

The narrator—a fish aficionado and transvestite who frequents Japanese baths—is not given a name, and neither are the city or the sickness. This namelessness gives the book a haunting, disorienting quality that allows you to become submerged in the narrator’s stream of thoughts on his life before the Terminal, dying, and his beloved fish, all of which are rooted in an obsession with beauty.

Much of the text is consumed by the narrator’s passion for his fish, which he first bought as a means of making the salon stand out and in the hopes that they’d make clients feel refreshed. He regards them with the utmost concern even after he has given up caring for them:

The water, though, isn’t very clear anymore. It’s taken on a greenish tinge, fogging up the glass walls of the aquarium. I’ve placed this fish tank somewhat away from the guests. I don’t want their rot to reach the water; I don’t want the fish to be infected with any fungus, virus or bacteria.

They are an escape, just as the salon once was for women—and as were the jaunts in drag he and his friends enjoyed. The fish allow him to feel control over life amidst the inescapable presence of death. It is beauty, though—particularly feminine beauty—that exists throughout the text as life itself, a powerful force that cannot be exposed to the decay of the Terminal.

The beauty salon had once been dedicated to beautifying women and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice so many years of work. Which is why I never accepted anyone that wasn’t a man, regardless of how much they pleaded.

The narrator and his friends who ran the salon with him didn’t just go out to work the streets dressed in women’s clothes, but would operate the salon in sequined garb. This, he says, created a more intimate atmosphere with the clients. It is not intimacy, but lethargy that he is interested in creating now: There is nothing to idealize about men because he has known them intimately in his life. When a strained relationship with his mother is mentioned, you understand that he strives to attain and sustain feminine beauty in order to compensate for the emptiness of that relationship. Eventually he himself begins to succumb to the sickness and discusses a desire to let the current guests die and then restore the salon to its previous state and die in its glory, once again a testament to the feminine.

Throughout the book there are hints that he has fallen ill when he wonders why he can’t care for the fish in the same way, though he goes on dressing up and visiting the baths until sores appear on his cheek. As he becomes weaker and weaker he speaks about his life and imminent death with regret; the vanity that had been saturating his words has eroded.

It’s an obvious turn in this work so obsessed with death, but Bellatin doesn’t seem to know a cliché. He keeps the voice measured and tightly enclosed in the nameless world he has created to the very end, as though it’s a fish bowl.

—

That questions about gender can be gorgeously rendered in such a short work so obsessed with death speaks of Bellatin’s mastery of the form, and we’re left to grumble about the paltry amount of fiction translated into English (translations of three of his stories were included in Chinese Checkers, released by Ravenna Press only in 2007). Thanks to his “unusual” personality, though, Bellatin was featured in the New York Times. Score one for non-English-language lit?

This is a review from my old blog.

The New Yorker called Nick Hornby’s latest novel Juliet, Naked “shamefully readable.” And it is. His fiction and his criticism (originally published in The Believer, now collected in three volumes) read like a conversation with someone kind and funny. There is a reason his books Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, and About a Boy were made into successful films: they’re basically movies to begin with. He specializes in writing extremely believable unremarkable characters and making their rather unremarkable adventures amusing and, above all, heartwarming. Can we fault someone for this? No. But his personal disdain for “literary fiction” is certainly cause for some eye-rolling. Were all novels as easily imagined as films as his are, there would be no cause for novels.

Juliet, Naked is High Fidelity without the edge and with the internet. A childless English couple named Annie and Duncan live in a dull, seaside town and have been together 15 years but don’t actually love one another (is this possible?). Duncan considers himself a “Croweologist,” an expert on a musician who hasn’t released an album in 20 years, and he runs a website dedicated to him. That reclusive singer-songwriter is Tucker Crowe, who now lives a quiet life in Pennsylvania with his son, and a string of children and women he hasn’t paid much attention to tie  him to a past he doesn’t quite understand. Through a series of events following the release of an acoustic version of Tucker’s seminal album, Juliet (hence the book’s title), Annie and Tucker end up falling for one another. Everyone learns something. Yeah: the End.

There is some predictably good stuff in there about obsession, music, and being a fan, but all wrapped up in its neat, white middle-class bow, it isn’t much of a revelation; it’s just Hornby. That’s why his name dwarfs the title on the cover.

Review of Best European Fiction 2010, a collection of new translated fiction from Dalkey Archive edited by Aleksandar Hemon. Click the photo for a larger scan of the review as seen in the December 2009/January 2010 issue.

Review of God Says No by James Hannaham.

Is quoted both on the author’s page and the book’s page on McSweeney’s.net:

Gary Gray is a wholly American character unlike many we meet in literary fiction, written in a clear, contemporary style that has a good chuckle at our taboos. God Says No takes our cultural anxiety about homosexuality and spins it into prose that breathes, capturing a human moment with all the sadness and humor that it deserves.

Review of Me and My Friends, a collection of photos of the band the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Restaurant reviews:

Besito
Painters’
Pasta Pasta
Honu Kitchen & Cocktails
The Eatery at Tullulah’s
Mirabelle Tavern
Red Bar & Restaurant
Public House 49
Nonnina Italian Bistro
Fifth Season
Mangia Mangia
Mac’s Steakhouse
H2O Seafood Grill

Review of the Latin America issue of Zoetrope: All-Story.

Was quoted in an “Of Note” post on the Words Without Borders blog:

The editors’ introduction is titled “Enter the Post-Post Boom” and in it they argue that ignorance of Latin American literature beyond Márquez fosters an inequitable and dangerous relationship between the region and the English-speaking world. They hope that the recent success of Roberto Bolaño has opened up a new interest in Latin American fiction, and conclude by noting that they simply selected stories they like in lieu of attempting to make a sweeping, grand statement about what the region’s literature is doing as a whole. By taking this approach, they are actively breaking down the essentialist understanding of Latin American letters as a homogeneous force steeped in the tradition of magical realism.

Both at our computers, working, wearing hoods. (Taken with instagram)

I have never seen this before and I am obsessed. Is it really him?

A bowl of roasted veg. (Taken with instagram)

This post is really, really interesting (as is everything Roxane Gay writes) and I would be linking it even if I weren’t, uh, mentioned in it. I’d love to tackle publishing books on this scale at some point.

When I need to get out of the house… (Taken with Instagram at Book Revue)

Thinking a lot about cannoli. Haven’t had one in too long. This is an old picture of me eating a cannoli and giving Scott shit. Everyone at this party took most of their clothes off because it was really hot.

Bed. (Taken with instagram)

Unnatural on Flickr.

This is sort of what it looks like from the computer when I sit at my desk. Still growing out the haaaair.

Desk in our new office. on Flickr.

This is my desk situated in the office of our new apartment, complete with coffee, cat, and banana peel. And yes, I have a cupcake calendar! I am a lady who bakes!

(via Pedro Almodóvar Shares Missoni’s Spring Campaign with Mariacarla Boscono — The Cut)

To make money, I copyedit recaps of shows like The Bachelor, Gossip Girl, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. To save my soul, I copyedit fiction from tiny presses and review literature in translation.

Early bird. Work in the office, then straight to yoga. (Taken with Instagram at LIRR - Cold Spring Harbor Station)

Love our new place and its kitten-friendly windowsills. (Taken with instagram)

Proud of my little innovation to keep cupcake liners from getting destroyed. (Taken with instagram)

A favorite chunk of my bookshelves, which now carry so few books! I’m free! (Taken with instagram)

Listening to OK Computer. Laughing about how I often I angrily repeated the “Paranoid Android” lyric, “When I am king, you will be first against the wall” in my head as a 13-year-old.

The Book Bench: In the Labyrinth: A User’s Guide to Bolaño : The New Yorker

Totally wanna beat this dude upppp! Intellectually and with my fists!

As I just Googled “valrhona fair trade,” we can all rest easy knowing I have no real problems.

Well, don’t I feel like the coolest person around. Aira’s ‘Varamo’! In my mailbox! (Taken with instagram)