October 6, 2010 Events The Whistle-stop Tour Hits the West Coast By Nicole Rudick Photograph by Alain Picard. Catch Lorin Stein in the Golden State this week, at three events. Tonight: San Francisco The venerable City Lights hosts a conversation between Stein and Oscar Villalon, former book critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, as part of the city’s LitQuake festival. The fun starts at 7 P.M., at 261 Columbus Avenue. Tomorrow: Claremont Stein joins Aaron Matz, Scripps English professor and the author, most recently, of Satire in an Age of Realism, to talk literature and publishing in the Internet age. The conversation begins at 4:15 P.M. at Scripps College, 1030 Columbia Avenue, and is open to the public. Saturday: Los Angeles The final stop on the whistle-stop tour and an event not to be missed. Stein and Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin discuss the role of a literary journal in the era of constant distraction. Get to Book Soup, 8818 West Sunset Boulevard, early. The conversation starts at 5 P.M.
October 5, 2010 Events An Editor Abroad: Chicago By Lorin Stein J. C. Gabel, Lorin Stein, Danielle Chapman, and Mairead Case. I always forget how giant Chicago is. How giant, how elegant, and how proud. Under Culture Commissioner Lois Weissberg, the city has come into possession of an exact replica of Maxim’s, the Paris restaurant, in the basement of a Gold Coast condominium designed by Bertrand Goldberg. Beatles fans: This is the site where John Lennon recanted his “bigger than Jesus” claim. On that hallowed ground Stop Smiling’s co-founder, J. C. Gabel, Mairead Case, and I talked shop last Friday night before a crowd of fellow editors (Poetry, Playboy, The Baffler, the Trib), Ms. Weissberg, and assorted civilians passionate—to the point of forcible ejection—about The Paris Review. It was all part of the city’s “Cocktails and Conversations” series. New Yorkers, can you imagine such a thing? Verily, they are Sweden to our United States. Many thanks to Danielle Chapman, of the Department of Cultural Affairs, for having us. Even more thanks to J. C., who out-Virgiled Virgil, giving me the grand tour of the city, from Saul Bellow’s old apartment building and the Third Coast bar, to the thirty-third birthday of Poetry’s Fred Sasaki. May Fred enjoy many happy returns. Another thing I forget—and then always remember—about Chicago, or rather Chicagoans, is what snappy dressers they are. Chicago men are not afraid of a necktie or a hat. The peaked cap also is worn. On Michigan Avenue I saw plenty of all three (plus a woman sporting the first fur coat of the season), as I provisioned for the forty-nine-hour California Zephyr to San Francisco. Last-minute purchases included: Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, A Tale of Two Cities, Cousin Bette, Ragtime (I will read Doctorow, I will!), a pair of warm pajamas, a sturdy pigskin toilet kit, and a smallish bottle of Johnny Walker Red. As it happened, I read the last page of The Anthologist at five-thirty Sunday morning, simply too happy to sleep, as my bunk lurched and tossed like a cozy Cyclone (I even found myself hanging on to the straps). Thus did I cross the Rockies. In this connection, I must finally thank Patricia Daliege, Amtrak’s chief ticket agent at Chicago’s Union Station, for saving my bacon in the face of an intractable Paris Review–Amtrak imbroglio. If not for Ms. Daliege, and the sleeper compartments she finagled out of seemingly thin air, your humble correspondent would have detrained in the thunderstorming moonscape of Green River, Utah, and taken his chances against the sands. To Patti Daliege, merci. To read more about Lorin’s trip, click here.
October 1, 2010 Events An Editor Abroad: Pittsburgh By Lorin Stein Inspecting Winifred Lutz's Garden Installation through hole in wall. Photograph by David Keaton. According to the timetable of the Capitol Limited, I spent exactly twenty-four hours and one minute in Pittsburgh. It felt, I am pleased to report, more like a week. In the first place, I met one of my literary heroes, Chuck Kinder. Chuck is a legend in Pittsburgh. Among other things, he is the real-life inspiration behind Michael Chabon’s Wonderboys. If you’ve seen the movie, he’s Michael Douglas. Only Chuck’s funnier and better-looking and West Virginian. Also, in real life his manuscript doesn’t blow away (it, Honeymooners, was the first novel I ever signed up for FSG). After years of phone discussions and sheafs of correspondence, he more than lived up to his reputation for hospitality. In fact, he and his wife, Diane Cecily, and their friends were so hospitable, I almost missed my midnight train. And would hardly have minded if I had. I cannot tell you all the things we did. The day’s events, included, in no particular order, a guided tour of the magical Mattress Factory (pictured above and below); a leisurely rooftop interview with the charming Guatemalan journalist Silvia Duarte; two fiction readings; a lively staged talk with the book critic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, including the by-now requisite opinions on Jonathan Franzen qua bestseller; a studio visit with Diane Samuels, who is copying Fagles’s Odyssey (in a tiny, elegant hand) onto a large painting of the street behind the house where she lives with Henry Reese, director of City of Asylum (I can’t even begin to describe City of Asylum!); and a multigenerational farewell party at Chuck and Diane’s, where I learned much that I had never guessed about the moped scene in Cincinnati (it’s coed, and it’s hopping), the early history of the nickelodeon, how to roast a groundhog (use a corn cob), the difficulties of writing closed captions for girl-on-girl pornography [moans intensify], and the Depression-era practice of using textbooks for fuel. About which last factoid I remain skeptical. With Henry Reese and photographer David Keaton in Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Dots Mirrored Room. Photograph by David Keaton. Also in Pittsburgh I was told by an Amtrak ticket agent—for the second time in exactly two days—“You won’t make your train,” then sent running down a platform while somebody woke up the sleeping-car attendant, who was cheerful and informal about it and made up my berth in his boxers.
September 28, 2010 Events Lorin Stein Heads West By Nicole Rudick Well, slightly West. First stop: Pittsburgh Tomorrow, September 29, Stein will join Bob Hoover, books editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, to reveal “The Sordid Confessions of a Subversive Big-Apple Editor.” The free event starts at 6:30 P.M. at the Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Avenue. Next: Chicago On September 30, Stein and Stop Smiling editor JC Gabel talk with Literago.org’s Mairead Case at Maxim’s: The Nancy Goldberg International Center, 24 East Goethe Street. The conversation begins at 6 P.M.
September 27, 2010 Events An Editor Abroad: Washington, DC By Lorin Stein Literary agent Anna Stein, artist Gay Gladding, editor Lorin Stein (clutching stuffed Eeyore) on the steps of the Beverly Court, Adams-Morgan, Washington, DC The Paris Review Whistle-stop Tour of 2010 (aka The Choo-Choo Revue) got off to an intimate start Saturday at Politics and Prose. It was a shimmering semitropical September afternoon. The Washington sun was shining. So were the faces of the staff: Jonathan Franzen had come through the night before, drawing a crowd of a thousand and selling about as many books. Luckily, P & P had the foresight to reserve a nearby auditorium. No auditorium was needed in our case—but the cream of the Beverly Court was in attendance. Noted artist Gay Gladding was full of praise for Tauba Auerbach, whose work she has admired since Tauba’s San Francisco days. Double-threat jazz clarinetist and tennis instructor Bob Greene was seen to trade phone numbers with TPR Daily tennis correspondent Lousia Thomas, in town to research her book Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family—A Test of Will and Faith. Dorothy Jackson, the doyenne of Washington event planners, sparked a spirited discussion of the literary magazine today. Actually, it was more of a monologue, but our old neighbors were indulgent. As were my parents. Many thanks to Barbara Meade, co-owner of the store, and Mike Giarratano and the rest of their staff for their gracious welcome—and for excellent recommendations to read on the train.
September 25, 2010 Events Today: Lorin Stein at Politics and Prose By Nicole Rudick Join editor Lorin Stein at the first event of his whistle-stop tour. At 3:30 P.M., he’ll be at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, in Washington DC, to present the new Fall issue. If you’re in DC, don’t miss it!