April 24, 2012 Arts & Culture Mapping Markson By Sadie Stein When modernist novelist David Markson died in 2010, the West Villager’s personal library ended up, by his request, at his old haunt, the Strand bookstore. Word quickly spread, and bibliophiles and readers tried to snatch up as many of the annotated books—many of which figured in Markson’s own work—as possible. (Alex Abramovich describes buying up three shopping bags’ worth of classics, complete with notes and marginalia.) The books were, typically, signed: either Markson, David M. Markson, Markson NYC, or Markson London. It’s an archive worthy of a university but preserved, instead, in bits and pieces on bookshelves all over New York and beyond. Now, a tumblr, Reading Markson Reading, has dedicated itself to, as the author puts it, “Exploring the mind, method and masterpieces of David Markson through the marginalia found on the pages of the books in his personal library.” An intimate glimpse into the writer’s thoughts, for all readers to share. Watch Markson reminisce at the Strand in 2007.
April 24, 2012 On Music Big Squeeze By Ezra Glinter On a recent Tuesday afternoon I was sitting with Walter Kuehr in the back room of Main Squeeze Accordions on Essex Street, asking questions about the accordion business. He said he mostly does repairs these days, and he conducts the Main Squeeze Orchestra, a fourteen-piece all-female accordion band he founded in 2002. Photos of famous accordion players line the wall: Myron Floren of the Lawrence Welk Show; John Linnell from They Might Be Giants; Texas conjunto star Flaco Jimenez; “Weird Al” Yankovic. They’ve all played in Main Squeeze, often in exchange for instrument repairs. On a shelf piled high with books and accordion music there’s an advance copy of Squeeze This: A Cultural History of the Accordion in America, a study of the piano accordion by ethnomusicologist Marion Jacobson. She was once a student of Kuehr’s, and they keep in touch. “Something drew me in,” Jacobson said later, recalling her first visit to Main Squeeze, in 2001. “I had been thinking for some time that the accordion would be my next instrument. How could I not have this thing that makes even the simplest melodies sound so danceable, so rich?” Though Jacobson got her ruby-red Delicia Carmen elsewhere (she traded for it with her piano, which is now the house instrument at the Brooklyn music venue Barbes), she returned to Main Squeeze to learn how to play. Read More
April 24, 2012 On the Shelf World Book Night, Shakespeare Day By Sadie Stein Happy birthday, Shakespeare! Talk to us about cities. Are writers exploited? The seventeenth annual Los Angeles Festival of Books took place last weekend. Check out the fantastic lineup. A roundup of women’s travel diaries through the ages. Busloads of librarians and book-vending dogs! How did you celebrate World Book Night?
April 23, 2012 Bulletin Remembering Margaret Weatherford By Sadie Stein It is with deep sadness that we note the passing of Los Angeles writer Margaret Weatherford, who died this month at the age of forty-six. Her beautiful, miniature “Green Car, Nightfall” ran on the Daily last November. Friends remember Margaret on Zyzzyva and Little Star.
April 23, 2012 On Poetry Secrets Are Lies By Bonnie Nadzam A few months ago, I received an e-mail from a bright young writer who’s having some success: “You can keep a secret,” she wrote. “Right?” And my heart sank. Earlier that day, discussing a gift for her brother, I’d asked my eight-year-old niece, “Can you keep a secret?” She put her hands on her hips and sagely reminded me, “I don’t keep secrets. Secrets are lies.” In her family, “secret” is distinguished from “private.” My sister has taught her children that secrets hurt. Privacy protects. That very same evening, a woman who knowingly passed on an STD to a partner without disclosing it (privately defending her action with my spouse and me because, she says, the STD is so common), publicly “liked” on Facebook a page called “The Respect and Dignity Campaign,” whereby all likers will “treat everyone with respect and dignity.” The following morning, two poems about secrecy, lies, and public and private matters crossed my desk. My attention was roused. Read More
April 23, 2012 Arts & Culture How to Sharpen Pencils: A Demonstration By Sadie Stein If you’ve yet to hear about David Rees’s manifesto How to Sharpen Pencils, perhaps you’d enjoy a demonstration? Here, the author exhibits proper technique. (Pencil snobs will surely rejoice.)