When I got back from Gainesville, there was a big fact package from Open City waiting for me. I felt like I had won a prize. Inside were three books: Flight Patterns: A Century of Stories About Flying; and a galley of Rachel Sherman’s debut novel, Living Room (dropping this October); and Lost & Found, the second Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood anthology, which clocks a thoroughly impressive gut-busting 853 pages. (The first anthology, you might recall, was Before & After, in 2002). Just a few of the names included: Sam Lipsyte, Jonathan Ames, Charles D’Ambrosio, Phillip Lopate, Daniel Nester, Mickey Z., Iris Smyles, and several dozen others. As Beller explains in his introduction (apropos the question- why does NYC produce so much writing about itself?), “The essential ingredient is density. The density is the drug.” I’ll cheers that one. Anyway, for those of you who actually live here, I thought you might want to know that there’s a reading for the Beller book tonight in Washington Square Park. Details after the jump (and more on the Sherman and Flight books at some point in the nearish future).
Writing about jobs is difficult to do well. I wonder if people think that since their employment is something they aren’t passionate about (“just payin’ the bills”), it’s more acceptable to ramble on about it in an unmediated voice which they might not otherwise write in? Like, when you’re writing about something that everyone automatically understands — devoting half our lives to some company we hate, say — it’s easier to take artistry for granted.
