Holy Moly!
Are you quaking?
The thing with a 9-day long festival is that you want to get caught up but it keeps happening. So let's try and get caught up before tonight's Stories on Stage (altho once again there are so many quality options tonight, it almost makes me weep).
On Monday (I know, it's Thursday - can you even believe all the things we can talk about!), I caught the two part series entitled Writer's Toolkit, which consisted of two panels. The first, called Authors Reveal All, included 5 first-time novelists and 1 (bloody) two-timer. Hosted by Litquake's CFO Elise Proulx, the main function of this panel was to discuss the various paths each author underwent, from personal exercises all the way to sitting on the panel. First, to give you an idea of the type of writing each author does, Elise had them read about 5 minutes from their books:
Elise's Intro
Joanna Smith Rakoff
Michael Sledge
Vanitha Sankaran
Jason Headley
Elaine Beale
Shanthi Sekaran
:: Part 1 ::
— When did you start writing and how long until you published something?
— Was getting an MFA part of the process and how do you feel about MFAs?
:: Part 2 ::
— What would be your single biggest tip if you could give your start-up self advice?
:: Part 3 ::
— What is your personal writing process?
— How do you write if you have kids?
The second part of the series, called How to Navigate the New World of Publishing, was moderated by Scott James and featured various industry experts: founder and CEO of Blurb Eileen Gittins, Untreed Reads founder Jay A. Hartman, Graywolf Press Editor-at-Large Ethan Nosowsky, literary agent Amy Rennert, and Associate Publisher of Cleis Press, Brenda Knight. The conversation was wide-ranging and audience participation quite lively. I've broken it into smaller chunks:
:: Intro ::
Scott introduces each panelist
:: Part 1 ::
The panelists explain what their jobs really consist of
:: Part 2 ::
— Where does the industry stand at the moment. Are deals really up?
— How do you get your work out there?
— How has the role of agents changed?
— Here we are. The dawn of eBooks.
:: Part 3 ::
— How the cost of a book breaks down.
— How do publishers justify their jobs?
— Social media rocks the boat. How?
:: Part 4 ::
— Who is Stephen Elliott? This is one of the freshest perspectives on new-age publishing. Sign-up for the Daily Rumpus.
— Is there a role for the misfit writer in our culture anymore?
— What are publishers doing in this new age to facilitate an introduction between writers and readers?
— What does publishing an eBook entail?
— DIY only gets you so far. True or false?
:: Part 5 ::
— Using your platforms and social reading.
— Advice for the traditional publishing route.
:: Part 6 ::
— Q&A: Digital Rights Management and giving your work away for free
— Raising money to publish your work
— You've got the book finished and a strong platform. What do you do now?
— How does the new world of publishing effect poetry?
:: Part 7 ::
— Visual art in eBooks
— The average print run and cost for each book and the guessing game of P&L
— Is it necessary to know someone to get an agent?
I was going to launch straight into my analysis and coverage of Tao Lin's reading at Booksmith, to which I frantically biked after these panels, but I have a coffee date right now and not enough time to do the event justice. Give me a few hours and we'll be talking again, just as though no time passed at all.
In the meantime, here's a guide to this evening's festivities:
The Booksmith Bookswap: Litquake Edition, 6:30-9:30 pm. The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St. Admission for this show was $25 and advance only. I'm not sure if they're still selling, but you can call 800-838-3006 to find out, or drop by The Booksmith. I went to one of these events and cannot recommend them too highly. Featured guests will be:
Poets 11 2010 Showcase, 7 pm. Readers Café, Fort Mason Center, Building C, SF. Free. This will be a great way to spend your evening and at no cost. Jack Hirschman organizes this annual submission-based best-of, selecting 3 poets from each of SF's 11 districts. This is what happened when (nearly) all 33 of them got together this year at the library. They are also selling a pretty compilation.
Litquake in the Bookstore: Thaddeus Russell at City Lights, 7 pm.City Lights, 261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco. Free.
Spiritual Journeys at Marin Osher JCC, 7:30 pm. Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Rd., San Rafael. Admission: $12 for members of Litquake and Osher Marin JCC, $15 general public; tickets (415) 444-8000 or online.
Feminine Wiles, 7 pm. Noe Valley Recreational Center, 295 Day St., San Francisco. Free. What's there to say about this one? Litquake knows how to put together great all-women events. This one is from last year (plus I caught one last night, which will be up in the next 2 or so days). By the way: this is an all-star lineup.
Stories on Stage, 7:30 pm. Berkeley Repertory Theater, Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Admission: $22.50 in advance (at brownpapertickets.com or by phone 800-838-3006); $25 at the door. If you can afford this event, have nothing against the EBay, appreciate recent McArthur Genius Award recipients, brilliant funnymen, and people on top 20 under 40 lists, oh and theater … you should probably fork over the cash. I'll see you at the Rep.
Talk to you soon,
Evan
jueves, 7 de octubre de 2010
miércoles, 6 de octubre de 2010
Preview of Night 6
Yesterday was the "tent-pole," which means that today we are on the waning half of this festival. Tonight is the busiest night, with 13 events to choose from!! The tough part is that you can't really lose. Click here for a full schedule, or read on for a few thoughts:
If you're interested in writing non-fiction, you do not want to miss this panel @ 6pm tonight. Tamim Ansary, Pulitzer-Prize winners T.J. Stiles and Richard Rhodes, and the fabulous do-everything Frances Dinkelspiel will discuss the artistry of real life on the page.
If you're in the South Bay, you should check out Lan Samantha Chang at the CLA.
If you're in the East Bay, or used to live there and feel like getting nostalgic, come with me to Lit on the Lake: readings by East Bay writers. That's at 6pm too, at Lake Chalet.
But you can't miss with Radar Productions. Tao Lin in the house. The lovely Beth Pickens. Chinaka Hodge! Did anyone else fall in love with her when she read Ferlinghetti's fireflies? Time? 6pm. Free @ the library.
In one of the more unique events of the festival, 14 Hills editor Hollie Hardy organizes Flight of Poets, which pairs a wine to each scribe. With Robin Ekiss in the house, this promises to be fun and potent. 7pm @ Hotel Rex . $15 includes your flight.
Another program sure to be fascinating is Civilization on Six Legs: The Complex Societies of Ants and Honeybees at the California Academy of the Sciences in the planetarium! 7pm.
Also at 7pm is the 100th episode of Literary Death Match. Founder Todd Zuniga is in town to join Alia Volz and M.G. Martin in this unconventional death duel. All-star cast. Metaphorical (and sometimes real) blood.
Bawdy Storytelling is your raunchy option for the evening. I caught this show once and, while it isn't normally my thing, if you like Porchlight but want more sex in your show (a lot more sex), why don't you go by The Blue Macaw tonight at 8? Stephen Elliott will probably not be reading from the Daily Rumpus (although he probably could). I'll be there, if that's any more incentive!
Oh wait! What about sex? Try The Funny Side at the Cobbs Comedy Club , also at 8pm. Daily Show correspondent Kristen Schaal celebrates the release of her first book: The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex and will be joined for some good - and funny - friends.
Stay tuned for some recap later this afternoon. Hope to see you all tonight!
— Evan
If you're interested in writing non-fiction, you do not want to miss this panel @ 6pm tonight. Tamim Ansary, Pulitzer-Prize winners T.J. Stiles and Richard Rhodes, and the fabulous do-everything Frances Dinkelspiel will discuss the artistry of real life on the page.
If you're in the South Bay, you should check out Lan Samantha Chang at the CLA.
If you're in the East Bay, or used to live there and feel like getting nostalgic, come with me to Lit on the Lake: readings by East Bay writers. That's at 6pm too, at Lake Chalet.
But you can't miss with Radar Productions. Tao Lin in the house. The lovely Beth Pickens. Chinaka Hodge! Did anyone else fall in love with her when she read Ferlinghetti's fireflies? Time? 6pm. Free @ the library.
In one of the more unique events of the festival, 14 Hills editor Hollie Hardy organizes Flight of Poets, which pairs a wine to each scribe. With Robin Ekiss in the house, this promises to be fun and potent. 7pm @ Hotel Rex . $15 includes your flight.
Another program sure to be fascinating is Civilization on Six Legs: The Complex Societies of Ants and Honeybees at the California Academy of the Sciences in the planetarium! 7pm.
Also at 7pm is the 100th episode of Literary Death Match. Founder Todd Zuniga is in town to join Alia Volz and M.G. Martin in this unconventional death duel. All-star cast. Metaphorical (and sometimes real) blood.
Bawdy Storytelling is your raunchy option for the evening. I caught this show once and, while it isn't normally my thing, if you like Porchlight but want more sex in your show (a lot more sex), why don't you go by The Blue Macaw tonight at 8? Stephen Elliott will probably not be reading from the Daily Rumpus (although he probably could). I'll be there, if that's any more incentive!
Oh wait! What about sex? Try The Funny Side at the Cobbs Comedy Club , also at 8pm. Daily Show correspondent Kristen Schaal celebrates the release of her first book: The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex and will be joined for some good - and funny - friends.
Stay tuned for some recap later this afternoon. Hope to see you all tonight!
— Evan
martes, 5 de octubre de 2010
A post-rest meditation
When I opened my eyes it was Tuesday already and we were in the thick of this festival! Originally, I was extremely pleased to see the Barbary Coast Award was on the second day this year instead of in the middle like last year, and it did really launch us right in to the week's festivities. But because I covered the event for The Chronicle (which just ran today) I stayed up all night Saturday and, well, pretty much Sunday too, but now (don't worry) I've caught up on sleep and am ready to catch you up on everything that's happened.
The one strange thing about how this week has gone down so far is that programming really really started on Sunday, the third day, because although there were a number of readings as part of Litquake's Off the Richter Scale on Saturday at the Variety Preview Room Theatre they all took place between 12-4pm, and although a lot of them were of premium quality, the big event on Saturday evening kind of separated them from the rest of the week and I had to forego immediate coverage to immerse myself in analysis, speculation, and giant vats of caffeine.
Every year, the Off the Richter Scale series provides a forum for authors with recently published books to present their work in themed groups. This year's first day was broken into 4 categories, and I've included two links for each author: click on the authors names (on the left) to view their readings from Off the Richter, and to the right for each author's most recent book, if applicable, or website.
Poetry
Cheryl Dumesnil » In Praise of Falling
Aja Couchois Duncan » Nomenclature, Miigaadiwin, a Forked Tongue
Miriam Bird Greenberg » reading as part of Portuguese Artists Colony
Melissa Stein » Rough Honey
Lyzette Wanzer » reading as part of Poets 11
Illustrated Works
Lisa Brown » Picture the Dead
Eric Drooker » Howl
The Stanford Graphic Novel Project » Pika-Don
Belle Yang » Forget Sorrow
Mystery
Rhys Brown » Royal Blood
Barry Eisler » Inside Out
Reece Hirsch » The Insider
Sophie Littlefield » A Bad Day for Sorry
Dad Lit
Terry Bisson » Bears Discover Fire
Tanya Egan Gibson » How to Buy a Love of Reading
Jeff Gillenkirk » Home, Away
Jeremy Adam Smith » The Daddy Shift
Ransom Stephens » The God Patent
I'm a big fan of the Richter Scale series. It gives you a chance to be introduced not only to authors you might not know yet but even genres you wouldn't normally pay your attention. See, one of the things I really love about Litquake is that I am so committed to it that I just show up; when you just show up with an open mind, good things usually happen. Right?
But I had forgotten much about Litquake proper and how it makes me feel until Sunday evening, when I caught Ransom Stephens' annual Barely Published Authors event (also follow that previous link to catch reflections on the North Beach Literary Walking Tour, which I caught last year). I missed the Sunday Richter series, lamentably, because of the whole not-sleeping/Chronicle deadline thing.
Much to my delight, this event garnered a lot of press this year. SF Weekly called it their "favorite" event of the whole festival and Alan Black said for The Chronicle that it's "one of the best" events every year. I couldn't agree more, which is why I finally - though I struggled over this conflict for days - decided to skip the Center for Literary Arts' 25th anniversary celebration blowout featuring Kim Addonizio, Andrew Sean Greer, Maxine Hong-Kingston, Andrew Altschul, Daniel Alarcon and Mary Roach! I would repeat those names for emphasis but it will make me sad again that I missed them.
I would just like to say really quickly that if you don't know about the CLA you should really check it out; their programming is consistently astounding and they are really fostering a lively community in San Jose. Last year marked the first time Litquake partnered with the South Bay, and I'm really happy to see they have 2 events together this week; in addition to Sunday's readings, the CLA will present Lan Samantha Chang in San Jose on Thursday (alternately, you can see her tonight at the Ferry Building Book Passage).
Why did I skip that lineup? Why did our major newspapers call Barely Published one of the best events? Here's a metaphor:
The room is a limp balloon. The first reader fills the room with a distinctive breath that has never (or rarely ever) given life to a room. The breath, the voice commands our attention as we become swollen with it. Just when we think the balloon will pop the reader finishes and we clap, letting out the hot air that has filled us. But another new writer picks us up immediately with another fresh breath, commanding our attention, silencing us as we hush in our own expansion. It could take us over. It could make us pop!
OK, the metaphor needs a little work. But the point remains: during Barely Published, each author overtakes the Makeout Room in a way that you only hear - and I can't tell you how many hours I've spent in the Makeout since last year's Litquake - you only hear when writers like Molly Gloss and Jerry Stahl take the stage. What you hear is the twinkling of a new star born, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. New stars piercing the atmosphere with their idiosyncratic glitterings like a baby's first righteous wailings rebelling against the involuntary influx of oxygen into their lungs, only this breath has been practiced and leaves their lips with a calm measured pride. This is like the bar and bat mitzvah of Bay Area authors. Welcome, authors! For you have been inducted into the realm of adulthood.
So I'm sad I missed the CLA celebration; I also missed the Enviro-Lit Panel at Lake Chalet and songs by Literary Lions (one of which you can see here). But I couldn't pass on this event.
I'm including links to Ransom's introductions to each author for several reasons. The first is to show hosts everywhere how it's done. Because his intros are so good - giving a precise understanding of each author's scope of work and at the same time being down-to-earth and funny - I asked some of the authors if they had to submit their works to be read to Ransom ahead of time. "No," they said. "He sent us a questionnaire to get to know us better." Wow.
But the other thing I want to say is that Ransom reminded me that Litquake is an umbrella. It is the successful and diverse festival we know it to be because of the committee members' dedication and utter belief in what it can be. There are not a lot of people on the committee, and what I remembered was the feeling you get when you keep showing up for these programs: one of the committee members or volunteers starts each program off, whether it's a reading in a bookstore or a panel @ The World Affairs Council or a film festival @ The Embarcadero Cinema Center. They bring it all together with each event. I just love this. I love how organized it is, that something this special and dependent on volunteers can so powerfully present such a wide-ranging scope of events.
No doubt the committee will laugh when I call Litquake organized; they scramble all year for this and they do it with little money and with little thanks. But … well. It seems weird to be gushing about them on their own website, but I would be doing this wherever I could. So. Check out the videos now. They're really worth gushing about, too. These are some of our brightest:
Ransom introduces » Mimi Lok
Ransom intros » Olga Zilberbourg
Ransom » Jeremy Hatch
Ransom » Ian Tuttle
Ransom (sorry, I missed it!) » Caitlin Myer
Ransom » Andre Perry
Ransom » Alia Volz
Mr. Spinrad asked not to be filmed
So right now I'm loading the videos I caught from yesterday's New Writer's Toolkit: Authors Reveal All & How to Navigate the New World of Publishing - two panels you might find extremely useful. The first included 5 first-time novelists and 1 with two books and their respective stories from work ethic to publication, and the second panel featured industry specialists' advice on the fast-growing tendencies of the new publishing world. Stay tuned for those and for Tao Lin's reading @ Booksmith!
Meanwhile, what are you doing tonight? You have plenty of options:
Litquake in the Bookstore: Lan Samantha Chang at Book Passage, 6 pm. Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco. Free.
Virtual Reality: The Effect of Fiction on Your Mind, 6:30-7:30 pm.Mechanics Institute Library, 57 Post St., San Francisco. Admission: $12 general public, Free to members of Mechanics Institute; reservations at (415) 393-0100 or rsvp@milibrary.org.
McSweeney’s Fall Harvest, 7 pm: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street, San Francisco. Free.
Feast of Words: A Storytelling Potluck, 7 pm (Open mic signup begins at 6:30 pm). Presented by SOMArts Cultural Center. SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St., San Francisco. Admission: $10 suggested donation, Free with potluck dish; advance tickets and information online.
Litquake in the Bookstore: Nick Bilton at The Booksmith, 7:30 pm. The Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street, San Francisco. Free; Preferred seating voucher with Booksmith purchase of I Live in the Future, beginning September 14 and while supplies last.
Litquake and Porchlight: Tales of Hollywood Hell, 8 pm. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Admission: $12 in advance, $15 at the door; tickets available at cityboxoffice.com
Wow. This is the type of night that almost makes you hate the committee I just praised. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I can't miss the panel at Mechanics - last year's was one of my favorite events. So if anyone goes to McSweeney's Fall Harvest, feel free to send a little write-up, pictures, or videos my way; I'd be happy to include them. Same goes with the Feast of Words and Nick Bilton, because I"ll be flying down Market after the Mechanics panel for Porchlight. It's gonna be soo good!
Tomorrow, I'm happy and afraid to say, you'll be facing a similar predicament, with quality programming all over the Bay Area. I think Elise said it yesterday: this is like a week-long Halloween. Trick and treat!!
Check out (and get tix for) tomorrow's events here.
The one strange thing about how this week has gone down so far is that programming really really started on Sunday, the third day, because although there were a number of readings as part of Litquake's Off the Richter Scale on Saturday at the Variety Preview Room Theatre they all took place between 12-4pm, and although a lot of them were of premium quality, the big event on Saturday evening kind of separated them from the rest of the week and I had to forego immediate coverage to immerse myself in analysis, speculation, and giant vats of caffeine.
Every year, the Off the Richter Scale series provides a forum for authors with recently published books to present their work in themed groups. This year's first day was broken into 4 categories, and I've included two links for each author: click on the authors names (on the left) to view their readings from Off the Richter, and to the right for each author's most recent book, if applicable, or website.
Poetry
Cheryl Dumesnil » In Praise of Falling
Aja Couchois Duncan » Nomenclature, Miigaadiwin, a Forked Tongue
Miriam Bird Greenberg » reading as part of Portuguese Artists Colony
Melissa Stein » Rough Honey
Lyzette Wanzer » reading as part of Poets 11
Illustrated Works
Lisa Brown » Picture the Dead
Eric Drooker » Howl
The Stanford Graphic Novel Project » Pika-Don
Belle Yang » Forget Sorrow
Mystery
Rhys Brown » Royal Blood
Barry Eisler » Inside Out
Reece Hirsch » The Insider
Sophie Littlefield » A Bad Day for Sorry
Dad Lit
Terry Bisson » Bears Discover Fire
Tanya Egan Gibson » How to Buy a Love of Reading
Jeff Gillenkirk » Home, Away
Jeremy Adam Smith » The Daddy Shift
Ransom Stephens » The God Patent
I'm a big fan of the Richter Scale series. It gives you a chance to be introduced not only to authors you might not know yet but even genres you wouldn't normally pay your attention. See, one of the things I really love about Litquake is that I am so committed to it that I just show up; when you just show up with an open mind, good things usually happen. Right?
But I had forgotten much about Litquake proper and how it makes me feel until Sunday evening, when I caught Ransom Stephens' annual Barely Published Authors event (also follow that previous link to catch reflections on the North Beach Literary Walking Tour, which I caught last year). I missed the Sunday Richter series, lamentably, because of the whole not-sleeping/Chronicle deadline thing.
Much to my delight, this event garnered a lot of press this year. SF Weekly called it their "favorite" event of the whole festival and Alan Black said for The Chronicle that it's "one of the best" events every year. I couldn't agree more, which is why I finally - though I struggled over this conflict for days - decided to skip the Center for Literary Arts' 25th anniversary celebration blowout featuring Kim Addonizio, Andrew Sean Greer, Maxine Hong-Kingston, Andrew Altschul, Daniel Alarcon and Mary Roach! I would repeat those names for emphasis but it will make me sad again that I missed them.
I would just like to say really quickly that if you don't know about the CLA you should really check it out; their programming is consistently astounding and they are really fostering a lively community in San Jose. Last year marked the first time Litquake partnered with the South Bay, and I'm really happy to see they have 2 events together this week; in addition to Sunday's readings, the CLA will present Lan Samantha Chang in San Jose on Thursday (alternately, you can see her tonight at the Ferry Building Book Passage).
Why did I skip that lineup? Why did our major newspapers call Barely Published one of the best events? Here's a metaphor:
The room is a limp balloon. The first reader fills the room with a distinctive breath that has never (or rarely ever) given life to a room. The breath, the voice commands our attention as we become swollen with it. Just when we think the balloon will pop the reader finishes and we clap, letting out the hot air that has filled us. But another new writer picks us up immediately with another fresh breath, commanding our attention, silencing us as we hush in our own expansion. It could take us over. It could make us pop!
OK, the metaphor needs a little work. But the point remains: during Barely Published, each author overtakes the Makeout Room in a way that you only hear - and I can't tell you how many hours I've spent in the Makeout since last year's Litquake - you only hear when writers like Molly Gloss and Jerry Stahl take the stage. What you hear is the twinkling of a new star born, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. New stars piercing the atmosphere with their idiosyncratic glitterings like a baby's first righteous wailings rebelling against the involuntary influx of oxygen into their lungs, only this breath has been practiced and leaves their lips with a calm measured pride. This is like the bar and bat mitzvah of Bay Area authors. Welcome, authors! For you have been inducted into the realm of adulthood.
So I'm sad I missed the CLA celebration; I also missed the Enviro-Lit Panel at Lake Chalet and songs by Literary Lions (one of which you can see here). But I couldn't pass on this event.
I'm including links to Ransom's introductions to each author for several reasons. The first is to show hosts everywhere how it's done. Because his intros are so good - giving a precise understanding of each author's scope of work and at the same time being down-to-earth and funny - I asked some of the authors if they had to submit their works to be read to Ransom ahead of time. "No," they said. "He sent us a questionnaire to get to know us better." Wow.
But the other thing I want to say is that Ransom reminded me that Litquake is an umbrella. It is the successful and diverse festival we know it to be because of the committee members' dedication and utter belief in what it can be. There are not a lot of people on the committee, and what I remembered was the feeling you get when you keep showing up for these programs: one of the committee members or volunteers starts each program off, whether it's a reading in a bookstore or a panel @ The World Affairs Council or a film festival @ The Embarcadero Cinema Center. They bring it all together with each event. I just love this. I love how organized it is, that something this special and dependent on volunteers can so powerfully present such a wide-ranging scope of events.
No doubt the committee will laugh when I call Litquake organized; they scramble all year for this and they do it with little money and with little thanks. But … well. It seems weird to be gushing about them on their own website, but I would be doing this wherever I could. So. Check out the videos now. They're really worth gushing about, too. These are some of our brightest:
Ransom introduces » Mimi Lok
Ransom intros » Olga Zilberbourg
Ransom » Jeremy Hatch
Ransom » Ian Tuttle
Ransom (sorry, I missed it!) » Caitlin Myer
Ransom » Andre Perry
Ransom » Alia Volz
Mr. Spinrad asked not to be filmed
So right now I'm loading the videos I caught from yesterday's New Writer's Toolkit: Authors Reveal All & How to Navigate the New World of Publishing - two panels you might find extremely useful. The first included 5 first-time novelists and 1 with two books and their respective stories from work ethic to publication, and the second panel featured industry specialists' advice on the fast-growing tendencies of the new publishing world. Stay tuned for those and for Tao Lin's reading @ Booksmith!
Meanwhile, what are you doing tonight? You have plenty of options:
Litquake in the Bookstore: Lan Samantha Chang at Book Passage, 6 pm. Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco. Free.
Virtual Reality: The Effect of Fiction on Your Mind, 6:30-7:30 pm.Mechanics Institute Library, 57 Post St., San Francisco. Admission: $12 general public, Free to members of Mechanics Institute; reservations at (415) 393-0100 or rsvp@milibrary.org.
McSweeney’s Fall Harvest, 7 pm: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street, San Francisco. Free.
Feast of Words: A Storytelling Potluck, 7 pm (Open mic signup begins at 6:30 pm). Presented by SOMArts Cultural Center. SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St., San Francisco. Admission: $10 suggested donation, Free with potluck dish; advance tickets and information online.
Litquake in the Bookstore: Nick Bilton at The Booksmith, 7:30 pm. The Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street, San Francisco. Free; Preferred seating voucher with Booksmith purchase of I Live in the Future, beginning September 14 and while supplies last.
Litquake and Porchlight: Tales of Hollywood Hell, 8 pm. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Admission: $12 in advance, $15 at the door; tickets available at cityboxoffice.com
Wow. This is the type of night that almost makes you hate the committee I just praised. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I can't miss the panel at Mechanics - last year's was one of my favorite events. So if anyone goes to McSweeney's Fall Harvest, feel free to send a little write-up, pictures, or videos my way; I'd be happy to include them. Same goes with the Feast of Words and Nick Bilton, because I"ll be flying down Market after the Mechanics panel for Porchlight. It's gonna be soo good!
Tomorrow, I'm happy and afraid to say, you'll be facing a similar predicament, with quality programming all over the Bay Area. I think Elise said it yesterday: this is like a week-long Halloween. Trick and treat!!
Check out (and get tix for) tomorrow's events here.
The Booksmith Bookswap: Litquake Edition
The Bookswap is a truly special event: participants have the chance to reflect on their most treasured reads and learn about dozens of new, fantastic books. The evening culminates in a rowdy and always entertaining swap. Think cocktail party, with a bookish twist. For the Litquake edition, bibliovores from across the city will convene at The Booksmith. Bring a book you passionately love but can part with, and we’ll provide the rest. Ticket price includes two drinks, appetizers, and a 20% discount card to purchase books after the event. Bookswap tickets sell out fast!
Admission: $25 advance only. brownpapertickets.com, 800-838-3006, or in-person at The Booksmith
Holly Payne, K.M. Soehnlein, and Oscar Villalon
Admission: $25 advance only. brownpapertickets.com, 800-838-3006, or in-person at The Booksmith
Holly Payne, K.M. Soehnlein, and Oscar Villalon
domingo, 3 de octubre de 2010
The Barbary Coast Award: Holy!
Last night was one of the great nights, when you can actually sense not only time but your own significance in the history of something important.
The best fireworks show you’ve ever seen, with explosions so vast and colorful and loud and resounding that people actually cheer with each pop though they gape from the spiderstar silent, still melting into the darkness.
Although Lawrence Ferlinghetti was too frail to be in attendance to receive the 4th annual Barbary Coast Award, the overwhelming support he received from every arena of the artistic world was so resounding (see above: kaboom!), the retrospective of his life and the span of his City Lights Bookstore and their collective effects on the city of San Francisco and on the minds of generations of readers and thinkers was so poignant and heartfelt that the evening truly felt like a celebration of the whole city and its spirit and the very community the man made it his mission to establish. The feeling of the night was triumph
That there be such a man who would risk everything for what he believes in, not once but persistently, throughout the course of a lifetime … and to watch the many people said man has directly influenced and created a space for testify as a community … is perhaps the most triumphant of all human experiences. As each person spoke I could not help but stare at the pictures of Ferlinghetti screened behind the stage; I stared at his face with each testimony and measured the boundaries of my own self.
I sat up all night and thought about what to write today. I haven’t even put together my report for The Chronicle yet—I wanted to get the gush out. But as I listened to the whole show, which I snagged clandestinely on my audio recorder, I could not overcome the feeling that I had recorded a piece of history that should be remembered and passed down—and not just as hearsay. So what follows is more of a script than anything else:
The Marcus Shelby Quartet played their signature jazz as, one after another, some of our favorite writers took the stage to read excerpts of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry (in this order): devorah major, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Daphne Gottlieb, Robert Mailer Anderson, Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, Justin Chin, Juan Felipe Herrera, James Kass and Chinaka Hodge. Each artist injected the verse with a personal verve, then shone as they walked or even skipped off stage.
When they finished, these ten, the lights came on and they returned from the side stage to the center, and I expected them to bow and leave again. The crowd gave a loud applause, apparently thinking the same thing, but then—as a chorus—the artists launched into the footnote to “Howl,” for which each recited a passage:
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
…
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
…
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!"
The crowd went wild. And then Bamuthi Joseph, MC, said “Holy Shit! Here we are,” and then “give it up for Lawrence Ferlinghetti!” We all cheered, thunderously, but we were still too decorous. “We are honoring Lawrene Ferlinghetti tonight,” Bamuthi Joseph said, “which means any impulse you have to be quiet or coy is fucked up and should be thrown out the window … We are an uncensored, untethered body of literary worshippers tonight.”
This was the beginning of the show!!!
… And then came the tributes. Here are some notable quotables:
Paul Yamagatzi, who has worked at City Lights for 40 years now, talked about the whole sense of community, how City Lights was always to be a meeting place, an intersection of minds and texts. He celebrated Ferlinghetti’s abilities not only as a poet, activist, and painter, but as an organizer and collaborator with the peculiar ability to pass a vision on—how central he was to the community that we are today.
Elaine Katzenberger, executive director of City Lights, started by saying she would be brief because she knew we were waiting for more important people, but then was carried away by an impassioned speech that ended with a justified pitch for us all to “come to the bookstore.” Huzzah!“People love City Lights. It has something to do with how it’s infused with who Lawrence Ferlinghetti is. … It’s been a center for culture. … He is the sparkle of irrepressible human curiosity.”
She captured the intersection of spirit and utility that is the bookstore’s hallmark: “There’s something different when you walk in that door … it’s driven by something other than money. It is not profit that moves us to go to work every day—it’s passion. And it’s curiosity. And it’s wanting to share it. And that’s what books do when books inspire you. And you walk in there and suddenly you realize wow, there are all these people who are thinking other things than that noise that I have to hear all the time. Not only that! Look around: … Decisions are being made about what should we share and how can we do that.”
Michael McClure then took the stage with a slow gait and impressive air. He talked about reading in the Six Gallery with Ginsberg et al. and how City Lights evolved. “If we couldn’t afford to buy ,” he said, “we could stand in the aisles and read. … It was Coney Island of the Mind which did more than any other book to turn young people the world over to poetry as an instrument to thinking and feeling. … This was the beginning of a metamorphosis of consciousness. Scholars have a fulltime occupation to try to make sense of what Lawrence has done since then … to make freedom available in the United States and wherever his energies reached.” Then he read a poem called “Cups,” which ended with the line: “What will we say to all the singing realms that try to rise inside of us? Grawr!”
Michael Horowitz, co-founder of the Ludlow Library, which he described as “a library/museum of beating hand culture books” and which collected first editions and paraphernalia from neighboring artists, praised Ferlinghetti for supporting him and so many others, for “the protection of all things. Thank you for protecting me and helping me protect others.” An image of City Lights as a true sanctuary began to form in my mind, and members of the Quartet peered over their instruments with smiles on, holding the standup bass, sax at the ready.
Already we were sensing an overload, and when Horowitz finished the band played a little interlude to let us process things.
Then, a short video was projected onto a screen above the stage. We saw Sylvia Whitman of Paris’ Shakespeare and Company give us a tour through their bookstore, which, she lovingly explained, they consider the sister bookstore of City Lights (and even called it “the best bookstore in the world”). A marquee with that name is painted above the doorway and as she walked up to the third floor to find her father, the famous 90+ year-old George, she passed several employees who all looked into the camera and said “Hi Lawrence!” or else were reading one of his books. It was so personal and … appropriate. George seemed a little confused by his daughter’s questions, and the following dialogue made everyone laugh:
Never stayed in City Lights.
But there are photos of you in City Lights.
There are?
Yes … Why don’t you say something to City Lights?
… Talking to City Lights is like talking to myself—it doesn’t make any sense.
George then extended a most gracious offer to Mr. Ferlinghetti to stay at Shakespeare and Co. for as long as he’d like.
You said that to Lawrence?
I’m saying it to him now.
Wow. Then Jack Hirschman took the stage in what was definitely one of my favorite parts of the night. He started by saying he’s known Lawrence for over half a century. I’m going to give a long excerpt of what he called “Ferlinghetti Arcane:”
“… Jack and Alan drumming on a new American poetry … but you’d already been international … You the constant consonant and vowel uttered, and I the same vowel uttered at the end of the next syllable but only an unsounded echo barely heard still being in the university. … You never did go back to bourgieville, but stayed on as independent as you could, creating the first paperback bookstore in the land, opening a bunch of doors so that worlds and people could realize San Francisco is one of the most priceless cities on the planet, still a city small town, like a kid at a window somewhere dreamed of way back when. … With your lilting whine of a drawl, distinctive in its way, memorable and therefore imitable.
… You should have been at … for Neely Cherkovski’s at his almost perfect, always slightly envious but ever-affectionate impersonation of you, because you already were a legend by the 70s, encircled by a transparent but ever-unbreakable wall of image with a capital I, which only Jack and Alan otherwise possessed. … You critique my work for being too arcane and esoteric while you stole from all the poets you loved, giving their phrases new context, a master husker of American corn. Ironic deconstructivist of the reveries of patriotic cliché, you had a dream and would not go gentle into that warzone.
… This millennium decade when we become closer out of brotherly need in a time of great anti-semitism against salaam alakem as well, and with Alan gone who was a light and also I imagine a heavy cargo for you, we know there’s no god to judge or forgive us, there’s only this singing to life what comes form the human immensity of death … and that’s why putting it to the computer file of the revolutionary poets brigade and policy, “At Sea,” the finest poem you’ve ever written, and you wrote it this very year at the age of 91, I have a sense of the greatness of the victory over time and despair an authentically true poetry embodies.
So write on young timer, you who opposed the war in Vietnam, the gulf, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, write on, first baseman in your ninth decade, with legs still able to give my latka leaden ones a run for the bases. Well sure, ‘cause I ride my bicycle every chance I get! … Though the antibiotics make you tired, your complexion’s still rosy, and I know all you want to do is get up and go downstairs and drive to your studio where alone you never are. So chorus, sure. We’ll give you one more standing O big guy. Chorus, sure. …
Needless to say, this brought the house down. MC Marc Bamuthi Joseph then remarked: “This is off the chain. … A fluid reminder of how blessed we all are. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience where you walk into a bookstore and kind of get emotional, choked up by all the words committed to paper. But to bear witness to all these personalities kind of jumping out from their spines and being present with us here. It’s moving me, but … I’m from New York though, I’m hard I’m hard!”
He did such an outstanding job as MC. After each testimony he would say something like that above and it would feel so tenuous … like ‘wait, what could you possibly say …” but he would put himself out there and it worked every time.
Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, a poverty scholar and revolutionary journalist, took the stage in a somewhat frightening mask and all-white suit and declared: I’m here for all who aren’t here …” She thanked Ferlinghetti for “ripping a tear into the cloth of access so this poverty scholar can jump in and resist, by publishing Criminal Poverty, and for truly understanding the equity of publishing and his connection to race, class and resistance, which has enabled me and … … to continue the fight against poverty and homelessness.” Then she sang an old jazz excerpt, ending with: “The champagne is Larry, and Larry is mine.”
Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of Truthdig and a long-ago employee of City Lights, followed with one of the evening’s more poignant testimonies, saying of Ferlinghetti that he was “One of the great human beings that I’ve ever encountered. He was the bridge between the Beats and what happened with the radicals of the 60s. He was aware of both worlds. … I thought he was sort of a saint, frankly, and that’s coming from someone who got paid a buck and a quarter an hour for 3 years. … The bookstore was like a lending library … I never heard him say we’re supposed to sell books—we’re supposed to turn people on to interesting books.” He said Ferlinghetti was so pure that it made him feel evil, and in that vein he confessed, just last night, to stealing quarters from the register to buy food when he was poor (although he did gift LF his uncle’s wristwatch, he was sure to add). And, of course, he apologized!
Oh, there was the fact that he introduced Bob Dylan to Ferlinghetti. That was a nice anecdote. But that was just the adlib portion of Scheer’s praise. He had written and then read the following about Ferlinghetti as a Profound Thinker:
“An aspect of this deeply modest man that he tries to conceal in his public persona. Over the past half century we have seen the super-achievers, the smartass careerists, the best and the brightest lead us from one disaster to another. From the carnage of Vietnam to the lies of Iraq to the banking meltdown. During that time Ferlinghetti and his City Lights stood as a center … consistently of reason and sanity and the honoring of basic human rights along with the joys of freedom. … He became the embodiment of the pacifist anarchist. …”
He painted Ferlinghetti as “an indelibly shy man who forced himself to be a public person reluctantly but faithfully whenever the times required it. This is the stuttering poet of truth loath to take the stage but rising every time when the outrages of the moment demanded that the powerful be held accountable. And he did hold them accountable.”
Then Litquake co-founders/directors Jane Ganahl and Jack Boulware took the stage. Jack recalled how after 9/11 he was walking through North Beach thinking “what everybody in America was thinking: what’s going on? Who attacked us? Why did they attack us? Why are we invading Iraq? Why is the media not covering this? And I remember looking up and seeing in the windows of City Lights Bookstore the words “Dissent is Not Un-American.” And I remember thinking ‘I’m so glad I live in this city with this literary legacy.’”
And Jane told the story of Litquake 2002, when the festival consisted of only one day of readings and the committee (was there a committee?) presented each reader with a little “corny” trophy that said “First Place.” And they had asked Ferlinghetti to kick off the proceedings but he was three hours late, so they started without him. When he did show up, he walked right onto the stage and read an original poem called “Lit.quake” (below). Then he walked off the stage and left!
Jack and Jane chased him, tugging on his coat to present their dorky trophy. “Lawrence! Lawrence! You forgot your trophy.” He looked at it and smiled. “Was I really the best?”
So we’re having a quake
We’re going to have a literary quaking
It’s announced in the smallest papers
Free for the taking
It’s flying on flyers all over town
It’s happening here today
In downtown San Francisco
In the town that’s famous for earthquakes
And ready for them every way
It’s a quake that’s been promised
And all the best writers will be quaking or shaking
So get ready to tremble get ready to shake
The hour has come
The atomic clock is down to one
And I am wondering
Who will really be shook up
Who will be quaking in their boots
Will it shake the country to its roots
Will it crack the marble skies
And will it have a ripple effect
With Lit.revolutions and Lit.orgasms
All around the world
Will it shred the fabric of society
And cause inebriation or sobriety
Will it get you high or low
Will you go with the flow
Will it make lovers run for cover
Will it shake up marriages in fancy carriages
Will it let loose the dogs of war
Or liberate the doves of peace
Will it leaved a scorched earth
Or business-as-usual on the home hearth
Will it open up a huge hole
Into which will tumble
And the cars and trucks and freeways of the land
And where will be the epicenter of this quake
And what will be the reading on the Richter scale
Will there be lots of real estate for scale
What towers and powers will come tumbling down
Will it shake down the banks
Will it hit the ranks
Of both the good and the bad
The glad and the sad
Will it derail tanks and war
Or derail peace and more
Or bring down the war machine
Or other things obcene
Will it burn up the Bush
And will the White House fall
Will it change anything at all
Will it open up a great chasm in which we’ll see
The huge spiritual void in America
Or will it move your heart and soul;
Will it shake your mind
Willit wake up the humanity
Of all mankind?
This poem was a tremendous thing to read during intermission while considering the immanence of Patti Smith, Tom Waits and Winona Ryder! I thought: my, how this festval has grown. How this city, even, has grown as a result of this festival. How this festival would not exist without Ferlinghetti. And so on and so on.
Everyone was shocked through the doors, in the stairways, on the balcony, on the stage! It wasn’t loud; there was a muted murmur in the halls and I couldn’t help but bumble about like a stuttering fool. What? This is only intermission? …
After the break, Eric Drooker, illustrator and animator of the graphic sequences in the new motion picture Howl, gave a presentation of the slides (which you can see here, as part of a presentation earlier the same day) and read some passages from “Howl.” One of the slides was a cover he did for Nation Magazine that inspired a striking Ferlinghetti poem. “Not bad, Lawrence,” he said, and then: “I’ll let the images do the talking for me.” Applause!
Then devorah major drew from Ferlinghetti’s namesake, St. Lawrence, making sure to stress that while LF is certainly not a saint , he has grown into his name. He “always provides a sharp zinger for those who need sharpening.” And of course the former Poet Laureate was not the first one to use the S word.
Ishmael Reed stressed Ferlinghetti’s courage in standing up for the right thing, even when seemingly no one else in the world would do the same. He spoke of President Eisenhower, and how “One writer was not awed by the first imperial presidency. … Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s document ends with Eisenhower’s resignation.”
Then a man rushed onto stage and we were all confused for a minute until we realized it was a sound guy. As he set up the audience was audibly trembling with anticipation, and when Bamuthi Jospeh announced Lenny Kay and Patti Smith I thought ‘Oh lord, here goes the Herbst Theatre, and all of us in it!’ Announced as the godmother of punk and a poet, one of the first things Smith said (with much aplomb) was: “Lawrence Ferlinghetti is not a man that anyone would say is ALSO a poet. He IS a poet.” Her voice lowered to an intimate hush: “Lawrence, we send this little song to you and may it give you energy and sweet dreams tonight.”
They then proceeded to play a riff of Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby: “You’re my Coney Island Baby / You mean so much to me. / We love you tenderly. / You’re my luck star / That’s what you are / You’re my Coney Island Baby / We love you / We love you / We do.” They then played “Wing” with so much passion and just heartfelt sincerity it was palpable that Smith was singing for Ferlinghetti and to the audience at the same time. She then ended with a completely humble “Thank you Lawrence” and exited the stage. It’s a crime that I don’t have video.
Bamuthi Joseph followed: “Even if you’d never met me, you would have a pretty good idea of who I am if you met my friends. The company that you keep. The folks that vouch for you. The folks that speak your name. Just standing there watching this performance thinking ‘Wow there are some incredible folks that would vouch for this man, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.’ … I seek to acknowledge that … his impact is made manifest by those who would speak for him.
Without pausing, he went into an introduction of Tom Waits and people started stomping and whooting.
Waits came out and, accompanied by Marcus Shelby on standup, played an original rendition of the final section of Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind.” It was simply astounding—you could sense the impact this poem had on the artist.
Steve Earl followed by saying he didn’t prepare anything new to play or to read but could not say no when asked to pay tribute. He thanked Mr. Ferlinghetti for saving him from what would probably have been a well-paying job, to much laughter, and then made one of the most profound statements of the entire night: I was born in 1955 so that means that I never had to live in a world where Allen Ginsberg had not written “Howl” and Lawrence Ferlinghetti hadn’t taken the heat. Thank you very much.”
Talking with Mr. Kruger over a post-show coffee, he remarked how—considering this—the world is a completely different place and that, as a consequence, we are all living in Ferlinghetti’s world. This is the kind of thing we all know innately, but I beg you to think about it long and hard, my friends. Cry some everything tears! (Go on.)
Then Winona Ryder took the stage, and in front of a giant picture of the actress as a little girl on Ferlinghetti’s shoulders, she read from Americus I. Her reading was personal and raw—she smiled intermittently and at times stumbled over the beautiful prickly language. Here is an excerpt (just imagine):
"… No end to the sea-bells tolling beyond the dykes of the calling of bells and empty churches and towers of time. No end to the calamitous annunciation of harry holy man / Endless the ever-unwinding wash-spring part of the world shimmering in time through space / No end to the birthing of babies for love and lust has lain / No end to the sweet bird of consciousness, to the bitter deaths in vain. / No end, no end to the withering fur and fruit and flesh so passing fair and neon mermaids singing each to each somewhere the fires of youth and the embers of the rage of the poet born again / No end to the muted dance of molecules / All is transmuted / All is muted and all cries out again again! / Endless the wars of good and evil flips the fate / The trips of hate / Nukes and faults and all failings safe and chain reactions of the final flash where white bicycles of protest still circle around / For there will be an end to the dog-faced gods in wing-tipped shoes and Gucci slippers and Texas boots in tin-can hats in bunkers pressing buttons / For there are hopeful choices still to be chosen in the dark minds in stonewall bars and green giants of chance / The fish-hooks of hope and the sloughs of despond / The hills in the distance and the birds in the bush / The hidden streams of light and unheard melodies / The sessions of sweet silent thought stately pleasures droned decreed in the happy deaths of the heart every day / The cocks of clay / The feet in running shoes upon the quay. / And there is no end, no end to the doors of perception still to be opened and the jetstreams of life and the upper air / The spirit of man in the outer space inside us, shining, transcendent into the crystal night of time / In the endless silence of the soul / In the long loud tale of man in his endless sound and fury / signifying everything / the dancing continues / there is a sound of revelry by night."
Ryder then added that she always thought of City Lights as
“A beacon, an oasis—the light in City Lights like a lighthouse flashing and gathering all those great minds in search of hope and creative shelter. It is a living monument to the ideals that inspire and protect those writers. It’s hard to imagine a world without the profound courage and the deep, deep conviction of a man who went all the way to court to defend Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and his own right to publish it, for all of us and for all future generations to enjoy and to be inspired by it. Every writer, poet, and artist to this day is indebted to Lawrence and his deep commitment to freedom of press, and because he helped insure that all our work would have a chance to find its own audience, and in the end, in the end that’s all any writer artist can ask—to have the chance to be seen and to be read and to be heard. So I thank you Lawrence, I’ve been so privileged to know you my entire life, and I salute you and I love you very much.”
Lawrence babysat Winona in City Lights and she was audibly shaken. What could top that, you ask?
On the screen, a video played in which Lawrence addressed us directly.
“San Francisco, the late last frontier. What’s left of the last frontier includes City Lights, and I’m happy to accept the Litquake award ON BEHALF OF CITY LIGHTS, and now I’m gonna read a poem that Jack Hirschman has claimed is the greatest poem I ever wrote.”
But before he “reads” this poem, I would just like to point out the humility, the humanity of this poet who so proudly accepted the award on behalf of his shining project, City Lights, and how he tipped his hat to Mr. Hirschman. He said no more, but read:
“AT SEA”
The sea through the trees
distant
shining
The dark foreground
a stone wall
with lichen
And the bone-white beach stretching away
An old salt
sits staring out
at the sea
A wind sways the palms
infrequently
Another day prepares
for heat and silence
A small plane
buzzing like a fly
disturbs the sky
The air eats it
Far out on the slumbering sea
a trawler creeps along
The wind from the south
blows the bait in the fish’s mouth
The yawning sea
swallows the trawler
The lichen lives on
in its volcanic stone
taciturn
eternal
awaiting its turn
in the turn of the sun
Never will I return here
never again
breathe this wind
on this far run
in the reaches of morning
where the sea whispers
patience and salt
The sun
scorches the sky
and drops like a burnt-out match
into night
And I am an animal still
perhaps once a bird
a halcyon
who makes its nest at sea
on my little flight across
the little chart
of my existence
Life goes on
full of silence and clamor
in the grey cities
in the far bourgs
in the white cities by the sea
where I go on
writing my life
in neither blood nor wine
I still await an epiphany
by the petri-dish of the sea
where all life began
by swimming
But it’s time now
to give an accounting of everything
an explanation of everything
such as
why there is darkness at night
Everywhere the sea is rising
(Flood tide and the heron’s haunted cry!)
Am I to be drowned
with the rest of them
all the animals of earth
washed away in ocean
motherer and moitherer
in this tremendous moment
of wondrous sea-change
as our little world disappears
in a tremor of ocean and fear
to the murmur
of the middle mind of America
as imbeciles in neckties
drop from the trees?
No matter then
if I end up
in a house of insurgents
on the Avenida de los Insurgentes
or shoeless on Boston Common
or cast-up clueless
in my great Uncle Désir’s
beach hut
in St. Thomas
Pardon my conduct then
if I can’t give you
any final word—
a final unified theory of existence—
all thought subsumed
in one great thought
(utopian vision!)
Humans with all their voices
as myriad as
the syllables of the sea
have never been able to fathom
man’s fate
nor tell us why we are here
Still will we be
free as the sea
to be nothing but
our own shadow selves
beach bums all after all
in future time when
nations no longer exist
and the earth is swept
by ethnic hordes
in search of food and shelter?
Neither patient nor placid
in the face of all this
in the sea of every day
with its two tides
I drift about
immune to hidden reefs or harbors
Someone throws me
crystal fruits
in the shape of life-preservers
Others wave
from distant strands
Goodbye! Goodbye!
Beached at last
bleached out
I would to the woods again
with its ancient trees
that sing like sitars
in the wind
Wordless ragas!
Shipwrecked ashore
at the mercy of avaricious gulls—
And yet and yet
we are still not born for despair
Spring comes anyway
And a gay excursion train appears
The ancient conductor
with stove-pipe hat
and gold pocketwatch
greets us like long-lost passengers
gracing us with
wreathes around our necks
as arms of lovers
insanely embrace us
Is there anything more to be said
before they carry us off
as dead
while we’re still dreaming
still in search
of the bread of the word
cast upon the waters
the dough that rises
in the yeast of speech
in the written word
in poetry
Tracks upon the sand!
left by corraled bands of animals
cornered by mistakes and habitudes
and trains taken
to mistaken destinations
or trips taken or not taken
with angels of love
to lower latitudes
Between two waves
the ocean is still—
a silence of ages
lasting but a moment
between two waves
of emotion
as lovers
turn to each other
or away
Love ebbs and flows
comes and goes
between two emotions
yet surges again
with each new wave
as some sea-creature from the deep
breaks the surface with a leap
The sea roars but says no more
O the yarns it could spin
if it would
between its rages
under the eye of the sun
under the ear of the sky—
Cities asunder!
Plunderers and pieces of eight!
Petrified hulls!
Crystal skulls!
Sailors’ masturbations!
or yesterday’s sperm
lost in the wake
of a pleasure boat
O endless the inchoate
incoherent narrative—Voyager, pass on!
We are not our fathers
yet we carry on
breathing like them
loving and killing like them
Away then away
in our custom-built catamarans
over the hills of ocean
to where Atlantis
still rides the tides
or where that magic mountain
not on any map
wreathed in radiance
still hides
A radiant Nancy Peters accepted the Barbary Coast Award for Mr. Ferlinghetti, and that concludes our transcript.
Oh, the afterparty? Nevermind that … Did you already read all of this? If you still want more, email me. I recorded videos of the Off the Richter Scale series and nearly have them all rendered, but I think this is more than enough for the day! Plus, the festival continues, and I wouldn’t want to miss more than I have to. I have to condense this report into 1000 words now, after all.
— Evan Karp
Ps. WE HAVE ALL JUST WITNESSED MOSES PRESENTING THE TABLETS FRESH FROM SINAI. ATTEND ANY EVENTS YOU CAN. FIND US. FOR WE GLOW WITH THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF UBER-DIVINE PRESENCE. UM YES I’M CARRIED AWAY. Have you read this? FIND US!
The best fireworks show you’ve ever seen, with explosions so vast and colorful and loud and resounding that people actually cheer with each pop though they gape from the spiderstar silent, still melting into the darkness.
Although Lawrence Ferlinghetti was too frail to be in attendance to receive the 4th annual Barbary Coast Award, the overwhelming support he received from every arena of the artistic world was so resounding (see above: kaboom!), the retrospective of his life and the span of his City Lights Bookstore and their collective effects on the city of San Francisco and on the minds of generations of readers and thinkers was so poignant and heartfelt that the evening truly felt like a celebration of the whole city and its spirit and the very community the man made it his mission to establish. The feeling of the night was triumph
That there be such a man who would risk everything for what he believes in, not once but persistently, throughout the course of a lifetime … and to watch the many people said man has directly influenced and created a space for testify as a community … is perhaps the most triumphant of all human experiences. As each person spoke I could not help but stare at the pictures of Ferlinghetti screened behind the stage; I stared at his face with each testimony and measured the boundaries of my own self.
I sat up all night and thought about what to write today. I haven’t even put together my report for The Chronicle yet—I wanted to get the gush out. But as I listened to the whole show, which I snagged clandestinely on my audio recorder, I could not overcome the feeling that I had recorded a piece of history that should be remembered and passed down—and not just as hearsay. So what follows is more of a script than anything else:
The Marcus Shelby Quartet played their signature jazz as, one after another, some of our favorite writers took the stage to read excerpts of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry (in this order): devorah major, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Daphne Gottlieb, Robert Mailer Anderson, Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, Justin Chin, Juan Felipe Herrera, James Kass and Chinaka Hodge. Each artist injected the verse with a personal verve, then shone as they walked or even skipped off stage.
When they finished, these ten, the lights came on and they returned from the side stage to the center, and I expected them to bow and leave again. The crowd gave a loud applause, apparently thinking the same thing, but then—as a chorus—the artists launched into the footnote to “Howl,” for which each recited a passage:
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
…
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
…
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!"
The crowd went wild. And then Bamuthi Joseph, MC, said “Holy Shit! Here we are,” and then “give it up for Lawrence Ferlinghetti!” We all cheered, thunderously, but we were still too decorous. “We are honoring Lawrene Ferlinghetti tonight,” Bamuthi Joseph said, “which means any impulse you have to be quiet or coy is fucked up and should be thrown out the window … We are an uncensored, untethered body of literary worshippers tonight.”
This was the beginning of the show!!!
… And then came the tributes. Here are some notable quotables:
Paul Yamagatzi, who has worked at City Lights for 40 years now, talked about the whole sense of community, how City Lights was always to be a meeting place, an intersection of minds and texts. He celebrated Ferlinghetti’s abilities not only as a poet, activist, and painter, but as an organizer and collaborator with the peculiar ability to pass a vision on—how central he was to the community that we are today.
Elaine Katzenberger, executive director of City Lights, started by saying she would be brief because she knew we were waiting for more important people, but then was carried away by an impassioned speech that ended with a justified pitch for us all to “come to the bookstore.” Huzzah!“People love City Lights. It has something to do with how it’s infused with who Lawrence Ferlinghetti is. … It’s been a center for culture. … He is the sparkle of irrepressible human curiosity.”
She captured the intersection of spirit and utility that is the bookstore’s hallmark: “There’s something different when you walk in that door … it’s driven by something other than money. It is not profit that moves us to go to work every day—it’s passion. And it’s curiosity. And it’s wanting to share it. And that’s what books do when books inspire you. And you walk in there and suddenly you realize wow, there are all these people who are thinking other things than that noise that I have to hear all the time. Not only that! Look around: … Decisions are being made about what should we share and how can we do that.”
Michael McClure then took the stage with a slow gait and impressive air. He talked about reading in the Six Gallery with Ginsberg et al. and how City Lights evolved. “If we couldn’t afford to buy ,” he said, “we could stand in the aisles and read. … It was Coney Island of the Mind which did more than any other book to turn young people the world over to poetry as an instrument to thinking and feeling. … This was the beginning of a metamorphosis of consciousness. Scholars have a fulltime occupation to try to make sense of what Lawrence has done since then … to make freedom available in the United States and wherever his energies reached.” Then he read a poem called “Cups,” which ended with the line: “What will we say to all the singing realms that try to rise inside of us? Grawr!”
Michael Horowitz, co-founder of the Ludlow Library, which he described as “a library/museum of beating hand culture books” and which collected first editions and paraphernalia from neighboring artists, praised Ferlinghetti for supporting him and so many others, for “the protection of all things. Thank you for protecting me and helping me protect others.” An image of City Lights as a true sanctuary began to form in my mind, and members of the Quartet peered over their instruments with smiles on, holding the standup bass, sax at the ready.
Already we were sensing an overload, and when Horowitz finished the band played a little interlude to let us process things.
Then, a short video was projected onto a screen above the stage. We saw Sylvia Whitman of Paris’ Shakespeare and Company give us a tour through their bookstore, which, she lovingly explained, they consider the sister bookstore of City Lights (and even called it “the best bookstore in the world”). A marquee with that name is painted above the doorway and as she walked up to the third floor to find her father, the famous 90+ year-old George, she passed several employees who all looked into the camera and said “Hi Lawrence!” or else were reading one of his books. It was so personal and … appropriate. George seemed a little confused by his daughter’s questions, and the following dialogue made everyone laugh:
Never stayed in City Lights.
But there are photos of you in City Lights.
There are?
Yes … Why don’t you say something to City Lights?
… Talking to City Lights is like talking to myself—it doesn’t make any sense.
George then extended a most gracious offer to Mr. Ferlinghetti to stay at Shakespeare and Co. for as long as he’d like.
You said that to Lawrence?
I’m saying it to him now.
Wow. Then Jack Hirschman took the stage in what was definitely one of my favorite parts of the night. He started by saying he’s known Lawrence for over half a century. I’m going to give a long excerpt of what he called “Ferlinghetti Arcane:”
“… Jack and Alan drumming on a new American poetry … but you’d already been international … You the constant consonant and vowel uttered, and I the same vowel uttered at the end of the next syllable but only an unsounded echo barely heard still being in the university. … You never did go back to bourgieville, but stayed on as independent as you could, creating the first paperback bookstore in the land, opening a bunch of doors so that worlds and people could realize San Francisco is one of the most priceless cities on the planet, still a city small town, like a kid at a window somewhere dreamed of way back when. … With your lilting whine of a drawl, distinctive in its way, memorable and therefore imitable.
… You should have been at … for Neely Cherkovski’s at his almost perfect, always slightly envious but ever-affectionate impersonation of you, because you already were a legend by the 70s, encircled by a transparent but ever-unbreakable wall of image with a capital I, which only Jack and Alan otherwise possessed. … You critique my work for being too arcane and esoteric while you stole from all the poets you loved, giving their phrases new context, a master husker of American corn. Ironic deconstructivist of the reveries of patriotic cliché, you had a dream and would not go gentle into that warzone.
… This millennium decade when we become closer out of brotherly need in a time of great anti-semitism against salaam alakem as well, and with Alan gone who was a light and also I imagine a heavy cargo for you, we know there’s no god to judge or forgive us, there’s only this singing to life what comes form the human immensity of death … and that’s why putting it to the computer file of the revolutionary poets brigade and policy, “At Sea,” the finest poem you’ve ever written, and you wrote it this very year at the age of 91, I have a sense of the greatness of the victory over time and despair an authentically true poetry embodies.
So write on young timer, you who opposed the war in Vietnam, the gulf, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, write on, first baseman in your ninth decade, with legs still able to give my latka leaden ones a run for the bases. Well sure, ‘cause I ride my bicycle every chance I get! … Though the antibiotics make you tired, your complexion’s still rosy, and I know all you want to do is get up and go downstairs and drive to your studio where alone you never are. So chorus, sure. We’ll give you one more standing O big guy. Chorus, sure. …
Needless to say, this brought the house down. MC Marc Bamuthi Joseph then remarked: “This is off the chain. … A fluid reminder of how blessed we all are. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience where you walk into a bookstore and kind of get emotional, choked up by all the words committed to paper. But to bear witness to all these personalities kind of jumping out from their spines and being present with us here. It’s moving me, but … I’m from New York though, I’m hard I’m hard!”
He did such an outstanding job as MC. After each testimony he would say something like that above and it would feel so tenuous … like ‘wait, what could you possibly say …” but he would put himself out there and it worked every time.
Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, a poverty scholar and revolutionary journalist, took the stage in a somewhat frightening mask and all-white suit and declared: I’m here for all who aren’t here …” She thanked Ferlinghetti for “ripping a tear into the cloth of access so this poverty scholar can jump in and resist, by publishing Criminal Poverty, and for truly understanding the equity of publishing and his connection to race, class and resistance, which has enabled me and … … to continue the fight against poverty and homelessness.” Then she sang an old jazz excerpt, ending with: “The champagne is Larry, and Larry is mine.”
Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of Truthdig and a long-ago employee of City Lights, followed with one of the evening’s more poignant testimonies, saying of Ferlinghetti that he was “One of the great human beings that I’ve ever encountered. He was the bridge between the Beats and what happened with the radicals of the 60s. He was aware of both worlds. … I thought he was sort of a saint, frankly, and that’s coming from someone who got paid a buck and a quarter an hour for 3 years. … The bookstore was like a lending library … I never heard him say we’re supposed to sell books—we’re supposed to turn people on to interesting books.” He said Ferlinghetti was so pure that it made him feel evil, and in that vein he confessed, just last night, to stealing quarters from the register to buy food when he was poor (although he did gift LF his uncle’s wristwatch, he was sure to add). And, of course, he apologized!
Oh, there was the fact that he introduced Bob Dylan to Ferlinghetti. That was a nice anecdote. But that was just the adlib portion of Scheer’s praise. He had written and then read the following about Ferlinghetti as a Profound Thinker:
“An aspect of this deeply modest man that he tries to conceal in his public persona. Over the past half century we have seen the super-achievers, the smartass careerists, the best and the brightest lead us from one disaster to another. From the carnage of Vietnam to the lies of Iraq to the banking meltdown. During that time Ferlinghetti and his City Lights stood as a center … consistently of reason and sanity and the honoring of basic human rights along with the joys of freedom. … He became the embodiment of the pacifist anarchist. …”
He painted Ferlinghetti as “an indelibly shy man who forced himself to be a public person reluctantly but faithfully whenever the times required it. This is the stuttering poet of truth loath to take the stage but rising every time when the outrages of the moment demanded that the powerful be held accountable. And he did hold them accountable.”
Then Litquake co-founders/directors Jane Ganahl and Jack Boulware took the stage. Jack recalled how after 9/11 he was walking through North Beach thinking “what everybody in America was thinking: what’s going on? Who attacked us? Why did they attack us? Why are we invading Iraq? Why is the media not covering this? And I remember looking up and seeing in the windows of City Lights Bookstore the words “Dissent is Not Un-American.” And I remember thinking ‘I’m so glad I live in this city with this literary legacy.’”
And Jane told the story of Litquake 2002, when the festival consisted of only one day of readings and the committee (was there a committee?) presented each reader with a little “corny” trophy that said “First Place.” And they had asked Ferlinghetti to kick off the proceedings but he was three hours late, so they started without him. When he did show up, he walked right onto the stage and read an original poem called “Lit.quake” (below). Then he walked off the stage and left!
Jack and Jane chased him, tugging on his coat to present their dorky trophy. “Lawrence! Lawrence! You forgot your trophy.” He looked at it and smiled. “Was I really the best?”
So we’re having a quake
We’re going to have a literary quaking
It’s announced in the smallest papers
Free for the taking
It’s flying on flyers all over town
It’s happening here today
In downtown San Francisco
In the town that’s famous for earthquakes
And ready for them every way
It’s a quake that’s been promised
And all the best writers will be quaking or shaking
So get ready to tremble get ready to shake
The hour has come
The atomic clock is down to one
And I am wondering
Who will really be shook up
Who will be quaking in their boots
Will it shake the country to its roots
Will it crack the marble skies
And will it have a ripple effect
With Lit.revolutions and Lit.orgasms
All around the world
Will it shred the fabric of society
And cause inebriation or sobriety
Will it get you high or low
Will you go with the flow
Will it make lovers run for cover
Will it shake up marriages in fancy carriages
Will it let loose the dogs of war
Or liberate the doves of peace
Will it leaved a scorched earth
Or business-as-usual on the home hearth
Will it open up a huge hole
Into which will tumble
And the cars and trucks and freeways of the land
And where will be the epicenter of this quake
And what will be the reading on the Richter scale
Will there be lots of real estate for scale
What towers and powers will come tumbling down
Will it shake down the banks
Will it hit the ranks
Of both the good and the bad
The glad and the sad
Will it derail tanks and war
Or derail peace and more
Or bring down the war machine
Or other things obcene
Will it burn up the Bush
And will the White House fall
Will it change anything at all
Will it open up a great chasm in which we’ll see
The huge spiritual void in America
Or will it move your heart and soul;
Will it shake your mind
Willit wake up the humanity
Of all mankind?
This poem was a tremendous thing to read during intermission while considering the immanence of Patti Smith, Tom Waits and Winona Ryder! I thought: my, how this festval has grown. How this city, even, has grown as a result of this festival. How this festival would not exist without Ferlinghetti. And so on and so on.
Everyone was shocked through the doors, in the stairways, on the balcony, on the stage! It wasn’t loud; there was a muted murmur in the halls and I couldn’t help but bumble about like a stuttering fool. What? This is only intermission? …
After the break, Eric Drooker, illustrator and animator of the graphic sequences in the new motion picture Howl, gave a presentation of the slides (which you can see here, as part of a presentation earlier the same day) and read some passages from “Howl.” One of the slides was a cover he did for Nation Magazine that inspired a striking Ferlinghetti poem. “Not bad, Lawrence,” he said, and then: “I’ll let the images do the talking for me.” Applause!
Then devorah major drew from Ferlinghetti’s namesake, St. Lawrence, making sure to stress that while LF is certainly not a saint , he has grown into his name. He “always provides a sharp zinger for those who need sharpening.” And of course the former Poet Laureate was not the first one to use the S word.
Ishmael Reed stressed Ferlinghetti’s courage in standing up for the right thing, even when seemingly no one else in the world would do the same. He spoke of President Eisenhower, and how “One writer was not awed by the first imperial presidency. … Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s document ends with Eisenhower’s resignation.”
Then a man rushed onto stage and we were all confused for a minute until we realized it was a sound guy. As he set up the audience was audibly trembling with anticipation, and when Bamuthi Jospeh announced Lenny Kay and Patti Smith I thought ‘Oh lord, here goes the Herbst Theatre, and all of us in it!’ Announced as the godmother of punk and a poet, one of the first things Smith said (with much aplomb) was: “Lawrence Ferlinghetti is not a man that anyone would say is ALSO a poet. He IS a poet.” Her voice lowered to an intimate hush: “Lawrence, we send this little song to you and may it give you energy and sweet dreams tonight.”
They then proceeded to play a riff of Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby: “You’re my Coney Island Baby / You mean so much to me. / We love you tenderly. / You’re my luck star / That’s what you are / You’re my Coney Island Baby / We love you / We love you / We do.” They then played “Wing” with so much passion and just heartfelt sincerity it was palpable that Smith was singing for Ferlinghetti and to the audience at the same time. She then ended with a completely humble “Thank you Lawrence” and exited the stage. It’s a crime that I don’t have video.
Bamuthi Joseph followed: “Even if you’d never met me, you would have a pretty good idea of who I am if you met my friends. The company that you keep. The folks that vouch for you. The folks that speak your name. Just standing there watching this performance thinking ‘Wow there are some incredible folks that would vouch for this man, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.’ … I seek to acknowledge that … his impact is made manifest by those who would speak for him.
Without pausing, he went into an introduction of Tom Waits and people started stomping and whooting.
Waits came out and, accompanied by Marcus Shelby on standup, played an original rendition of the final section of Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind.” It was simply astounding—you could sense the impact this poem had on the artist.
Steve Earl followed by saying he didn’t prepare anything new to play or to read but could not say no when asked to pay tribute. He thanked Mr. Ferlinghetti for saving him from what would probably have been a well-paying job, to much laughter, and then made one of the most profound statements of the entire night: I was born in 1955 so that means that I never had to live in a world where Allen Ginsberg had not written “Howl” and Lawrence Ferlinghetti hadn’t taken the heat. Thank you very much.”
Talking with Mr. Kruger over a post-show coffee, he remarked how—considering this—the world is a completely different place and that, as a consequence, we are all living in Ferlinghetti’s world. This is the kind of thing we all know innately, but I beg you to think about it long and hard, my friends. Cry some everything tears! (Go on.)
Then Winona Ryder took the stage, and in front of a giant picture of the actress as a little girl on Ferlinghetti’s shoulders, she read from Americus I. Her reading was personal and raw—she smiled intermittently and at times stumbled over the beautiful prickly language. Here is an excerpt (just imagine):
"… No end to the sea-bells tolling beyond the dykes of the calling of bells and empty churches and towers of time. No end to the calamitous annunciation of harry holy man / Endless the ever-unwinding wash-spring part of the world shimmering in time through space / No end to the birthing of babies for love and lust has lain / No end to the sweet bird of consciousness, to the bitter deaths in vain. / No end, no end to the withering fur and fruit and flesh so passing fair and neon mermaids singing each to each somewhere the fires of youth and the embers of the rage of the poet born again / No end to the muted dance of molecules / All is transmuted / All is muted and all cries out again again! / Endless the wars of good and evil flips the fate / The trips of hate / Nukes and faults and all failings safe and chain reactions of the final flash where white bicycles of protest still circle around / For there will be an end to the dog-faced gods in wing-tipped shoes and Gucci slippers and Texas boots in tin-can hats in bunkers pressing buttons / For there are hopeful choices still to be chosen in the dark minds in stonewall bars and green giants of chance / The fish-hooks of hope and the sloughs of despond / The hills in the distance and the birds in the bush / The hidden streams of light and unheard melodies / The sessions of sweet silent thought stately pleasures droned decreed in the happy deaths of the heart every day / The cocks of clay / The feet in running shoes upon the quay. / And there is no end, no end to the doors of perception still to be opened and the jetstreams of life and the upper air / The spirit of man in the outer space inside us, shining, transcendent into the crystal night of time / In the endless silence of the soul / In the long loud tale of man in his endless sound and fury / signifying everything / the dancing continues / there is a sound of revelry by night."
Ryder then added that she always thought of City Lights as
“A beacon, an oasis—the light in City Lights like a lighthouse flashing and gathering all those great minds in search of hope and creative shelter. It is a living monument to the ideals that inspire and protect those writers. It’s hard to imagine a world without the profound courage and the deep, deep conviction of a man who went all the way to court to defend Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and his own right to publish it, for all of us and for all future generations to enjoy and to be inspired by it. Every writer, poet, and artist to this day is indebted to Lawrence and his deep commitment to freedom of press, and because he helped insure that all our work would have a chance to find its own audience, and in the end, in the end that’s all any writer artist can ask—to have the chance to be seen and to be read and to be heard. So I thank you Lawrence, I’ve been so privileged to know you my entire life, and I salute you and I love you very much.”
Lawrence babysat Winona in City Lights and she was audibly shaken. What could top that, you ask?
On the screen, a video played in which Lawrence addressed us directly.
“San Francisco, the late last frontier. What’s left of the last frontier includes City Lights, and I’m happy to accept the Litquake award ON BEHALF OF CITY LIGHTS, and now I’m gonna read a poem that Jack Hirschman has claimed is the greatest poem I ever wrote.”
But before he “reads” this poem, I would just like to point out the humility, the humanity of this poet who so proudly accepted the award on behalf of his shining project, City Lights, and how he tipped his hat to Mr. Hirschman. He said no more, but read:
“AT SEA”
The sea through the trees
distant
shining
The dark foreground
a stone wall
with lichen
And the bone-white beach stretching away
An old salt
sits staring out
at the sea
A wind sways the palms
infrequently
Another day prepares
for heat and silence
A small plane
buzzing like a fly
disturbs the sky
The air eats it
Far out on the slumbering sea
a trawler creeps along
The wind from the south
blows the bait in the fish’s mouth
The yawning sea
swallows the trawler
The lichen lives on
in its volcanic stone
taciturn
eternal
awaiting its turn
in the turn of the sun
Never will I return here
never again
breathe this wind
on this far run
in the reaches of morning
where the sea whispers
patience and salt
The sun
scorches the sky
and drops like a burnt-out match
into night
And I am an animal still
perhaps once a bird
a halcyon
who makes its nest at sea
on my little flight across
the little chart
of my existence
Life goes on
full of silence and clamor
in the grey cities
in the far bourgs
in the white cities by the sea
where I go on
writing my life
in neither blood nor wine
I still await an epiphany
by the petri-dish of the sea
where all life began
by swimming
But it’s time now
to give an accounting of everything
an explanation of everything
such as
why there is darkness at night
Everywhere the sea is rising
(Flood tide and the heron’s haunted cry!)
Am I to be drowned
with the rest of them
all the animals of earth
washed away in ocean
motherer and moitherer
in this tremendous moment
of wondrous sea-change
as our little world disappears
in a tremor of ocean and fear
to the murmur
of the middle mind of America
as imbeciles in neckties
drop from the trees?
No matter then
if I end up
in a house of insurgents
on the Avenida de los Insurgentes
or shoeless on Boston Common
or cast-up clueless
in my great Uncle Désir’s
beach hut
in St. Thomas
Pardon my conduct then
if I can’t give you
any final word—
a final unified theory of existence—
all thought subsumed
in one great thought
(utopian vision!)
Humans with all their voices
as myriad as
the syllables of the sea
have never been able to fathom
man’s fate
nor tell us why we are here
Still will we be
free as the sea
to be nothing but
our own shadow selves
beach bums all after all
in future time when
nations no longer exist
and the earth is swept
by ethnic hordes
in search of food and shelter?
Neither patient nor placid
in the face of all this
in the sea of every day
with its two tides
I drift about
immune to hidden reefs or harbors
Someone throws me
crystal fruits
in the shape of life-preservers
Others wave
from distant strands
Goodbye! Goodbye!
Beached at last
bleached out
I would to the woods again
with its ancient trees
that sing like sitars
in the wind
Wordless ragas!
Shipwrecked ashore
at the mercy of avaricious gulls—
And yet and yet
we are still not born for despair
Spring comes anyway
And a gay excursion train appears
The ancient conductor
with stove-pipe hat
and gold pocketwatch
greets us like long-lost passengers
gracing us with
wreathes around our necks
as arms of lovers
insanely embrace us
Is there anything more to be said
before they carry us off
as dead
while we’re still dreaming
still in search
of the bread of the word
cast upon the waters
the dough that rises
in the yeast of speech
in the written word
in poetry
Tracks upon the sand!
left by corraled bands of animals
cornered by mistakes and habitudes
and trains taken
to mistaken destinations
or trips taken or not taken
with angels of love
to lower latitudes
Between two waves
the ocean is still—
a silence of ages
lasting but a moment
between two waves
of emotion
as lovers
turn to each other
or away
Love ebbs and flows
comes and goes
between two emotions
yet surges again
with each new wave
as some sea-creature from the deep
breaks the surface with a leap
The sea roars but says no more
O the yarns it could spin
if it would
between its rages
under the eye of the sun
under the ear of the sky—
Cities asunder!
Plunderers and pieces of eight!
Petrified hulls!
Crystal skulls!
Sailors’ masturbations!
or yesterday’s sperm
lost in the wake
of a pleasure boat
O endless the inchoate
incoherent narrative—Voyager, pass on!
We are not our fathers
yet we carry on
breathing like them
loving and killing like them
Away then away
in our custom-built catamarans
over the hills of ocean
to where Atlantis
still rides the tides
or where that magic mountain
not on any map
wreathed in radiance
still hides
A radiant Nancy Peters accepted the Barbary Coast Award for Mr. Ferlinghetti, and that concludes our transcript.
Oh, the afterparty? Nevermind that … Did you already read all of this? If you still want more, email me. I recorded videos of the Off the Richter Scale series and nearly have them all rendered, but I think this is more than enough for the day! Plus, the festival continues, and I wouldn’t want to miss more than I have to. I have to condense this report into 1000 words now, after all.
— Evan Karp
Ps. WE HAVE ALL JUST WITNESSED MOSES PRESENTING THE TABLETS FRESH FROM SINAI. ATTEND ANY EVENTS YOU CAN. FIND US. FOR WE GLOW WITH THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF UBER-DIVINE PRESENCE. UM YES I’M CARRIED AWAY. Have you read this? FIND US!
sábado, 2 de octubre de 2010
Go!
I became a monkey, swinging from open arms to open arms, in a congregation where a trip to the bathroom means a slew of conversations. The room is a series of rivers. The current changes. Maybe I was driftwood, picked up and passed around by the buoyant expectations of a thousand useful hands. Or it's possible we were all waves converging, the slow trickle of a tide turning, a whirlpool spinning on the rise.
It was opening night of Litquake XI and 111 Minna was humming with sea monkeys! I thought it was a great idea to kick the festival off with a free reception, and a lot of people did too. Mostly the room was abuzz about tonight's big Barbary Coast Award - it's the hottest ticket in town and the seats are so spoken for there are people begging to stand. Famous people. There was a sense of entitlement last night, that Litquake is a club completely open to the public and that anyone present is privy to its excellence. There are no membership fees. (Although it is possible to donate. Just last year Litquake became a nonprofit, eh, so your contributions are tax-deductible.)
There was talk about how the San Francisco literary world has changed since the early 90s, that despite the steady evolution of our culture from a few small puddles of involvement to a unified network of waterways there is not really a movement now ('although it'd be nice if there were'). I disagreed. There is this and this to consider. Since I started Quiet Lightning in December of last year (with Rajshree Chauhan, whom I met during Lit Crawl), more than a dozen new reading series have emerged (and some will be in this year's Crawl). So there's that to consider, too. We are cross-pollinating with a fury.
In fact, so much has changed since last year's Litquake I can only advise you hold onto your beautiful program (below) and take note of the many names you don't know yet. Because next year, at this rate, you'll have plenty to talk about.
Not to get all meta here, but my friend and assistant Charles Kruger has written an excellent recap of last night's opening party from the perspective of someone who has never attended a Litquake function. (Here's mine from last year.)
I'm so excited about tonight. People all over San Francisco are waking right now. Some I will see in the Variety Preview Room Theatre for poetry, graphic novels, mystery, and dad lit (dad lit, people!) - all free. Some will walk around the city drinking coffee and scribbling in their notebooks, enthused by tonight's impending superstar blowout. Some will - bless them - attend the Giants' game first. But however you spend the day, and whether or not you were quick enough to snag a ticket to tonight's event, this week is full of mostly free programming that includes something for everyone. Below is a daily guide to some of my favorite cost-free events. Enjoy! And say hello.
SUNDAY, October 3
Off the Richter Scale Readings, Day 2, noon-4 pm. Note new location: Variety Preview Room Theatre, 582 Market Street, First Floor, San Francisco. Free.
Women Authoring Change, noon-1 pm. Faith Adiele, Eugenie Chan, Carolina De Robertis, Elana Dykewomon, Elaine Elinson, andAmy Wheeler (moderator)
AltPub, 1-2 pm. Marta Acosta, Kathleen Fitzgerald (moderator), Lian Gouw, Luke James, Hyla Molander, Peter Plate, and Matt Stewart
The Golden Gate and Beyond, 2-3 pm. Gabrielle Burton, David Chu, Scott James, Jonathan Kiefer, and Merla Zellerbach
Literature in Translation, 3-4 pm. Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Scott Esposito (Moderator), Chana Kronfeld, and Eric Selland
Literary North Beach Walking Tour, 5:30-6:30 pm. Starts at The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, SF.
The Literary Tour Stops Here, 7 pm. Focus Gallery, 1534 Grant Avenue, San Francisco.
Phil Bronstein, Will Durst, Ben Fong-Torres, Alan Kaufman, Ellen Sussman, and Jody Weiner
Barely Published Authors, 7 pm. The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd Street, SF. 21+.
Jeremy Hatch, Mimi Lok, Caitlin Myer, Andre Perry, Paul Spinrad, Ian Tuttle,Alia Volz, and Olga Zilberbourg
MONDAY, October 4
New Writers Night: Authors Reveal All & How to Navigate the New World of Publishing, 3-6:30 pm. Co-production with the Foundation Center. Foundation Center, 312 Sutter Street, 2nd floor World Affairs Council Auditorium, San Francisco. Free, but advance registration required. Please register for each panel separately.
Authors Reveal All! 3-4:30 pm. Register online. Elaine Beale,Jason Headley, Joanna Smith Rakoff, Vanitha Sankaran, Shanthi Sekaran, and Michael Sledge
How to Navigate the New World of Publishing, 5-6:30 pm.Register online. Eileen Gittins, Jay A. Hartman, Brenda Knight, Ethan Nosowsky, and Amy Rennert
Original Shorts: Bottoms Up, 7 pm. Heart Wine Bar, 1270 Valencia Street, SF. 21+.
Dodie Bellamy, Elizabeth Bernstein, Joshua Braff, Anne Finger, Shanthi Sekaran, Namwali Serpell, and James Warner
Litquake in the Bookstore: Tao Lin at The Booksmith. 7:30 pm. The Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street, SF.
TUESDAY, October 5
McSweeney’s Fall Harvest, 7 pm: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street, SF.
Hilton Als, Adam Levin, Peter Orner, and Darin Strauss
WEDNESDAY, October 6
he Art of Narrative Nonfiction, 6 pm. San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium. Main Branch, 100 Larkin St., SF.
Tamim Ansary, Frances Dinkelspiel, Richard Rhodes, and T.J. Stiles
The RADAR Reading Series: Litquake Edition! 6 pm. San Francisco Public Library’s Latino Reading Room, Main Branch, 100 Larkin Street, SF.
Chinaka Hodge, Tao Lin, Sara Marcus, and Beth Pickens
SF in SF presents The Maltese Omelette: A Radio Play, 7 pm. Variety Preview Room Theatre, 582 Market Street, First Floor, SF.
Peter S. Beagle, Cara Black, Lori Leigh Gieleghem, Michael Kurland, Pat and Richard Lupoff, Gregory Tiede
Litquake in the Bookstore: Lorin Stein with Oscar Villalon at City Lights, 7 pm. City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Ave., SF.
THURSDAY, October 7
Litquake Bites, noon-1 pm. Book Passage joins forces with Litquake for presentations and tastings (including Cowgirl Creamery). Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, SF.
Sarah Billingsley, Gordon Edgar, Steve Sando, and Amy Treadwell
Poets 11 2010 Showcase, 7 pm. Readers Café, Fort Mason Center, Building C, SF.
Feminine Wiles, 7 pm. Noe Valley Recreational Center, 295 Day St., SF.
Elif Batuman, Marisa Crawford, Katie Crouch, Thaisa Frank, Joyce Maynard,Kaya Oakes, and Shawna Yang Ryan
SATURDAY, October 9
The Infamous, Indefatigable Lit Crawl!!!! 6-9:30 pm
Various venues along the Valencia Street Corridor in San Francisco’s sunny Mission District. Three phases:
Phase I: 6-7 pm
Phase II: 7:15-8:15 pm
Phase III: 8:30-9:30 pm
» Check back for more in-depth previews and coverage from today's - and tonight's - events. For those of you who don't have a ticket, get a jumpstart on making the tough decision about how to spend tomorrow. It's one of the best days!
» I'm going to roam Market now. If you're in the neighborhood, why don't you give me a call?
Yours, Evan
912 658 2333
It was opening night of Litquake XI and 111 Minna was humming with sea monkeys! I thought it was a great idea to kick the festival off with a free reception, and a lot of people did too. Mostly the room was abuzz about tonight's big Barbary Coast Award - it's the hottest ticket in town and the seats are so spoken for there are people begging to stand. Famous people. There was a sense of entitlement last night, that Litquake is a club completely open to the public and that anyone present is privy to its excellence. There are no membership fees. (Although it is possible to donate. Just last year Litquake became a nonprofit, eh, so your contributions are tax-deductible.)
There was talk about how the San Francisco literary world has changed since the early 90s, that despite the steady evolution of our culture from a few small puddles of involvement to a unified network of waterways there is not really a movement now ('although it'd be nice if there were'). I disagreed. There is this and this to consider. Since I started Quiet Lightning in December of last year (with Rajshree Chauhan, whom I met during Lit Crawl), more than a dozen new reading series have emerged (and some will be in this year's Crawl). So there's that to consider, too. We are cross-pollinating with a fury.
In fact, so much has changed since last year's Litquake I can only advise you hold onto your beautiful program (below) and take note of the many names you don't know yet. Because next year, at this rate, you'll have plenty to talk about.
Not to get all meta here, but my friend and assistant Charles Kruger has written an excellent recap of last night's opening party from the perspective of someone who has never attended a Litquake function. (Here's mine from last year.)
I'm so excited about tonight. People all over San Francisco are waking right now. Some I will see in the Variety Preview Room Theatre for poetry, graphic novels, mystery, and dad lit (dad lit, people!) - all free. Some will walk around the city drinking coffee and scribbling in their notebooks, enthused by tonight's impending superstar blowout. Some will - bless them - attend the Giants' game first. But however you spend the day, and whether or not you were quick enough to snag a ticket to tonight's event, this week is full of mostly free programming that includes something for everyone. Below is a daily guide to some of my favorite cost-free events. Enjoy! And say hello.
SUNDAY, October 3
Off the Richter Scale Readings, Day 2, noon-4 pm. Note new location: Variety Preview Room Theatre, 582 Market Street, First Floor, San Francisco. Free.
Women Authoring Change, noon-1 pm. Faith Adiele, Eugenie Chan, Carolina De Robertis, Elana Dykewomon, Elaine Elinson, andAmy Wheeler (moderator)
AltPub, 1-2 pm. Marta Acosta, Kathleen Fitzgerald (moderator), Lian Gouw, Luke James, Hyla Molander, Peter Plate, and Matt Stewart
The Golden Gate and Beyond, 2-3 pm. Gabrielle Burton, David Chu, Scott James, Jonathan Kiefer, and Merla Zellerbach
Literature in Translation, 3-4 pm. Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Scott Esposito (Moderator), Chana Kronfeld, and Eric Selland
Literary North Beach Walking Tour, 5:30-6:30 pm. Starts at The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, SF.
The Literary Tour Stops Here, 7 pm. Focus Gallery, 1534 Grant Avenue, San Francisco.
Phil Bronstein, Will Durst, Ben Fong-Torres, Alan Kaufman, Ellen Sussman, and Jody Weiner
Barely Published Authors, 7 pm. The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd Street, SF. 21+.
Jeremy Hatch, Mimi Lok, Caitlin Myer, Andre Perry, Paul Spinrad, Ian Tuttle,Alia Volz, and Olga Zilberbourg
MONDAY, October 4
New Writers Night: Authors Reveal All & How to Navigate the New World of Publishing, 3-6:30 pm. Co-production with the Foundation Center. Foundation Center, 312 Sutter Street, 2nd floor World Affairs Council Auditorium, San Francisco. Free, but advance registration required. Please register for each panel separately.
Authors Reveal All! 3-4:30 pm. Register online. Elaine Beale,Jason Headley, Joanna Smith Rakoff, Vanitha Sankaran, Shanthi Sekaran, and Michael Sledge
How to Navigate the New World of Publishing, 5-6:30 pm.Register online. Eileen Gittins, Jay A. Hartman, Brenda Knight, Ethan Nosowsky, and Amy Rennert
Original Shorts: Bottoms Up, 7 pm. Heart Wine Bar, 1270 Valencia Street, SF. 21+.
Dodie Bellamy, Elizabeth Bernstein, Joshua Braff, Anne Finger, Shanthi Sekaran, Namwali Serpell, and James Warner
Litquake in the Bookstore: Tao Lin at The Booksmith. 7:30 pm. The Booksmith, 1644 Haight Street, SF.
TUESDAY, October 5
McSweeney’s Fall Harvest, 7 pm: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street, SF.
Hilton Als, Adam Levin, Peter Orner, and Darin Strauss
WEDNESDAY, October 6
he Art of Narrative Nonfiction, 6 pm. San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium. Main Branch, 100 Larkin St., SF.
Tamim Ansary, Frances Dinkelspiel, Richard Rhodes, and T.J. Stiles
The RADAR Reading Series: Litquake Edition! 6 pm. San Francisco Public Library’s Latino Reading Room, Main Branch, 100 Larkin Street, SF.
Chinaka Hodge, Tao Lin, Sara Marcus, and Beth Pickens
SF in SF presents The Maltese Omelette: A Radio Play, 7 pm. Variety Preview Room Theatre, 582 Market Street, First Floor, SF.
Peter S. Beagle, Cara Black, Lori Leigh Gieleghem, Michael Kurland, Pat and Richard Lupoff, Gregory Tiede
Litquake in the Bookstore: Lorin Stein with Oscar Villalon at City Lights, 7 pm. City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Ave., SF.
THURSDAY, October 7
Litquake Bites, noon-1 pm. Book Passage joins forces with Litquake for presentations and tastings (including Cowgirl Creamery). Book Passage, 1 Ferry Building, SF.
Sarah Billingsley, Gordon Edgar, Steve Sando, and Amy Treadwell
Poets 11 2010 Showcase, 7 pm. Readers Café, Fort Mason Center, Building C, SF.
Feminine Wiles, 7 pm. Noe Valley Recreational Center, 295 Day St., SF.
Elif Batuman, Marisa Crawford, Katie Crouch, Thaisa Frank, Joyce Maynard,Kaya Oakes, and Shawna Yang Ryan
SATURDAY, October 9
The Infamous, Indefatigable Lit Crawl!!!! 6-9:30 pm
Various venues along the Valencia Street Corridor in San Francisco’s sunny Mission District. Three phases:
Phase I: 6-7 pm
Phase II: 7:15-8:15 pm
Phase III: 8:30-9:30 pm
» Check back for more in-depth previews and coverage from today's - and tonight's - events. For those of you who don't have a ticket, get a jumpstart on making the tough decision about how to spend tomorrow. It's one of the best days!
» I'm going to roam Market now. If you're in the neighborhood, why don't you give me a call?
Yours, Evan
912 658 2333
viernes, 1 de octubre de 2010
:: For Immediate Release ::
Free party. Tonight. Exciting geniuses. Art gallery. Bar. Exciting geniuses. Bar. Tonight. Art gallery. Free party.
111 Minna Gallery | 5 – 9
Then » Barbary Coast Award ft. everyone. Sold Out. Unofficially accepting best offers. Just kidding. But you can still get tickets to these events:
» Lit Flicks: Litquake’s Literary Film Festival
When: 1-9 pm
Where: Embarcadero Cinema Center, 1 Embarcadero Center, SF
Cost: $10 for each screening
Advance tickets: Landmark Theatres.
Dante’s Inferno, 1 pm. Directed by Sean Meredith, 78 min, 2007
Red Poet, 2:30 pm. SAN FRANCISCO PREMIERE. Directed by Matthew Furey, 55 min, 2009. Conversation with Matthew Furey and Jack Hirschman to follow, with reading by Hirschman. Moderated by Michael Fox of SF360.org.
Ghost World, 4:30 pm. Directed by Terry Zwigoff, 111 min., 2001.
The Practice of the Wild, 7 pm. Directed by John J. Healey, 53 min., 2009. A conversation to follow between Wild producer Will Hearst and Gary Snyder’s longtime friend and publisher, Jack Shoemaker of Counterpoint Press. Moderated by Robert Avila of SF360.org.
» The CLA All-Stars: 25 Years of San Jose's Center for Literary Arts
When: 6:30 pm (VIP wine reception at 5:30 pm)
Where: California Historical Society | 678 Mission Street
Cost: $25 VIP wine reception, $10 general, $5 for California Historical Society members, and San Jose Center for Literary Arts members
Tickets: Brown Paper Tickets
» Virtual Reality: The Effect of Fiction on Your Mind
When: 6:30-7:30 pm
Where: Mechanics Institute Library | 57 Post St, SF
Cost: $12 for public, free to members of MIL
Reservations at (415) 393-0100 or rsvp@milibrary.org
» Litquake and Porchlight: Tales of Hollywood Hell
When: 8 pm
Where: Herbst Theatre | 401 Van Ness Ave, SF
Cost: $12 in advance, $15 at the door
Tickets available at cityboxoffice.com
» Civilization on Six Legs: The Complex Societies of Ants and Honeybees
When: 7 pm
Where: California Academy of Sciences, Morrison
Planetarium | 55 Music Concourse Dr, SF
Cost: $15 adults, $12 seniors and Academy members Reservations: (800)794-7576 or online.
» LDM100: San Francisco Celebrates the 100th Literary Death Match
When: 7 pm (Doors open at 6:30 pm)
Where: Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF
Cost: $10 in advance (available at LiteraryDeathMatch.com) or $15 at the door
» The Booksmith Bookswap: Litquake Edition
When: 6:30-9:30 pm
Where: Martin Macks | 1569 Haight St., SF
Cost: $25 advance only
Tickets: brownpapertickets.com, 800-838-3006, or in-person at The Booksmith
» Spiritual Journeys at Marin Osher JCC
When: 7:30 pm
Where: Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Rd., San Rafael.
Cost: : $12 for members of Litquake and Osher Marin JCC, $15 general public
Tickets: (415) 444-8000 or online.
» Stories on Stage
When: 7:30 pm
Where: Berkeley Repertory Theater | Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Cost: Admission: $22.50 in advance
Tickets: At brownpapertickets.com or by phone 800-838-3006); $25 at the door.
» It’s All Over But the Crying: A Night of Authors on Sports
When: 7 pm (Doors open at 6:30 pm)
Where: Hemlock Tavern | 1131 Polk Street, SF
Cost: $10 in advance at brownpapertickets.com
» The Expert’s Mind: Across Bodies
When: 7:30 pm
Where: LGBT Center, Andrew Spencer Ceremonial Room |1800 Market St, SF.
Cost: $10-20 online.
» Next: a guide to the best free events of each day «
111 Minna Gallery | 5 – 9
Then » Barbary Coast Award ft. everyone. Sold Out. Unofficially accepting best offers. Just kidding. But you can still get tickets to these events:
» Lit Flicks: Litquake’s Literary Film Festival
When: 1-9 pm
Where: Embarcadero Cinema Center, 1 Embarcadero Center, SF
Cost: $10 for each screening
Advance tickets: Landmark Theatres.
Dante’s Inferno, 1 pm. Directed by Sean Meredith, 78 min, 2007
Red Poet, 2:30 pm. SAN FRANCISCO PREMIERE. Directed by Matthew Furey, 55 min, 2009. Conversation with Matthew Furey and Jack Hirschman to follow, with reading by Hirschman. Moderated by Michael Fox of SF360.org.
Ghost World, 4:30 pm. Directed by Terry Zwigoff, 111 min., 2001.
The Practice of the Wild, 7 pm. Directed by John J. Healey, 53 min., 2009. A conversation to follow between Wild producer Will Hearst and Gary Snyder’s longtime friend and publisher, Jack Shoemaker of Counterpoint Press. Moderated by Robert Avila of SF360.org.
» The CLA All-Stars: 25 Years of San Jose's Center for Literary Arts
When: 6:30 pm (VIP wine reception at 5:30 pm)
Where: California Historical Society | 678 Mission Street
Cost: $25 VIP wine reception, $10 general, $5 for California Historical Society members, and San Jose Center for Literary Arts members
Tickets: Brown Paper Tickets
» Virtual Reality: The Effect of Fiction on Your Mind
When: 6:30-7:30 pm
Where: Mechanics Institute Library | 57 Post St, SF
Cost: $12 for public, free to members of MIL
Reservations at (415) 393-0100 or rsvp@milibrary.org
» Litquake and Porchlight: Tales of Hollywood Hell
When: 8 pm
Where: Herbst Theatre | 401 Van Ness Ave, SF
Cost: $12 in advance, $15 at the door
Tickets available at cityboxoffice.com
» Civilization on Six Legs: The Complex Societies of Ants and Honeybees
When: 7 pm
Where: California Academy of Sciences, Morrison
Planetarium | 55 Music Concourse Dr, SF
Cost: $15 adults, $12 seniors and Academy members Reservations: (800)794-7576 or online.
» LDM100: San Francisco Celebrates the 100th Literary Death Match
When: 7 pm (Doors open at 6:30 pm)
Where: Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF
Cost: $10 in advance (available at LiteraryDeathMatch.com) or $15 at the door
» The Booksmith Bookswap: Litquake Edition
When: 6:30-9:30 pm
Where: Martin Macks | 1569 Haight St., SF
Cost: $25 advance only
Tickets: brownpapertickets.com, 800-838-3006, or in-person at The Booksmith
» Spiritual Journeys at Marin Osher JCC
When: 7:30 pm
Where: Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Rd., San Rafael.
Cost: : $12 for members of Litquake and Osher Marin JCC, $15 general public
Tickets: (415) 444-8000 or online.
» Stories on Stage
When: 7:30 pm
Where: Berkeley Repertory Theater | Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley
Cost: Admission: $22.50 in advance
Tickets: At brownpapertickets.com or by phone 800-838-3006); $25 at the door.
» It’s All Over But the Crying: A Night of Authors on Sports
When: 7 pm (Doors open at 6:30 pm)
Where: Hemlock Tavern | 1131 Polk Street, SF
Cost: $10 in advance at brownpapertickets.com
» The Expert’s Mind: Across Bodies
When: 7:30 pm
Where: LGBT Center, Andrew Spencer Ceremonial Room |1800 Market St, SF.
Cost: $10-20 online.
» Next: a guide to the best free events of each day «
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