Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood will reportedly return to film scoring, writing music for an adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. The score will be based on a composition Greenwood wrote for the BBC Concert Orchestra—Sean Michaels.
Last night I attended the John Banville and Colum McCann reading at the 92nd St Y. Banville kicked things off by reading from his latest novel, The Infinities. This was my first exposure to Banville’s writing and the passage he selected to read was both lyrical and hypnotic but maybe not the wisest selection for reading aloud to an audience. I typically do not have a problem staying engaged at readings but my thoughts kept wandering elsewhere and for the first time at a 92y reading I did not feel compelled to add the accompanying writer to the ongoing “books to buy” list I track on my BlackBerry. This feeling was dispelled during the q+a session at the end but more on that later.
Next, Colum McCann took the stage and I was surprised to find that he was not the graying, subdued older man I had pictured him to be. McCann addressed the audience before diving in, admitting that he was feeling nervous and providing some background on his decision to write a book about New York and 9/11 as an Irish immigrant. McCann put it eloquently, that when he moved to New York he could not stop thinking about dust, how in New York City there is a lot of dust and dirt, and that the dust can be someone’s curriculum vitae or an eyelash. He read from three sections of Let The Great World Spin, first setting the tone by introducing the allegory of the tightrope artist walking between the Twin Towers that is the common thread throughout the kaleidoscope of narratives in the novel. McCann also read from sections about a Park Avenue housewife who lost her son in Vietnam and a prostitute from the Bronx.
The q+a session rounding out the evening had everyone in fits of laughter thanks to Banville’s dry wit and McCann’s gregariousness. The first question was directed at both writers and focused on the anxiety of influence as Irish writers. Banville leaned toward the mic and said, “We have giants or nothing. There are no mediocre writers. It is like the Easter Island statues are standing behind us saying ‘what have you done little man?’” Banville’s q+a made me more interested in reading him than the excerpt from his new novel—now I am determined to check out his books.
Next up at 92nd St Y: The Critic’s Voice with James Wood on 3/22 and Ian McEwan on 4/6.
When I shoot an event, before I start deleting and editing, I like to take all the photos and flip through them quickly to see the event as a whole. I recently started making videos of it. So here is Tumblr Reads at Housing Works.
I bought a book explaining the science of memory and now can’t remember where I put it. I figured that if traces of you are going to stick with me like undigested gum, clinging to my entrails for eight years, I would like to intellectualize the hows and whys. I know that you’re squatting in my hippocampus. Interloper, you will sit heavy on me until my ribcage cracks or something else gives.
There was no method for deleting the framework laid down, this is not like that. Don’t get me wrong—if science could go there, I would follow in two beats. Instead I brought someone new into the foreground and shifted you to stage left. Reworking the formula. The scientific method, discarding what did not work and experimenting with the variable’s opposite.
i am very excited/nervous to be reading at this tonight! i will post the text of my story to paperbackgirl.com tomorrow for anyone interested in checking out my piece.
