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Tuesday, October 25, 2005 It's Zuzu's Pornographer! I have a story. It starts this summer, when I interviewed AC Newman, leader of The New Pornographers and Vancouver's son. I was covering a Canada Day show they were playing in Brooklyn. I became an even bigger fan and told Steve, who generally does what I say, to get on the bus. Two weeks ago during New York's 40-year rainstorm they played Webster Hall. I bought a ticket but got so sick with what I was sure was the bird flu that I couldn't get out of bed to go. Flash forward to today. It's raining again. What you really need to know about today, though, is that it blew in an operatic, big-picture, marrow-sucking way. It was a marrow-sucker. All day long I had been feeling hideously sorry for myself and listening to The New Pornographers, the only thing I can take on a weak stomach: sometimes they make it better, but they never make it worse. I listened to all three records maybe four times each, focusing my meager powers of concentration on uber-redhead Carl Newman and how his mind might work. Walking up Broadway at lunch, getting to'd and fro'd and shoved around, I noticed that with my new iPod I was hearing certain details for the first time: the six claps in 'Centre for Holy Wars' that come and go out of nowhere and the jubilant keyboard swatting in 'The Fake Headlines'. When Carl was going "la la laaa lalalalalala" in my ear on the subway home I was thinking of the interview and how he looked me straight in the eye and said "sometimes you need a reason to be good" and how that has haunted me and how often I think of it. I closed the door to my apartment and despite the rain immediately wanted out again. New York can open up and swallow you sometimes, and I was going down down down. I was trying to talk myself out of it, I said "something good will happen soon, just hang on." I'm not even lying about that part, I actually said that. That's gay, right? I thought so, so I washed off my face and decided to go buy some cereal. I get less than one block from my house, in a gnarly, ugly part of Brooklyn with gnarly, empty streets when I see Carl Newman walking right toward me. I stopped in my tracks and watched him pass with eyes like whiskey tumblers, but he was engrossed in his cell phone conversation (a laughy one, of course), and didn't notice. posted by Michelle Orange 6:10 PM | link | |
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"Any true love story, if told with the urgency and animal intelligence of love, isn't for the fainthearted. On every page of this profound, distilled work of art, Stephen Elliott wrestles with the unknown and unspoken essences of love, and articulates that unknown so beautifully, with such clear-eyed fearlessness... Imagine a glass of pure water with one drop of blood hanging in its center, about to dissolve... Then drink it and be transformed." -Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City "There's an emotional courage to these stories, and a sense of urgency, that are thrilling to encounter. Elliott writes as if his life depended on each sentence. It is not overstating the case to say that he does for the BDSM community in this book what Denis Johnson did for lost druggies in Jesus' Son." - Steve Almond, The Believer Magazine Best of the year: Salon.com, San Francisco Chronicle Reviews: Salon.com, LA Weekly, The Believer Excerpts: My Stripper Year, Just Always Be Good Purchase from Amazon, Powells, Cleis, and your local bookstore 
"Happy Baby is surely the most intelligent and beautiful book ever written about juvenile detention centers, sadomasochism, and drugs." - Curtis Sittenfeld, The New York Times Book Review Best of the year: Village Voice, Salon.com, Chicago New City, The Journal News Awards: Finalist Young Lions Award, Silver Medal California Book Award Reviews: The New York Times, Salon.com, Village Voice Excerpts: Stalking Gracie Part 3 Purchase from Amazon, Powell's, and your local bookstore 
"Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Richard Ben Cramer: the great, all-American genre of the political campaign in extenso (and in extremis) has had its Homers and Boswells. To that list we can now add Stephen Elliott. Hilarious, strange, electrifyingly written, and heart-pumpingly idealistic, Looking Forward to It wins every literary caucus and primary in a landslide." -Tom Bissell, author of Chasing the Sea Best of the year: Village Voice Reviews: New York Magazine, New York Times Excerpts: The Dennis Kucinich Polka, A John Edwards Almanac Purchase from Amazon, Powell's (cheap!), and your local bookstore 
"A Life Without Consequences was harrowing, hard as nails, brutal, and soaring. Stephen Elliott has to be watched, because he knows things almost no one else could." - Dave Eggers, author of A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius and What Is The What Excerpt: Adlai Stevenson House Reviews: Austin American Statesman Purchase from Amazon |
