Thirty Days Artist Series: Ashley Merriman

• May 8, 2010
• by TD

Ashley Merriman is a chef living in New York.

Live Video of the Charles Willeford Symposium

• May 7, 2010
• by TD

Photos of Aaron Bondaroff + Lesley Arfin at Thirty Days NY

• May 4, 2010
• by TD

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Photos of a reading by Aaron Bondaroff and Lesley Arfin by Bryan Derballa.

Thirty Days Guest Blogger Series : The World’s Best Ever

• April 30, 2010
• by TD

Every Friday we choose a blog or blogger that we think is making an impact on the world of arts and culture, and bring them on board to guest curate the site for a day. This week we welcome the multi-layered insight of our friends at The World’s Best Ever.

Photos of the Charles Willeford Symposium + JAM Book Release

• April 28, 2010
• by TD

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Photos from the Charles Willeford Symposium and Jam book release by Bryan Derballa.

JAM

• April 26, 2010
• by TD

What is JAM? Aside from a delicious sandwich spread, JAM is a brand new book published by Peter Sutherland’s Decathlon Books. It’s a collaboration between Jack Greer and Maggie Lee (Jack And Maggie) comprised of photos, drawings, and collage work by the two artists.

Greer is a recent Pratt graduate who has shown work at Rental Gallery and is part of the Still House collective. Maggie Lee is an artist living in Brooklyn whose works have been exhibited worldwide. Frenching is Maggie’s latest zine and has been printed through many forms of media from photocopy, letterpress, lithography, and risograph. Frenching zine was featured at New Museum’s Younger Than Jesus show, Vice Photo Show in LA, The Journal Magazine, and in Off Off Bowery for Colette.

Tomorrow night at Thirty Days NY, Jack and Maggie will be showing videos and signing books. Here is one of Maggie’s “Video Salads”:

Charles Willeford

• April 26, 2010
• by BW

We only wish Charles Willeford were around for the symposium honoring his legacy on April 27 at Thirty Days. A hard-boiled and cruelly under-appreciated practitioner of crime and noir writing, Willeford injected a new, sometimes humorous, sometimes weird voice into the age-old American genre. Come join Lawrence Block, Jesse Pearson, Dan Nadel, and Sammy Harkham for a boisterous discussion of his life and oeuvre.

Emily Gould Interview

• April 24, 2010
• by TD

is the author of And the Heart Says Whatever, a memoir of the Gould’s youth and young womanhood as she finds her way through the wilds of New York as a writer and astute absorber of all that passes before her.

Amy Sohn called the book,”Honest, gorgeously rendered, and occasionally brutal…a testament to the pleasures and pains of heightened self- awareness.” We think this description is perfect.

Gould is also the host of compulsively watchable web TV series Cooking the Books and a of deserved renown.  We caught up with Emily to talk about her new book and the perils of self-revelation.

Hi, Emily. What is it like to write a memoir?

I resisted calling this book a “memoir” for a long time, in a very snotty and un-endearing way; I really wanted to believe that it was a book of essays.  This is a cliche but in New York people really do ask “So what do you do?” about five seconds after they first meet you, and when I would tell people I was working on a book of essays they’d say, “Oh, what about?” and then I’d have to tell them anyway: “About, um … me?”  And then there would be an awkward silence while they tried to figure out how to delicately ask whether I had been a child soldier or a heroin-addicted hooker or an 80s sitcom star or something.  Finally in order to cut out a few sentences from this interaction I started saying the word “memoir;” it didn’t make the interaction less awkward but it did make it briefer.

Explain the origin of the book’s title…

“And the heart says whatever” is a line from the song “Think About It”, which is the fourth track on Stevie Nicks’ first solo album, Bella Donna.  I have heard that this song was written for Christine McVie, Nicks’ Fleetwood Mac bandmate, when McVie was thinking of leaving the band (which she would later do).  So it’s a pep talk song, with lines like “Even when you feel like your life is fading/you know that you’ll go on forever, cause you’re that good/heartbreak of the moment is not endless.”  My use of the line is possibly a misinterpretation based on enjambment; that is to say, the actual line in the song is “And the heart says ‘danger!’/ And the heart says, “whatever/ it is that you want from me/I am just one small part of forever/falling star catcher.’” However at the end of the song, right before the fade, Nicks sings, “And the heart says ‘danger,’/ and the heart says ‘whatever.’/ Think about it, think about it before you go.”   So I think she meant it, that “whatever.”  Sometimes the heart does, in the face of endless-seeming heartbreak, finally give up and say “whatever.”  I also say “whatever,” probably too much.  It’s a very useful word, though it is inherently bratty and teenagerish.  You think of the hand gesture from Clueless, that thumbs-and-forefingers W

As you were in the process of writing, were you consciously (or unconsciously) consulting any other memoirs? Were there touchstones?

These are to some extent just the books I am always going back to but during the year of working on ATHSW I reread The Cutmouth Lady by Romy Ashby, Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles, everything by Cookie Mueller, and Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It and Out Of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer.  And, maybe weirdly, all of Ruth Reichl’s memoirs with recipes, and Heartburn by Nora Ephron!  If these books have anything in common I think it is that they can all be said to be “deceptively straightforward.”