If you’ve ever read anything by David Foster Wallace, or if you’ve ever read anything about David Foster Wallace, you’ll know first and foremost that his style and his genius were unmatched in the modern era of “less is more literature.” Say what you will about the practical application of implementing hundreds of pages of footnotes to help broaden the understanding of your story, or layering characters so deep that they often fold in upon themselves, the steps that he took to advance the cause of what great writing can be will no doubt still be a topic of debate on college campuses and coffee shop sofas for decades to come. While DFW left us with only a handful of titles to his name (each one a delightful gem) he also left a substantial library of notes and notebooks. The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired the archive and has been diligently digitizing the papers one by one so you too can have a flip through the (virtual) pages.
The archive contains manuscript materials for Wallace’s books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace’s college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books.
Highlights include handwritten notes and drafts of his critically acclaimed “Infinite Jest,” the earliest appearance of his signature “David Foster Wallace” on “Viking Poem,” written when he was six or seven years old, a copy of his dictionary with words circled throughout and his heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and more than 40 other authors.
Wallace’s materials at the Ransom Center will reside alongside the papers of contemporary writers such as DeLillo, Norman Mailer, Doris Lessing and James Salter, as well as those of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.
Wallace’s publisher Little, Brown and Company is donating its editorial files relating to the author to the Ransom Center. Wallace worked with Little, Brown and Company beginning in 1993.
Partners & Spade is a store-cum-gallery-cum-studio-cum-performance space in Lower Manhattan established by Andy Spade and Anthony Sperduti. How to describe the storefront? It’s a bit like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse for creative adults— a place where you can look at art, browse and buy neat things, and generally soak up the conceptual shenanigans of the two founders.
Along with hosting art shows, the two are fond of hosting one-shot events in the vein of ping-pong tournaments, avant-garde preschool classes and, for two memorable weekends, a fanciful French bakery with treats baked in-house by artist Will Cotton. The macarons were impeccable.
It’s to our great delight that Spade and Sperduti have recently launched a website worthy of their space. If you’re not in the neighborhood, an online tour makes a fitting substitute for the store experience. Be sure to check out the custom fixed gear bike, the backdated confidence trophies, and the Stacy Wall skate deck!
Stop, breathe, and take a moment to appreciate how rad bugs are. Let’s send waves of positive thought about insects into the Universe. Here in the English-speaking world, where they are semiotically bound to concepts of destruction and annoyance, bugs could use some respect and affection. Not so much in Japan, as we learn in Jessica Oreck’s dazzling documentary Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo.
…While people of many other countries fear all manner of creepy crawlies, the Japanese love and respect them: they’re sold live in vending machines and department stores; they’re the subject of the No. 1 videogame MushiKing; and a single beetle recently sold for $90,000. Insects have been an integral part of the centuries-old traditions of the country, once described as the “Isle of the Dragonflies.”
The film’s gorgeous imagery links people with the strength of beetles, the music of crickets, the magic of fireflies and the endless colors of butterflies. Using bugs like an anthropologist’s toolkit, the film uncovers Japanese philosophies that will shift Westerners’ perspectives on nature, beauty, life, and even the seemingly mundane realities of their day-to-day routines.
Take the rare opportunity to reflect on the elegance of the microscopic and watch this film. It’s playing tonight at Cinefamily in L.A., for one night only. The screening will also feature a Q&A with Oreck.
Watch the official video for it above and stream the entire record by going to thelocalnatives.com. They just earned a “best new music” over at Pitchfork and are hitting the road starting this month headed all the way into June so be sure to check them out.
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Kim Gordon designed it, Chloë Sevigny worked the runway, Mike Mills drew the logo, Kathleen Hannah pimped it out, and Spike helped run the fashion show. X-Girl was a perfect storm of creative energy in 1994, and here’s the very Nineties video to prove it:
If that’s not enough nostalgia for you, how about a Vice Magazine photo shoot with Chloë showing off the X-Girl line? Still begging for more? Here’s Vice’s interview with co-designer Daisy Von Furth, where she talks about styling some “cute kid” named Mark Ronson in a photo shoot for Spike’s Dirt magazine, and mentions that Chloë will soon be starring in some movie written by “this kid Harmony Korine.” Also: Doc Martens, flannel and black skinny jeans are so out in ‘94. Which, if I’m predicting the trend cycles correctly, means you’d be wise to invest in some ringer tees and vintage X-Girl before the kids on Gossip Girl start sporting A-line minis.
If you were able to magically return to your ten-year-old self and make a list of all the things that fascinated you, it would probably look like a diagram of Radio-Guy’s obsessions. We mean this as the highest possible compliment.
Radio-Guy is Steve Erenberg, who collects and displays old anatomical models of the brain, dental mpression tray wall hanging displays, portable operating chair circa World War I, old radio batteries, vintage space-age looking televisions, steam engines, salesman samples, old x-ray tubes and tons of other stuff. Oh, the best part? YOU CAN BUY IT ALL! The result would look like the dream bedroom of a very precocious and science-minded 19th-century kiddo.
If the phrase “nickel-plated” revs your engine, consider a tour through the site. And start saving your pennies.
BRAHMS is the new project of Brooklyn based Cale Parks and Eric Lyle Lodwick (Vulture Reality.) I first discovered Cale Parks through his percussion, piano and vibraphone duties in the band Aloha (who just released a new record yesterday.) Since that band he’s released two solo records and played with one of my Ohio favorites White Williams.
BRAHMS are fairly new, have only recorded a 4 song demo, played a slew of shows around New York the last few months and are playing somewhere around 10 times at SXSW in the next week but somehow seem like they’ve been around a long time.
You can grab their 4 song demo (for free and that I listened to non stop all weekend) from the band by signing up to their mailing list at their website. Visit them on myspace/facebook, follow them on twitter or visit their blog. (they’ve got it all covered.)
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If you haven’t bought yourself a copy of Sam Lipsyte’s new book The Ask, now would be the time to run out and do it. Failing that, ask around amongst your friends and see if anyone else has scored a copy yet. Very few books qualify as smart, pee-your-pants funny, and deadly relevant all at the same time. In this regard, Lipsyte hits the bullseye.
Witness, for proof, this head-over-heels rave from Lydia Millet in the New York Times Book Review, wherein she described the book as one of very few “half-crippled, doughnut-gobbling man-apes of the literary world,” which clearly means something incredible, even if we’re not sure precisely what it is.
Lipsyte, who also wrote the great and hilarious novel Homeland, will be reading at New York’s McNally Jackson bookstore on Tuesday, March 16th. His work will also appear in the forthcoming issue of n+1 Magazine. Dude’s all over the place, and we love it!
Being a talented painter of a certain kind living in New York in the 1980s, Donald Baechler was lumped in with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf as a constituent of a certain downtown art scene. In reality, his work didn’t share many concerns with the graffiti-influenced aesthetic of his peers. Baechler’s singularity may or may not have something to do with his longevity, which is impressive. Clicking through his early paintings into the later flower paintings, crowd portraits, and sculptures is a trip in the best sense of the word.
Take a peek at the artist’s studio here, and check out this mini-profile in the T Magazine blog, in which the artist reveals as inspirations his striped socks, backyard, and three de Kooning drawings which he found on eBay for fifty bucks each. Score!
Tremendously tasteful and refreshingly warm, Humberto Leon and Carol Lim are the truly rad duo behind one of the world’s most innovative and chic international boutiques: Opening Ceremony. Humberto and Carol are no strangers to Spike. They recently celebrated his new short film, I’m Here, with an elaborate window display and a series of fabulous flipbooks, and they lovingly paid homage to Where the Wild Things Are with a remarkable line of clothing (and wolf suits!) inspired by Max and his wild pals.
Now Spike is turning the tables on this delightful pair of creative masterminds in a two-part documentary for VBS. Check it out and join us in relishing the tubular team’s eerily oracular telepathic connection, freewheeling fun-fueled business strategy, and Carol’s uncanny ability to cry on command. Plus, exclusive footage from the party for Opening Ceremony’s brand new store at the Ace Hotel, featuring a dazzling duet by Dirty Projectors and Solange Knowles!
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