Live From City Lights: The City Lights Podcast » Gender Studies

Dennis Cooper and Dodie Bellamy celebrate the release of their new books, The Marbled Swarm and the buddhist

jeff — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:01:37 +0000

On Wednesday, November 16, 2011, Dennis Cooper & Dodie Bellamy joined us at City Lights to celebrate the release of their new books, The Marbled Swarm and the buddhist.

The long-anticipated new novel from literary icon Dennis Cooper is a moody and foreboding tale of a son’s unwitting devotion to a possibly insane father. The Marbled Swarm (Harper Perennial) tells the story of a son raised by a charmingly psychopathic father and taught a private language only the two of them know. With its Parisian and French countryside setting; its trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine that obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender; and its completely original, lilting voice; The Marbled Swarm may read as a departure from Cooper’s earlier work – a new beginning, of sorts. But once again – with secret passages, events that may or may not have happened, and a father-son relationship strangely heavy with sexual tension – readers will find themselves enveloped in a world only Dennis Cooper could create.

What is personal, what is public? In our electronic age, can anybody tell the difference? While ending an affair with a Buddhist teacher, Dodie Bellamy wrote about it simultaneously on her blog. In her experiment in writing through states of extremis, she explores nuances of public shame, the vagaries of desire and rage, and her confusion over the authenticity of group and individual spirituality. the buddhist (Allone Editions) becomes a celebration of marginalized subjectivity as enacted in the work of female artists from Bessie Smith to Eva Hesse and Carolee Schneeman, to Bhanu Kapil and Ariana Reines. This volume contains the essence of the blog, as well as more extended narratives too explicit to post on line. Like Duras’ The Lover, Bellamy’s writing glorifies the abject and the discarded; it is a passionate evocation of a love lost and a raw depth plumbed.

Dennis Cooper – called a “disquieting genius” by Vanity Fair – is the acclaimed author of the George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels: Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period. His other works include My Loose Thread; The Sluts, winner of France’s Prix Sade and the Lambda Literary Award; God, Jr.; Wrong; The Dream Police; Ugly Man; and Smothered in Hugs. His plays “Jerk” and “Them” are performed widely across Europe and the United States.

Dodie Bellamy is a novelist, nonfiction author, journalist and editor. She is one of the originators in the New Narrative literary movement, which attempts to use the tools of experimental fiction and critical theory and apply them to narrative storytelling. Dodie is the author of Feminine Hijinx, Broken English, The Letters of Mina Harker, and Pink Steam.

Renegade performance artist Penny Arcade shows off Bad Reputation

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:30:03 +0000

Renegade performer Penny Arcade makes a rare appearance to celebrate the release of Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews, from Semiotext(e)

A runaway at thirteen, a reform-school graduate at sixteen, a performer in the legendary New York City Playhouse of the Ridiculous at seventeen, and an escapee from Andy Warhol’s Factory scene at nineteen, Penny Arcade (born Susanna Ventura) emerged in the 1980s as a primal force on the New York art scene and an originator of what came to be called performance art. Arcade’s brand of high camp and street-smart, punk-rock cabaret showmanship has been winning over international audiences ever since.

Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!, is Penny Arcade’s raucous, cutting-edge sex and censorship show, (which continues to be a commercial hit around the world), featuring the daily life of a receptionist in a brothel, the upbringing and rearing of a “faghag,” the evolution of the New York gay scene in the 1990s, and a participatory “audience dance break.” The funny and heart-rending title work, Bad Reputation, portrays a young teen runaway’s coming of age in a Catholic reform school (run by nuns who are former fashion models) and her subsequent life on the streets of 1960s New York. La Miseria, a rare depiction of working-class Italian-Americans from a woman’s point of view that portrays the clash between working-class morals and compassion during the 1980s AIDS epidemic, rounds out the trilogy.

Bad Reputation is the first book by and on Penny Arcade. The complete scripts are accompanied by a new interview with Penny Arcade by Chris Kraus, a range of archival photographs of the East Village scene and Arcade’s performances, an introduction by playwright Ken Bernard, and contributions by Sarah Schulman, Steve Zehentner, and Stephen Bottoms.

Kevin Killian Reads From His New City Lights Collection, Impossible Princess

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:00:17 +0000

Kevin Killian reads from his new collection of new fiction, Impossible Princess, published by City Lights Books

Impossible Princess is the third collection of gay short fiction by Kevin Killian. An original member of the notorious San Francisco-based “new narrative” circle including Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker, Killian is a master short story writer, crafting campy yet edgy tales that explore both the humor and darkness of desire. From an examination of an ex-British-boy-band-member’s skeevy skivvies, to a sexual assault inside a copy machine, to a nocturnal tryst in a panther cage, Impossible Princess runs a bizarre gamut of erotic experience, where the appetite of lust is only satisfied by the peculiar unexpected.

A founder and former director of Small Press Traffic, Kevin Killian has long been a hidden favorite of gay literary San Francisco. Killian has published numerous books, including two previous story collections, the Pen award-winning Little Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby (2001). His latest novel, Spreadeagle (2010), is published by Alyson Books. With his wife Dodie Bellamy, he edits the long-running poetry zine, Mirage/Periodical. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in, among others, Best American Poetry 1988 (ed. John Ashbery), and Discontents (ed. Dennis Cooper).

Recorded Thursday, December 3 at City Lights Books in San Francisco