tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1 2012-05-15T22:36:35Z The official website for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP). Movable Type Pro 5.01 tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2438 2012-05-15T22:33:42Z 2012-05-15T22:36:35Z

Yeehaw! Only 16 days until CCLaP's big road trip to New York City! And I'm happy to say that we now have a local literary partner for our Friday show at Book Thug Nation, local litmag Moonshot. Click through for all the details. Oh, and did I mention that we're running our very first Kickstarter campaign right now too? How about donating a few bucks to pay for the $2,500 in plane tickets we all ended up buying?

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com Yeehaw! Only 16 days until CCLaP's big road trip to New York City! And I'm happy to say that we now officially have a performance partner for our Friday show at the Brooklyn bookstore Book Thug Nation; it's a series of writers from the local litmag Moonshot, who was introduced to us through our mutual friend Oriana Leckert, a staff writer for the CCLaP blog who also owns the New York arts-and-entertainment website Brooklyn Spaces, sponsor of our Friday and Saturday shows. As far as I can tell, Book Thug Nation seems to be a lot like Quimby's here in Chicago, an indie-friendly bookstore that specializes in lots of interesting live events; it's going to be a total of nine performers on Friday, June 1st, the night of our particular show, and based on the Facebook signups there promises to be a whole ton of young sexy hipsters in attendance, so I hope all you New Yorkers will be able to make it out to both this and the other three shows we'll be doing while we're in town. And don't forget that we're in the middle of our first-ever Kickstarter campaign as well right now, to hopefully raise the $2,500 that all of CCLaP's authors collectively spent on their plane tickets out to New York; to entice you to donate, we've created a brand-new anthology called Chicago Platter featuring never-before-published work by all the participating authors, with both electronic and paper copies available at differing donation levels. (And don't forget that for $50 or more, you'll also receive an invitation to our private 'bon voyage' party on Saturday, May 26th, in an outdoor garden environment in Evanston two blocks from the train; it'll be a great chance to interact with CCLaP's authors on an intimate, one-on-one basis, for those like me who feel uncomfortable approaching people in big chaotic situations like release parties and the like.) As of today we're at $260, so we still need lots of help; I encourage you to stop by and kick in a few dollars yourself, if you're a fan of what CCLaP does and would like to see us do more shows and anthologies like these in future years. Onward and upward, my Big Apple friends!]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2437 2012-05-15T22:22:30Z 2012-05-15T22:25:28Z

Today's DVD: Season 1 of the fascinating-like-a-trainwreck "Breaking Bad," commonly thought of as a blackly comic thriller but in actuality one of the most complex and brilliant neo-noirs ever made. Believe the hype!

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com CCLaP's main movie page.) Today's movie: Breaking Bad: Season 1, 2008 (Amazon | IMDB | Netflix | Wikipedia) Why I added it to my queue: Because this is one of literally dozens of critically acclaimed TV shows I still need to get caught up on, because of not owning cable, in this case a blackly funny neo-noir about a milquetoast high-school chemistry teacher who develops inoperable cancer, and who decides to start cooking and selling crystal meth in order to create a large dowry for his wife and kids for after he dies. The reality: Just as amazing as you've heard! And that's because this is not so much a black comedy as it is a true noir, which makes all the difference in the world; our "hero" Walter White, in fact, is a pretty despicable human being, precisely because he is such a morally weak person, and it's the dichotomy of this compared to all the craziness going on around him that really makes this show shine. See, showrunner Vince Gilligan makes it clear right away that Walter has so far spent his entire life as a sorta wishy-washy coward who hasn't lived up to a single expectation made by the people around him -- once a celebrated corporate scientist, he left the company he helped found right before everyone else became millionaires, settling for an unhappy life teaching chemistry basics to sullen teenagers who disrespect him, and a wife and in-laws who are constantly disappointed in him; but then as soon as he gets cancer, he does the exact and diametric opposite of what his family wishes he'd do, closing himself off from them (both emotionally and literally physically) in a misguided attempt to raise a wad of cash that they don't want in the first place, and essentially ignoring their pleas to share himself with them in the little time he has left, instead becoming secretive and emotionally distant at a point when everyone involved believes him to only have a few more months to live. And this doesn't even touch on the ethical quagmire of Walter glibly deciding to make money by preying on the weaknesses of his fellow humans, and especially meth addicts who are like literal monsters in their all-consuming desperation for their drug, a subject that Gilligan and company get a huge amount of mileage from here in this tight, exciting, yet thought-provoking first season. This may sound like you'll have nothing but disgust for Walter as the season continues, and in fact you'd be largely right by making that assumption, especially watching the way he weasels and outright lies right to the faces of the people closest to him; but that's the true essence of a noir, and what makes this show so brilliant, is that it's not about a cartoonish villain but rather an everyday joe who just happens to choose the most douchebaggy response possible to a sudden life-threatening crisis, and who just keeps digging himself into a bigger and bigger hole as recrimination stacks up on recrimination from this decision. That's why we watch noirs, after all, is to better understand the moral weaknesses in ourselves, and to feel better about ourselves for at least taking a higher road than the schmuck we're currently watching get himself into a world of trouble; and make no mistake, Walter very quickly finds himself in a world of trouble by making this decision to start selling meth, and it's the intricate plot mechanics of these problems that fuels the breathless sense of suspense that is the other reason this show is so popular. (For those who don't know, this is one of the most critically applauded television shows in that medium's history, a six-time Emmy winner that has consistently broken audience records for basic-cable shows; and not only that, but critical acclaim and audience numbers have done nothing but go up and up as the show has continued, with last year's season four for example scoring a rare 96 out of 100 at Metacritic.) A show that will delight and infuriate you in equal measures, it is quite unlike anything else I have ever seen on television, and needless to say that I will be continuing to watch an episode a day at Netflix Streaming until I'm finally all caught up to the fifth and final season, which begins its initial airings on AMC this July. Strangest piece of trivia: The original plan was for Jesse Pinkman, Walter's former student who helps get him ingratiated into the drug world, to die at the conclusion of season one, but he was kept on as a regular after impressive acting by Aaron Paul. Worth your time? Absolutely -- granted, you'll cringe on a regular basis, but absolutely]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2436 2012-05-11T20:49:16Z 2012-05-11T20:52:46Z

Today, short reviews of three recently read books: The so-so experimental novella "Keyi its ?? ?? 4 Sucsexy" by Charles Jeffrey Danoff; Philip Roth's 1985 novella "The Prague Orgy," volume five of his nine-title "Nathan Zuckerman" series; and George R.R. Martin's "A Storm of Swords," a.k.a. volume three of the "Game of Thrones" novels, still continuing to be just as great as the original book in question.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com main book and main movie archive pages.) Keyi its ?? 4 Sucsexy By Charles Jeffrey Danoff Self-published This small self-published volume by Charles Jeffrey Danoff is fascinating just in the details behind its publication; a fictional novella by a veteran of wiki textbook compilation that is clearly aiming for David Mitchell cross-genre WTF territory, it was purposely designed with the same Linotype fonts and spiral binding of an '80s computer manual, and was released not under a Creative Commons license but with no license at all, the author essentially renouncing his legal rights to the manuscript much like the author of a piece of freeware would. Unfortunately, though, like a lot of projects of this kind, Danoff seems to have come up with a great idea without actually putting together something compelling to do with that idea -- featuring interlocking story threads regarding a blow-by-blow recap of a random hockey game and a newbie software developer blowing off his first class, Danoff makes the common error among young writers of mistaking the navel-gazing meanderings of his personal journal for writing worthy of a finished manuscript for public consumption, making this a hard-to-finish mishmash of traditional sports story and metafictional masturbation. (Plus, it doesn't help that this is merely one part of a sprawling larger project known as "Annabell's Universe (TM)," and that it often feels like Danoff is simply setting things up for later payoffs in separate volumes; and while I'm as much a fan of this in theory as any other sci-fi fanboy, it's crucial in such cases that each volume be able to stand on its own as well, which is unfortunately not the case here.) A noble but ultimately failed experiment, Danoff is to be admired for all the chances he takes with this cutting-edge book; but like a lot of authors in his position, he would be wise in the future to marry this experimentation with a much better handle over the fundamentals of literature, to give his audience something not only interesting to look at but that they'll legitimately want to sit down and read as well. Out of 10: 6.9 The Prague Orgy By Philip Roth Regular readers know that I'm in the process of getting through Philip Roth's remarkable nine-book autobiographical "Nathan Zuckerman" series, a slew of novels written from the 1970s through early 2000s that essentially record the entire history of the Postmodernist Era, by looking very pointedly at Roth's own life as a major tastemaker of these Postmodernist decades. And in fact for a long time, the short 1985 novella The Prague Orgy was the official endcap of what was known then as the "Zuckerman Trilogy" (consisting of The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and The Anatomy Lesson), although the reason it's getting such a short write-up today is because there's simply not much to it; more a glorified short story than a standalone book, it tells the tale of Zuckerman traveling to an academic conference in '70s Communist Czechoslovakia, where in usual style he falls in with an absolutely insane femme fatale, gets dragged to a group-sex party held by one of the bright lights of the Czech intelligentsia, and eventually runs afoul of the local secret police, getting whisked away in the middle of the night and unceremoniously dumped on the first plane back to America. An interesting little ditty for what it is, it can nonetheless be charitably called the least essential Zuckerman book of the entire series, and can be pretty easily skipped unless coming across it in the famed '80s four-book compilation known as Zuckerman Bound; and this finally leads us to what's the most exciting part of the entire Zuckerman series, when in the '90s Roth started using this character merely as an everyman narrator for what is widely considered the best books of his career -- 1997's American Pastoral, 1998's I Married a Communist and 2000's The Human Stain. Expect write-ups of those to slowly start appearing here over the next year. A Storm of Swords By George R.R. Martin Bantam Dell / Random House So yes, it's true, I'm as much of a drooling fanboy as anyone else for George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" novels, also known as the "Westeros" novels; I've been lucky enough to have my original long write-up of the first volume, A Game of Thrones, eventually become one of the most popular reviews ever published here, and I promised then to get at least short recaps up of the rest of the novels as I slowly finish them all. And indeed, much like my review of the second book in this series, A Clash of Kings, I don't have much to say about this third volume besides, "Yep, business as usual!," with it recommended that you simply check out my first write-up for more on why I find this series in general so remarkable; although in this case I at least have to say, that after getting used to Martin bumping off a major character in the middle of his first two Westeros novels, it was a legitimate shock to see him do so here again and then promptly kill off a whole series of other major characters (and I mean major characters), blam blam blam in the last 500 pages like some kind of mafia bloodbath. It just reiterates what Martin has said over and over was the main point of even writing these novels, that the actual Middle Ages was a much more disgusting, violent and unfair time than the shiny clean "age of heroes" that most other fantasy novelists like to present it as; and the simple fact is that whenever a whole series of different clans and tribes would all go to war back then over a disputed title of authority, the only way to resolve this dispute was to literally kill off all the rivals until only one was still standing, a lesson that Martin has taken to heart here with his own "War of the Five Kings," to what will undoubtedly be the dismay of many of his readers. Still just as great as when I started, I'm looking forward to diving into volume four starting next week, and my thanks as always to author Mark R. Brand for letting me borrow his copies for what has now been over a year and still counting. WINTERFELL!]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2435 2012-05-10T17:48:08Z 2012-05-10T17:58:52Z

Today's movie: Alexander Payne's latest, the charmingly low-key George Clooney character dramedy "The Descendants," a major piece of Oscar bait last awards season and perfect for existing fans of Mike Leigh and NPR.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com CCLaP's main movie page.) Today's movie: , (Amazon | IMDB | Netflix | Wikipedia) Why I added it to my queue: Because this is the latest by Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways and others), who I'm a big fan of; starring George Clooney, who I'm also a big fan of; which happened to also be a major piece of Oscar bait last awards season (and in fact won for Best Adapted Screenplay), always an easy justification for adding something to my queue. The reality: Pretty great, I gotta say; although astute fans of indie cinema should be aware that this has a very similar feel and tone to Michael Winterbottom's Genova, not that that's a bad thing at all but just that I found it curious. Based on a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, it's the tale of the latest patriarch of a mixed-race Hawaiian family of particular fame -- starting with a marriage in the 1800s between a member of the old Hawaiian royalty and one of the white Victorians who eventually took over the islands, a massive amount of pristine coastal real%]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2433 2012-05-07T16:26:29Z 2012-05-07T17:04:03Z

Have you heard? Six of CCLaP's authors are going on a four-day mini-tour of New York City at the end of this month! And that unfortunately meant that they were all forced to buy airplane tickets on their own dimes ahead of time; so in the hopes of subsidizing the money they've spent, we're running our first-ever Kickstarter campaign, specifically to pre-sell a new anthology featuring never-before-published work from all the authors in question. Click through for a lot more!

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com So have you heard the news? A half-dozen of CCLaP's writers will be heading to New York City at the end of this month, to participate in a four-day, four-show mini-tour! And while the tour is definitely a go, no matter what happens between now and then, unfortunately that meant that all of CCLaP's authors were forced to purchase their own airline tickets ahead of time out of their own pocket, a $300 downer that technically starts all these writers off in debt at the beginning of their tour, a stressful situation that no artist likes being in when trying to put their best face forward in another city. And that's why CCLaP has just started up its first-ever Kickstarter campaign as well, to see if we can get all of you to help subsidize the costs of these tickets, so that these poor writers can at least start their trip at the zero mark financially and have a major load taken off their minds. Ah, but we're not simply asking you to donate money towards such a thing; in usual style we've actually put together a brand-new product for you to "pre-purchase" instead, with every penny after costs going straight into a communal fund for the eight tickets that ended up getting purchased (the six out-of-town writers plus CCLaP staffers Traci Kim and myself...and of course don't forget that New Yorkers Oriana Leckert and John Reed will be joining us for these shows once we get out there, just that they didn't need to purchase airplane tickets, so are not technically a part of this fundraising campaign). The book being offered is a brand-new anthology called Chicago Platter 2012 (yes, because I plan on putting one of these together every year from now on, to help subsidize whatever trip we make that particular year); and it consists of brand-new, never-before-published work by all six out-of-town authors going on this tour (Kevin Haworth, David David Katzman, Lauryn Allison Lewis, Katherine Scott Nelson, Ben Tanzer and Sally Weigel), plus a new story by Traci as a special bonus. As is typical at Kickstarter, there are a number of levels at which you can donate/invest, with differing levels of perks based on your dollar amount: for US$5, for example, you'll receive an electronic copy of Platter in mid-June when it's available, plus your name on the front "thank-you" page of the book, while for $20 you receive that plus a handmade, hardbound paper copy, or for $35 a copy with personal inscriptions from all seven contributors. For $50, then, you receive not only all of this but an invitation to a special intimate "bon voyage" party we're throwing for everyone on Saturday, May 26th, in an outdoor garden environment in nearby Evanston (party located two blocks from a CTA purple-line el station), featuring not just free food and liquor but a chance to interact with CCLaP's authors in a casual, one-on-one atmosphere; then for $100 you get not only everything just described, but free paper copies of all eleven books CCLaP has ever published, delivered en-masse directly to your door via USPS Priority Mail. (And it bears repeating, by the way, that all of these perks will actually be delivered in mid-June, once the tour is over and we're all back in town.) This is the very first time in CCLaP's five-year history that I've asked all of you to make a direct contribution towards one of our projects, and not even an open donation but with a chance to get some really cool things in return, so I hope that all of you who have ever thought about making a major act of support for the center will finally do so now; our real goal is $2,500 over the next month, which should just about cover everyone's tickets after costs for book production are subtracted, although our stated goal at Kickstarter is $1,500 so that we'll at least get something if we're not fully funded. (For those who don't know, Kickstarter donations are not finalized unless the fundraising target is fully met, the entire project dissolved unfunded otherwise.) I urge you to stop by our Kickstarter page and make a donation right away, and to also help us spread the word about both this and the tour in general. Many, many, many updates to come over the next 30 days!]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2430 2012-05-04T17:47:34Z 2012-05-04T17:51:18Z

Today, a special "apologia" (or deliberately all-positive critical essay), all about why I commissioned Chicago author Lauryn Allison Lewis a year ago to write the apocalyptic fairytale that would eventually become the center's newest book, "solo/down," and by extension what it is about her dense, beautiful writing that I love so much.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com APOLOGIA: A deliberately all-positive, consciously biased critical essay, usually written to convince others to believe a certain way To understand in a nutshell what I like so much about Chicago author Lauryn Allison Lewis's work, let me relate a little story about her that I'm sure she doesn't like me repeating -- that when we were first putting the promotional material together for her new novella with the center, the apocalyptic fairytale solo/down, she admitted that she was uncomfortable with me comparing it to a David-Cronenberg-style "body horror" tale, in that she's hardly read any books that usually fit that definition and frankly isn't much of a fan of the horror genre in general. But it's precisely because Lewis doesn't read much horror that solo/down works so well as a unique and unexpected horror story, a statement that can be applied to her writing in general; that in her determination to carve a niche out for herself and her idiosyncratic writing style, she often does a great job at accidentally churning out really original genre tales too, even while already in her young career strongly following the tradition of people like J.G. Ballard and Thomas Pynchon in creating literally a one-person genre for herself. (In fact, if I hold real still, I can already hear the stoned undergraduates of twenty years from now, calling their classmate's new piece very "Lewisian.") Certainly this was on display in Lewis's more experimental self-published 2011 chapbook The Beauties (coming out next year in full novel form by our pals at Silverthought Press), the Chicago hipster must-have of last summer which made such a splash among the local literary community; but here with solo/down she's trying something a little different, not exactly following the rules of a certain trope but at least seeing if she can work within the universe of certain tropes, most notably the mad scientist story. Because that's ultimately what this is, buried under all the complexities we'll get to in a bit, the sociopathic scientist in question fueled more and more in this direction because of a hazy, ill-defined apocalyptic moment that has happened before our story opens, an unnamed series of events that has left acid in the rain, too much junk in the clouds for plants to get adequate sun, and a swarm of semi-intelligent "battle bugs" that have devastated America's crops. Our bleeding-edge botanist Amse, then, along with her doting assistant Jin, are recruited or perhaps kidnapped by a shadowy organization (maybe the government? maybe a private corporation?) and placed alone in a crumbling former 300-employee vaccine-making compound from the 1930s in the middle of nowhere, charged with conducting unholy experiments in combining plant and insect DNA to produce crops that can violently defend themselves against attackers. It's here where the "body" part of our body-horror tale kicks in; because after deciding that she wants to experience for herself the ultimate alchemistic act -- pregnancy -- and after having Jin artificially inseminate her, a lab accident ends up mixing together this hybrid DNA with the now twin embryos in her womb. And while I'll leave the rest of the complicated series of events a surprise, let's say that Lewis gets a lot of mileage out of very cleverly exploring what is usually the cliche of the "evil twin," and that there's a level of blood and disaster at the end that will keep even the most fervent Fangoria reader happy. But then, let's not forget that an entire two-thirds of this story is not about this but something else entirely; the mysterious Solo, that is, not quite an angel and not quite a demon, not exactly benevolent but not exactly malevolent either, and the magical, mystical, explanation-defying things that happen when it decides to get involved with our dysfunctional little family and the increasing amount of danger they're facing. That's what makes Lewis's work such a challenge sometimes to edit but always such a pleasure to read, is that she refuses to ever take the easy way out; everything from her plots to her characters and even themes are always big, messy, chaotic, and not proscribing to the usual rules of either a particular genre or even the three-act structure in general. I saw all of these things in The Beauties, which is why I commissioned her a year ago to write the brand-new piece that would eventually become solo/down; but in this case I was particularly interested in building some tighter walls around that explosive creativity of hers, under the belief that something interesting would inevitably come from the process. I like to believe that something has, and I hope that you will grow to feel so too, and to eventually see this book as I do, as one of the most unique titles that CCLaP has ever put out and bound to be strongly remembered for a long time by all who read it. If you haven't downloaded a free copy for yourself yet, I encourage you to do so as soon as you have a chance.]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2424 2012-05-04T17:00:00Z 2012-05-04T17:18:18Z

Today in Karl Wolff's CCLaP essay series "On Being Human," it's 'The Culture' novels by Iain Banks, in which humans, aliens, and machines all live in a post-scarcity utopia. Banks's novels follow eccentrics and troublemakers in a society where humans can switch gender, become aliens, and even become machines.

Karl Wolff http://driftlessareareview.com/ (Once a month through 2012, CCLaP staff writer Karl Wolff is examining the question of what it means to "be human" through a diverse series of books, movies and television shows. For all the essays in this series, please click here.) The Culture series by Iain Banks Review by Karl Wolff The Scots novelist Iain Banks is an important literary figure in the genre dubbed New Space Opera that took off in the 1980s. The Culture is Banks's contribution to New Space Opera and a radical contrast to Warhammer 40K, covered here last month. But first, some preliminaries: Banks has written about The Culture in a series of ten novels. While most science fiction and fantasy series demand a reader read them chronologically, you don't need to do that with the Culture novels. One can dip in and out of them as one pleases. As a Gateway to Geekery, I recommend starting with Excession, a 1996 novel involving a mysterious star older than the known universe, the Culture's dirty tricks division, and a heady dose of conspiracy, thwarted love, and interplanetary conflict. Unlike the dystopian nightmare of Warhammer 40K, the Culture is a pan-galactic regime with socialist and anarchist tendencies. The technology encountered makes the Culture a post-scarcity anarchist society. This means you can have whatever you want whenever you want it, with a machine ready to fabricate it for you. Humans, machines, and aliens all co-exist in a relative harmony. Since the Culture is utopian and every need and desire is freely available (and free!), Banks chooses to write novels focusing on outsiders, eccentrics, and troublemakers within the Culture. Humans are different than us in the Culture. It should also be stated that the Culture isn't some far-future dream of society. The Culture exists in parallel with the humanity of Earth, existing roughly from 1300 to 2970 CE. Banks even wrote a short story where Culture observers came to Earth. While Culture humans bear an outward physical appearance to us, the resemblance ends there. Culture humans live up to 400 years and can switch sex at will. When changing sex, the process takes over a year. (Keep this in mind for next time, when I cover the hermaphrodite Wraeththu in Storm Constantine's post-apocalyptic fantasy series.) In addition, humans can be put into a kind of digital cold storage for an indefinite time period. Humans also have the option of being Sublimed, a similar status to the cold storage but with the resemblance of an afterlife. Some alien species have been Sublimed, leaving their advanced technology for humanity to puzzle out. Humans can even become artificially sentient beings like the Minds, although this is considered an Usual Life Choice, to use the parlance of the time. While at first blush this may seem like Iain Banks has created some hippy dippy utopia, man, where, like, all wars and pain are gone forever and we can all grok out in trippy harmony in our Space Communes, the reality is otherwise. The Culture has at its disposal vast fleets of lethal spaceships and all manner of cunning weaponry. Excession explores a bored diplomat's desire to join Special Circumstances, the Culture's version of the CIA. Since private property doesn't exist, private thoughts become a citizen's only possessions. This also sets up scenarios where conspiracies become rampant, since no one can really control what another is thinking. The novel covers a conspiracy among the Minds, the hyperintelligent AIs that control the starships. These starships can be several kilometers long and the Mind controlling it can also manipulate things down to the atomic level, changing deck space into engines, creating gravity, terraforming, and recreating historical battle scenes in the massive deck spaces. Similar to the Minds, drones exist to serve humanity and other life forms as well as create a society all their own. Excession follows a drone serving an aristocratic woman who also dreams of joining Special Circumstances. The drone is an ancient being, tracing its lineage back to the household program that served the aristocratic family for untold centuries. Despite all this detail, I've only scratched the surface of what the Culture novels contain. Part of the appeal of Iain Banks, aside from the politics, is the wealth of his inventiveness. While the term "New Space Opera" makes one think of solemn officers in uniforms fighting space baddies, Banks loads his novels with humor. The Minds controlling these massive starships give them ironic and funny names like "Prosthetic Conscience," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and "Frank Exchange of Views," the last being a Psychopath class military vessel. If P.G. Wodehouse, Frank Herbert, and Anthony Burgess all wrote a novel together, it might end up bearing a close resemblance to a Culture novel. What does being human mean in terms of the Culture novels? Everything and nothing, to be evasively vague about it. The Culture is a society where boundaries are fluid. It is where humans can change sex, become digitally uploaded, become aliens, and even machines. With its mixture of high adventure, military set-pieces, foreign intrigue, and biotechnological wonderment, Banks explores that troublesome notion that's bothered philosophers and writers for centuries: What is being? Coming June 1st: Wraeththu by Storm Constantine]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2427 2012-05-04T16:53:58Z 2012-05-04T16:54:47Z

Today's photo: "A X E," by Flickr member Paul Hooper.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com Today's photo of the day is entitled "A X E" and is by Paul Hooper. Paul doesn't mention much about himself over at his Flickr account, but does say that this particular shot was taken in the British town of Southchurch. Do make sure to stop by his main photostream for a lot more great images. Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2426 2012-05-03T20:17:42Z 2012-05-03T20:20:57Z

Today, small reviews of three recently read books: the fascinating new anthology of obscure Victorian detective stories, "The Dead Witness;" the rollickingly good Michael-Crichton-like look at a person actually turned into a giant; and Sam Benjamin's "American Gangbang: A Love Story," a funny yet riveting look at a former alt-porn producer who slowly morphed into a mainstream pornographer, and by extension a sort of indictment of the entire alt-porn community of the early 2000s in general.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com main book and main movie archive pages.) The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories Edited by Michael Sims Walker & Company / Bloomsbury This fascinating new anthology, by an academe who has made a career out of putting together such anthologies, is a lively and unexpected guide to the early history of the detective story, whose invention is largely credited to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and which really flowered into mainstream success during the Victorian Age of the 1830s to 1900s. And indeed, by placing his only Sherlock Holmes story right in the middle of this massive book, editor Michael Sims is clearly showing just how much precedence there was leading up to what eventually became the most famous character in this genre's history; because with the very idea of a city police department not even invented in the real world until the early 1800s, many of the first stories about solving crimes came about in a roundabout way, whether through "Newgate" novels that salaciously glorified the criminals or "Sensation" novels that combined noir-like plots with Gothic moodiness and supernaturalism. And there's lots more surprises awaiting the eager Victoriana fan who picks this up, not an "all-star" compilation but with stories picked precisely because of their uniqueness and obscurity; for example, how many female writers found real success in this genre back then, or how much great crime fiction came from other areas of the Empire like Canada and Australia. And in the meanwhile, Sims throws in a few nonfiction tidbits to help us maintain a sense of society in general back then; of particular interest, for example, is a full reprint of the first long newspaper article to come out about the first Jack The Ripper slaying. A huge collection that kept an armchair historian like me flipping pages quickly, it comes strongly recommended to other Baker Street Irregulars, and the only reason it's not getting a higher score is the unavoidable fact that you won't like it at all if you're not already a fan of Victorian genre fiction. Out of 10: 8.9 Enormity By W.G. Marshall Night Shade Books This technothriller by W.G. Marshall posits a well-worn idea at its core (a freak accident turns a couple of people into six-thousand-foot-high giants, at which point all hell breaks loose), but easily elevates itself above most other stories of this kind by taking an ultra-realistic and scientifically accurate look at just what such an occurrence might actually be like in the real world; so not only are our normal-sized heroes battling the giants themselves, but also the now human-sized and unstoppable bacteria that was on these people's skin when the transformation took place, the airplane-crashing waves of superheated air that come with each exhalation by the giants, not to mention the simple challenge of trying to communicate with a creature whose ear alone is the size of a skyscraper, making even the most powerful amplifier ever made effectively non-comprehensible. So as such, then, readers shouldn't expect anything above Jerry Bruckheimer level in terms of characterization and plot; but I have to admit that I found this to be a real rollicking delight anyway, merely from the pure audaciousness of its mundanely disgusting details (ugh, igloo-sized piles of dandruff, UGH) and the breakneck speed in which it introduces these details. A strong contender for CCLaP's Guilty Pleasure Awards at the end of this year, it comes strongly recommended to Michael Crichton fans and other lovers of simply-told but fantastically imagined what-if stories. Out of 10: 8.8 American Gangbang: A Love Story By Sam Benjamin Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster So before anything else, let me get a big disclosure out of the way: that about a decade ago, I did some writing and design work for the website JewishCheerleaders.com, online home of the now defunct alt-porn production company once owned by Sam Benjamin, although let me make it clear that I've had no contact with him since those days; and that's important when it comes to this review, because his hilarious, filthy and touching new memoir on the subject, American Gangbang: A Love Story, is not really about Jewish Cheerleaders per se (although bizarre stories about its formation make up the bulk of the book's first third), but rather how this quest to make smart alt-porn eventually led him to working full-time in the legitimate mainstream porn industry, waking up one day to realize that he was now living in one of the bedrooms of a Malibu mansion that served as a 24-hour drug-filled shooting location for the production company he was now making tens of thousands of dollars a month from, his personal life by definition now becoming complexly intertwined with the abusive interracial group-sex scenes he was now in charge of organizing and shooting on literally a daily basis. And indeed, in a larger sense what this book is really about is the grand tragedy of the entire "alt-porn" industry of the early 2000s in general, and the dispiriting lesson that nearly all of us who were involved with it back then eventually learned -- that no matter how noble your intentions, no matter how refined your pedigree (Benjamin, for example, had studied semiotics at Brown before getting involved in the industry), the combination of drugs and cash and douchebaggery and exploitation and desperation that automatically comes with any instance of sex being exchanged for money is bound to dirty and sully anyone who comes into contact with it, no matter how peripherally they're involved or how little that person thinks they're being affected. And so in Benjamin's case, as he found himself surrounded more and more by the kinds of deeply dysfunctional fringe dwellers who normally populate the trillion-dollar adult industry of southern California, he also found more and more of his hipster postmodern high-mindedness slipping away from him, slowly turning more and more into the kind of person he used to make fun of and with there being an increasingly blurry line between his fantasy life, the outrageous concepts being created for his porn shoots, and the way he dealt with women on just a day-by-day nonsexual basis. I mean, not that this is a dour book by any means; in fact it's laugh-out-loud funny for nearly its entire length, with Benjamin having the courage to cast himself as the self-deprecatory foil of most of his own anecdotes, whether talking about his disastrous night while young and broke as an unpopular go-go dancer at a gay club, starring in a strap-on reverse-bisexual shoot for revered San Francisco company Good Vibrations simply for the hell of it, or later darker stories of becoming obsessed with ultra-abusive "gonzo" porn and having it bleed into his non-porn love life. And make no mistake, Benjamin puts his college degrees to good use here (he also has an MFA in Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts); this is not only one of the best-structured personal memoirs I've ever read, but Benjamin pulls off the neat trick of giving his stories a general appeal precisely by making them so specific, making this not just a naughty tell-all about sometimes some fairly famous people in the industry (although it's that too) but also a bigger and grander examination of an entire sorry little era in Generation X's history, when literally thousands of spoiled, overeducated young intellectuals thought they could change the very essence of exchanging sex for money simply because they were determined to, only to have the entire effort mainly end up biting them in the ass. I'm obviously too personally associated with the proceedings in this case to give anything even close to an "objective" review, which is why American Gangbang is neither receiving a score today nor will be eligible for CCLaP's best-of lists at the end of the year; but it nonetheless comes strongly recommended, one of the best historical documents out there to help future generations understand (for example) how a place like Suicide Girls could go in a single decade from a darling of third-wave feminist hipsters to a nearly universally reviled codeword for misogyny and cruelty. When read in this spirit, I'm confident that most people will find it utterly riveting. Out of 10: N/A]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2425 2012-05-03T20:15:32Z 2012-05-03T20:16:17Z

Today's photo: "Pierce Point Ranch," by California photographer David Dasinger.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com Today's photo of the day is entitled "Pierce Point Ranch" and is by David Dasinger. David is based out of El Cerrito, California, and in fact this particular shot was taken in the nearby Nick's Cove. He also has a nice personal website, for those who would like to see and learn more. Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2423 2012-05-02T20:34:32Z 2012-05-02T20:36:18Z

Today's movie: The 2011 Oscarbait adaptation of the spy thriller "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," my very first introduction to the work of John le Carre in any form. Spoiler -- it's pretty great!

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com CCLaP's main movie page.) Today's movie: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 2011 (Amazon | IMDB | Netflix | Wikipedia) Why I added it to my queue: Because this was one of the major pieces of Oscar bait this last awards season, a movie which brought a fresh new perspective to veteran actor Gary Oldman's career; and because it's based on a classic '70s spy novel by John Le Carre, which would give me a good chance to get caught up with the story without having to slog through the actual book. (I'm not a big fan of spy thrillers.) The reality: Pretty interesting! Although I do have a bit of a complaint about it, although I'm not sure if I should technically even call it a complaint, since ultimately I appreciate the filmmakers making the effort in the first place; that in their determination to really streamline the book specifically for subtle, smart effect, I had a hard time many times simply figuring out what was going on, especially when adding the one-year-ago flashbacks regularly mixed in with no warning nor transition, great from a stylistic standpoint but confusing from a narrative one. Plus of course this shares the same problem as all those crime-solving shows on basic cable too, which is that the most famous actor among the group of suspects almost always turns out to be the criminal, because why otherwise spend all that money for that famous actor?; and so that ruined some of the surprise I should've experienced as someone not already familiar with the story. But all that said, I have to say that I was really pleasantly surprised to learn what the theme of this story is about -- basically an examination of the very last days of collapse of the old British Empire, which in a mere 75 years went from the strongest global confederacy since the Romans to a pathetic shadow of its former glory, with a bungling, corrupt intelligence agency serving as a fine metaphor for Britain's overall downfall as a world power by those years, a mole-riddled unending bureaucracy reduced to outright begging for help from their powerful American cousins, and so inept that they are fooled and played by their Soviet counterparts on a regular basis. Granted, this fits right in with the dour, morally relative countercultural times in which the original book was written; but given the rah-rah reverence that so many British males have for this book, it was a surprise to find out that it's such a dark, cynical tale, versus the nationalist boosterism of James Bond in the '60s or Tom Clancy in the '80s. A slick, technically perfect adaptation that gets all these points across just fine, it comes strongly recommended. Strangest piece of trivia: Gary Oldman went to a hipster old-glasses store in southern California, and tried on hundreds of pairs, to find the funky '70s glasses he wears in this movie. Worth your time? Yes]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2422 2012-05-02T20:32:08Z 2012-05-02T20:32:55Z

Today's photo: "Golden Gate Lights," by San Francisco Flickr member "camaelon."

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com Today's photo of the day is entitled "Golden Gate Lights" and is by a Flickr member who goes by the online handle "camaelon." C is based out of San Francisco; and as the title indicates, this particular shot is of the Golden Gate Bridge in the same city. He also has a nice personal website, for those who would like to see and learn more. Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2421 2012-05-02T01:31:04Z 2012-05-02T01:34:37Z

A group of us have been secretly working on this for six months, so I'm happy to finally announce publicly today that a half-dozen of CCLaP's authors and myself will be doing a four-day, four-show mini-tour of New York City at the end of this month, including Kevin Haworth, David David Katzman, Traci Kim, Oriana Leckert, Lauryn Allison Lewis, Katherine Scott Nelson, John Reed, Ben Tanzer and Sally Weigel. Click through for lots, lots, LOTS more!

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com A group of us have been secretly working on this for literally the last six months, so I'm relieved and happy today to finally announce the news to the public -- a half-dozen of CCLaP's writers and myself will be traveling to New York City at the end of this month, for a four-day mini-tour of New York City consisting of four different shows across Manhattan and Brooklyn! I've got lots to tell you today about it, so let's get started: This has been a long-desired goal of mine at CCLaP, to start sponsoring a yearly out-of-town showcase for our writers, simply to help spread the good news about the Chicago literary community to as many far-flung locations as possible; and really the main person to thank is New York author and Brooklyn Rail senior editor John Reed, who initially proposed last fall that we all come to lower Manhattan performance space Le Poisson Rouge to promote the CCLaP anthology last year that he was a part of, American Wasteland: Bleak Tales of the Future on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11. That got delayed until this early summer, and its scope got bigger and bigger as the months progressed; and now we're going for a total of four days, from Sunday May 31st to Sunday, June 3rd, performing in four different locations in four nights, and with four different line-ups of performers, including local tie-ins at two of those shows... On THURSDAY, MAY 31ST, like I said, CCLaP will be at the lower Manhattan performance space Le Poisson Rouge, and will be featuring writers David David Katzman, Oriana Leckert, Lauryn Allison Lewis, Katherine Scott Nelson and John Reed. The showcase will be hosted by myself. On FRIDAY, JUNE 1ST, the group will move to Brooklyn used bookstore Book Thug Nation, where the featured performers will be Katzman, Leckert, Lewis, Nelson and now Sally Weigel. This show will be hosted by CCLaP's assistant director, Traci Kim. This particular event will also feature a local literary group still to be announced, and is being sponsored by the arts-and-entertainment website Brooklyn Spaces. On SATURDAY, JUNE 2ND, CCLaP will be at the Brooklyn experimental performance space Vaudeville Park, where the lineup will once again consist of Katzman, Leckert, Lewis, Nelson and Weigel, and with John Reed once again joining the group. It will be hosted again by Kim, sponsored again by Brooklyn Spaces, and this time will be done in conjunction with New York jazz band Battle Of The Camel. And on SUNDAY, JUNE 3RD, join CCLaP for its largest showcase of the tour, at revered lower Manhattan "lit bar" KGB. The lineup will once again feature Katzman, Lewis, Nelson and Weigel, plus Chicago writer Ben Tanzer and Ohio essayist Kevin Haworth. This show will once again be hosted by me. Anyway, there's a Facebook event page for this now as well, so please join that to have it automatically added to your own Facebook calendar, wall, etc. We need all the help we can get to get this properly promoted to New Yorkers, so I highly encourage you to pitch in however you can! And speaking of which, I'm also looking for all of these authors' collective fans to help chip in to subsidize the massive amount of plane tickets that had to be bought, which right now are each being covered by the authors themselves; just $2,500 brought in through our coming Kickstarter campaign, starting tomorrow, would be enough to cover the tickets of each and every person who bought one, essentially starting that author near zero at the beginning of the tour, and the rest of it being pure profit from book sales while there. To entice you, CCLaP is releasing a brand-new limited-edition anthology called Chicago Platter, in fact technically called Chicago Platter 2012 because I plan on doing one of these every year as a fundraiser for that year's trip. It features brand-new, unpublished pieces from every local writer going on this trip, and will be available in electronic form for a $5 donation and as a handmade paper edition for $20, or signed by all six authors for $35. (And yes, technically we'll release the electronic version later this summer to the general public for free download; but that $5 not only gets you an early copy, but your name on the book's front "thank you" page to all the Kickstarter donators.) We'll then also have a $50 level where you get all of the above, plus get to attend an intimate, private summer outdoor 'bon voyage' party in Evanston on Saturday, May 26th, where on top of free food and liquor in a beautiful garden environment you will have a chance to interact with CCLaP's authors within a very small and casual crowd; and for $100 you get all of that plus a paper copy of all eleven small "Hypermodern" paper books we've now put out, shipped en-masse directly to your door via USPS Priority Mail. Wow, how can you go wrong? Anyway, that will be officially online tomorrow for your donations, and will run for a month total (or until the end of the actual tour, that is, so that New Yorkers will have a chance to donate too). I'm very happy to be pulling this off for the first time this year, something I've wanted to do for a very long time now; and here's hoping that we'll be able to do the same thing in the San Francisco Bay area in about a year from now, and then (fingers crossed) maybe an entire two-week tour of the UK and Ireland in 2014. (Fingers crossed!) If you're in the area, I encourage you to come out; and if you're not, I especially encourage you to pre-purchase a copy of Chicago Platter 2012 to help support this and future out-of-town showcases. And don't forget our next out-of-town trip, coming this October to Oxford, Ohio to celebrate the release of Kevin Haworth's coming book of essays about contemporary Jewishness, Famous Drownings in Literary History, winner already of an Ohio Arts Council grant. Kevin's the very first non-Chicagoan to be published at CCLaP, so we're taking the party out to him when the book is out; it's eight hours by car, so we're hoping to make a big fun hipster convoy roadtrip thing out of it. Whew, I'm so glad that all the details of this are finally worked out; I've been very excited about this, so I'm glad to finally have a chance to share it with all of you.]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2420 2012-04-30T19:08:58Z 2012-04-30T19:12:24Z

Today, short reviews of three recently read books: The so-so quirky literary piece "The Last Hiccup" by Christopher Meades; the so-so story/photography collaboration about pre-gentrified lower Manhattan, "East of Bowery" by Drew Hubner and Ted Barron; and the clever but so-so human interest drama pulling details from both "The Raven" and "The Great Gatsby," "The Great Lenore" by J.M. Tohline.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com main book and main movie archive pages.) The Last Hiccup By Christopher Meades ECW Press This quirky piece of literary fiction almost exactly illustrates, nearly as a textbook example, the inherent problem of writing quirky literary fiction; that once you get past the quirky gimmick that draws people in (here, the tale of a boy in 1930s Russia who starts hiccuping one day, and literally doesn't stop for decades), it can become an insurmountable challenge to come up with anything interesting after that, a common problem among academic short-story veterans who try taking on full-length novels. And so in author Christopher Meades' case, he adds a rambling, digressive plot that involves our hero being shuttled away to a sanitarium for years, to re-enter society just in time to not understand the profound changes to Russian society that Stalinism and World War Two have brought, and to get caught up in a series of adventures that help to illuminate Forrest-Gump-style many of the developments this part of the world saw in the early 20th century; and while this can be clever at times, and is definitely at least well-written, the vast majority of the book really has nothing to do with the titular gimmick at all, and in fact it's hard to understand what the hiccups are doing in this story in the first place other than to serve as a "running motif" off which to hang the bland, underdeveloped plot, yet another common thing you see among academic veterans of short fiction trying to pad out one of their ideas into a full novel. Interesting for what it is, it's absolutely worth your time if you ever come across it at the library or on a friend's bookshelf, but I can't honestly encourage people to go and actively seek out a copy. Out of 10: 7.9 East of Bowery By Drew Hubner and Ted Barron Sensitive Skin Books Just to be clear, I really wanted to be a big fan of this story/photography collaboration by Drew Hubner and Ted Barron, both halves taking a look at the hardscrabble lives found in lower Manhattan during its pre-gentrification years, which started life as a web project before being turned into a popular multimedia performance event at the Bowery Poetry Club a few years ago. But alas, apart from its legitimately great value as a historical document, I found the stories and photos themselves to be only so-so, nothing outright bad but certainly cliche-filled documents that feel interchangeable with the dozens of other writers and photographers who recorded this fascinating period in New York history as well. Absolutely worth your time if you have a specific interest in the subject, it can be easily skipped if you don't. Out of 10: 7.7 The Great Lenore By J.M. Tohline Atticus Books This slim debut novel by J.M. Tohline has an interesting conceit at its core; cleverly combining details from Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby but neither of their actual plots, it tells the story of a young novelist invited to housesit a mansion in Nantucket one winter, eventually becoming emotionally adopted by the upper-class family of misfits next door. The catch? It turns out that not only both brothers of that family but a close family friend have all had passionate love affairs at one point or another with the titular manic pixie dream girl, each of whom know only some of the truth about all of the others; so when said Lenore magically shows up at our everyman narrator's place four days after she apparently died in an accident, the family next door already starting to break down into Peyton-Place histrionics over their loss, needless to say that it throws a real wrench into the entire proceedings, especially after Lenore requests that our hero keep her existence a secret so that she can take advantage of the rare opportunity to see how all these various lovers of hers exactly react to her death. The problem, though, is that once Tohline puts this admittedly fascinating milieu together, he can't seem to figure out anything interesting to do with it; for while the entire thing is definitely well-written, and contains all kinds of knowing asides for the pleasure of heavy literary readers, the last two-thirds of this short book seem to consist of not much more than a bunch of people all endlessly screaming to each other, "I loved her more!" "No, I loved her more!" before building to a contrived climax that feels as if Tohline simply ran out of energy to continue. Fantastic as a short story idea but lacking as a novel, as belies the author's actual career experiences so far, this certainly is a sign of a writer who still has a lot of great work ahead of him, although with this particular book receiving only a tepid recommendation today. Out of 10: 8.1]]> tag:www.cclapcenter.com,2012://1.2419 2012-04-30T19:07:10Z 2012-04-30T19:07:51Z

Today's photo: "Jules 02," by New York photographer Tyler Mariano.

Jason Pettus http://www.cclapcenter.com Today's photo of the day is entitled "Jules 02" and is by Tyler Mariano. Tyler is based out of Buffalo, New York, which I assume is where this particular shot was taken as well. Do make sure to stop by his main photostream for a lot more memorable images. Don't forget that I actually maintain a whole page of favorite photographs over at Flickr, for those who would like to see more. To express an interest in having your own work featured, just drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.]]>