Dennis Cooper, Mark Gluth, and James Greer

Description

Readings by Mark Gluth, author of The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis (the newest selection in Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series), James Greer, author of The Failure, and special guest, Dennis Cooper.

Book Details:

The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis by Mark Gluth
A phenomenal debut novella to further establish the literary excellence of Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series.

"Gluth probes the effects of death in his creepily enchanting debut, a delicate narrative consisting of a chain of lives connected by deaths." -- Publishers Weekly

"In The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis, Mark Gluth does something I've never seen another author do: he captures perfectly the feel of daydreams. Like daydreams, his book is brief but powerful; like daydreams, it is both heartbreakingly hopeful and heart-stoppingly honest. It's a reverie that's a revelation. It is great."
--Derek McCormack, author of The Show that Smells

"Swift and sharply detailed, Mark Gluth's novella accordions between the mundane and the unknown with striking economy. The sense of loss is palpable--its toll compounding in an astute articulation of melancholy that should be familiar to anyone who understands life and longing as one and the same."
--Zac Pennington of Parenthetical Girls

The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis begins during the later days of Margaret Kroftis's life. She is a writer, living alone. As she experiences a personal tragedy the narrative moves forward in an emotionally coherent manner that exists separately from linear time. Themes of loss and grief cycle and repeat and build upon each other. They affect the text and create a complex structure of crosshatched narratives within narratives. These mirror each other while also telling unique stories of loss that are both separate from Margaret's as well as deeply intertwined. 

This groundbreaking debut demonstrates an affinity with the work of such contemporary European writers as Agota Kristof and Marie Redonnet, while existing in a place and time that is uniquely American. Composed in brief paragraphs and structured as a series of vignettes, pieces of fiction, and autobiography, The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis creates a world in which a woman's life is refracted through dreamlike logic. Coupled with the spare language in which it is written, this logic distorts and heightens the emotional truths the characters come to terms with, while elevating them beyond the simply literal.
 
Mark Gluth's writing has previously appeared in the anthology Userlands (Akashic, 2007) and Ellipsis magazine. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and now lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife and their two dogs.

Dennis Cooper's (series editor) novels have been translated into eighteen foreign languages. He has guest-edited sections of fiction and nonfiction for BookForum, Nerve, the L.A. Weekly Literary Supplement, and the Village Voice Literary Supplement. He is a contributing editor of ArtForum magazine and lives in Los Angeles.

The Failure a novel by James Greer

California Book Award-winner Greer presents a hilarious and immaculately written story set in L.A., exploring the inevitability of failure.

"James Greer, one of the nimblest and most multilayered American fiction writers, has, with his latest novel The Failure, pulled off a sublime and shivery-smooth literary hat-trick-cum-emotional-gotcha. I defy anyone to come up with an equation to explain how this book's first impression as a ridiculously clever, funny crime story can gradually disclose a metanovel built from far more encyclopedic scratch only to reveal upon its conclusion a central, overriding thought so heartfelt literally it trembles your lower lip. This is one stunning piece of work."
--Dennis Cooper, author of Ugly Man

"James Greer's The Failure is such an unqualified success, both in conception and execution, that I have grave doubts he actually wrote it."
--Stephen Soderbergh, filmmaker

"Greer's done it again: a big-city, techno-jargon-filled thrill-ride with slick medium-brow drop references to our (once-shared) mythological hometown. What could be more poignant?"
--Robert Pollard, rock musician

The Failure is a picaresque novel set in Los Angeles about two guys who conceive and badly execute a plan to rob a Korean check-cashing store in order to finance the prototype for an impossibly ridiculous Internet application.

The main character, Guy Forget, is a twenty-something drifter with brains, good looks, and absolutely no ambition except to get rich without having to work. His best friend, Billy, is a professional dog walker who ties the dogs to the rear bumper of his run-down car and drives very slowly. Along the way we meet, among others, Guy's Midwestern parents, his theoretical-physicist brother, his girlfriend Violet McKnight, and his secret nemesis, Sven Transvoort, who hates Guy with unusual passion for reasons that are not immediately clear.

While the story of The Failure is fairly straightforward, the manner of its telling is anything but; it begins at the end, and proceeds in similarly nonlinear fashion to a conclusion that will surprise either nobody or everybody, depending on who's been paying attention. Using elements of pop culture, tech jargon, and noirish satire, the book attempts to answer the question not enough people ask themselves on a regular basis: Am I a failure? 

James Greer is the author of Artificial Light(a selection of Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series), which won a California Book Award for Best Debut Novel, and the nonfiction book Guided by Voices: A Brief History (Grove), a biography about a band for which he once played bass guitar. He is currently working on a rock musical about Cleopatra starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. He lives in Los Angeles.

More Info

Link

http://www.citylights.com

Call

415-362-8193

Email

Contact Form (account required)