In bed with Raymond Williams

I was on the verge of writing B. an email earlier - "Getting into bed with Raymond Williams" - only I realized that what I really needed was a straight-up nap, not nap-pretending-to-be-reading-a-book! I have been remiss in not mentioning this here sooner - Facebook and Twitter leach energy away from this sort of announcement - but I've got a fun gig tomorrow night, joining Geoff Dyer (one of my literary heroes) and Nikil Saval (Columbia grad and author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, which I haven't read yet but which I sent a copy of last year to my father, longtime "cube" occupant) for a panel discussion of a new reissue of Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review.

At the Strand Bookstore, Thursday, March 26, 7pm (828 Broadway @ 12th St.).

Hazlittiana

Short notice I'm afraid - have been too busy this week to deal with email and announcements properly, and am due some catch-up - but I am leading a workshop tomorrow at the CUNY Graduate Center on two of my favorite of Hazlitt's essays, 12-2pm. More information here.

January ploys redux

I have a desk in Cayman! (Thanks, Brent!)

On a related note, I'm speaking about the bread and butter of the novel on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 4:30 to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colloquium of Princeton's English Department - stop by and say hello if you are in that neck of the woods...

And

this is so farfetched that I could hardly believe the email in my inbox - but my younger self would never have forgiven me if I did not get a ticket to this, although it will mean missing a talk that I really wanted to attend! Arghhhh, schedule conflicts...

Upcoming

I think I must go to this, it sounds so exactly my cup of tea, although it will have to be squeezed in before meet-up for early family dinner:

November 21 5PM Andrea Rosen Gallery
525 W. 24th St NY (212) 627-6000

Writer Shelley Jackson offers an illustrated lecture in applied necrophysics, with selections from the archives of the Shelley Jackson Vocational School of Ghost Speaking and Hearing-Mouth Children (founded 1898), including early travel writings from the land of the dead and recordings from the school choir’s Music for Stammererers. The mechanics of channelling the dead and the structure of the necrocosmos will be explained, with a brief refutation of certain errors made by fellow thanatomath Matthew Ritchie. Class will conclude with a collective attempt to channel the dead.

Speed reading

When I first got an invitation to participate in this event, I knew I had to be a part of it!

Sponsored by Cabinet Magazine, it's part of the Performa festival. Event description: "A 90-minute relay race of sorts, featuring 25-35 writers and artists who will take turns reading aloud short texts related to the theme of speed while running on three treadmills positioned side-by-side. The velocity of the treadmills will be controlled by the Speed Demon, the somewhat sadistic MC who will oversee the performance."

Saturday, Nov. 14 at 6pm at Definitions Gym, 19 Union Square West (at 15th St.) - note corrected time

The perfectibility theorem

I'm on the lineup now for what promises to be a very interesting event on Thursday, Oct. 15 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, "You Can't Be Anything You Want": "an evening examining the promise—and pitfalls—of personal and cultural reinvention, casting a curious eye over the world of minor-league wrestling, the depths of the self-help section, and rock 'n roll's perpetual second act."

Also: on Friday, Oct. 15, our departmental eighteenth-century group is having its first true conference! Both the panels and the lecture are going to be very good (guest speaker Matthew Kirschenbaum is a fantastically good speaker and writer whose talk has the teasing title "Shakespeare's Hard Drive") - open to anyone who's interested, you do not need to be a Columbia affiliate.

Up close and personal

It is not quite Wednesday yet, but close enough that I will simply say that Ed Park is doing a reading and Q&A at Columbia TODAY (203 Mathematics, 8pm, Wednesday, Sept. 30) - alas, I will not be able to attend, having entered a true DAVIDSONIAN VORTEX whose whirling elements include an as-yet-unwritten lecture on the middle section of Madame Bovary, the final revisions to the Explosionist sequel (due on FRIDAY) and a big race on Sunday (ARGHHHH, I see they have got all complicated on us, not least involving an earlier cut-off for same-day race-packet pickup - 7am rather than 7:45; it is clearly no longer realistic to leave NYC at 5am and hope to get there in time to get set up the morning of...).


!@#$%!

Also upcoming

"A Blog of Her Own": Scholarly Women on the Web, this Monday at 12:30 in Lerner 555. I am moderating; panelists include Bitch Ph.D., Tenured Radical and other prominent feminist bloggers (I am too lazy to post in the relevant links, but they can be found at the event page!).