Jonathan Ames, Lynn Harris, & Neal Pollack
Hot & Bothered: An Evening in Bed
February 8 2006, 7:00 PM
The Abbey Pub
3420 West Grace Street, Chicago
Nextbook presents an evening of erotic escapades, courtesy of writers Jonathan Ames, Lynn Harris & Neal Pollack. A man dials a number scrawled on the men's room wall and discovers just how painful a good time can be; a Jewish woman falls for a Philo-Semitic skinhead; a young poet finds that the only way to stimulate her beau is to moan, "You are Edmund Wilson! You are Edmund Wilson! You're, you're ... better than Edmund Wilson!" But whatever the story, on this night, everybody gets lucky. Jonathan's Ames' books include
What's Not To Love and
Wake Up, Sir! Writer Lynn Harris is co-creator of BreakupGirl.net, author of
Miss Media, and a regular contributor to Salon.com. Neal Pollack is the author of
The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, among other works. Live music by Stuart Rosenberg.
Aleksandar Hemon & Jonathan Lethem
A New Life: Malamud Today
February 20 2006, 7:00 PM
The Abbey Pub
3420 West Grace Street, Chicago
Bernard Malamud was one of the most popular and acclaimed novelists of his time, but as literary fashions changed, his books were increasingly neglected. Now, a new generation of readers and writers is rediscovering his work. Aleksandar Hemon and Jonathan Lethem read from Malamud's novels and stories and talk about his importance today. Hemon is the author of
Nowhere Man and
The Question of Bruno; he wrote the introduction to the new edition of Malamud's novel
The Tenants. Lethem is the author of numerous books, including
The Fortress of Solitude and
Motherless Brooklyn; he wrote the introduction to the new edition of Malamud's novel
A New Life. Live music by Alex Koffman.
Naama Goldstein & Lara Vapnyar
I Have Only Just Arrived: New Voices
March 21 2006, 7:00 PM
The Abbey Pub
3420 West Grace Street, Chicago
Naama Goldstein and Lara Vapnyar arrived on the American literary scene at almost the same time, both publishing highly praised short-story collections in 2004. Their characters, too, tend to be recent arrivals, making the best of new lands and new situations. In
The Place Will Comfort You, Goldstein gives us stories of Americans in Israel, Israelis on Cape Cod, and a young girl, at home in two languages, but unsettled by a shivah call. In Vapnyar's
There Are Jews in My House, a shy math teacher is assigned to teach sex education to ninth-grade girls, and a Russian boy in Brooklyn tries to avoid translating his grandmother's complaints into English. Naama Goldstein moved to Israel in 1973, at the age of three, and returned to the United States in 1986. Lara Vapnyar emigrated from Russia to New York in 1994 and began publishing stories in English in 2002.
Nicole Krauss
The Book on Love
May 16 2006, 7:00 PM
The Abbey Pub
3420 West Grace Street, Chicago
As a young man in Poland, Leo Gursky fell in love and wrote a novel called
The History of Love. Sixty years later, we find him in New York, a locksmith living alone in a small apartment. His novel, meanwhile, has made its way to Chile, where it is published under a different man's name. Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is named for a character in the book, but when a stranger asks her mother to translate the novel into English, Alma decides to investigate. One mystery leads to another in Nicole Krauss' second novel,
The History of Love, as love leads to loss and, perhaps, back to love again. Nicole Krauss' first novel was
Man Walks Into a Room; her work has appeared in
The Paris Review and
The New Yorker.