Jonathan Ames, Lynn Harris & Neal Pollack
Hot & Bothered: An Evening in Bed
February 7 2006, 7:30 PM
Washington DCJCC
Nextbook presents an evening of erotic escapades, courtesy of writers Jonathan Ames, Lynn Harris, and 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.
Charming Hostess
Benjamin in Love: A Song Cycle
March 7 2006, 7:30 PM
Busboys & Poets
The three women who make up the a cappella group Charming Hostess (Jewlia Eisenberg, Marika Hughes, and Cynthia Taylor) describe their music as "nerdy-sexy-commie-girlie." In this performance, they portray the love affair between philosopher Walter Benjamin and Russian revolutionary Asja Lacis. Sexy, cerebral, and hilarious, the song cycle explores both their public debates (should he move to Palestine?) and their most intimate encounters: "We kissed at length. But the thing that excited me most was the touch of her hands." Based on the writings of Benjamin, Lacis, and Gershom Scholem, the songs can be found on the group's 2001 release,
Trilectic. Their latest cd,
Sarajevo Blues, juxtaposes music and text from the Jewish, African, and Bosnian diasporas to tell the story of a city under siege.
Shalom Auslander & Jonathan Goldstein
The New Jewish Radio
April 4 2006, 7:30 PM
Washington DCJCC
Some of the freshest voices in Jewish literature are now to be found not in the pages of a book (or not only there), but on the radio, thanks to Ira Glass'
This American Life. In "The Blessing Bee," Shalom Auslander tells how, as a yeshiva student, he memorized the proper blessings for various foods to please his mother, while accumulating sins to spite his father. He is the author of the short-story collection
Beware of God. Jonathan Goldstein is a contributor to
This American Life. He is the author of
Lenny Bruce is Dead and co-author of
Schmelvis: In Search of Elvis Presley's Jewish Roots.
Nicole Krauss
The Book on Love
May 17 2006, 7:30 PM
Washington DCJCC
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.