Our September events!

Jonathan Lethem reurns to LA on Tuesday, September 24th

http://www.skirball.org/programs/readings-talks/jonathan-lethem

5 Questions with Sam Halpern, author of A Far Piece to Canaan

1. How does an accomplished professor of nuclear medicine come to write fiction?

I’ve been writing since I was five. My first composition was in red crayon on the living room wall. My mother panned what I considered a brilliant piece of work. My interest in writing has continued all my life. Even as my medical career and family responsibilities increased, I continued to write, getting up before dawn to get in an hour or two before going to work. Eventually demands of career and family forced a hiatus in my writing, but when I retired from academia, I took up writing full time.

2. What is your favorite stop in Los Angeles?

That’s easy -- the home of Justin, Amanda and my grandson, Nathaniel.

3. Who are your literary influences?

First comes Mark Twain. Twain is the most important Southern writer and has had a huge influence on all American literature.  I think Huckleberry Finn initiated a new writing style when it was published; one so close to the people and places he wrote about that it invites you to appreciate the story with all five of your senses. Another writer who influenced me was John Steinbeck. I don’t know how many times I’ve read Of Mice and Men and his other short novels. Grapes of wrath, of course, helped change our nation.  Steinbeck was a great story teller, and readers remember his characters because they were so close to our own humanity. Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea taught me that a writer must know his characters so well they can enter their souls and put more than just their thoughts on paper.
 
4.You are perhaps infamous for your frank and colorful advice. What advice would you give to young writers?

The first thing you need to do is read one book that covers such things as person, point of view, arc, etc. then throw the son of a bitch away and don’t look in another one. Read good literature by accomplished authors and see how they used the rules of writing. Then stop screwing around, sit your ass down and write. Don’t write about molecular biology if you think a base pair is a piece of bad fruit. Write what you know. Get a writing group together, people who read good literature and are serious about writing. Don’t have more than six people in the group and five is optimal. Check your ego at the door and listen to the criticism of what you read.  Evaluate every critique when you get home and take time to consider it.  I have a rule. If one person thinks something needs changing and no one else does, I give it serious thought, but if two people think it needs changing, I make changes. Finally, if you want to write for publication and keep getting rejection letters from agents, do not stop writing! Remember, if you slam your guts against a door long enough people will open it, if for no other reason than to get rid of the noise.

5. What was it like to watch William Shatner play you on a television program?

It was funny. Many years ago some magazine voted Shatner one of the sexiest men in America. I’ve been homely as a mud fence all my life. I laughed for months about Shatner playing me.    

August events have just been announced!

Don't forget, Corey Taylor is at Book Soup tonight!

Sunset Strip Music Festival Saturday, Agust 3rd

Don't forget about the Sunset Strip Music Festival which takes place again on Saturday, August 3rd just down the street from us on Sunset between San Vicente Boulevard and Doheney Drive.  This year's bill features Wale, Asher Roth, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and headliners Linkin Park.  And while you are in the neighborhood stop in at Book Soup to peruse the best music books selection on this or any coast!

A few of our favorites:

Rock 'N' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip by Robert Landau

Landau was born & raised in Los Angeles and steeped in the urban landscape, particularly the Sunset Strip which he has photographed extensively since the seventies.  This is essentially viewing for classic rock fans!

Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess by Danny Sugarman 

Embraced by rock & roll at a very young age, Sugerman escaped a troubled family life to the only world he could ever imagine living in.  He followed The Doors closely, first as a fan, then a kind of roadie, and eventual manager.  He pushed it to the limit too, throwing himself into the rock & roll lifestyle with all he had.  This book recounts a remarkable journey and offers a backstage look at a tender Jim Morrson and wild Iggy Pop.

The Art of Punk by Russ Bestley & Alex Ogg

Starving artists forging a new sound with no rules and no idea what they would do after the next gig.  Captured brilliantly by Bestley & Ogg, this book lovingly illustrates the histories of iconic bands from homemade gig flyers to major and indie record label deals.

between San Vicente Boulevard and Doheny Drive

between San Vicente Boulevard and Doheny Drive

5 Questions with Matthew Specktor, author of American Dream Machine

1. You are a founding editor of LA Review of Books.  Tell us how that came about.
As you know, Los Angeles is one of the largest book markets in the country. All of us were a little surprised there wasn't a Los Angeles Review of Books already. (After all, New York has one, London has one . . . ) Tom Lutz, LARB's editor in chief, had a strong belief that books coverage was declining in many traditional venues--newspapers cutting or shrinking their Sunday book review supplements and so on--but that readership, and interest in books, hasn't declined in the slightest. As it happens, he was absolutely correct. But we saw a need for it, for an expansive site that would provide essays and cultural commentary of all sorts, including thoughtful, provocative pieces about books. Between the five of us (the original founding editors of LARB: Tom, myself, Evan Kindley, Julie Cline, and Lisa Jane Persky), we knew a lot of writers we felt might be willing to contribute to such a site, if it existed. And so we started working the phones, so to speak. It was that simple.

2. Favorite stop in LA?

Besides Book Soup? Well, I have to give a certain amount of credit to King's Road Cafe, since I wrote most of American Dream Machine there at a corner table, under the influence of their astonishingly strong coffee. I'm partial to Musso & Frank, when I want to old school it. Pizzeria Mozza when I'm feeling flush.

3. Who are your literary influences?

Too many to mention. Writers to whom I return often include Philip Roth, Wallace Stevens, Henry James, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Denis Johnson, Nabokov, Saul Bellow, James Salter, Pynchon. Contemporaries I love would include Jonathan Lethem, Dana Spiotta, Maggie Nelson, John Jeremiah Sullivan. Right now I'm reading the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's "My Struggle" and it's thrilling me to bits.

4. American Dream Machine is about many things, but very much an LA book.  Do you have a favorite book about Los Angeles or the film industry in particular?

Again, there are so many. It really varies according to mood. Ones I've enjoyed (or re-enjoyed) recently include Robert Stone's Children of Light and Steve Erickson's Rubicon Beach, though I guess the former is more an "industry novel" than a "Los Angeles" one. I just started David Freeman's A Hollywood Education, which I'm told is quite wonderful as well.

5. You wrote a book about George Roy Hill's 1973 film The Sting. Any chance you will publish more film criticism?

I certainly hope so. I love writing criticism, whether of film, literature, music. Really I don't distinguish terribly between fiction and criticism. Writing of any kind is essentially reader-response. I'm talking back to the texts that have made me. Criticism is just a little more direct in doing this, is all. I loved writing about The Sting, which delights me every bit as much today as it did when I was a kid (and I've surely seen it more than twenty times, by now. At least). I'd love to write at length about Altman, or about Hal Ashby . . .



Matthew Specktor discusses & signs his novel American Dream Machine at Book Soup on Wednesday, July 10th at 7pm.

Tosh Berman discusses Sparks-tastic! with the LA Review of Books

https://soundcloud.com/lareviewofbooks/larb-podcast-34-tosh-berman

Space Is The Place - more summer music from Zoie!

Space is the Place! from BookSoup on 8tracks Radio.

5 Questions with Iris Smyles!

Iris Smyles discusses & signs her novel Iris Has Free Time Monday, June 24th at 7pm.

1. Are you a fan of Colt 45?
 “It works every time.” Who am I to argue with Billy Dee Williams?

2. Favorite stop in LA?
The museum of Jurassic Technology and The Griffith Observatory are devoted respectively to my two favorite things: fiction masquerading as truth, and space!

3. Who are your literary influences?
Proust is a big one. Like me, he was a dilettante partier until he was 30 when he decided, seemingly out of nowhere, to retire from social life, retreat to his bedroom, and essentially stay there until he’d completed the semi-autobiographical novels comprising, In Search of Lost Time. A roman a clef, my novel is modeled in part after his; certainly Proust is its patron saint as Iris Has Free Time is about lost time, too.

4. Fictional character you love to hate and/or least admire.
 Larry Darrell is still the worst thing about young people today.

5. Describe your book in a tweet (140 characters or less)
Youth in its twilight.