New York might have its official celluloid clusterfuck and its punk-rock stepsister Film Comment Selects delivering highbrow cinema and cocktail-party fare (not to mention NYAFF and its ilk, screening beauties that only occasionally reappear stateside), but no film fest marries cultured screenings with good ol' gore and broken bones like Austin's Fantastic Fest.

My math skills are a bit...nonexistent, but check it: 70+ features play over eight days, plus countless parties, secret screenings, and booze a'flowin'. The Alamo Drafthouse — pairing grub and grog with movies since '97 — hosts this bonkers event. Hell, screening room #3 becomes the “Shiner Bock Theatre” during the festival, meaning free pint of namesake lager with each film. 

"The nerds have completely conquered the universe. This is our world!"

—Tim League (Fantastic Fest founder, Alamo Drafthouse owner)

As I write this, I've seen “just” seven films. By the time you read it, I will have conquered 16. Somewhere in there, I caught the sound test for Dragon Sound's 25th anniversary reunion concert, karaoke'd in a Hulu-themed booth with a dozen Japanese guests. Time blurs in manifold waves during Fantastic Fest. Like, I think the autumn equinox just commenced. And I believe today, as I type this, is Saturday, but don't quote me on that.

“You are what you watch (and listen to); at Fantastic Fest, we are Motörhead.”

—Marc Savlov (Austin Chronicle) 

Kicking off the fest, Tim Burton unleashed some stop-animation enchantment with the world premiere of Frankenweenie 3D. This included a special "Dog Theatre," where tux-clad pooches and their natty human "guests" took in the film. Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby got my heart racing at the ensuing red-carpet for Dredd 3D. (NB. Back-to-back 3D screenings is an intense experience...but it helps when they contrast so nicely as poignant black-and-white Frankenweenie and ultraviolent, slo-mo stylizedDredd.)

“Fuck Christmas, Fuck Easter...Fantastic Fest is the greatest time of the year!”

—Luke Mullen (Fantastic Fest programmer, scribe for Film School Rejects)

Despite the fest's propensity for outlandish B-movie bijoux, there's a helluva lot of quality here. Last year, Michaël R. Roskam's debut Bullhead was shortlisted for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Academy Awards, after its Fantastic Fest premiere. Cannes mind-boggler Holy Motors plays this fest ahead of its NYFF premiere. And Adrián García Bogliano's scintillating Here Comes the Devil scored high-profile U.S. distribution via Magnet Releasing during right here in Austin fest. Bogliano and Fantastic Fest founder Tim League sabered a bottle of bubbly to celebrate.

More wildness awaits, including The ABC's of Death (one director and one creative kill for each letter of the alphabet!), an “extreme sushi” competition (before Dead Sushi's U.S. premiere), and this delightful gem from Chile called Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman. Tune in next week for my huge-ass Fantastic Fest wrap-up!

Images: main image and Here Comes the Devil champagne sabering photo by the author; film stills via Fantastic Fest; Dredd 3D red carpet via Austin Chronicle

“There are twenty-seven different definitions of the self,” I heard Siri Hustvedt say at the Brooklyn Book Festival yesterday. “So you had better decide which one you want to use before going any further.”

It reminded me of that morning, when Sheila Heti and Karl Ove Knausgaard faced a throng of literati at a discussion called "Ice or Salt: The Personal in Fiction." James Wood had acknowledged the former’s “surfeit of empathy”in How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life and the “ceaselessly compelling” quality of the latter’s My Struggle: Volume One. And both writers spoke out in contrast to the versions of the selves they’d presented on the page: Karl Ove read from one of the more meditative, “authorial” sections of My Struggle, while Sheila focused on a letter between herself and the sado-masochistic Israel.

Hustvedt, who was also on the panel with Knausgaard and Heti, noted how their books, despite hewing closely to real life, used novelistic conventions. The very act of forming art necessarily deformed the life from which it was drawn. The other two novelists nodded, throwing their hands up in mock-resignation. (Laurent Binet should have been on the panel solely on basis of HHhH.)

One of the most common (and certainly the most frustrating) questions authors must answer is whether their fiction is autobiographical — and then they have to explain how, and where exactly, and of course why. But why are we so fascinated by this divide, or lack thereof, between an artist’s life and an artist’s work? Why did the line for this event teem with so many people that it filled the second floor and most of the first floor of the Brooklyn Borough Hall Courtroom?

Because we are confused about our many definitions of selfhood, perhaps?

In my college creative-writing courses, I read thinly veiled autobiographies of near-suicides or first heartbreaks. It was a way to talk about the event without judging the person who had lived it. But I preferred the direction Sheila and Karl Ove took. To paraphrase Yeats, they resisted the impulse topack the personal in ice or salt; they actually used their own names.

A great deal of what makes us human is our evident self-consciousness. Because of this, we can think about ourselves as seen by others, as doing things not yet done, as different from our present and living selves in age or body or action. We can think about ourselves as others.

We want to know whether our books' authors are writing about themselves, because we want to know if it's possible to live two lives, to escape the one in the world by setting another one down on the page. We want to imagine that these different definitions of the self actually mean different selves.

It's clear that Sheila Heti and Karl Ove Knausgaard have grappled mightily with this question, and maybe even made some peace with it. They see their literary personae as separate selves, old and no-longer-personal selves that do not need to be packed in ice or salt. What we read is, to them, just another version to add to the hundreds of selves already in their heads.

image credit: elbauldeguardian.com

"A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit" —Phil Ochs

As we march past the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (or politely make our way around it), I’m reminded that nothing keeps a good protest going like music. Long before Tom Morello and Jeff Mangum played Zuccotti Park, musicians have been harnessing and amping up the power of the people in song. Here are a few personal favorites.
 

"Which Side Are You On?" (Traditional)

This union anthem’s central thesis never gets old. There may be some complicated situations in the current political climate, but really it all comes down to what I like to call the Star Wars test: are you on the dark side of the force, or are you with the people — the rebels and the workers, the downtrodden, the mothers, the regular folks against whom the system is most often rigged? Pete Seeger leads it off here:

"Bella Ciao" (Traditional)

Out west in the little town of Oakland, we have a radical marching band called the Brass Liberation Orchestra. Rain or shine, they keep protest crowds animated and motivated with their kick-ass brass action. Although they don’t play it much anymore, "Bella Ciao" is one of my favorite BLO numbers. The song was originally an Italian anti-fascist tune, and despite the language barrier it never ceases to get everyone singing along. Here’s a mostly English version by Chumbawumba:

Nina Simone: "Mississippi Goddam"

It feels almost wrong to try and write any words about this stark, furious classic. It’s that good. We should all bow down before Nina Simone, and listen as she lays the horrors of racism in America across her keyboards and pounds them out the way only a genius can. God damn.

Public Enemy: "Fight the Power"

It’s hard for me to separate this song from Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, in which it serves as a key narrative catalyst. Together, Lee and Public Enemy broadcast a potent cultural one-two punch that told America to wake up: racism is alive and well, and it's not going anywhere without a fight. As Chuck D says, "My beloved, let's get down to business."

Bikini Kill: "Suck My Left One"

Whether you love or hate its raw sound, riot grrl was the real deal, and this song is a chillingly straightforward “fuck you” to dudes who disrespect women. Hear it for the first time as a teenage girl, as I did, and you will never let misogyny go unaccounted for again.

Pulp: "Common People"

Okay, I wouldn’t technically categorize this as a protest song, but it’s an awesome, sneakily angry class-war fairytale. Brit-pop: dancin’ it out for the working-class since the fey 90s.

Bonus protest classics!

Woody Guthrie: "This Land is Your Land"
Phil Ochs: "I Ain’t Marching Anymore"
Sam Cooke: "A Change is Gonna Come"
Bob Marley & the Wailers: "Get Up, Stand Up"
Bob Dylan: "The Times They Are A-Changin’"
N.W.A.: "Fuck Da Police"
Billy Bragg: "Help Save the Youth of America"
Crass: "Do They Owe Us A Living"
Dead Kennedys: "California Über Alles"

…and about a million more. Leave your own faves in the comments. And then hit the streets.

Image: hiphop-n-more.com

The New Yorker counted Britain's Lawrence Norkolk among Europe’s best young novelists way back in '98, and yet he’s never quite made it across the pond. Not that he lacks for singularity — his first book, Lemprière’s Dictionary, concerns the writing of the Bibliotheca Classica, while The Pope’s Rhinoceros describes in encyclopedic detail the quest to bring a rhino from West Africa to the Pope. (One can only imagine what Sharon Olds would do with this title.)

Norfolk's Shakespearean vocabulary and voluminous range of historical references don’t make him an easy read, but with his newest book, John Saturnall’s Feast, he uses them in service of a far simpler story: the coming-of-age of an orphaned kitchen boy who, through his skill in cooking, slowly begins seducing the lord's daughter. Never before have I read a book so laden with food — archaic food, pungent food, weird food. To give you a bit of the book’s flavor profile, here are a few of the delicacies I ended up researching. (Vegetarians: run for your lives.)

Forcemeat

The first step in preparing sausages, pâtés, quenelles, and other meat-stuffed dishes. Raw meat is emulsified with fat by being ground or puréed together. Forcemeats can be made straight without additional ingredients, country-style with liver and other spices mixed in, gratin with some of the meat cooked before emulsification, or mousseline with cream and eggs for a lighter texture.

Madeira Sugar

Sugarcane had been growing on Madeira, just off of Portugal, and in the first half of the 17th century (when John Saturnall’s Feast takes place) no other major sources of sugar were available. Consequently, dishes that featured the “sweet salt” were rare. John Saturnall labors for days with it to create a transparent tart; he declares it is “for Tantalus” because of the jewels cooked inside, visible through the jelly.

Bukkenade

A stew of beef or veal usually including eggs and several spices, from hyssop to cloves and mace. “Sharpened” with verjuice (from sour fruits) or vinegar, the preparation makes a hearty concoction for the cold winter nights weathered in the manor. Even in John Saturnall’s time, however, the stew was considered “ancient,” and the best recipes online are written inMiddle English.

And that's not all. Norfolk has posted a glossary of even more obscure concoctions online. As I looked through the recipes that prefaced each chapter, it became increasingly clear that, even with the advances of modern technology and global cuisine, cooking nowadays is hardly as downright strange as it was in John Saturnall’s time. We owe Norfolk our thanks for keeping it alive.

And now, if you'll exuse me, I must check on my chawdron: "A black sauce made with boiled giblets and offal (especially liver) and often served with roasted swan."

Kitchen image credit: skiptoncastle.co.uk; Forcemeat image credit: kitchenmusings.com; Sugarcane image credit: madeirahelp.com; Bukkenade image credit: medievalcookery.com

Slate just did a great overview of the history of the jingle, to the tune that every generation wants new cool things, and to be told about them in a different way. Which is way true. At a glance, the Fifties were for International Style (although I have no idea how Eames chairs were supposed to be comfortable); Eighties fashions, unfortunately, are making a comeback (but everybody knows those neon colors are retro, notcool, right?); and the Noughties were all about shiny glass and brushed steel, courtesy of Macintosh.

But that’s the past. Let’s talk about the future according to the ones making it all up. Here’s a doubleplusfast overview of big brands and products soon to come!

Soma (Brave New World)

I can rattle off seven brand-name drugs (Prozac, Klonopin, Valium, Vicodin, Advil, Excedrin, Prilosec) faster than I can name the Seven Dwarfs (Dopey, Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc, Grumpy, Happy ... Bashful?), so it’s no surprise that one of the greatest dystopian novels of all time, Brave New World, revolves around the pleasure drug Soma. The stuff sounds pretty strong, and lasts a dangerously long time: “half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon.” And when characters realize they haven’t got the magic drug, they whine in catchphrases: “A gramme is better than a damn.” Above and beyond all the other possibilities in this list, I'd say Big Pharma is the real future.

Depend Adult Undergarment (the year, not the undergarment; Infinite Jest)

David Foster Wallace had a few hilarious ideas about the near future. In particular, calendar years were to be sponsored by corporations (Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, Year of the Whopper), and Ian Crouch has considered the real-life twists on this joke. But really, it’s not so strange to imagine that kind of sponsorship becoming normal. People joked about the iPad and female sanitary products, but those quick-witted tweeters were no match for the almighty Apple.

Diet GingerCoke (In Persuasion Nation)

I have a soft spot for George Saunders, in large part because his characters really believe in their brands. In one story, the titular Jon is part of a collective compound that mainlines advertisements from Prudential Life to Honey Grahams (especially LI 34321) and does Assessments for products like Diet GingerCoke. If you’ve got companies raising their own focus groups, you know you’re going to get the best advertisements ever.

ColgatePalmoliveYum!BrandsViacomCredit (Super Sad True Love Story)

Welcome to the not-too-distant future: a world run by conglomerations like GlaxoSmithKline, only with a little bit more “global” and a little less “local.” Our hapless narrator, Lenny Abramov, flies on a UnitedContinentalDeltamerican plane, and ColgatePalmoliveYum!BrandsViacomCredit (don’t forget the exclamation mark) doesn’t even have a focused purpose anymore, except to wield more power than the government. But hey, in Gary Shteyngart's vision future, everybody can rate each other and talk in Netspeak!

Mattel Hoverboards (Back to the Future Part II)

Fine, I know we're talking about books, but I grew up watching Marty McFly hitting 88 miles per hour on that DeLorean, and Back to the Future II was easily my favorite film in the trilogy. When I first saw it — around the time jingles were reduced to the "cannibalization of the pop charts and an endless parade of kitsch," according to Slate — I thought it was super futuristic: 3D ads for Jaws? Gigantic televisions that show multiple channels? And I am definitely psyched to see that the film’s predictions for 2015 are closer to fact than fiction. Still waiting on the Hoverboards, though.

image credit: jeanpaulreparon.blogspot.com

style="margin: 1em 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: AvenirNextLTW01-Regular; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; ">First, some cold, hard facts.

FACT: A signed first edition of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch will set you back $2,000 at Powell’s City of Books.
FACT: You can get it in digital format for $10.91, or free if you’re willing to click on some sketchy-looking pdfs.
FACT: I sometimes miss holding things in my hands.
FACT: It’s not an either/or proposition.

Last week I visited Portland, Oregon; naturally, my first stop was Powell’s and its 68,000 square feet of books. While it does have thriving e-book and print-on-demand departments, Powell’s is primarily a living monument to the printed word, a magical place where throngs of readers crowd the aisles in the middle of a weekday.

I had been thinking a lot about the alleged death of print, so I climbed the stairs to the Pearl Room, which houses the rare books. The rare books are kept in a climate-controlled glass enclosure and monitored by a friendly and vigilant employee; the room has more in common with a museum than with the ramshackle chaos of the fiction aisles downstairs.

The attendant and I get to talking, and soon enough I've arrived at several theories about the future of the printed word.

1. A book’s value is not necessarily linked to content, but a book’s value is totally linked to content. Popularity can decrease value because when a book is popular, more copies are printed, and editions become ordinary. The most exciting collectibles work both angles: they surpass popularity and vault into that unique realm we call a “classic” or (machismo intended here) “seminal.” East of Eden versus Eat Pray Love is no contest. However,East of Eden versus the first Harry Potter might get tricky, due to the ever-present wrench of fan obsession. And cover art matters.

2. E-books and e/print hybrids push readers away from collecting because the content is not encased in a physical object; it is always available, always floating in the ether and ready for consumption.

3. At the same time, e-books push us in a more accelerated fashion toward collecting books, because we fetishize the physical object more. When technologies go obsolete, their artifacts become more collectible. The boards and pulp become special. Rare.

4. As publishers get more creative with electronic and hybrid print/electronic packages, what constitutes a “collectible” edition of a given title is unclear.

5. As books change, bookstores will change. Powell’s may become more of a museum and less of a store — an archive, a physical representation of literature. It’s already halfway there: most of the customers I see crowding the entryway are there to buy souvenir tote bags and t-shirts, not books.

6. I don’t think printed books will ever disappear entirely, but they are certainly in the process of losing their popular monopoly. As e-books grow in prominence, used bookstores grow more specialized; independent stores will carry a smaller spectrum of titles geared toward small, dedicated audiences. Like vinyl record stores, bookstores are on their way to becoming boutique retailers, with a customer base made up of aesthetes and collectors. Print freaks.

7. Powell’s has a 1924 edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables hand bound by Virginia Woolf. It’s $9,500. When I hold it, even through plastic, I pause. I think about Woolf’s hands holding it. She madethis book. Does that make me want to read it? Not particularly. But it kind of makes me want to take it home and pet it whenever I want.

Images courtesy the author

I've always surrounded myself with music, beginning with my parents' vinyl collection. Spilling from their tattered jackets, these albums kicked off my life soundtrack, prefiguring my omnipresent iPod and my NYC record-store route. This same LP-love forms the soul of Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon's hot-blooded and utterly human novel, which drops today.

In the Bay Area sweet spot bordering Berkeley and Oakland, Chabon gives dap to card-collecting culture, comic books, and kung fu. But it's music that reigns supreme, underlining Chabon's prose, so I've devised a playlist inspired by Telegraph Avenue's tracks and my own personal experience in reading it. Tune in:

Jimmy Smith “Root Down (And Get It)” (Root Down Live, Verve Records, 1972)

"Good heart is eighty-five percent of everything in life." —Cochise Jones

At Telegraph Avenue's core is Brokeland Records, co-owned by childhood friends Archy (cool-headed brother) and Nat (kvetching hothead). Their spouses Gwen (very pregnant, very independent) and Aviva are the Berkeley Birth Partners, midwifing for a mostly white, well-to-do clientele. All good, right?

Miles Davis “Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another” (On the Corner, Columbia, 1972)

"I am building a monastery, if you like, for the practice of vinyl kung fu. And I am asking you to come be my abbot." —Gibson Goode

Then the stylus skips. Archy's got a fuckup or two in him yet, like unacknowledged teen son Titus reentering the picture and drawing the infatuation of Nat and Aviva's film-freak son, Julius (call him “Julie”). Add Archy's dad Luther and Jet-espoused entrepreneur Gibson Goode, whose planned Dogpile Megastore (think Tower Records on soul-jazz steroids) spells Brokeland's demise, and shit gets real.

Carole King “It's Too Late” (Tapestry, Ode Records, 1971)

"Swear. On the soul of your mother, who raised you to be a better man than that." —Gwen Shanks

Like in his pulpy whirlwind The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Chabon's multisensory prose plunges us into the souls of his players. Heady aromas from an Ethiopian restaurant mingle with the intoxication of a man's infidelity. Lingos befitting hotrods and honeys blend in degrees that would make Quentin Tarantino blush. Chabon knows when to pare it down, too, turning an affectionate gesture between teenaged boys into something deeper: "They hooked hands at the thumbs and bumped chests. Titus wrapped an arm around Julie. Julie felt protected in the lingering embrace, though he knew that when Titus let go of him, he was going to feel nothing but abandoned."

The Winstons “Amen, Brother” (Color Him Father, Metromedia, 1969)

"Do what you got to do, and stay fly." —Valletta Moore

Soul, in at least two senses of the word, figures into the book's most scene-stealing, goosebump-inducing cameo. While Archy pinch-hits on bass at a fundraiser, a certain former Senator from Illinois approaches Gwen, reflecting: “The lucky ones are the people like your husband there. The ones who find work that means something to them. That they can really put their heart into, however foolish it might look to other people.”

DJ Shadow “Midnight in a Perfect World” (Endtroducing....., Mo' Wax, 1996)
Crate-digging memories and dreams in my own Brokeland. [—author]

HarperCollins unveils Telegraph Avenue today with an enhanced e-book edition, featuring Chabon's own playlist, audio clips narrated by Treme'sClarke Peters (I internalized his voice while reading Archy's part), and more. Plus, for you lucky locals: Oakland's Diesel Books has become a “Brokeland Records” pop-up store through September 14, replete with requisite jazz LPs for sale. Time for that overdue trip out West.

Image: DJ Shadow Endtroducing..... via Discogs

Reviews of Zadie Smith's fourth novel, NW, have been, to put it kindly, mixed. Much of the criticism seems to stem from Smith's “indecision” throughout the novel: it's divided into four very different sections, all of which suck the reader in before tearing them away. As someone who rather liked the book, I found that each section read best in a specific place. Likewise, the wrong reading location had profound effects on my enjoyment of the book, and I had to stake out a better reading territory. Perhaps if Michiko Kakutani had taken the same guess-and-check approach, she wouldn't have called NW "a much smaller, more meager book than White Teeth.”

Below, I share some of the best places to read each section (no spoilers, I promise). After all, if environment affects how we learn to read, why shouldn’t it also affect how we read?

Section 1: Visitation
Ideal Reading Location: Home, on a nice day
The novel opens in the quiet, beautiful apartment of Leah Halwell, one of the book's duller characters. Excitement happens once in a while, but for the most part, you may find yourself getting up for another drink or flipping open your laptop to scan your newsfeed once in a while. Any time I tried to read the slow, thoughtful pacing of this section on the subway, I was distracted by my seatmate's gum chewing or the conductor's garbled announcements. A casual, serene location, much like Leah's apartment, was the best place to acclimate myself to Smith's intricate, cherry-picked prose.

Section 2: Guest
IRL: The subway
The action starts chugging along with the introduction of Felix, a drug-dealer-cum-mechanic who's ready to settle down. Reading this section in a cramped subway car on my way to work proved to be the ideal distraction during my commute. Smith seems to hit her stride here, throwing in characters that maintain a fairytale shimmer despite their brutally realistic settings. It's a harsh awakening from the first section of the book, and it goes hand-in-hand with shrieking brakes and whooshing doors.

Section 3: Host
IRL: Lunch
Reading over lunch is always a struggle: turn the page, take a bite, read a paragraph while chewing, don't spill, repeat. It helps that this section is chopped into manageable, diary-like entries. Again, this section is a big change from the last one, and the biggest departure from what I consider the tried and true Zadie Smith voice. She even went the Tao Lin route and threw in some gchat transcripts, which for many, will take some time to digest.

Section 4: Crossing/Visitation
IRL: Park bench
After a somewhat bizarre revelation that occurs in the previous section, you'll need to sit down and focus. Your neighborhood park may help you feel closer to the community Smith works so hard to examine in the novel. Grab a seat away from the dog park and playground; no time for distractions now. NW may be a chore to get through, but in the end, the characters keep drawing you back. If you've read any of Smith's other books, you know she likes to give her characters their comeuppances. The book's finale is pretty messy, but after all this time you've spent with it, you'll be eager to see what becomes of everyone — of these vivid characters who have become your neighbors, lunchmates, and groggy fellow passengers.

Image: ew.com