Ben Bush's Blog, page 4

A Hundred Syncopated Pacemakers: An Evening with Adam Wilson and Darius James

I got to read with Darius James, Adam Wilson, and Daniel Hamilton at Mellow Pages Library in Bushwick back on Oct.17th. Adam read a very new short story–more recent even than the ones in his forthcoming story collection What’s Important is Feeling. The stock market, hard drugs and the angular kinks in human anatomy were involved. Over the years, Darius has written a series of Christmas stories for an ex-pat magazine in Berlin, one of which, the hilarious  “Froggy Chocolates’ Christmas” was anthologized in Paul Beatty’s Hokum. Darius read a piece from that serious about one very drunk Christmas in the LES. I read from “The Unloading” about an IMF worker’s visit to Paraguay. More information below.

A HUNDRED SYNCOPATED PACEMAKERS:

AN EVENING WITH DARIUS JAMES,

ADAM WILSON AND MORE

October 17 7:30 pm

Two paragons of poor taste—two offensive linemen known for crossing the line—team up on the gridiron of Mellow Pages Library for an evening of filmic appropriation and stealth assaults on language. Darius James and Adam Wilson will be joined by musical guest Island Boy as well as Daniel Hamilton and Ben Bush.

 

Darius James reading at Mellow Pages

Darius James is the author of Negrophobia: An Urban Parable and That’s Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss ‘Tude (Rated X by an All’Whyte Jury). He co-wrote and appeared in the 2013 documentary The United States of Hoodoo. James also wrote the Ask Dr. Snakeskin column for Penthouse magazine.

Adam Wilson is the author of Flatscreen and the forthcoming

collection of short stories What’s Important is Feeling. His writing has appeared in Paris Review, Tin House, and New York Tyrant.

Island Boy’s electro-pop songcraft is the the work of Richard Hunter-Rivera. Mixing tender vocals, eerie synths, and ambient guitar washes with drum and bass loops composed on an AKAI MPC, Hunter-Rivera’s music pays homage to the art of modern songwriting while at the same time exploring new recording processes that result in dense, cinematic, and surreal soundscapes. Island Boy’s debut, a self-titled EP was released in late 2012 on Rita Records (ritarecords.com)

Daniel Hamilton is a writer, graduate student, and teacher from Brooklyn by way of Los Angeles by way of Massachusetts. He’s a reader,, but secretly prefers to watch movies. Daniel is an active social media user who maintains relevant accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and most recently, Vine. All of his accounts are anonymous.

Ben Bush’s fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming in Yeti, The Literary Review, and The Fanzine. He has contributed to The Believer, San Francisco Chronicle, Poets & Writers, and Bitch.

Mellow Pages Library

56 Bogart St. Brooklyn, NY 11206

(near the Morgan stop on the L train.

Like Trenton, But Without the Thrills

I’ve got an essay about poster artist / rock novelist / baseball historian / narco-troubador Camden Joy / Tom Adelman up over at the Los Angeles Review of Books. “I always thought of Camden Joy as something that would carry you through the darkest times.” A portion of this essay was presented as a talk at the 2013 Midwest Modern Language Association conference. My co-panelists included Adam Wilson, Trinie Dalton, and David. N. Meyer. The panel was moderated by Prof. Samuel Cohen (University of Missouri). Tom Adelman served as keynote speaker for the conference.

A Story Called > <

I’ve got a raunchy 8,000-word monster of a story in the current issue of The Literary Review. “Even though we hadn’t spoken in months, my older brother had called me up to help him move out of the collective farm where he’d spent the last 3½ years of his life. Since I’d last seen him, he’d grown a beatnik soul patch on his lower lip and a Hitler mustache on the upper: inversions of each other.” TLR’s a great journal that’s included Percival Everett, Adam Wilson, and in the current issue Charles Simic. Print and e-book. http://amzn.to/1cWsTA0

Brian Dewan! Stacey Levine! Monica Youn!

Stacey Levine photographed by David Moscovich

This was a reading / concert I put together at Unnameable Books on what proved to be one of the hottest days of the year. David Moscovich did a great write-up of it for Electronic Books’

Stacey Levine is the author of Frances Johnson, Girl with Brown Fur, and Dra-. Her collection My Horse and Other Stories won the PEN/West Fiction Award. “Stacey Levine ignores lyricism as an evolutionary dead end. Life is fractious and dire, her prose style says; let fiction serve as razor and torch.” –Bookforum

Brian Dewan photographed by David Moscovich

Brian Dewan performs original compositions as well as odd traditional folk songs using electric zither/autoharp, accordion, organ and homemade electronics. Dewan’s invention the Swarmatron was used extensively in the soundtrack to The Social Network. His visual art has appeared on album artwork for David Byrne, Neutral Milk Hotel and They Might Be Giants. Dewan has also performed a series of educational film strips, one of which was included on the first of McSweeney’s Wholpin DVDs.

Monica Youn is the author of the National Book Award finalist Ignatz, a collection of poetry themed around George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strips series, which ran from 1913 to 1944 and featured a love triangle between a police officer dog, a good-hearted cat and an anarchist mouse. She is also the author of the collection Barter, active as a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice and has appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

This reading also led to Stacey Levine’s story “He Wanted All Galenans to Know He Was Real” in The Fanzine and as a chapbook from David Moscovich’s Louffa Press.

Plummeting Appliances, Dying Verbs, Enslaved Automatons, and Other Objects

Photograph by Diego Sierralto

This reading, which included Joshua Cohen, Louis Chude-Sokei, Jim Krusoe, Joanna Ruocco, and Matthew Derby, was held at 601 Artspace and coincided with their exhibit The Unspecific Index, which contained largely photographic works dealing with post-human ontology. There were works by John Baldessari, love letters from Buckminster Fuller, and a photographic piece by George Christoph Lichtnberg that Louis and I are examining in the photo above. Louis read a great piece on Joice Heth, a sometimes slave owned/employed by P.T. Barnum and exhibited variously as George Washington’s 100+ year-old wet nurse or as an android, depending on Barnum’s interpretation of the audience’s whims. The piece will appear in a forthcoming issue of McSweeney’s The Believer. All five writers’ talks can be watched here. Additional information about the event and photographs can be viewed here.

Seven Bedtimes for Seven Bonzos

I have a short story in the lush perfect-bound issue 13 of Yeti magazine, which also has a sweet-ass 7-inch record in its back cover and boggling illustrations throughout. Yeti has previously published some of my favorite authors, such as Trinie Dalton, Stacey Levine, and Kevin Sampsell, but also musical contributions from Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, Will Oldham, The Blow, Devendra Banhart, etc.  “According to their testimony, the three co-defendants had met wile flipping ollies in the drained swimming pools and of suburban southern California and had gone on to serve as graphic designers and principal investors in their own product line of extreme sports clothing.” The story is set largely in Cambodia and Indonesia of the 1970s and asks questions about ownership and imagery. You can buy it here.

Brian Dewan! Stacey Levine! Monica Youn!

Stacey Levine photographed by David Moscovich

This was a reading / concert I put together at Unnameable Books on what proved to be one of the hottest days of the year. David Moscovich did a great write-up of it for Electronic Books’ Stacey Levine is the author of Frances Johnson, Girl with Brown Fur, and Dra-. Her collection My Horse and Other Stories won the PEN/West Fiction Award. “Stacey Levine ignores lyricism as an evolutionary dead end. Life is fractious and dire, her prose style says; let fiction serve as razor and torch.” –Bookforum

Brian Dewan photographed by David Moscovich

Brian Dewan performs original compositions as well as odd traditional folk songs using electric zither/autoharp, accordion, organ and homemade electronics. Dewan’s invention the Swarmatron was used extensively in the soundtrack to The Social Network. His visual art has appeared on album artwork for David Byrne, Neutral Milk Hotel and They Might Be Giants. Dewan has also performed a series of educational film strips, one of which was included on the first of McSweeney’s Wholpin DVDs. Monica Youn is the author of the National Book Award finalist Ignatz, a collection of poetry themed around George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strips series, which ran from 1913 to 1944 and featured a love triangle between a police officer dog, a good-hearted cat and an anarchist mouse. She is also the author of the collection Barter, active as a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice and has appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews. This reading also led to Stacey Levine’s story “He Wanted All Galenans to Know He Was Real” in The Fanzine and as a chapbook from David Moscovich’s Louffa Press.

A Hundred Syncopated Pacemakers: An Evening with Adam Wilson and Darius James

I got to read with Darius James, Adam Wilson, Daniel Hamilton, and the band Island Boy at Mellow Pages Library in Bushwick. More information below.

A HUNDRED SYNCOPATED PACEMAKERS:

AN EVENING WITH DARIUS JAMES,

ADAM WILSON AND MORE

October 17 7:30 pm

Two paragons of poor taste—two offensive linemen known for crossing the line—team up on the gridiron of Mellow Pages Library for an evening of filmic appropriation and stealth assaults on language. Darius James and Adam Wilson will be joined by musical guest Island Boy as well as Daniel Hamilton and Ben Bush.

Darius James is the author of Negrophobia: An Urban Parable and That’s Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss ‘Tude (Rated X by an All’Whyte Jury). He co-wrote and appeared in the 2013 documentary The United States of Hoodoo. James also wrote the Ask Dr. Snakeskin column for Penthouse magazine.

Adam Wilson is the author of Flatscreen and the forthcoming collection of short stories What’s Important is Feeling. His writing has appeared in Paris Review, Tin House, and New York Tyrant.

Island Boy’s electro-pop songcraft is the the work of Richard Hunter-Rivera. Mixing tender vocals, eerie synths, and ambient guitar washes with drum and bass loops composed on an AKAI MPC, Hunter-Rivera’s music pays homage to the art of modern songwriting while at the same time exploring new recording processes that result in dense, cinematic, and surreal soundscapes. Island Boy’s debut, a self-titled EP was released in late 2012 on Rita Records (ritarecords.com)

Daniel Hamilton is a writer, graduate student, and teacher from Brooklyn by way of Los Angeles by way of Massachusetts. He’s a reader,, but secretly prefers to watch movies. Daniel is an active social media user who maintains relevant accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and most recently, Vine. All of his accounts are anonymous.

Ben Bush’s fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming in Yeti, The Literary Review, and The Fanzine. He has contributed to The Believer, San Francisco Chronicle, Poets & Writers, and Bitch.

Mellow Pages Library

56 Bogart St. Brooklyn, NY 11206

(near the Morgan stop on the L train.

A Story Called > <

I’ve got a raunchy 8,000-word monster of a story in the current issue of The Literary Review. “Even though we hadn’t spoken in months, my older brother had called me up to help him move out of the collective farm where he’d spent the last 3½ years of his life. Since I’d last seen him, he’d grown a beatnik soul patch on his lower lip and a Hitler mustache on the upper: inversions of each other.” TLR’s a great journal that’s included Percival Everett, Adam Wilson, and in the current issue Charles Simic. Print and e-book. http://amzn.to/1cWsTA0

Like Trenton, But Without the Thrills

I’ve got an essay about poster artist / rock novelist / baseball historian / narco-troubador Camden Joy / Tom Adelman up over at the Los Angeles Review of Books. “I always thought of Camden Joy as something that would carry you through the darkest times.” http://owl.li/swdrM