Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 3

The Jacob S. Knabb really wants you to see this outtake from our photo shoot. And we do too. Enjoy.

The New York Stories (and friends) is Curbside Yuletide Party thing.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode One Hundred and Twenty-Three - I'm Going To Get My Voice Out There, starring the Amy Guth.

Wow are we so Guth podcast. But that's not all, yo. We are also Three Fallen Women, life as a radio personality, The Pilcrow Lit Fest, The Fixx Reading Series, Megan Stielstra, always, Strangewaze, the Association for Women Journalists-Chicago, The Op-Ed Project Public Voices Fellowship, the Guth's new documentary series on women and online harassment and much, much more. So much more. So do check it out, because it just might, nay, will, change your life.

"A keen work of literary art worthy of your attention." The New York Stories. The CCM/Entropy. The Joseph G. Peterson. And many appreciations.

Most definitely appreciations for the CCM/Entropy and the Peterson. And yes, many at that. Excerpt? Of course. Always.

"The Tanzer style evolves from the pithy speech and the dialogic to-and-fro of David Mamet’s early plays. If the 1986 movie classic, About Last Night, enacts a cinematic variation on Mamet’s theatrical production, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, then Tanzer’s opus enacts prose variations on About Last Night.

In other words, in so far as About Last Night softens and laughs up the hard edge of Mamet so too does Tanzer take his cue and fill in comic color around the dark and mean parameters of Mamet’s vision. Both writers, Tanzer and early Mamet, are distinctly urban, Gold Coast Chicago, male-centric and minimalistic. But in my view Tanzer’s take is more generous and open than Mamet’s. While Mamet is ultimately a tragic dramatist, Tanzer’s worldview is ultimately comic and, should I say, more loving and, yes, there is tragedy and hurt here as well."

Lost in Space is awesomely Curbside Splendor $5 books winter haul indeed.

$5 books! TY @CurbsidePress for my winter haul! @ambernoelle @meganstielstra @BenTanzer @carrielorig @frankielliot pic.twitter.com/B3cOdndttY

— Danaë Aurora Fuentes (@wnDEEctyprtty) December 16, 2015

Fitzpatrick. Scanlon. Hopper. Tran. Lansana. Reidy. Makkai. Butler. Tanzer. Curbside Yuletide Book Party. Beauty Bar. 7:00 PM. December 17th.

SEX AND DEATH is quite kick-ass blurb from the quite kick-ass Tom Williams.

"With artful guilelessness and an ability to never look away from the world's miseries and ecstasies, Tanzer has done it again: populated his fictions with people and places and situations so vivid that the pages shimmer and pulse with vitality and purpose." --Tom Williams, author of Among The Wild Mulattos and Other Tales

And more to come.

SEX AND DEATH and feels about stuff.

@BenTanzer made me feel ways about stuff at City Lit Saturday night. pic.twitter.com/MIWeUcdKPK— Zach Yontz (@zontz) December 7, 2015

"Like getting a totally sweet hand job from someone with an MFA." The New York Stories is Clash "10 Best Books of 2015" list. And in ridiculously fine company at that.

Really fine. And most appreciated. So please do check it out. Excerpt? Always.

"Harkens back to the golden age of dirty realism, where Carver and A.M. Holmes and Gaitskill and Tobias Wolff were all your tightest bros. Tanzer’s the best, man." 

"I READ A SCI-FI BOOK Y'ALL and will read one again but ONLY when Ben writes another one." All hail the Leesa Cross-Smith. And the Orphans too, yo.

All hail indeed. And much appreciative for the Cross-Smith we are. Excerpt? Of course.

"I read this from cover to cover, MY FIRST TIME and I would probably read Ben Tanzer writing abt anything, tbqh, bc I like how he writes and describes things and how dude-ish the whole thing is. Very Dude-ish."