Saturday, October 04, 2003

BTW... I am fully aware that "Sister I'm A Poet" is a Morrissey song but it's fucking great anyway. Substitution? Cemetary Gates. Because Keats and Yeats ARE on my side. Who've you got on your side, huh?

Tonight I went to see Jonathan Lethem read from his fantastic new novel, The Fortress of Solitude. Conveniently, he began reading exactly where I had left off last night. Went to dinner with him, his very nice girlfriend Amy, Erin, Dan Fisher, Julie Orringer and her husband Ryan Harty. All very nice folks. Really drove home the difference between being a successful fiction writer and being a hopeful poet. It's really like being a stadium concert rock superpower v. a coffee shop playing folkie. Weird but I have a great deal of respect for those writers who not only pull off amazing novels/short story collections but on top of it all, have to deal with touring, signing ungodly numbers of books and seemingly endless proscribed engagements. Lethem is really, in my humble opinion, a great great writer.


Today, I picked up some new albums: Neil Young's "On The Beach" finally issued on cd; Stereolab's "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" (shouldn't I have owned this for years already? Yes. Now I do.); and Winfred E. Eye's new album, "The Dirt Tier."

Also got some books: Oh My God! Jack Spicer's One Night Stand in hardcover! and Rod Smith's The Good House, a beautiful chapbook. Absolutely as the imprint says, "a spectacular book."

Right now, "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" is making me weep.