This week, as with every week, we have some great events lined up for you. Or, well, for us. We mostly schedule these things for our own enjoyment. It’s a nice surprise if other people come, I guess, and nicer still if they decide to buy books, but I try not to plan for it. Just me alone in a room in a single folding chair, is always what I imagine, clapping slowly, waving my arm trying to be called on for questions. But on to the list!
Wednesday, May 23rd at 7pm, I’ll be hanging out with* Dave Hill, who you may recognize from being funny all over the damn place, in conversation with Ira Glass, who you may recognize because he is famous, I know you know him, you are reading a bookstore’s tumblr, let’s not play games here. Dave has a new book and it seems great. Ira has some show. You know it. You’ve had a billion impassioned conversations about it.
*Dave Hill and Ira Glass will be hanging out in front of microphones and an audience. I will be hanging out alphabetizing the russian novelists, probably. But we will both be in the same building so ‘with’ is fair, right? Right?
Wednesday, 7pm: The formidable Maud Newton just twoted: “Can’t wait to talk superstition, Carolina parakeets, and wartime atrocities with Ron Rash (The Cove, Serena) at @mcnallyjackson Wed night.” She can’t wait. And neither can you wait, to hear them, now that you know that it’s happening.
Thursday, 7pm: Kevin “The Celtic Liger” Barry talks about The City of Bohane.
Wednesday, 7pm: It’s called an event, dickhead. John D’Agata and Jim Fingal will be talking to Heidi “No Foolavitz” Julavitz about The Lifespan of a Fact.
Thursday, 7pm: Meaghan O’Rourke and Anne Enright will make you cry.
Tonight, 7pm: It just occurred to me, even though she’s a big time store favorite regular customer, that I’ve never heard Molly Crabapple say “Crabapple”—and maybe she pronounces it like Mrs. Crabapple from the Simpsons. Except I just googled it, and she’s Krabappel. If you come tonight, which you should, don’t ask Molly that.
Wednesday, 7pm: Real Characters—our regular hilarity bomb for your face—is back with God, or rather David Javerbaum, plus Cambri Crews, Blaise Allysen Kearsley, and Shelly Gossman.
Thursday, 7pm: I liked writing the events copy for Peter Cameron’s Coral Glynn because I got to use the word “manse.” Why use “mansion” when you can use “manse”? Answer: Use manse. And get a load of this Justin Torres blurb for Forgotten Country: “I was left utterly devastated by the wonder and heartbreak captured in these pages. Forgotten Country is overflowing with folktales and family secrets, with American and Korean traditions, with haunting prose and mathematical beauty. Here is a book to cherish, and to celebrate. When I finished the last page I made a promise to myself to be more fearless and fierce with my love; it’s that kind of book.”
Monday (that’s tonight), 7pm: The Bridge is our ongoing series about literature in translation—near and dear to our hearts, this series is. This time it’s about translating from the Japanese: Michael Emmerich, who puts Banana Yoshimoto (among others) into American, and Ted Goossen, one of the forces behind Monkey Business, are here.
Tuesday, 7pm: Hari “The Funzru” Kunzru is here to talk about Gods Without Men. BYOUFO.
Wednesday, 7pm: We got the old Groff-Bergman double whammy. Birds of Lesser Arcadia. Arcadias of a Lesser Bird. Barcadia of a Lesser Paradise (that’s a bar in West Bushwick).
Your week at McNally Jackson is short, except for all those times you’re going to come and sit in our extremely pleasant cafe which has its windows open because Sarah McNally says winter is over:
Tonight: Eleanor Henderson is here, and Guy Gugliotta is there.
Wednesday: Real Characters—the monthly comedy bonanza or “comanza” that happens here, well, every month—is back, this time with Simon Doonan, Mike Doughty, Jullianne Smolinski (aka @boobsradley), Steve Zimmer and Cole Nissan.
Tonight!: Dueling bookclubs! The brand new essay book club will be discussing Pulphead. Is it pronounced “pullfeed”? Find out tonight! (It’s not, you guys, duh.) Sarah’s literature club will be talking about Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book, which we are wholly responsible for putting into innumerable hands from here to Greenpoint. Probably.
Wednesday: Stephanie Vaughn’s Sweet Talk has just been reissued by the fine folks at Other Press. She’ll be talking to Tea “How do I put an accent over the e in Tea on a PC?” Obreht.
Thursday: Big time brandy-fueled Sisters Brothers reading. With Patrick deWitt and Andy Hunter of Electric Lit.
Tonight!: Granta shows up to talk about Exit Strategies.
Tomorrow: I joked, while Dustin was building our Valentine’s Day display, that we should have all these lovely red love books about love and smooching, and then next to it, on a bare table, one lonely copy of Singular Pleasures. That has nothing to do with tomorrow’s event, which is in Spanish.
Wednesday: A conversation on Black Cool with Rebecca Walker, Margo Jefferson, and Miles Marshall Lewis.
Thursday: Stewart O’Nan will be here talking about his new novel, The Odds, which is about gambling and love. Also Niagara Falls. He’ll be talking to Ed Champion.
Andre Dubus III in conversation with John Burnham Schwartz Friday, Feb. 3 at 7PM 52 Prince Street, New York, NY
”’Townie’ is the story of how Dubus made the journey to his own writer’s life, and also of how he almost didn’t make it. Unsparing and occasionally brutal, but never bitter, it’s an exceptionally eloquent depiction of something many Americans have experienced in the past three years: what it feels like to be left behind.” —Laura Miller, Salon
Enter to win a free copy of Townie in paperback from Goodreads.
Tonight!: The Bridge is an ongoing (and by “ongoing” I mean it rules and it’s ongoing) series devoted to literature in translation. Tonight we’ll have Jonathan Cohen and Daniel Borzutzky. Cohen recently put together Word of Mouth, a collection of William Carlos Williams’ (or Bill Carlos Bill, as his friends knew him) translations from the Spanish, and Burzutzky has translated a number of Chileans.
Tomorrow: We will be closed so we can count all the books in the store. Literally every book.
Thursday: Shalom “Lana Del Rey:Lips::Shalom Auslander:Hair” Auslander (catchy nickname, no?) will be talking to the redoubtable Jessa Crispin of Bookslut about Hope: A Tragedy.
“After all the things that happened, described and undescribed, if I told you I still loved the father would you understand it? How there was a wire...”
