Kerri Sonnenberg shared news of this event, which doesn’t seem to appear anywhere on the web.  Just like those FC2 guys to try to sneak into town like this: 

11 November, 7pm
experimental fiction and poetry by
Steve Katz and Yuriy Tarnawsky
Elastic Arts Foundation
2830 N. Milwaukee Ave. (Logan Square)
$5 suggested donation | BYOB

Steve Katz, who was one of the founders of Fiction Collective (now FC2), has taught creative writing at Cornell University, Brooklyn College, Queens College, The University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, The University of Notre Dame, and The University of Colorado in Boulder, from which he retired in 2003. He’s also tended bar, worked construction, waited tables, and mined for mercury. He is known for such classics as CREAMY & DELICIOUS, WIER & POUCE, FLORRY OF WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, SWANNY’S WAYS, SAW, MOVING PARTS, and STOLEN STORIES, plus a screenplay and some books of poetry. His two most recent books are the novel ANTONELLO’S LION (Green Integer, 2004) and the collection KISSSSS? (forthcoming 2007, FC2).

Yuriy Tarnawsky is one of the founding members of the New York Group, a Ukrainian avant-garde group of writers, and co-founder and co-editor of the journal NOVI POEZIYI (New Poetry; 1959-1972). He worked for IBM as an electronic engineer and computer scientist, and received a Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics from New York University in 1982. From 1993-1996, he was professor of Ukrainian Literature and Culture in the Department of Slavic Languages, as well as co-coordinator of Ukrainian Studies at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York. He has written over thirteen books of fiction, poetry, and plays, including THREE BLONDES AND DEATH (1993, FC2) and MENINGITIS (1978, Fiction Collective). His newest book, LIKE BLOOD IN WATER, will be published next spring by FC2.

This is a special event being organized by Adam Jameson.  Contact him at adjameson@yahoo.com for more information.

A few items from Chicago’s dailies and weeklies, plus a local blog or two:

John Freeman interviews Booker winner Kiran Desai.

Noah Berlatsky purports to review Mark Strand’s latest.

Audrey Niffenegger writes a ghost story serial.

Charles Storch talks Humanities Fest with Ren Weschler.

Tim Lowery considers Bayo Ojikutu’s latest.

Nick and Erika host Chuck Palahniuk.

The Tribune marks Eric Newby’s death.

Pete Anderson addresses our man Nelson Algren.

Porter Shreve attends Lahiri’s Chicago reading.

Finally, four years and 2,000 events later, yours semi-truly celebrates his anniversary.  Here’s my first post from 2002. 

Check this out:

Instituto Cervantes, Chicago, May 25: Tomás Eloy Martí­nez will talk about Buenos Aires. A flat city with a monotonous layout and unnoticeable architecture, it is revealed nevertheless like an unexpected labyrinth in which it is easy to lose oneself: the labyrinths happen both in space and time.

Needless to say I was excited by this, since I loved Martínez’s most recent novel, The Tango Singer (tr. Anne McLean), which follows the same theme.   Unfortunately for me, I was informed yesterday by the good folks at the Instituto Cervantes that the lecture will conducted entirely in Spanish. 

But hey: if you know Spanish, please go and give me a nice report.  More info here (scroll down). There’s also a roundtable featuring the author on Thursday of next week.

Down LBC way, our little book club has selected its Autumn “Read This” title:  Sam Savage’s Firmin, the affecting tale of a literary-minded rat. Read Ed Champion’s post on why he nominated the book.  Then, while we gear up for this week’s conversation, enjoy an interview with the author conducted by the novelist William Baldwin:

Q: The novel doesn’t back away from the big ones: Life, Love, and Death — but your main points of reference are the other Big Ones, the Canon with a big C, the literature that our generation was instructed to revere (and with good reason?). And yet there’s such an aloneness to this novel. Does Firmin choose to read because he is alone or is he alone because he chooses to read?

A: You and I belong to the last generation raised on the Canon. We knew what the great books were, and how they stood to each other. Did we have reason to revere them? I think so. Were some Big Ones left out of the Canon? Certainly. But it is the case that some books are incomparably better than others, and a few are better than almost all others. It is an interesting question as to which comes first, Firmin’s aloneness or his becoming a reader. He begins to read because he is lonely, and he is lonely because he is puny and shunted from his family, a minor freak from the get-go. As he reads he becomes at once less lonely (he has the companionship of books) and more alone (he grows more human and therefore more freakish and more conscious of his solitude).

Dipping into Richard Ellmann’s wonderful essay on Washington Irving this morning, I was reminded that boxer George Foreman (!) dropped a nice Irving allusion in a recent article in the New York Times:

Why can’t those who are already wealthy restrain themselves from spending more than they have? Why do rich people, those who would seem to have all the financial padding one needs, wind up deeply in debt? Even worse, why do some of them end up broke?

Mr. Foreman, street-smart and now mindful of his wallet, has his own perceptive answers to those questions. For the man who came back from the brink, it’s all a matter of discipline and proper boundaries.

“A lot of people just don’t grow up,” he says. “I mean, 65-year-old men. They just don’t grow up. They don’t understand that money does not grow on a tree and that you’ve got to respect every dollar. Like Rip Van Winkle — the guy who slept — they party, party, party, then they wake up. ‘Oh my God!’ And they do something desperate trying to recapture what they had. And it doesn’t work like that. You must stay awake.”

Literary items from the Chicago dailies and weeklies:

Jonathan Messinger on Simenon’s Red Lights.

John Freeman on Fo’s My First Seven Years.

John Barron on Doctorow’s Creationists: Selected Essays.

Thomas Conner on Studs’s Giants of Jazz.

Ben Goldberger on Meno’s The Boy Detective Fails.

Steven G. Kellman on Noiville’s Isaac B. Singer: A Life.

Nick Anderman interviews Jonathan Lethem.