A Call for Narrative

Local

At a moment when it has become largely irrelevant to the approval of the Atlantic Yards proposal, the New York media has finally noticed some of the real light unfiltered by the Ratner PR projection.

JOHN BERGER’S MOTORCYCLE

Express

I’ve a vivid memory of John Berger, whose latest book, Here is Where We Meet (Pantheon), appeared this past summer: seeing him on his giant black motorcycle.

Roselee Goldberg with Praxis

Art

PERFORMA05, the first performance art biennial, will take place this year from November 3-21, 2005 in New York City.

James Siena with Chris Martin

Art

The Brooklyn Rail visited James Siena at his compact Canal Street studio on a rainy October morning. The two-room space felt like some archetypal medieval workshop.

Suzan Frecon with John Yau

Art

One Sunday afternoon last month at Suzan Frecon’s Hell’s Kitchen studio, Rail’s consulting editor John Yau spoke with the painter about her new body of work which will be exhibited at Peter Blum Gallery from November 17 to January 14, 2006.

The $64,000,000 Pyramid

More than anything else, money has been the determining factor in the most lopsided mayor’s race that, mercifully, will end in early November.

Richard Ford with James McCloskey

Books

Mr. Ford asks me to meet him for coffee early on a Saturday morning in late September in the lobby of his midtown hotel. When I arrive, I’m initially surprised by the modernity, the sleekness of the décor: mirrored tables and high straight backed chairs, and Japanese fighting fish in bowls on shelves above the couches.

Cracking Movie Gromit!

Film

It was some time early 1994 my brother Mark mailed me this ‘brilliant’ short he’d taped from BBC Ireland. From his description it was a Hitchcockian tale of double identities, sweet-mad inventors, intellectual pets and jewel-thieving penguins – all made in Plastecine.

Night Thoughts

Poetry

It may be that any poem as we read it is only some of the first few spring leaves of the actual poem, whose true unfolding—from deepest root to flower to fruit to recreative seed—is to be found in its proliferating, uttering of itself in us.

Stories by Diane Williams

Fiction

Mrs. White at the Red Shop showed me the beady-eyed garment, but I can’t pay for it. I’m broke! I already own a gold ring and a gold-filled wristwatch and I am very uncomfortable with these. My eyes sweep the garment and its charms.