the eight-day week

wcfields1

To Do Wednesday: Playing the Fields

The slow season continues with a torpid Wednesday—we really ought to have just taken the week off! Instead, we’ll take the day off and enjoy the luxurious air-conditioning and chemically buttered popcorn—but nothing at the multiplex is appealing. We’re originalists when it comes to both Batman and Total Recall—give us nippled rubber suits, Arnold Schwarzenegger Read More

literary events

Will Patton, left, and Denis Johnson.

Denis Johnson Says His Novel Tree of Smoke, a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, “Shouldn’t Have Been Published”

“I’m here to sell books. That’s why I came,” Denis Johnson informed the audience after reading from his recently released book of plays, Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse, at BAM Thursday night. Despite this early disclaimer, Mr. Johnson appeared to thoroughly enjoy performing.

The crowd was about what we would have expected for an event series entitled “Eat, Drink & Be Literary” with a $50 ticket price—a mix of sweet-looking bespectacled couples with haphazardly tucked button downs and more seasoned residents of Park Slope who dressed in summer whites and chewed slowly. Not, in other words, stereotypical Denis Johnson fans. Read More