Wednesday, September 19, 2007

I'm kind of missing living next to a park these days. Last year I had the luxury of living across the street from Humboldt Park. It is way nicer than anyone in Chicago gives it credit for, no thanks to the area's not-so-distant shady past (and somewhat shady present). At this point in time, the park is one of those great public places that is teeming with all kinds of people: from the local Puerto Rican community to fisherman to runners to incoming yuppies to hipsters (but strangely more yuppies than hipsters) to old men hanging out in lawn chairs all afternoon to the very special and extended groups of local crackheads. During the weekend it would fill up to what would be its capacity, if a park had such a thing. Every shady spot would be occupied with dozens of people all marking their spot with a grill, a blanket, and possibly a folding table and balloons.



It had everything you could ever ask from a city park: baseball fields, a formal garden, a meandering stream, historical buildings, bike paths, even a hilariously small "swimming hole" they dug out of the ground every May.




It was concurrently serene and chaotic- at once both a beautiful urban oasis and a trash-strewn cesspool. And it felt like mine...even though I liked to share the place with others.



In two years the whole damn street will probably go condo and I'll never get the chance to live there again, but it sure was fun while it lasted.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Crystal Lake, Summer 2007:

Brooklyn, September 2007:

Sometimes you just have to play with a couple of syringes....

Friday, September 07, 2007



PRESS RELEASE:
Mark Batty Publisher announces announces A Field Guide to the North American Family

New York, September 4, 2007: Mark Batty Publisher announces its first foray
into illustrated literary fiction: Garth Risk Hallberg¹s A Field Guide to
the North American Family, with accompanying website (afieldguide.com).

For more information or to request a review copy, contact
pr@markbattypublisher.com

The story:
For years, the Hungates and the Harrisons have coexisted peacefully in the
suburbs of New York. But when the patriarch of one family dies, the
survivors face a stark imperative: adapt or face extinction.

In sixty-three entries and a website (afieldguide.com), A Field Guide to the
North American Family offers a collaborative portrait of two fictional
specimens and the environments they inhabit. Both established and
up-and-coming photographers contributed this edition¹s lavish illustrations
via the website, an ongoing,
networked internet community. The novella¹s entries can be read straight
through, but alphabetical headings and cross referencing also enable readers
to move through the narrative on their own as they see fit.

Part fiction, part reference work, part photo-essay, this singular Field
Guide invites readers and participants to consider the state of the family .
. . and to explore the future of the book, since visual content for a book
has never been generated this way before. Quite simply, this is a novella
like no other.

Garth Risk Hallberg, 28, will be included this fall in the anthology Best
New American Voices 2008 (Harcourt/Harvest Books), guest-edited by Richard
Bausch. His short stories have appeared in venues such as Glimmer Train,
Canteen, Evergreen Review, pindeldyboz, h2so4, and Em. Garth also writes
about books for the website, The Millions. His essay, titled Why James Wood
is Wrong About Underworld..., will appear in the fall issue of The Quarterly
Conversation. A graduate of New York University¹s M.F.A. program, where he
was a Starworks/Geduld Fellow, Garth earned the William H. Gass award for
fiction and the Leana Boysko essay prize as an undergraduate at Washington
University in St. Louis. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing at Hofstra
University.

A Field Guide to the North American Family
Garth Risk Hallberg
Fiction, Media Studies
144 pages
Color throughout
Casebound 7 x 9 inches
ISBN-13: 978-0-9779850-9-8
$19.95
October 2007

A Field Guide to the North American Family includes photographic contributions from the following artists: Jordan Alport, Timothy Briner, Jessica Bruah, Kara Canal, Sandy Carson, Alana Celii, Janice Clark, Jason Curtis, John Paul Davis, Chris Eichler, Amy Elkins, Jason Falchook, Elizabeth Fleming, Catherine Gass, Hans Gindlesberger, Andres Gonzalez, Maury Gortemiller, Jonathan Gitelson, Jennifer Greenburg, Ben Huff, Christy Karpinski, Mickey Kerr, Liz Kuball, Michael Kwiecinski, Shane Lavalette, Jason Lazarus, Stacy Arezou Mehrfar, Nick Meyer, Matt Nighswander, Alexis Pike, Colleen Plumb, Gus Powell, Abby Powell-Thomas, John Putnam, Shawn Records, Rebecca Blume Rothman, Christopher D Salyers, Matthew Schenning, David Shulman, Kevin Sisemore, Brandon Sorg, Brian Sorg, Sai Sriskandarajah, Tema Stauffer, JJ Sulin, Brian Ulrich, Consider Vosu, Grant Willing.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Andersonville, Chicago. Summer 2007.

(To be fair, Casey was only reading the RedEye because we brought it to his house. The front page article was riveting. Can't remember anything about it, only that it was absolutely riveting.)