Sir Harold Evans at the Strand Bookstore in New York City to discuss his memoir, My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times.

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It was quite a sensation in 2006 when Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Three years ago Slate published a story about how the celebrated author narrowly escaped prison:

The trouble began last February, when Pamuk told the Swiss news magazine Das Magazin that “one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands and no one but me dares talk about it.” For this statement, Pamuk received death threats from Turkish nationalists and was eventually charged under a new Turkish law with “insulting” the Turkish Republic. When he went on trial in December, he faced up to three years in prison.

In Turkey, you risk imprisonment if you discuss the Armenian Genocide.  It’s an entire country in forced denial.

Yet Pamuk, the country’s best-selling novelist, spoke out.   Ever since he is not only the face of Turkish literature to the west, but also the face of Turkish liberalism.

Pamuk was at Barnes & Noble Union Square to discuss his new book about love, The Innocence Museum.  He was practically giddy on stage in proclaiming the theme, although he was quick to point out that he does not put the emotion upon a pedestal.

He said he was interested in how love is like a car accident that hits us all.   From Karen Long’s well-written review in the Plain Dealer:

Our guide into “The Museum of Innocence” is a liar, a drunk, a kleptomaniac and a spoiled Istanbul society boy named Kemal Basmaci.  [....]

Pamuk begins “The Museum of Innocence” with what Kemal declares as “the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.”

Who among us does? Kemal’s moment is with a woman. In the opening paragraph, her earring drops unheeded to the sheets during their lovemaking in one of his family’s spare Istanbul apartments. The earring becomes the first exhibit in the museum.

In taking questions, Pamuk would not discuss the political tensions surrounding him back in Turkey, perhaps because last May it was reported that he may face re-trial.  No doubt he does not want to add to any problems, particularly as his book is not political, although 1975 Istanbul through today is a central character in the novel.  Buy the book.

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The swine flu that is now an epidemic in the United States is likely traced back to a farm in North Carolina, and its first appearance in Mexico occurred near farms owned by Smithfield Foods.   We inject dairy cows with so many hormones that women who drink regular milk are three times more likely to have twins than women who drink organic.  The pollution from factory meat growing farms accounts for a fifth of greenhouse gases; that’s more than cars.

All of this occurs while 96% of Americans believe animals deserve some legal protection from harm.  We like animals.  It doesn’t matter our politics nor our backgrounds, we all agree that animals shouldn’t suffer.

These two ideas, the need to fix and protect the environment and the desire to not have animals suffer, was the common ground that Jonathan Safran Foer sought in his new book Eating Animals.  Tonight at the Union Square Barnes & Noble he read from it, discussed those statistics above and took questions.  His desire, he said, was to highlight the consensus we have on the environment and animal suffering to find ways to make better choices.

Foer has received a good deal of media attention for re-writing Fast Food Nation and Making Kind Choices, but that’s not a criticism.  It’s Foer’s own take, and every new voice that reaches new minds gets more of society thinking about what we are doing with factory farm meat growing.

We don’t think about its effects on our health, and we don’t think about how it’s hurting our environment.  Add Foer to the growing chorus of people who say: when will the mainstream media report this issue?

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Kamila Shamsie and Hari Kunzru were at Union Square B&N to read and discuss their work with Robert Polito.

Unfortunately, my contact popped off my super dry right eye, so I had trouble with the focus and it shows in most of the shots.  Grrr.  Win some, lose some.

Kamila Shamsie was interesting to see.  In a short time she has accomplished a good deal of award-nominated work and comes from a family of notable Pakistani writers (she is the daughter of Muneeza Shamsie and a niece of Attia Hosain).  She read from her work Burnt Shadows.

Equally interesting was Hari Kunzru, whose varied tastes have taken him from travel journalist at The Guardian to music editor at Wallpaper* to winner of the Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel The Impressionist. You can never celebrate a renaissance man enough.  Kunzru read from his book My Revolutions.

Perhaps most exciting for me was the unexpected opportunity to see Robert Polito again, as I have some memories tied to him.

In 2006 there was a symposium at the Bowery Poetry Club for Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl. I found a table in the front, where I sat drinking vodka all night as Polito, David Gates, Bob Holman and Alicia Ostriker talked about the famous poet’s work and the effect that he had on their lives.  My camera was very cheap, but I liked the photographs I took of each of them (they could all stand to be cleaned up).

It was Ostriker on stage who indirectly brought up Ginsberg’s NAMBLA controversy that I recalled well, as I had asked Ginsberg himself about it.

In 1995 when I lived in Boulder and my brother-in-law Rob attended the Naropa Institute–Ginsberg helped found its poetics department–I wandered over to the campus with Rob and his classmates for a festival the school held each summer.  Ginsberg always came out to Colorado for it.

I saw him milling about on the grounds, so I approached him.  What I most knew about him then was his position regarding the North American Man-Boy Love Association.  More accurately, I didn’t know his position, just that he had caused a national firestorm over it.

I walked up and introduced myself.  “Mr. Ginsberg,” I said,” I don’t want to take too much of your time, but I was wondering if you would explain to me your position about your support for the North American Man-Boy Love Association.”  I was incredibly embarrassed to ask him, but I already had prejudged him negatively about it.  Part of me felt now was the only moment I could confront him politely to find out his thoughts myself.

“Follow me,” he replied.  We began to walk down a path through the campus, and he asked me some questions about myself, who I am, what I wanted out of life.  The sorts of things one expects an older poet to ask a college student.

We approached the bathroom, and he motioned for me to come in.   “So you want to know what I think about NAMBLA?  Well, tell me David,” and he unzipped his pants and stood at the urinal as I heard water begin to trickle, “did you know what you wanted to do sexually when you were 16?”

Ginsberg went on to say his support for NAMBLA was nothing about having sex with 10-year-olds or any other such nonsense.  “More,” he said to me as he held his penis in his hand and finished relieving himself, “it is about our culture’s complete immaturity regarding human sexuality that people under 18 are classified as sexual incompetents.”

His support–he said as he washed up his hands–was not for NAMBLA per se, but only that we should reexamine the issue of age-of-consent laws to see if they actually make sense.  “We simply don’t discuss it.  After all,” said Ginsberg as he turned toward me from the sink, hands dripping as he smiled, “I certainly knew what I wanted to do when I was 15.  Didn’t you, David?”  He paused for the answer, and I replied shyly that yes, yes I thought I did.

“Well then,” he said as he smiled again and dried his hands, “should we return to the festival?  Or is there something more you’d like to discuss?”

When I listened to Polito, Ostriker, Holman and Gates talk about him that night in 2006, it was a pleasure to photograph them with my cheap camera and to reflect upon my own Ginsberg tale.  That moment in 1995 was one of the first times in adulthood that I decided that I would take the time to discover the reality of a controversy myself, and not just listen to what other people said about it.  What a reward that was.

That night in 2006 at the Bowery Poetry Club Polito gave an impassioned, tear-inducing reading from his then-new book The Poem That Changed America: ‘Howl’ Fifty Years Later.

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Ludmilla Petrushevskaya traveled far to New York City to discuss her work There Once Lived a Woman Who Killer Her Neighbor’s Baby. Only a few nights ago Snob Magazine hosted her at Russian Samovar on West 54th, where she sang cabaret songs as people downed vodka.  Tonight the setting was McNally Jackon, which played host to the Russian literary star reading, with Keith Gessen providing translation. From Wikipedia:

Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya (Russian: Людмила Стефановна Петрушевская) (born May 26, 1938) is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright. Petrushevskaya is regarded as one of Russia’s most talented contemporary writers, whose writing combines postmodernist trends with the psychological insights and parodist touches reminiscent of writers such as Anton Chekhov. Over the last few decades, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya has been one of the most admired and acclaimed contemporary writers at work in Eastern Europe: The Times called her “one of the finest living Russian writers”.

Below is my photographic essay of Petrushevskaya.

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Tonight Paul Auster, as a I type this post, only an hour after that photograph was taken, is speaking before a large group of people on the fourth floor of Barnes & Noble Union Square, the must-stop for anyone who has written something worth knowing about.

The choice this evening was Invisible, and for me the event ended a horror before it began.  I left shortly after taking these shots.

I had planned on quickly saying hello to Auster.  He, Salman Rushdie and I had a small conversation last year at a breakfast honoring Israel’s gift to literature, Amos Oz.  I wouldn’t expect Auster to remember some party chit-chat from 2008, yet it makes a good re-introduction as photographer’s routinely identify themselves to the subject.

But it was made impossible by a man who was almost a penciled caricature of a paparazzo. What made it comical to me (not to anyone else) was that there was absolutely no need to go paparazzo.  He and I were the only photographers there, and it was Paul Auster in a bookstore not Britney Spears on a red carpet.

I should have known the guy was trouble.  The entire twenty minutes before the start he wanted to go on-and-on with me about the guy with Alzheimer’s who won the Nobel Prize for something he did decades ago.  He talked about things I don’t care about, like Einstein and fiber optics, and the tragedy that only now this guy gets the big prize as he suffers from memory lapse.

Most photographers don’t want to talk.  Maybe over the years they see the same photographers covering the same events, and friendships develop; otherwise, they get in and out and don’t want to hear a random photog’s life musings.

Not this guy.  His eyes were so bloodshot that they barely looked like eyes since the inflamed skin surrounding them was the same puffy red-pink shade as his cornea.  It all blended together in a fleshy wrinkled mass.  Somewhere in there I saw blue irises, drowning. His hair was so badly dyed–the gray, coarse base with what looked like a black dye-job over a brown one–it resembled a toupee.

B&N Union Square, despite its size, is somewhat intimate.  Often, I am the only photographer there.  When professionals show up they know from experience to respect the venue.  A bookstore is not the place to start shouting, “Mista Austah!  Mista Austah!  Look left!  Now above!  Mista Austah, toyn some to tha right!”

He did this while Maria, the curator of these events, was in the midst of her introduction of Auster, causing everyone to stare in our direction to a point that Auster, holding up his index finger like a schoolteacher, had to “Shhhh” the guy.  He was making a spectacle of himself (and by association, me).

These photography sessions don’t last forever.  You’re expected to take a few shots and then let the person alone.  Not this guy.  He wouldn’t stop photographing Auster, gesturing, yelling loudly, “Mista Austah, one maw look down please…”

Every photo I took has Auster, lips pursed, staring at this fool.

Auster looked at me and I nodded in a sign that I got what I needed.  I turned off my camera and looked at this guy still going nuts with the flashes.  To stop the endless shots that had long worn out their welcome, I moved in front of the guy’s camera and made the quick introduction to Auster.  Flustered, he only brightened with recognition when I mentioned the Amos Oz breakfast.

Then he was called up to the podium.  I turned toward the exit embarrassed.

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John Hodgman, known for his personification of a PC in Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign and as a correspondent on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, has just released the audio book of More Information Than You Require. Below are my photos for its release at Barnes & Noble’s Union Square megastore.

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Gore Vidal was at the Union Square Barnes & Noble to be interviewed by Leonard Lopate to discuss his life and his photographic memoir, Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare.  He was spectacular, although he did not raise the headlines that he did at the 92nd Street Y.  From New York magazine:

Accused anti-Semite Gore Vidal is scheduled to speak at the 92nd Street Y, and former mayor Ed Koch is convinced that “those who invited him are, as Jews, either most forgiving, or schmucks.”

In attendance was Susan Sarandon, whom I photographed at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, and Dick Cavett.  I also had shot Eva Amurri, Sarandon’s daughter.  After the event was over I introduced myself to Ms. Sarandon, and told her that the photograph at the top of her Wikipedia article is mine, and that it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to meet her.  The atmosphere at the book store was very relaxed.  There was a huge crowd and people were milling about to get out.  She looked at me and after a moment or two said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what ‘my Wikipedia article‘ is.  I don’t know what is Wikipedia.  But it’s a pleasure to meet you nonetheless.”  Then she returned to her friends.

Usually Wikipedia makes for a good ice-breaker, as it did with the aforementioned Ed Koch.  Not this time.

Then because of the way the crowd moved, Susan Sarandon was right behind me on all four escalators down.  Thankfully I was standing next to a pudgy Chatty Cathy of a man who had to talk about all the other times he had seen Gore Vidal. The moment I glanced at this guy in line he launched into Vidal lecture stories. I didn’t want Susan Sarandon behind me on the escalator to think, ‘Oh, shit, now I’ve got to talk to this Wiki whatever person four floors down.‘  I acted so into the conversation that I must have made the man’s night, but I don’t remember a thing he said except, “Gore looks on his last legs. I’ve seen him look better…”

At one point I glanced back and made eye contact and then quickly turned back around, just so she didn’t have to worry that maybe I hadn’t seen her; the introduction was pleasant and rewarding enough.

Nobody else noticed Susan, and where there was a pile-up beginning at the bottom of the escalator to the second floor because people wouldn’t move, it was Sarandon who called out, “Come on people, we have to move, this is dangerous.”  That’s a New Yorker, although I imagine the headline “Susan Sarandon Crushed in Tragic Bookstore Escalator Pile-Up” wasn’t an appealing thought to her, either.

Gore Vidal makes few public appearances now; below are Creative Commons photographs I released under the 3.0 attribution license that are now found on Wikipedia and my Flickr Creative Commons stream.

RZA, the co-founder of the Wu Tang Clan, was at Barnes & Noble Union Square to promote what is destined to be a must-read for any hip-hop aficionado, The Tao of Wu.  The Wu Tang is cited by MTV as the fifth greatest Hip-hop group of all time.

Something that stuck out was RZA talking about his troubled history.  He told the audience that even though his music seems to glorify violence and drugs, in reality he is embarrassed by some of the things he has done.  Hurting people, he said, is not something he is proud about.  The words were infused with a sense that, looking back, he probably made the choices he thought would most help his game even though he wishes he had had other options available to him.  It was a touching moment of honesty.  From Wikipedia:

Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, better known by his stage name RZA (pronounced ‘Rizza’; born July 5, 1969), is an American Grammy winning music producer, author, rapper, and occasional actor, director, and screenwriter. A prominent figure in hip hop music, he is the de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan. He has produced almost all of Wu-Tang Clan’s albums as well as many Wu-Tang solo and affiliate projects. He subsequently gained attention for his work scoring and acting in films.

Fox News reported that in mid-2007 RZA attended one of Hillary Clinton’s parties and donated money to her 2008 campaign. Fox News criticized the fact that Clinton took money from The RZA, claiming it was contradictory due to RZA’s felony record, FBI investigation, ties to the Gambino family and his music lyrics.  RZA referred to the investigation in one of his lyrics, “Plus, feds had one ad saying I gun traff’ / I sold 20 million records bitch, some laugh.”

Fox News is such a joke.

Below are Creative Commons photographs I released under the 3.0 attribution license that I took of RZA. They are now available on Wikipedia and my Flickr Creative Commons stream.

I’m testing the new Samsung Memoir 8 megapixel camera phone to see how it holds up in various conditions.  This weekend it had the chance to prove itself on vacation in Fire Island, where it was graded a B for its performance.

Last night at the famed Blue Stockings bookstore on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the Memoir summarily failed on all fronts in its Eileen Myles test.

(continued below)

A packed, sweltering Blue Stockings bookshop sweats patiently in the heat for Eileen Myles to take the mic.

Myles is one of the United State’s more influential writers, and I have had the supreme pleasure of photographing her now three times.

It was this third time that was depressing.  The Memoir produced horrible photos of Myles reading to her audience.  It was amazing:  I stood only about five feet from Myles, yet it was impossible to take a clean shot.  The color was off every single one, and the blurriness added insult to injury.

Photographing Eileen Myles through the years

The first time I shot Myles was at the 2006 Brooklyn Book Festival.  I’m not much for poetry, but her rendition of “That’s Gay” was so linguistically melodic and intellectually complex that she won me over.  I absolutely love her work, and that was the first time I was exposed to it.  The camera I used was a low-priced 2.6 megapixel Fuji point-and-shoot.

My second opportunity was at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival.  By this time I had my Olympus E-500 DSLR, the main camera I used for Wikipedia, and the crispness of the work was far above the 2006 shot; however, on the 2006 I liked the lighting and background better.

But last night was the worst of the bunch.  The Samsung Memoir, using only its factory settings (with the anti-shake on) completely crapped out.

I couldn’t take a decent photograph of anyone, or anything, in Blue Stocking’s fluorescent lighting.  I tried so hard to make the camera lens focus, that I’m certain Myles–who read from her new work, The Importance of Being Iceland–assumed I was paparazzi.

Eileen Myles was sublime, as always, despite a room that felt like the inside of a hot leather glove left inside a car parked in the heat.  It was almost unbearable, and would have been had Myles’ wit and humor not allayed the crowd’s pending heat stroke with smiles.  Too bad the Memoir didn’t do the evening justice.

SAMSUNG MEMOIR CAMERA EILEEN MYLES TEST GRADE:  F