Henry Miller Memorial Library

Uh huh.

It’s our West Coast Ping Pong release party!

Here, we have the perfect night for you, for this, Saturday, Oct. 22nd in San Fran.

5:30 - Go to North Beach and get a $5 slice of za somewhere.

5:50-7:30 - Go to Vesuvio and split three pitchers of Anchor Steam. Oh, you’re on a date, btw. So talk about your respective jobs.

7:30-9:30 – Walk across the street to the Beat Museum for the Ping Pong West Coast release party. Be regaled by readers Jesse Nathan, Dana Teen Lomax read, as well as our East Coast Editor, Christine Hamm, with a Cinepoem by Maria Garcia Teutsch.

Sean Labrador Y Manzano, editor of the anthology, Conversations at the Wartime Cafe, will read as will Daphne Gottlieb. Booze,(wine), snacks and music will be provided. (Pace yourself – remember the three pitchers; fortunately the cheese will soak most of it up tho.)

Magnus Toren, Executive director of the Henry Miller library, and all around dilettante will be the MC too!

More info here.

9:30-11:00 am - Go to Japantown with Magnus and do karaoke. Get one of those private rooms. Smuggle in a some Modelo tall-boys. Sing “Paradise by the Dashboard Light!!”

11:04-11:49 am - Wait for a cab, for like, 45 minutes (this is Japantown in SF, after all); during which you and your date get in a fight, as your date was jealous of the duet you did with Magnus (it was “I Had the Time of My Life.”) Scream “You don’t know what love is!” at your date and stagger towards the Marina district.

12:15-1:45 am – Roll up to Monaghan’s and order a double-Scotch. It’s also ladies night! Send passive-aggressive texts to your date; people-watch.

1:45 am – Go home. You’ve had enough. Send your date flowers on Monday. Girls love flowers.

This West Coast party precedes Ping Pong’s East Coast party to be held Nov. 5th in NYC at the One & One Bar (1st Ave & 1st St. on the LES). More about that one here and here:

Featuring BRANDO! the funky No Cal band, Leta LeNoir, the fancy dancer, and Kathy Smith, the family-friendly comedian. With readings by Ping Pong contributors Cynthia Cruz, J. Hope Stein, Phyllis Wat, Sara Goodman, Joanna Fuhrman, Whitney Porter, Thaddeus Rutkowski,and Mark Lamoureux, as well as editors Maria Garcia Teutsch and Christine Hamm.

Performances begin at 7:00. The event is free and open to the public.

*Please refrain from any Tupac jokes or anything alluding to an East-West coast rivalries.

The good life isn’t so hard to find. It’s easy. Just manipulate your brain chemistry with great and delicious things.

Things like good wine. Sunshine and Vitamin D. Cured meats. Great music. Succulent meats like duck and lamb. Great and interesting people. Exotic pates. Zesty cheeses. Exquisitely prepared pork dishes. Etc.

But it’s very rate that you get all those things in one place, at a single time, such that it generates a full-body buzz and fevered hallucinatory giggles.

Until now.

The Big Sur Food and Wine Fest is coming to Big Sur from Nov. 3-5!

All of this amazing stuff and for a good cause: your participation directly benefits the Big Sur community: In its first two years, the Big Sur Food and Wine Festival helped raise nearly $40,000 for local non-profit organizations.

This year’s recipients are The Big Sur School Council (which distributes funds as needed to Big Sur schools), ahem, the Henry Miller Library, and the Big Sur Health Center.

There be a whole host of amazing events and tastings across the weekend – the full schedule is here.

We are particularly excited about the events taking place at the Library.

Like Friday, November 4th. “Wine & Swine” takes place at the HML; enjoy four different preparations of local wild piggy from our local wild chefs and accompanying wines, followed by music by Songs Hotbox Harry Taught Us and dancing under the Big Top!

And then on Saturday, the Grand Public Tasting from noon to 3:30 pm. 40 wineries! 12 chefs! Another Silent Auction! Join us as we celebrate great things food – and wine-wise under the Big Top at Library.

Oh, and how could we forget the “Lifestyle Auction” at 3:30 pm on Saturday as well. Featuring overnight stays, wine collections, dinners at private homes, and other wonderful items, this auction benefits Health, Safety and Education programs throughout Big Sur.

Again, all of this is for a phenomenal cause, so if there’s any time to dust off that old navy-blue v-neck, now’s the time.

Hot off the presses from Ping Pong’s International HQs, here is the official state-sponsored press release. Come to the party this Saturday, the 22nd, in North Beach and tell your friends via our Facebook Event!

The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California is pleased to announce the annual publication of Ping•Pong, a journal of the arts. The editors continue to serve up the best artists from the global art and literary scene by publishing a vibrant group of poets, writers, artists, and photographers. This issue continues Ping•Pong’s commitment to a cultural dialogue between contemporary artists and the aesthetics set forth by Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin.

Miller was and is as much an international literary figure as he was/is an American one; therefore, Ping•Pong reaches beyond our shores in order to bring unknown, or lesser known, writers from around the world into more prominence in English.

The 2011 issue of Ping•Pong features an interview with Ruth Stone, and international collections from French-Canadian poet Guy Jean as well as translations from Japanese. Ping•Pong offers the finest in American writers including Brian Henry, Eleni Sikelianos, Katie Farris, Bruce Covey, and Sesshu Foster, among many other luminaries.

Ping•Pong’s award winning writers and artists have been featured in Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s, Time, The New Yorker, and Newsweek and have exhibited at the J. Paul Getty Museum, The National Gallery of Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

The Ping•Pong West Coast Launch Party will take place at the Beat Museum on Saturday, October 22nd and will feature the notable MC Magnus Toren, with readings by Jesse Nathan, Dana Teen Lomax, Christine Hamm, Daphne Gottlieb and Sean Labrador Y Manzano, with a screening of Maria Garcia Teutsch’s Cinepoem: Chronicles on Violence, based on poems published in the anthology: Conversations at the Wartime Cafe. Readings will begin at 7:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Ping•Pong’s release party is in conjunction with Conversations at the Wartime Cafe anthology.

Come by and have a glass of wine with us and marvel at the wonder of the Beat Museum,
and swing your hips to the music of Dan Guerra.

——
Book information:

Ping•Pong
A Literary Journal of the Henry Miller Library
2011
ISSN #1083-0944
Paperback, 220 pages, $12.00

——

Contact Information:
Maria Garcia Teutsch, Editor-in-Chief
maria@henrymiller.org
831-755.6943 (office)

Magnus Toren 667-2574 (Executive Director, Henry Miller Library)
Highway One, Big Sur, CA 93920
www.henrymiller.org

Christine Hamm, Poetry Editor
inktastesbitter@yahoo.com

Reader Bios:

Dana Teen Lomax is the author of Curren¢y (Palm Press), Room (a+bend press), and the co-editor of Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia Books, 2008). Her documentary poetics manuscript Disclosure is forthcoming from Black Radish Books in 2011. Her work has most recently appeared in UbuWeb, Jacket, Poets & Writers, The Bay Poetics Anthology and will be included in Against Expression (Northwestern University Press, 2010). She is working on a book of poems entitled Shhh! Lullabies for a Tired Nation, editing a Small Press Traffic-related project, Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, & Stories for Children, and teaching writing at San Francisco State University and Marin Juvenile Hall.

Jesse Nathan’s poems have appeared in the Nation, Agriculture Reader, Hot Metal Bridge, and a number of other places. He is co-editor, with Dominic Luxford, of the McSweeney’s Poetry Series, and managing editor of the Best American Nonrequired Reading. He’s also poetry editor at California Northern. He was born in Berkeley, grew up in Kansas, and lives now in San Francisco.

San Francisco-based Performance Poet Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the author and editor of nine books, most recently the poetry book 15 Ways to Stay Alive as well as co-editor (with Lisa Kester) of Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in her Own Words.? She is the editor of Fucking Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader, as well as the author of the poetry books Kissing Dead Girls, Final Girl, Why Things Burn and Pelt, and as the graphic novel Jokes and the Unconscious with artist Diane DiMassa.

Sean Labrador y Manzano has an MFA in Poetry from Mills College (2007). His column “Conversations at a Wartime Cafe” appears at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/wartime/. He is the poetry editor of Tea Party Magazine and the San Francisco literature editor for L.A.-based Forth Magazine. He is published in Beeswax, Leonard Cohen: You’re Our Man, Chain, Bay Poetics, The Best American Poetry 2004, and elsewhere.
Dana Teen is the author of Curren¢y (Palm Press, 2006) and Room (a+bend, 1998), a chapbook which was awarded the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Award. She is a is a fourth generation Californian who teaches poetry and writing at several institutions. Her writing has been supported by the California Arts Council, the Peninsula Community Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Marin Arts Council, and others. Currently she is making Q, a series of “home movies” about raising her daughter on the grounds of a prison. She lives with her family in northern California.

Christine Hamm, serves as Ping-Pong poetry editor. She is a PhD candidate in English Literature. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. She teaches English at CUNY, and has performed all over the country. She has three books, The Transparent Dinner, Saints & Cannibals, and her recent book is now out: Echo Park. Christine was a runner-up to the Poet Laureate of Queens.

Maria Garcia Teutsch is Editor-in-Chief of Ping-Pong magazine. She also serves as president of the board of directors of the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, Ca. She is widely published, and has four poetry chapbooks, Surrender Dorothy, Fractured Fortunes and there are no cars on this highway, and Chronicles on Violence. She is an MFA candidate at New England College.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”- Anaïs Nin.

We also have an official invite posted on our Eventbrite page here.

And here’s the other thing about Rollins. Not only is a literature buff, he walks the walk; in the 80s he established his own publishing company, 2.13.61, named after his birthdate. He did it in order to publish his own books, but at first they also published original and licensed titles by others, including Hubert Selby, Jr., Michael Gira, Nick Cave, and – you guessed it – Henry Miller.

But man, he really is a literature buff. Check out this great interview published in BookSlut.

Among other things, he talks about how certain books no longer have a hold on you once you reach a certain age. One example is Charles Bukowski.

It’s a rite of passage for every 17-year old dude to curl up with a Bukowski novel for a weekend (I used to call them “Bukowski Weekends,” as in, “Hey man, thanks for the invite, but I’m gonna pass on the party at Nicole Scaglione’s place. I’m having a ‘Bukowski Weekend.”)

Here’s what Henry has to say about it:

I left Bukowski behind and would see people my age or older [reading him], and think, “Like, really?” You’ve got to get better stuff. It’s good for a while. It’s like sniffing glue to get high: it’s cool when you’re thirteen but then you should get on to better stuff, otherwise you’re going to stagnate.

(Reading Bukowski is) fine when you’re twenty-something. I’m just saying that at least for me, there are times in life when some books are relevant for some reason. Some authors I can go back and read, like I have [Henry Miller's] Black Spring in my bedroom. I will open it up now and then and just hang out with Black Spring for twenty minutes. Any chunk will do. It still works.

Rollins has a point, but, of course it’s always nice – it’s mandatory, in fact – to read an old classic every 10 years or so. Look at things through a older, more world-weary eyes. Even if it means those classics from your youth – “On the Road,” “Huck Finn,” and yes, even Charles Bukowski, right?

I hereby challenge Rollins to a fight!*

* jk y’all

By now many of you are, hopefully, familiar with our Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series. It’s one of the coolest film festivals in the world, quite literally; last year along, we got 800 submissions from over 35 countries, including countries you’ve never heard of.

Well, word is getting out. The Series was recently profiled in this nifty – and I must say, tremendously well-written – piece in CineSource Magazine.

It’s a really cool story.

The Series started in 2005 in the gleam in the eye of Magnus Toren. He was was visited by a film producer friend from Santa Cruz — wait, what am I doing? I’m spoiling it. Just read the article – it’s cool!

This is very exciting. A three-day festival in the redwoods at Fernwood Resort Oct. 21-23rd. Confirmed bands so far include Jackie Greene, the Secret Sisters, John Vanderslice, Forrest Day, and many more (with more being added.)

Check it:

Communion, the U.K.’s most revered live music promotions team, are pleased to announce further details of their greatly anticipated move into the U.S, with Communion In The Redwoods, a 3-day gathering taking place October 21-23 in Big Sur, CA in association with (((folkYEAH!))) Presents.

(((folkYEAH!))) Presents in Big Sur has been the host to some incredible shows recently including Arcade Fire, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gillian Welch, MGMT, The Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Fleet Foxes among others. Continuing in the spirit of Communion by presenting distinctive performances in unique settings, Communion In The Redwoods will take place at Fernwood in the majestic Redwoods of Big Sur, California.

Communion is the brainchild of Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett, his close ally, Kevin Jones, and renowned producer Ian Grimble. Formed in London in 2006, it began as a monthly showcase, known as Communion nights, at Notting Hill Arts Club, where bands would share different musicians and collaborations often provided fresh material.

Communion very quickly became the home to some of the U.K.’s most accomplished and praised young musicians as well as the go-to team for promoting and encouraging fresh, emerging talent in London and beyond. Communion offered a live platform to artists including Laura Marling, The Vaccines’ Justin Young, Marcus Foster and Anna Calvi (who was promptly selected as one of the BBC’s Sounds Of 2011 nominees after Communion’s early support).

Ticket info and performers here!!

Everyone knows the classic diss that Capote laid upon Kerouac re: “On The Road,” saying, “that’s not writing; it’s typing.”

Damn.

You can argue about that ’till the end of time (although it actually is writing), and in the process, acknowledge that the same can be said regarding Henry Miller.

One of the useful talking points we employ at the Library is to tell folks not to approach Miller as a typical “writer” in the classical Dickensian sense. Rather, consider him that brilliant ranting Brooklyn guy chewing your ear off at the end of the bar; his colloquial style, his nuggets of wisdom, his shape-shifting restlessness – that’s how he should be defined. If you bother trying to define him at all.

But we think Henry Rollins describes Miller even more eloquently. Now, yes, you could say we’re squeezing a lot out of this recent interview with Henry Rollins in Bookslut. That’s only because there’s much to be squeezed.

Like this juicy nugget, where Rollins describes the liberating effect Miller had on him. (Fun fact, Rollins first discovered Miller (through his mom!):

So anyway, one day I’m going through her bookshelves and there’s this odd copy of “The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder.” It’s a pasteboard edition. She said, “Oh, I bought that from him. He was selling his watercolors and going through the audience saying, ‘You wanna buy this?’”

And he made me think writing was easy. I thought he was just a dude saying stuff. But then you try to write like that yourself and you realize he’s a black belt ninja motherfucker. It’s anything but easy. He only makes it look easy because he’s so good.

Isn’t it fun when you read someone or listen to a musician and say, “How, you can write like this? You can play music like this? You mean there are no rules?”

For Rollins, it was Miller and the Clash. For Bruce Springsteen it was Bob Dylan, of whom he famously said, “The first time that I heard Bob Dylan I was in the car with my mother, and we were listening to, I think, maybe WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody kicked open the door to your mind, from ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’”

How about you, loyal readers? Was it…Patti Smith? The Ramones? Emily Dickinson?

I just finished reading “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk.”*

It’s amazing!

It is also: tragic, sad, addictive, and more than anything, LOL funny. There’s this one thing Iggy says regarding his early years with the Stooges, and he’s like, “in the early days, our fans were total deviants. Druggies, burn-outs, waste-oids, and complete losers. It was like Early Christianity.”

There’s also this other great anecdote about Andy Warhol’s Factory days. Take it away Danny Fields:

“…when I arrived at the party, Andy was sitting on the couch with Ivy Nicholson, who was Vogue’s ‘Girl of the Year.’ And Ivy was getting drunk and started crawling across the floor to Andy on her belly. She started pawing Andy’s leg and was saying “Oh Andy, I love you, I love you! Put me in a movie!

“And Andy tried to kick her away with his foot, like, ‘Go away!’ She was like an annoying pet, like a dog who was trying to hump you.”

And I couldn’t help but thinking about this anecdote when my pal Maria alerted me of the upcoming Ping Pong release parties. Perhaps that’s because in her email to me, the subject read “Release party bloggage” – as in she wanted me to blog about it. But I original read it as “Release party BONDAGE.”

Anyway, the Henry Miller Library has a fantastic literary magazine, Ping Pong, that comes out annually. And to celebrate said release, rather than split the difference and have a party in Lawrence, KS, we’re having two two parties – one in San Fran, and one in NY!

This year’s West Coast party will take place at the uber-cool Beat Museum in San Francisco, California, Oct 22nd, 7:30 pm ; the East Coast event will be on Nov. 5 at 6 pm, at the One and One on the lower east side in NYC – hopefully that place is cool and Bloomberg hasn’t gotten his gentrifying mitts on it yet. (Shakes first and looks skyward) Bloooooomberrrrrggggg!!!

These parties will be super-fun and you may want to consider attending.

Now, naturally, you’re probably wondering: will the parties have any or all of the following: crawling around, pawing, humping, slithering, bondage-ing, fondling, grabbing, rubbing, caulking, manhandling, dry-rubbing, writhing, groping, haikus to Edie Sedgwick, etc?

Hmmmm…I’ll plead the fifth on that one, folks.

But I will say this:

A certain HML blogger has to go now; he/she has a date with a certain laundromat in Monterey who just dry-cleaned a certain-someone’s favorite petite-sized 3″ candy-green black leather dog collar.

* We have this book in stock; don’t by it from Amazon! It’s $16. Email us at store@henrymiller.org.

We are still recovering from what was a truly magical night last night. It had it all: soft, warm Indian Summer breezes, booze, some atmospheric red lighting, an exploding candle (true story), and above all, Ryan Adams, performing close to two hours-worth of sad jams interspersed with some mighty funny banter.

Rolling Stone was there and they wrote a blog about it.

Here it is. Money quote:

>Of course, just like the Adams of old, he came with no shortage of ad libbed one-liners and biting banter between songs. “Let’s do some more happy music – bring on the sunshine,” he said innocently at one point. “As I sing this next song, imagine a unicorn walking slowly across the room and then throwing up a rainbow into a toilet of sadness.” He then launched into “Dirty Rain.”

It’s like that old story about Townes Van Zandt, when he’s playing a hopelessly depressing number, and some heckler calls out, “Play a happy song!” and Townes is like, “That was a happy song.”

But back to Ryan. He ruled. And he closed out the 30th Anniversary Summer Season at the Henry Miller Library - to paraphrase TS Eliot’s “Hollow Men” – not with a bang, nor a whimper but with…um……an intimate and charismatic low-level bang.

(Leans back and exhales) Ah yes…I remember Jacksonville.

We were on tour, and after driving all night from Birmingham, at 6:30, just as the sun was coming out, a lunatic redneck in a pick-up truck came from out of nowhere and cut us off on this one-lane state highway.

Our singer, who was driving, immediately swerved, and for a few harrowing seconds, the van was on two wheels, and were like, “Oh man! Oh no!!!” and we were cursing too, in fear.

Miraculously, dude righted the van, got us back on four wheels, and that Florida devil sped away, cackling and rubbing his drooling mouth with his forearm.

From then on, I’ve told anyone who’d listen that Jacksonville* is a mean, bad place.

Ironically enough, it’s also that town that smelt a young Ryan Adams, aka the Heartbreak Kid, who’ll be performing a sold-out solo show here on Thursday (sorry ladies.)

What are the odds?

This article and interview provides a great primer on Mr. Adams, whose career trajectory is particularly illuminating – he, after all, co-conquered the “alt-country” scene with Whiskeytown and went through a huge Henry Miller phase. (Followed by, as per usual, the inevitable Black Flag phase. Mine included buying a t-shirt with the cool Raymond Pettibon “shears” artwork. Share yours!)

Oh and in case you’re wondering, Ryan is ever-the-gentleman. Though it would have been easy to do, during the interview he not once disses his hometown of Jackson-vile.

* It may have actually been Gainesville.