My intention in bringing Calvin Baker and Colson Whitehead together later this month is to facilitate a conversation between them on branding & freedom in the market economy, through the lens of their most recent novels, Dominion and Apex Hides the Hurt.
Focusing on the stories and the way they are told will, I hope, keep us out of the arena of theory and centered in a realm much closer to what my email pal Amitava Kumar calls the “deeply, even inescapably, contradictory nature” of actual existence in our market-driven world.
In other words: please don’t pull out your copies of Prison Notebooks and On Logo. Just read the novels.
I’m planning to record the conversation for out-of-towners and anyone else who can’t make it, so if you’d like to submit questions for a brief Q&A session following the event, email brandingandfreedom [at] yahoo dot com by next Wednesday, the 28th.
Powells continues to offer a 30% discount on both books through the end of the month. Other independent booksellers are welcome to offer discounts on in-store purchases. Email me with the details, and I’ll add them to this post.