The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled and posted by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30 pm, and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to Ms. Cerand at lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication. Due to the volume of submissions, events cannot be considered unless the date appears in the subject line of your message.
The “No, I Missed You More” Edition
MON SEP 8: “Galapagos [note: now in DUMBO] and WNYC present A Leonard Lopate Show Screening of All the President’s Men. Each month, from now until Election Day 2008, WNYC’s Leonard Lopate talks to film critics, historians, filmmakers, and listeners to find out how Hollywood has portrayed Washington politics over the past 70 years. Political Projections, a monthly segment on Leonard’s show, focuses on corrupt candidates, virtuous do-gooders, presidents and politicians who have been popular subjects on the silver screen since the early days of film.” 7PM, “Free with RSVP to projections@wnyc.org.”
TUE SEP 9: Upstairs at the Square, where writers and music mix, features journalist David Carr (The Night of the Gun) and singer-songwriter Greg Laswell (Three Flights From Alto Nido) in conversation with host Katherine Lanpher at the Union Square Barnes & Noble [Full disclosure: I am very involved with this project]. 7pm (doors open at 6), FREE.
WED SEP 10: Plan to shake it like a polaroid picture with Hannah Tinti, Andrew Sean Greer, Darin Strauss and Moby at Happy Ending for the season premiere of the final season in-house for the Amanda Stern show, soon headed off to brighter lights. 8PM, FREE.
THU SEP 11: At Bluestockings, “a release party for The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx, Arthur Nersesian’s deeply imaginative tale of metamorphosis and rage… Ben Greenman will also read and debut a handcrafted edition of Correspondences.” [Full disclosure, as always: Ben is one of my PR clients]” 7PM, FREE.
FRI SEP 12: Novelists Richard Todd and Andrew Sean Greer read at Clay, followed by an always lovely wine and cheese reception two doors down at Paragraph (Noted: Greer’s The Path of Minor Planets is one of my favorite novels ever, and I stopped buying new copies because I couldn’t stop giving them away. I last thrust it into the hands of Heather from Au Revoir Simone, who studies astrophysics when she’s not touring with Au Revoir Simone to the tune of lyrics like “You make me wanna measure stars in the backyard with a calculator and a ruler baby…”). Highly recommended. 8PM, FREE.
SAT SEP 13: “Miguel Abreu Gallery is pleased to present Raha Raissnia’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The show will feature recent paintings and drawings by the artist alongside a slide and film projection with sound work by Charles Curtis. In a seminal sequence from Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera, a horse’s steady trot is halted to a standstill and seized upon as a frame within the strip of film destined for the editor’s table. To fully understand how Raha Raissnia reanimates detritus, we must start at the cutting room floor and play these stages in reverse. Using transparent tape, Raissnia collages found 16 and 35 mm filmstrips with hand-processed, hand-painted and manipulated materials she then presses between glass slides, like specimens for inspection. The variegated components comprising any single slide may include segments of a still life photograph with paint and ink drawings reworked and scratched into acetate sheets. Pushing further the theme of ‘still life’, Raissnia incorporates selected sections from human x-rays into her mix of pictures. After the resulting palimpsest has undergone full treatment, she sets the final slide array into a sequence intensified by projection and injected with sound.” Through October 19.
SUN SEP 14: Whip out those tote bags for the literary equivalent of spending an afternoon “shopping” on Nerve, the Brooklyn Book Festival.