The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30pm 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 lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the date in the subject line.
MONDAY, 12:3: Brooklyn Independent film series presents a screening of the short film, “Henry Miller: Asleep & Awake,” with the documentary feature, “The Outsider of New Orleans: Loujon Press,” which tells the story of “Louise “Gypsy Lou” Webb, now well into her nineties, tells the story of how she and her husband Jon Webb published the avant-garde literary magazine The Outsider from a small apartment in the French Quarter in the early 1960’s.” Highly, highly recommended. 7PM, FREE.
TUESDAY, 12.4: At NYU’s La Maison Francaise, a roundtable discussion of “Publishing French Fiction and Nonfiction in the U.S., featuring Olivier Nora (Editions Grasset), Eric Vigne (Editions Gallimard), Lucinda Carter (French Publishers’ Agency) and Jennifer Crewe (Columbia University Press).” 2:30PM, FREE. At the Bowery Poetry Club’s Book-In-Hand Reading Group, which meets on Tuesdays in the Workshop Room, “The group is currently reading poetry by Pablo Neruda. After that we will continue reading poems by Shakespeare and perhaps move on to The Odyssey of Homer as translated by Rodney Merrill. Everyone welcome.” 5:30 – 7PM, FREE.
WEDNESDAY, 12.5: At the PAGE series, which is practically an enchantment machine, Alexander Chee (Edinburgh), Scott Snyder (Voodoo Heart) and Joshua Clark (Heart Like Water) read from their new work at the National Arts Club. Free, with drinks and snacks, jacket required.
THURSDAY, 12.6: Dance Theater Workshop presents The Barnard Project, “a culmination of choreographic residencies.” 7:30PM, $20. And, Carnegie Hall presents a “Neighborhood Concert” with Hüsnü Senlendirici and the Gypsy All-Stars. 8PM, FREE.
FRIDAY, 12.7: As part of “The Writers World, a new series of international writing, editor Edward Hirsch introduces editors Eavan Boland, Margaret Sayers Peden, and Adam Zagajewski, who will read from the first three books from the Trinity University Press series, featuring Irish, Mexican and Polish writers on writing.” 7PM, FREE. Also on Friday evening, a closing party for “Rude Boys,” a show of watercolors by my fave new artist, Dan Sabau, who I am buying a painting from this week! Noted for literary types, “There will be absinth, so people will be tripping! I don’t think it’s the real kind of absinth, so I think people will be faking tripping.” At Fox & Fawn from 5 – 8PM, FREE.
SATURDAY, 12.8: Forget logos, expand the definition of locavore and make a pledge to buy handmade. One good place to start: “La Superette is an annual event, an art sale held around the holiday season in December. We organize a temporary store where artists sell functional art in multiples at affordable prices. In addition to the sale there are performances and video screenings that run throughout the day.” Another: 20×200. Downtown, local temple of cerebral consumption, Project No. 8 is currently having a holiday sale with most items 20% off. Surely the someone on your list who has everything lusts after 16 Months Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel.
SUNDAY, 12.9: As part of KGB’s now-classic Sunday Night Fiction Series, Deb Olin Unferth and Anne Landsman read from new work [Full disclosure, as always: I’m publicizing Anne’s new novel, The Rowing Lesson]. 7PM, FREE.