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Thomas Beller on Twitter.
Recent work:
"Us and Them" "The Laundry Room" "A Different Kind of Imperfection" from Seduction Theory, in "'Higher Gossip,' by John Updike: review" "Parking The Car" "The Maserati Kid" "On Steve Jobs" "Stalking The Stalkers" They're at It Again: Stories from Twenty Years of Open City "'On Abundance,'" "The closing of H&H Bagels on 80th Street and Broadway sparked a surge of interest into that institution, some of which found its way to 'Portrait of The Bagel As A Young Man," collected in 'How To Be a Man." "Open City's Closing: 20 years, 30 Issues and 'Life Pressed Into' The Pages" "Exploring the New New Orleans" "Home Is Where Your Stuff Is" Spring Readings, 2011: March 27th, Tennessee Williams Festival, Muriel's Jackson Square, New Orleans. 10am. April 2nd: The Louisiana Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture. June 2nd, Housing Works Bookstore, New York: reading from "Man With a Pan." "The Rights," in What I Would Tell Her Pictures from the Open City Magazine Party, Dec 14th, 2010 Recent Short Stories:
Recent Readings: The Open City Summer Writer's Workshop. Two pieces on J.D. Salinger:
On Thin Ice,
J.D. Salinger In The Twitter Age. Also, this book: "With Love and Squalor"
Lost and Found reading at
The New York Historical Society, January 9th 2pm
"The Baggage Carousel: a short story" in Flight Patterns
Some pictures From the Open City Party for Issue #28 Lost
and Found: Stories From New York Fall Readings:
Lost and Found reading at St.
Marks Books, September 10th. 7pm "Street
Ball," "Duck
Soup at the Guggenheim Cafe" "The Ashen Guy" Reprinted in "Back to the Lake: A Reader for
Writers" (W.W. Norton) Summer Readings 2009: *Happy Ending Bar (with Gabriel Cohen,
Abigail Thomas, Lauren Stover) reading the short essay Lost and Found.
*Bryant Park Reading Room: with Colum McCann, Joseph O’Neill, Alice
Mattison and Jonathan Ames, on Writing About New York (Review)
*Park-Lit, Washington Square Park, with Thomas Ziegler, Vince Passaro,
Rachel, Cline, and Jonathan Ames.
Nnineteen creative works by contemporary,
award-winning writers including Junot Díaz, Jonathan Safran Foer,
Thomas Beller, Bernard Cooper, and Terry Tempest Williams, who also provide
companion pieces in which they comment on their work. The New York Times City Section closes:
back-story and remarks. "Discovering the Baltic Islands,"
"Home,
Sweet, Elusive Home," "Lost In New Orleans," A few words from "George Being George,"
the oral biography of George Plimpton, read on NPR's
All Things Considered. An earlier two cents on the same topic. "The
Deciders: Ted Solotaroff, Rust Hills, and the mysterious motives of fiction
editors," Slate.com A new introduction to D.H. Lawrence's
"Women
in Love" ESPN'S True Hoop, Henry Abbot's thoughtful
basketball blog, has reprinted, with nice commentary, two basketball related
essays from "How To Be a Man," "The
Tryout," and "Scenes
From a Playground." A contribution to "Dirty
Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex" NYU
Summer Writer's Conference, "Driving
Southwest Virginia's Mountains," "Route
60: A Tour of New Mexico and Arizona," "Shock
and Awww," a review of Rudolf' Delson's
"Maynard and Jennica," in the New York Times. "Summer
in the City," A column for The New York Times : "Negotiations",
"Pursuits"
and, "The
Stuff of Life" -"Swiss
Tryst: One couple takes to Switzerland's magic mountains with Thomas
Mann's novel in hand," in Travel and Leisure Magazine, July 2007. -"The
Peculiar Pleasure of Earplugs," in Slate.com -"Lost,
In Translation," in The New York Times. -Esquire's Napkins
-Spring Readings 2007: The
University of Arizona Prose Series is pleased to announce a reading
with Thomas Beller, Thursday, March 29th, 2007. The
University of Virginia, Thursday, April 19th, 2007. -"The End of Innocence: Jackie Earle
Haley Steps Out Of The Shadows," in Film
Comment. - 2007
brings two new essays in two new anthologies: "Odd
Numbers," in
"Only Child," -"The Kinks at the Garden, 1981,"
in
"The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable
Concertgoing Experience." -"That
Night at the Garden," an
essay about a Kinks concert in 1981, shoplifting, police violence, and
some other things, in The New York Times City Section, front page, November
26th, 2006. Adopted from a longer essay (see above.) -The
Debris of the Visible, a review of "In The Shadow of Angkor:
Contemporary Writing from Cambodia," in the Cambodia Daily. -"Birth of a Salesman," an essay
about Egg-Creams, street vending, and high school set in 1982, in Gourmet
magazine's August summer reading supplement. The author read an excerpt
on Public Radio International's "The Splendid Table," here.
(You need Real Player). For the extremely curious, a podcast interview
about the writing of the essay set at Gem
Spa, while sipping a vanilla Egg-Cream, on Gourmet's website, here. -Robert Birnbaum interviews Thomas Beller
here.
-A review of Edmund White's "My Lives,"
in the Voice, here. -"Foreign Exchange," a review
of two new story collections in the New York Times, here.
-On May 22nd, 2006, PEN
America presented the PEN/Robert
Bingham Award for best first book of fiction in 2005 to "We're
in Trouble," by Chrisopher
Coake. The judges this year are Victoria Redel, Heidi Julavits, and
Thomas Beller. |
How
To Be a Man: "Smart,
funny, interesting..." "Beller
can write his butt off." "A
supremely enjoyable collection of essays written in clear, often very
funny prose." "Not
since I first read Joseph Mitchell have I felt so vividly and beautifully
transported to the streets of New York. Thomas Beller is a chronicler
of his own life but also of the life of the city, and there's a quality
of unbridled curiosity to his work which
make his essays shimmer with comedy and insight and exuberance. I absolutely
loved this book." "The
best sections of his book . . . call to mind Raymond Carver in their clarity
of language and subdued emotion. A fine collection of essays that will
resonate with many." "Elegant
descriptions and sophisticated insights that evince the hipness you expect
from a lifelong New Yorker and a sweetness and intimacy you might not." "An
enjoyably mature read." "
Beller's smooth prose and insightful analyses will appeal to fans of good
writing everywhere." "Doesn't
show how to be a man so much as a mensch." "These
quite marvelous and darkly hilarious personal essays derive their power
from a shameless honesty, often about the most shameful moments, which
suddenly reveal a luminous upside in the author's comic retelling. Together
they give us a privileged view of how curiously attenuated and winding,
for many a young American male, is the long march to maturity." "Each
meticulous sentence is a crooked finger that lures the reader deeper into
his darkly funny world."
Editors' Choice: New York Times Book Review, Amazon.com
Table of Contents
Manhattan Ate My Car (read) The Costume Party Mother Goes to Hollywood (read) Chemistry Set The Drummer The Birthday Suit Portrait Of The Bagel As AYoung Man The Problem with T-Shirts A Biker in the City Turtles In New York The Breakup The Tryout Addicted To Love The Last Days of Shakespeare & Company (read) Scenes From a Playground A Bike Messenger in the City Strip Club A Car Is Not A Castle Walking The Dog The Floating Armoire
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