Those New Yorker ‘tooner types not setting off to the Baltimore Comicon, this weekend shoulod check out the Howl festival taking place September 5-9. The Carl Solomon Book Expo featuring comics, GNs, lit and poetry including such familiar comics consortiums as House of 12, Word War 3, Act-i-vate and many more takes place this weekand at Tompkins Sqaure Park. You can see the complete schedule here, a poster by James Romberger and Marguierite Von Cook here. Romberger writes:
The Arteries Group presents the Carl Solomon Book Expo in the center of the Park that weekend with literature, poetry, comics, graphic novels, and prints: St. Mark’s Books, Punk Magazine, Rand Hoppe’s Jack Kirby Museum, Alex and Allyson Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, World War 3 Illustrated, Rizzoli, MOCCA, House of Twelve, Ephemera Press, and more coming in as I write this.
The Carl Solomon Book Expo is named for the Beat legend who inspired Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem Howl, and who was responsible for getting the first novels of William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac in print. This is a cheap way to reach a large audience. More than 100,000 people visit Tompkins Square Park on HOWL! weekend! 8’ X 2.5’ tables are $175 both days included, these can be shared by three individuals at $60.00 apiece. Tables are still available: http://www.howlfestival.com/vend.php
In addition, this Thursday there’s a “Comics Thinktank” panel with postmodern stylist R. Sikorak, artist/critic Calvin Reid, DC/Vertigo head Karen Berger, Harvard fellow Dr. Hillary Chute; special tentative guests: comics master Gene Colan and EC critic/historian John Benson, moderated by Romberger. It takes place 6:30-8:00pm on September 6th at Rapture Cafe, 200 Avenue A (between 12th and 13th Streets).
The purpose of the panel is to hash out some of the potentials of comics as art and literature. Comics’ status in the Art World has been improving but there are still nostalgic and “High-Low” attitudes that seem to preclude objective curation and criticism. The current positive critical attention paid comics and graphic novels is often misguided, in that literary reviewers tend to analyze the text, but without understanding the relative value of the art in storytelling.
Thought provoking.
This is a weekend I wish I could be in two places at once. ComicMix will be in Baltimore, with our big announcement. Still, James Romberger is one of the few people who could do justice to a William Burroughs graphic novel.
This will be a fun overload, and I don’ have to cross highways to get there.
the highlight for me of HOWL 2007 was a play called “PAST LIFE=JACK KEROUAC”
Two really good lookin dudes blasted us into the ethers with some hip hop beatr hep dialogue cool dudes
Larry Myers, author of “Past Life= Jack Kerouac, is a forcre to be reckoned with. While most of us struggle to locate reality, Myers tracks it down, disrobes it and creates worlds within shimmering worlds. He is part Saint John of the Cross part Henry Miller. Make it your business to see his work. You’ll see yourself and just about everyone you know ( and no longer wish to know) revealed in the hippest, most elegant language imaginable. Not for the meek of spirit.
Larry Myers is the doctor of coooool without ever presenting it as such. To some extent, Jack Kerouac wrote in the styl of Doctor Larry. His work is unapolgetic and the actors he puts on stage are free to explore the marvelous idea that they, themselves, are far less intersesting then the characters Dr. Myers has helped to create. The work is highly energetic and, for lack of a better word, FUN. Bravo to putting the thrill back in creation.
This night also featured the fearless poetry of a man named face boy. Incredibly, his poetry did not focus on the weight of racisim or the self pitty of not being rich and famous; NO, his poetry, even with the pain, celebrated every last indecent speck of humanity and always ended in humor. All of the self serving POETRY SLAM contestants should take a lesson – poetry is a celebration and not simply a confessional or a crying game. Bravo, Face Boy. You have balls.
And the DISCO singer with the two dancing girls was one of the most fantastically bizarre spectacles. Keep doing exactly what you are doing. Your love of what you do is so obvious that the entertainment may not be denied.
Having been born in Barcelona and only in New York for four years, I have attended many off-off-off Broadway productions and the production by Larry Myers and the “Past Life = Jack Kerouac” team at the POETRY CLUB was something I have been waiting to see for some time. There was something quite appealing about taking the words of Kerouac and using these words in a conversational format. The writing was edited slightly and the additions worked to make for a wonderful concept. Both actors ‘acted’ as if they each did not have a plan, that whatever was coming next was as large a surprise to them as it was to the audience. Their level of energy was exciting and sexy at the same time and I would pay again to see both of these players work on stage. They came as an unexpected surprise, which I believe is the goal of theatre.
Larry Myers does not follow the mundane rules that dominate these productions. He provides a level of originality and unique creativity that is long lost to most of the showcase-dominated small stages of New York; where the only story is one actor trying to use my theatre viewing time as some stepping stone to the next break on the road to Lindsey-Ville, or whichever tomorrows perfeclty breasted chosen one might be named.
These guys came to play on stage and left it there when they walked off. It was about the audience, as it should be. Thank you Larry Myers and both wonderfully surprising actors.