John McWhinnie, book lover, dealer, and publisher, died earlier this month. McWhinnie, who specialized in counter-culture ephemera and art publications, was a huge presence in the insular, obsessive New York art book scene; in addition to the wonderful shop he ran with Glenn Horowitz, McWhinnie consistently had the most engaging booth at the New York Art Book Fair. The photographer Peter Sutherland has posted an unpublished interview with McWhinnie on his website that makes clear that investment savvy is no replacement for a true, deep, meaningful passion. At the end of the interview is a list of his favorite books, and, predictably, it’s one of the best I’ve ever read.

Photography by Peter Sutherland

W.G. Sebald, one of the greatest German authors of all time, died 10 years and four days ago. He was 57 years old. Damn.

Nerdy magazine Wired’s US edition features a special on time travel this month. One article examines Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84 which was just released in the English translation. Murakami creates a “bizarro version” of 1984 and Wired compares it to the real 1984 as it happened.

Moreover, there’s an interview with Stephen King about his latest novel 11/22/63 in which he sends his hero, Jake Epping, back in time to prevent JFK’s assassination. A short article about H.G. Wells’ first time machine explains where the idea of time travel and it’s fascination for writers came from.

Illustrations by Sachin Teng (Murakami) Pilgrim (King).

MISS READ invited publishers and artists to show their books –
for the first time with the participation and presentation of mono.kultur!

Dates: November 25 to 27, 2011
Opening hours:
Friday, November 25 and Saturday, November 26, 3 – 9 pm
Sunday, November 27, noon – 7 pm
KW Institute for Contemporary Art , Auguststrasse 69, 10117 Berlin
Program and further information can soon be found here.

For the third time MISS READ has invited international publishers and artists to show their books at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. As a genre of its own, the artist book reflects contemporary ways of artistic production and publishing to a great extent and also addresses issues of presentation and circulation as well as new strategies of distribution. Presenting a selection of more than 80 of the most active contributors in this field, the festival provides the rare opportunity to encounter and explore the contemporary scene of independent publishing.

The festival will present a series of lectures, performances and talks by artists, publishers, and graphic designers reflecting contemporary ways of artistic publishing. The program is a collaboration of Anke Schleper, Axel John Wieder and Alexis Zavialoff.

With:
A Prior Magazine, Ghent
Afterall, London
AKV Berlin, Berlin
AND Publishing, London
Anita Di Bianco, New York/Berlin
Apparent Extent, Cologne
Archive Books, Berlin
argobooks, Berlin
Art Metropole, Toronto
Automatic Books, Venice
b_books, Berlin
ballabella papers, Berlin
Bartleby & Co., Brussels
Bedford Press, London
Boabooks, Geneva
BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE, Berlin
Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin
Broken Dimanche Press, Berlin
Bücherbogen, Berlin
Bücher & Hefte, Berlin
Camera Austria, Graz
Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht
Dutch Art Institute/MFA ArtEZ, Arnhem
edition fink, Verlag für zeitgenössische Kunst, Zurich
Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich
Edition Taube, Stuttgart
EN/OF, Berlin/Kleve
Errant Bodies, Berlin
Fillip, Vancouver/Berlin
Fritz Balthaus, Berlin
FUKT magazine for Contemporary Drawing, Berlin
GAGARIN, Antwerp
GRAPHIC magazine, Seoul
hard copy (HEAD — Genève & Monospace Press), Amsterdam
information as material, York
Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht
Knust/Extrapool, Nijmegen
Kunstverein Publications, Amsterdam
LemonMelon, London
Lubok Verlag, Leipzig
Mathieu Copeland Presents, London
Maximage, Berlin
Merve Verlag, Berlin
Michael Baers, Berlin
Michalis Pichler, Berlin
mono.kultur , Berlin
Morava, Poznań
Mörel, London
Motto Books, Berlin
Mousse Publishing, Milan
Nebula Books, Copenhagen
Occasional Papers, London
OEI magazine, Stockholm
OMMU, Athens
Onomatopee, Eindhoven
Passenger Books, Berlin
Paraguay Press, a division of castillo/corrales, Paris
Piktogram & Bureau of Loose Associations, Warsaw
Pork Salad Press, Copenhagen
Precinct, London
Pro qm, Berlin
Provence, Berlin/Nice
Revolver Publishing, Berlin
Rollo Press, Zurich
Roma Publications, Amsterdam
Sara MacKillop, London
Scriptings/Achim Lengerer, Berlin/Amsterdam
Space Poetry, Copenhagen
Spector Books, Leipzig
Starship, Berlin
Sternberg Press, Berlin
Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen in der Weserburg, Bremen
THE GREEN BOX, Berlin
The Piracy Project, London
The Surplus Library
Ugly Duckling Presse, New York
umool umool, Amsterdam
urban art info, Berlin
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne
Verlag Silke Schreiber, Munich
Westphalie, Wien
Wiens Verlag, c/o Wien Lukatsch, Berlin
X Marks the Bökship, London
Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana

MISS READ is a cooperation with STADT LAND BUCH and an initiative of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, argobooks and Michalis Pichler. The program is a collaboration of Anke Schleper, Axel John Wieder and Alexis Zavialoff.

The Cd-version contains all eleven tracks from the three 12″ Kafkatrax releases.

Put your headphones on!

The novel takes upon the story of John Holten, the author, and Djordje Bojić, a Serbian artist, whose effort in writing a possible history of LGB Group, leads the narrative. LGB — a neo avant-garde eastern european collective formed in Belgrade in the middle 90s — which sought to escape, through art, the post war nationalism that dominated Serbia during those years, works as a story within the story, the particular narrative on which the general narrative centers itself in.

Different moments, points of view, dialogues and tones build up this novel, making it confusing sometimes, noisy or overcrowded, but perfectly translating the contexts where its characters move, their motivations and energy — or lack of it, at times. Politics, art and literature get together on a perfect mix of novel, documental text and art catalogue.

Bojić’s manuscript, that actually integrates the final part of the book, tells both the story of the artist and the group. A story that closely follows war’s history and its experience (which is also the urge and the foundation behind LGB’s artistic gesture). John Holten’s writing is therefore combined with LGB’s artwork, found texts and 1st person testimonies. The edition, beautifully designed by F.U.K Laboratories, elevates this novel to a piece of art in itself.

And in case you missed, like me, the book launch at Motto earlier this Fall, cheer up! Broken Dimanche Press, the publishing effort behind ‘The Readymades’, will be present at this year’s edition of MISS READ, taking place, as usual, at KW Berlin, between 25th and 27th November.

It’s been almost 10 years since Jeffrey Eugenides wrote Middlesex. Finally his new novel was published, called The Marriage Plot (I haven’t read it yet). The protagonists are college graduates this time – which doesn’t mean it will be less interesting than his previous novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex. There’s hardly a writer that can make any subject as entertaining and rich as Eugenides.

So, I finally got around to reading Houellebecq. All the hip kids, you see, were talking about it.

These books are pretty savage. James Wood points out that Michel Houellebecq ‘has the nihilist’s power to stain the fabric of life so utterly that most other contemporary writers seem by comparison sentimental and untruthful’. But I’m not sure all that radical honesty is necessarily productive of truth. I suspect that this writing is attractive, not because it is true, but because it is intense.

Anyhow, there is an interview with the man himself in The Paris Review. Here, an excerpt:

I hadn’t seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don’t just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don’t have a sex life, it’s not for some moral reason, it’s just because they’re ugly. Once you’ve said it, it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it.

Here is a little story from Lydia Davis to see out your week.

Interesting

My friend is interesting but he is not in his apartment.

Their conversation is interesting but they are speaking a language I do not understand.

They are both reputed to be interesting people and so I’m sure their conversation is interesting, but they are speaking in a language I understand only a little, so I catch only fragments such as “I see” and “on Sunday” and “unfortunately.”

This man has a good understanding of his subject and says many things about it that are probably interesting in themselves, but I am not interested because the subject does not interest me.

Here is a woman I know coming up to me. She is very excited, but she is not an interesting woman. What excites her will not be interesting, it will simply not be interesting.

At a party, a highly nervous man talking fast says many smart things about subjects that do not particularly interest me, such as the restoration of historic houses and in particular the age of the wallpaper. Yet, because he is so smart and because he gives me so much information per minute, I do not get tired of listening to him.

Here is a very handsome English traffic engineer. The fact that he is so handsome, and so animated, and has such a fine English accent makes it appear, each time he is about to speak, that he is about to say something interesting, but he is never interesting, and he is saying something, yet again, about traffic patterns.

mono.archiv #01 – containing issues mono.kultur #1 to 15, a whopping 14 of which are out of print:

Carsten Nicolai
Frank Leder
Nine Inch Nails
Zeruya Shalev
M. Cattelan, M. Gioni, A. Subotnick
François Ozon
Matias Faldbakken
Wolfgang Voigt
David Shrigley
Bahman Ghobadi
David LaChapelle
Richard Powers
GZA / Wu-Tang Clan
David Adjaye
Taryn Simon