Ecstatic Prose: Ecstatic Prose: On the State of Literary Genre and Contemporary Prose
Saturday 21 May, 2016
1 - 5pm, $8
Emily Harvey Foundation
537 Broadway
Please join Triple Canopy for a day-long series of conversations on the state of literary genre and contemporary prose. Writers Hilton Als, Andrew Durbin, Rivka Galchen, Tan Lin, Sukhdev Sandhu, Christine Smallwood, Jonathan Sturgeon, and Lynne Tillman will participate in a trio of discussions on criticism, style, and autofiction, convened by Triple Canopy editors Lucy Ives and Sarah Resnick.
As people exchange text more quickly and in greater quantities than ever before, prose has taken on a curious new literary life, a life seemingly betwixt, beyond, or out of bounds of genre. Reflective essays use techniques from fiction; fiction borrows from poetry; poetry borrows from philosophy; journalism encounters reflection; and on and on. This instability of genre and the ascendency of stylish prose seems at once part and parcel of the variously mediated modes via which we compose, convey, and consume texts. With the entry of the print book into a swarm of other media and temporalities for reading, it makes sense that traditional genres as well as ways of reading would metamorphose. Yet, genre is now also bent by a new emphasis on the writer, whether fictionalized or not, who is frequently at the center of a given text. Prose is the contemporary literary form par excellence and seems no longer to require the distinctions of genre to be functional, legible, or pleasurable. Indeed, it may no longer make sense to speak of “essayists,” “novelists,” or “poets,” but rather to simply praise and discuss the work of writers.
The day’s conversations will address three familiar aspects of prose as well as their ongoing transformation:
1:00—2:00 p.m., On Criticism
Where and how does criticism find its place? If criticism has traditionally circulated via the magazine and within the academy, what new occasions and pursuant forms present themselves today? Sukhdev Sandhu, Christine Smallwood, and Lynne Tillman in conversation.
2:30—3:30 p.m., On Style
Can one make an argument—or a fiction—by style alone? Hilton Als and Rivka Galchen in conversation.
4:00—5:00 p.m., On Autofiction
The narrator may or may not be the writer, and the writer may or may not be the author, and the author may or may not be “I.” On autofiction’s ambiguous vérité. Andrew Durbin, Tan Lin, and Jonathon Sturgeon in conversation.
- Hilton Als is a writer and theater critic at the New Yorker. He was formerly a writer and picture editor at the Village Voice and editor-at-large at Vibe. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000. His latest book, White Girls, was published by McSweeney’s in 2013.
- Andrew Durbin is the author of Mature Themes (Nightboat 2014) and the chapbook MacArthur Park (Kenning Editions 2015). His work has appeared in BOMB, Boston Review, Flash Art, Poetry London, Text Zur Kunst, and elsewhere. A contributing editor of Mousse, he co-edits the press Wonder and lives in New York. His first novel, Blonde Summer, is forthcoming from Nightboat in 2017.
- Tan Lin is the author, most recently, of 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004 The Joy of Cooking and Insomnia and the Aunt. The recipient of a Getty Distinguished Scholar Grant and a Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writing Grant to complete a book on the writings of Andy Warhol, he is also working on a novel called Our Feelings Were Made by Hand.
- Rivka Galchen ’s most recent book is Little Labors, a miscellany about babies and literature. She is also the author of the short story collectionAmerican Innovations and the novel Atmospheric Disturbances, winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.
- Sukhdev Sandhu directs the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture at New York University and is the author of Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night. He also writes for Bidoun, the Wire, the Guardian, and many other publications.
- Christine Smallwood writes the “New Books” column for Harper’s Magazine. Her reviews, essays, and cultural journalism have been published in the New Yorker, Bookforum, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and many other publications. Her fiction has been published in The Paris Review and n+1. She holds a PhD in English Literature from Columbia University and is a core faculty member of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She is also a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is currently writing a collection of short stories.
- Jonathon Sturgeon is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. Formerly an editor at n+1, e-flux, and the American Reader, he is now the literary editor atFlavorwire.
- Lynne Tillman is the author of five novels, four collections of short stories, two collection of essays, and two other books of nonfiction. Her second essay collection, What Would Lynne Tillman Do? was a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. In fall of 2016, a new collection of fiction THE COMPLETE MADAME REALISM AND OTHER STORIES will be published by Semiotext(e).
- Lucy Ives is the editor of Triple Canopy and author of four collections of poetry and prose, including the novella, nineties. The Song Cave will publish her book of aphorisms and extremely short stories, The Hermit, in 2016. Her novel Impossible Views of the World is forthcoming from Penguin Press in 2017.
- Sarah Resnick is a writer and senior editor of Triple Canopy.