Fiction + music + New Yorker personnel = simmering resentment (and a party!)

If I could be said to have a "thing," music fiction is it. Virtually everything I write ends up coming around to it, somehow. Since I spend a fair amount of time writing about real-world music, it seems like a natural fit. Also music moves me. Most people write about stuff that moves them. In that respect I'm no different.

There are so few good examples of it out there. (Daniel Klein's Elvis-as-a-private-detective books, awesome as they are, don't count). It's difficult to write about characters who are musicians, serious musicians, without coming off like a sanctimonious tool. I suppose that's why I continue to try to do it -- it's a challenge. New Yorker fiction gatekeeper Ben Greenman's Please Step Back, from what I've read, hits all ther requisite milestones, what with drugs and the horrible, soul-sucking toll fame takes. I wish him, and his book, well.

The release party is on May 12 at Galapagos, with after-party music by DJ Doc Delay. Greenman will be joined on stage by none other than (who else?) Sasha Frere-Jones, pop-music critic for the New Yorker, who will be engaging him in a spirited conversation about how great it is to work for the New Yorker.

It's free, but the drinks aren't, although the first 72 people to arrrive in costume will receive a free cocktail and book, so:



Yeah. This is what we've come to.