Ben Katchor

You are currently browsing articles tagged Ben Katchor.

“Katchor Sifts Through The Remnants Of Cities, Finds Value In The Wreckage And Uses It To Construct Something That Isn’t Exactly Factual But Seems Truer Than What Once Was”

September 12, 2011 in Books, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

If you’re in NYC in early October, looking for smart entertainment and poor–or perhaps just incredibly cheap–there are going to be free performances of Up From the Stacks, a new musical by Ben Katchor and Mark Mulcahy. I’m a really big fan of Katchor, who sifts through the remnants of cities, finds value in the wreckage and uses it to construct something that isn’t exactly factual but seems truer than what once was. The info:

Set in The New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street and in the environs of Times Square circa 1970, Up From the Stacks is the story of Lincoln Cabinée, a college student working part-time as a page, retrieving books for readers from the Library’s collection of 43 million items. This routine evening job inadvertently thrusts young Cabinée into the treacherous crossroads of scholarly obsession and the businesses of amusement and vice that then flourished in the 42nd Street area. The intellectual life of the city and the happiness of a young man hang in the balance.

Co-commissioned by the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for Target Free Thursdays at the David Rubenstein Atrium.

Four performances:

Monday, October 3, 2011 at 6pm at The New York Public LIbrary for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, Bruno Walter Auditorium

http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/55/node/129318?lref=55%2Fcalendar

Tuesday, October 4 and Wednesday, October 5, 2011 both at 7pm at The New York Public Library, Fifth Ave. and 42nd St. (Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) South Court Auditorium

Register here for free seats:

http://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2011/10/04/stacks-musical-theater-piece-ben-katchor-and-mark-mulcahy-0

Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 8:30 at The David Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center (Broadway at 62nd St.)

http://new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/atrium-up-from-the-stacks-oct-6-2011

All performances are free.

••••••••••

From Pleasures of Urban Decay, a documentary about Katchor by Sam Ball:

Tags: , ,

“Ben Katchor Is The Joseph Mitchell Of Contemporary Comics”

July 13, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The Cardboard Valise," by Ben Katchor.

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jeet Heer explores a new book by the excellent graphic-comics artist Ben Katchor. The first paragraph of the review sums up the lineage of Katchor’s work perfectly:

“Ben Katchor is the Joseph Mitchell of contemporary comics. Mitchell, along with his close friend A.J. Liebling, was a pivotal early New Yorker reporter who famously made a speciality of describing the peripheral rascals, layabouts, and oddballs of the Big Apple, ranging from the denizens of McSorley’s saloon to Joe Gould, the often homeless bohemian who claimed to be working on an ‘Oral History of the Contemporary World.’ With their cockeyed street-level view of New York and propensity for profiling loopy souls, Mitchell’s works were important precursors to the early Katchor who, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, meticulously chronicled the wanderings of ‘Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer’ in the pages of the New York Press (and, later, syndicated in alternative weeklies across the country). The Knipl strips were mournfully muted surveys of a New York where you could still feel the ghostly presence of the older city described by Mitchell in the 1930s and 1940s. “

••••••••••

Ben Katchor’s 2002 TED Talk:

Tags: ,