Is that? Could it be? Is that the sun? No! Don’t look at it or it might go away again. Just play it cool and maybe it’ll hang around long enough for you to check out NYC’s best beaches. There are some great ones out there, and it’s still possible to find some peace and quiet. Or, if this is more your sorta thing, the founder of Coney Island USA, Dick Zigun, reminds us “we’ve got half-naked New Yorkers here!”
We’ve also compiled the ten best beach reads this “summer,” to enjoy while working on your sunta… dang! The sun’s gone again.
How much money would you reckon knowing the meaning of life is worth? We asked popular Israeli novelist Etgar Keret about $9.99—a film based on his stories and shot in stop-motion—to talk about that and other aspects of the deceptively complex animated movie that he made with director Tatia Rosenthal (we review it here). It’s the story of a group of residents in a Sydney apartment building, all looking for meaning in their everyday lives.
I used to live in a Sydney apartment building like the one in the film, but it didn’t seem a likely place to find the meaning of life.
[Laughs] No. It doesn’t seem the most likely place where you would find the budget for a screenplay written by two Israeli short-story writers. But you find things where you find them, and not necessarily where you start looking for them.
Quite so. Do you find city apartment buildings to be, in general, good spots to find stories?
You know, I think it’s not the apartment building, but people together in close proximity that always makes for good stories. In a plane or Club Med or an apartment building. I think for me the fact that it’s specifically an apartment building is less of interest. Just the fact that these people lived so close together but lived lives that were totally different.
How much would you pay, personally, to find out the meaning of life? In American dollars, please.
Well, as much as I can afford. Which isn’t much.
Read the rest of the interview after the break.
Read more »
Classic Kicks: Get 10 percent off all this stuff.
Name-dropping? Not cool. Name-dropping TONY to get discounts at some of the best independent stores in NYC? Cool. See all the deals we scored for you below (awesome).
Lower East Side
Honey in the Rough
Browse dresses from established and up-and-coming labels, such as Mociun and Binetti, and a lower-level beauty bar. Mention TONY and land a brow sculpting for only $30, through August. Read more »
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Feeling poor after the weekend?
Get a free and sharp dose of historical fiction tonight in Brooklyn as Marlon James reads from his new epic novel of West Indian slavery, The Book of the Night Women.
James is poised to set the literary world aflame with a brutal new novel about slavery in the West Indies. It’s powerful, affecting stuff.
Leave work now!
A book-dealer friend of mine assures me that there will be good, inexpensive finds (at least before it gets picked over by him and his book-dealer friends) at this weekend’s Brooklyn book sale. So if, like me, you have trouble sleeping in on Saturdays (some residual internal Saturday-morning-cartoon clock mechanism?), then show up early and find some rare editions. You might not come across a 1456 Gutenberg Bible, but you may see Steve Guttenberg hanging out. Pretty sure that guy isn’t too busy these days (this time-honored joke has been, in our opinion, too long neglected).
