OH TO BE IN NYC NOW THAT SPRING IS THERE !



APRIL at LIVE from the NYPL

DAVID REMNICK
in conversation with TA-NEHISI COATES
THE BRIDGE: The Life and Rise of BARACK OBAMA
Tuesday, April 6th at 7PM in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the NYPL

Obama's election as the first African-American President came at the end of a personal journey that intersected with the history of race in American politics.
- What does it mean for America, 150 years since the commencement of the Civil War to have a black president?
- What was it about Obama that allowed him to break this barrier?
- Is Obama a symbol of how much the country has changed, or is he changing the country himself.
- What separated him, historically and personally, from generations of civil-rights leaders and other black politicians?
- How, as a writer and as a politician, did he go about making his personal story emblematic of the American story?

These are just some of the questions examined in The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama that will be explored in a discussion between David Remnick and Ta-Nehisi Coates.  

 GEORGE PROCHNIK
in conversation with PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER.
Joined by Wendy Jacob, Sheila Patek, Robert Sirvage, Caitlin O'Connell Rodwell & Hansel Bayman
Tactile Sound & The Pursuit of Silence in a Noisy World
Friday, April 9th at 7PM in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the NYPL

Through his book, In Pursuit of Silence : Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, George Prochnik explores the benefits of decluttering our sonic world. Speaking with doctors, neuroscientists, acoustical engineers, monks, activists, educators, marketers, and citizens, Prochnik examines what gets lost when we can no longer find quiet. Celebrating the great tradition of adaption, transformation and remixology inspired by this little powder keg of a tome.


Voltaire's Candide: A Bibliographic Laboratory
ADAM GOPNIK (left) in conversation with JAMES MORROW & STANTON WOOD
Thursday, April 15th at 7PM in the Berger Forum of the NYPL

To cap off its celebration of the 250th anniversary of the publication of Candide, the Library invites you to step into a bibliographic laboratory where Voltaire's text will shape shift before your eyes and ears. Take a tour through the Library's experiments with the book in cyberspace, electrifying its pages with the thrum of social networks and blog commentaries. Allow the mind's eye to open as actors read selections of the text, inserting fragments of web commentary, bouncing scholarly footnotes like ping pong balls, and enjoy a discussion of these passages by guest scholars, authors and artists.

PETER CAREY
in conversation with CLAIRE MESSUD & EDMUND WHITE
Parrot and Olivier
Tuesday, April 20th at 7PM in the South Court Auditorium of the NYPL

Parrot and Olivier is Peter Carey's most recent novel, set in early-nineteenth-century America. Olivier—an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville—is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English engraver. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives are joined by an enigmatic one-armed marquis.

As the narrative shifts between Parrot and Olivier—their adventures in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands—a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. Through Parrot and Olivier, Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy.
 
PATTI SMITH
in conversation with PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER..
Just Kids
Thursday, April 29th at 7PM in the Celeste Bartos Forum of The NYPL
TICKETS ON SALE APRIL 9th at 11AM

In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.


LIVE from the NYPL programs are presented at:
The New York Public Library
42nd Street and 5th Avenue (Enter on 42nd Street)

MORE INFO: 212 930 0855 or LIVE@NYPL.org

TICKETS: http://www.showclix.com
1 888 71 TICKETS

Footnote:
As my artist photogreapher friend Harvey Benge comments, a few good reasons to be in NYC !