May 28th: Kit Schluter- Cartoons
Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Kit Schluter in Conversation with Garrett Caples
to discuss his new book Cartoons (City Lights, 2024)
This event will take place live at 192 Books at 192 10th Avenue, between 21st and 22nd avenue, on Tuesday, May 28th at 7:00 PM ET. Seating is on a first come, first served basis. The discussion will be streamed directly on this page. A recording will be archived.
Kit Schluter— Cartoons (City Lights 2024)
Set in the uncanny valley between Bugs Bunny and Franz Kafka, Cartoons is an explosive series of outrageous, absurdist tales.
“The true surrealist is unblinking, convulsive, and cheerfully open to the mysterious flow, into their texts, of mythic and archetypal elements operating beyond their conscious control. In Cartoons, Kit Schluter vaults into the zone of Julio Cortázar, Richard Brautigan, and late Giorgio di Chirico, where the reader breaths the air of pure freedom attained rattling inside the chains of self.”–Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn
More than simply a book, Cartoons proposes itself as a genre of imaginary writing in opposition to the realism of most contemporary U.S. fiction, aligning itself with the French symbolism and Latin American fabulism its author is known to translate. A giant cricket with a tiny Kit Schluter in a jar, The Girl Who Is a Piece of Paper, an umbrella who confuses the words porpoise and purpose in its quest for self-fulfillment, these are just a few denizens of its pages, suffused with a fairy tale-like animism. A pair of slugs go on a bender. A microwave oven decries microaggressions. A beer bottle is filled with regret. An escalator mechanic’s shoe conceals a terrible secret.
As befits its title, Cartoons defies the laws of physics and fiction alike, eschewing tonal consistency in favor of a simultaneity of joy and horror, ecstasy and disgust, wrapped in an extravagant layer of black humor. The stories blur the boundary between microfiction and poet’s prose, featuring impossible transformations and surrealistic events, even as they wrestle with urgent psychic and moral dilemmas. Heightening the atmosphere of pervasive unreality are a number of drawings by the author, which don’t so much illustrate as parallel the tales with their own fantastic scenarios.
Kit Schluter’s recent work has appeared in Boston Review, BOMB, and Brooklyn Rail. He is author of the poetry collection Pierrot’s Fingernails (Canarium Books) as well as numerous chapbooks and artist editions of poems and stories. Schluter is included in the latest edition of Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan UP, 2020), edited by Carmen Maria Machado, Joyelle McSweeney, Jesse Damiani and Seth Abramson. He has translated widely from the French and Spanish, including works by Rafael Bernal (New Directions), Copi (Inpatient Press, New Directions), bruno darío (Ugly Duckling Press(e)), Mario Levrero (& Other Stories), Marcel Schwob (Wakefield Press), and Olivia Tapiero (Nightboat Books). He recently illustrated Sebastian Castillo’s novel SALMON. Kit coordinates production and design for Nightboat Books and lives in Mexico City.
Garrett Caples is the author of the Wave Books publication, Proses: Incomparable Parables! Fabulous Fables! CruelTales!, as well as the poetry collections Lovers of Today (Wave, 2021), Power Ballads (Wave, 2016), Complications (Meritage, 2007), and The Garrett Caples Reader (Black Square, 1999). Wave published his book of essays Retrievals in 2014. He is an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight Poetry Series, and has edited books by such poets as Will Alexander, mimi tempest, Joyce Mansour, Norma Cole, Frank Lima, Stephen Jonas, and Diane di Prima, among numerous others. He is also the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (California, 2013). He lives in San Francisco.