Subject: WAIT! THERE'S MORE
Sender: Maxine [themaxinator@yahoo.com]
¶ NEW! Listen to Ed on WBAI's Asia Pacific Forum (NYC, 99.5) on Tues., Oct. 21st, from 8 to 9 p.m. (Archived here.)
¶ LISTEN UP! IT'S THE PERSONAL DAYS AUDIO CENTER...
•Ed talks to Andy Hsiao on WBAI's Asia Pacific Forum.
•"Coworkers" theme song by Brian McMullen
•Ed talks to Voice of America's Korea service. (Here's the audio.)
•Ed on WFMU's Theory of Everything
•Ed on Edward Champion's The Bat Segundo Show.
•BBC 6's George Lamb Show features Personal Days (discussed by book critic Ernest Hemingway, at around the 56-minute mark)
•Ed talks about Personal Days, and the history of the office novel, on BBC 4's Open Book.
•Ed reads from Personal Days at Tompkins Square Park, August 1, 2007, for BOMB magazine's 100th issue.
¶ 10/19 Author and Columbia statistics professor Andrew Gelman blogs about Personal Days. He guesses that Ed is a Democrat, receives confirmation of his suspicions, draws connections to Gödel, Escher, Bach and a great Jonathan Coe novel, and winds up liking the book!
¶ 10/5 At BoingBoing, Douglas Rushkoff praises PD (as a "fast read...with surprisingly enduring flavor"):
Personal Days, by Ed Park, is a post-Dilbert, post-Microserfs look at office culture. It's like the show The Office, except populated by people who, for the most part, understand what is happening to them. What I like best about the book is Ed Park's use of cliché phrases. You know how that first song on Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom album ("Beyond Belief") strings together known phrases into something entirely bigger? Or the way Delmore Schwartz would italicize a phrase as if to show it was a saying instead of just words? Know what I'm saying? Park does this throughout his text, creating a gentle, phantom hypertext that required no further explanation. And this black comedy about downsizing brings an almost Beckett-like sense of reduction to the dwindling office.
Also: Library Journal calls PD one of "last season's top first novels," and it gets noticed on What Writers Read (Andrew Gelman) and the UCLA Asia Institute's Asia Pacific Arts. (More on the Elvis Costello song here.)
¶ 9/28 Various reviews of PD's Italian incarnation, Maledetti Colleghi, have appeared. Il Sole invokes Woody Allen and Kafka, while the Marie Claire piece gives you a who's who. (We're guessing here—more accurate translations welcome!)
¶ 9/7 Ed's "Reflections on That Tuesday," an essay about remembering and forgetting 9/11, appears in the New York Times City section.
¶ 9/2 Personal Days has been shortlisted for the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize.
¶ 8/28 The LA Weekly compares Personal Days to Orwell—but not the book you're thinking of...
¶ 8/17 The Buffalo News reviews PD, and EP is featured in August's KoreAm magazine. UPDATE (9/20): Link to KoreAm feature, "Cubiculture," by Soo Youn. Comes with "Personal Maze," a handy guide to the denizens of the PD office.
¶ 8/7 The Personal Days theme song, "Coworkers," by Brian McMullen. (Brian has also sent an energetic logo to Pru.)
¶ 8/6 The Philadelphia City Paper notes the "contagious joy" of PD...Megan McCafferty (Sloppy Firsts, et al.) recommends PD...plus some other interesting blog reactions.
¶ 8/3 Ed talks to the Guardian about today's hyperliterate bands.
¶ 7/31 EP's KGB reading featured in New York:
Ed Park, while a founding editor of The Believer, is really making his name with his debut novel, Personal Days, which was inspired by how shitty it was to work at The Village Voice in the time leading up to—and after—the paper was bought out by the weekly-paper conglomerate known as New Times. If that book were not such a fantastic leap away from his specific experience (we were there), into realms more universal, and more hilarious, you might think the new short story he’ll read tonight would just take a spade to the same territory. But Park digs deeper—wider, even!—and we can’t wait to hear what he does in the short form, and how his impish language sounds out loud. —Nick Catucci
¶ 7/30 The L Magazine's summer fiction issue includes an excerpt from The Dizzies, an EP novel-in-progress.
¶ 7/28 Canada's National Post picks Personal Days as a summer read.
¶ 7/22–7/30 At Time Out New York, Ed dispenses strangely shaped pearls of wisdom regarding that elusive creature, Success. Sample: “I like living in New York—a stimulating city, good for writing. I like being busy and being in the thick of things, even though I never go anywhere and only communicate via e-mail.”
¶ 7/23 Voice of America's Korea service talks to Ed. (Listen.)
¶ 7/5 Korea's Chosun Ilbo profiles Ed. Here's a solid translation.
¶ 7/4 Personal Days is a New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice."
¶ 7/2 At Largehearted Boy, Ed spins New Order's "Run":
"Run" was my theme song, and I didn't even know what it meant. It has the virtue of being intimate yet ambiguous, and the music is a thrilling mix of guitars and machines. Even the title is up for grabs: a directive to flee, or simply to hit the treadmill?
¶ At Time Out New York, poet Matthea Harvey throws Personal Days into the beach bag of her mind.
¶ 6/30 Ed talks to Benjamen Walker live at the studios of the legendary WFMU. The righteous playlist features work songs, actors reading from PD, and pictures of listeners' cubicles.
¶ 6/29 The New York Times reviews Personal Days, profiles Ed, and provides the novel's first chapter.
¶ 6/27 From Time magazine (July 7, 2008), "Three First Novels that Just Might Last":
THE BOOK
Personal Days by Ed ParkTHE SETUP
Some office drones work at a moribund company. That's really all Park needs.WHY IT'S GOOD
Never have the minutiae of office life been so lovingly cataloged and collated.FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE ...
The Mezzanine, Then We Came to the End (a book it superficially resembles, but only superficially)
¶ LOOK OUT! INTRODUCING THE PERSONAL DAYS VIDEO CENTER: Ed reads at Google (6/18).
¶ 6/27 Interview aggregator: Ed raps with The Star Ledger, LAist, Who Walk in Brooklyn, Metromix, Mediabistro (subscription required), and The Publishing Spot.
¶ 6/12: Ed talks to Rachel Aviv in the virtual pages of Triple Canopy.
¶ 6/11: Joongang Ilbo (Korea Daily) profiles Ed. (Here's a crude translation.)
¶ 6/6: This week in The Week, Ed chooses six of his favorite obscure books—four of which are out of print. Also: The "dean" of rock critics, Robert Christgau, reviews PD for The New York Observer; The Stranger's Slog takes the book out to lunch (and likes it); Time Out Chicago contrasts it with Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener; and The Boston Phoenix looks at the development of the office novel.
¶ 6/2 PD is a bestseller at Book Court in Brooklyn.
¶ Some great NEW REVIEWS in The Boston Globe, Newsweek, the Daily Mail, Bookforum, the Los Angeles Times, People StyleWatch, Daily Candy, L Magazine, The San Diego Union-Times, The Onion, and elsewhere! (See the main reviews page for links.)
¶ 5/20: Department of TMI: Ed talks about bruxism (teeth-grinding) to the New York Observer.
¶ 5/19: New York magazine's Agenda features Personal Days.
¶ Composer Nico Muhly turns to PD for some light reading.
¶ Ed blogged at Powell's Books from 5/12 to 5/16, on topics ranging from John Darnielle and H.P. Lovecraft to Dungeons & Dragons and the unexpected joys of wandering the stacks.
¶ “The Oblivion Arms” (from Ed's long-lost novel Dementia Americana) was serialized at Five Chapters.
¶ 4/20: The Los Angeles Times profiles Ed. Here's a small bit:
With his rumpled-preppy dress and pointy glasses, Park...could be one of the geek-chic protagonists in Adrian Tomine's "Optic Nerve" comic. Inspired more by the hip taste and fanboy ethos of the alternative press than the intellectually striving postwar "little magazine," he worships Philip K. Dick instead of Philip Rahv....
¶ 4/18: The San Francisco Chronicle profiles bestselling author Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake):
Crosley...first published an essay, "Goodbye, Columbus," in the Village Voice in 2004. It was about the day she moved and managed to get locked out of two apartments. She wrote up her experience in an e-mail to friends, and Ed Park, an editor at the Village Voice who happens to be one of those friends, told her to shape it up and he'd publish it. "I keep telling this story about the e-mail I sent that became the Village Voice essay. It's been inspiring the ire of many Internet personalities, as if after I decided to write an e-mail, now I'm going to call myself a writer."
¶ And as always, check out the Personal Days blog! New content nearly round the clock!