At Mellow Pages in Bushwick, the NYC Launch of Daniel Canty’s “Wigrum: An Inventory Novel”

I was really glad to discover a great new place for literary events and book talk last night in Brooklyn. The venue is Mellow Pages Library and Reading Room and it’s located on Bogart Street just steps away from the Morgan St. subway stop of the “L” train in Bushwick. It’s on the ground floor of a loft building that also houses a number of art galleries. It’s big, square-ish room with handsome walnut paneling and big windows, with a true library ambiance. Their tumblr includes this statement: “Mellow Pages is an independently-run library & reading room located in Brooklyn, NY focusing on providing limited-print fiction and poetry to the neighborhoods of Bushwick, East Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. With a collection of over 1,200 titles and zines, come check out the space and have a coffee, crack into a new one.” The picture to the left shows how they feature and display the amazing zine collection they hold.

I went there to represent Talonbooks of Vancouver BC, whose francophone author Daniel Canty was launching his new novel, Wigrum in a joint reading with Oana Avasilichioaei, his translator. Here’s a link to the full post on the reading that I’ve just published with pertinent links and lots of pictures at Honourary Canadian, my second blog which I launched about a month ago.

I’ve been dipping in to the novel all week in advance of the reading and am really loving it. It is a kind of Borgesian exercise, ostensibly the census of an idiosyncratic collection of objects, owned at one time by the elusive figure, Sebastian Wigrum. The printed book itself is beautifully presented with crisp typography and clean design on bright white paper. Precise drawings, each one well printed, depict each of the 149 objects in Wigrum’s mysterious collection. This imaginary world has also produced a novel with marginal notes and an index. At the Honourary Canadian post, you can read about five of the objects catalogued in the novel. Below are the front and back covers of Daniel Canty’s handsome book. I highly recommend exploring this fictional universe.