Reasons for Living - March 2015

Prose
Invisible Republic: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - Greil Marcus
Bossypants* - Tina Fey
The Masks of God: Creative Mythology* - Joseph Campbell
Bobos in Paradise - David Brooks
Helen Vendler essays
Don Delillo stories
Jorge Luis Borges stories
Walt Whitman: The Making of the Poet* - Paul Zweig

Poetry
Ezra Pound
Joseph Brodsky
The Double Dream of Spring - John Ashbery
Jorge Luis Borges
W.H. Auden
The Duino Elegies - Rilke

Images
Barfly - Charles Bukowski, Writer. Barbet Schroeder, Dir.
Wrestlemania XXXI

*partial

Reasons For Living - February 2015

Prose
Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock and Roll Band - Ian Svenonius
Raymond Carver stories
The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School Poets - David Lehman
Sound and Form in Modern Poetry - Harvey Gross
Memoirs - Pablo Neruda

Poetry
T.S. Eliot - Prufrock
Pablo Neruda
Cesar Vallejo
Rilke - New Poems

Movies
Reality Bites - Ben Stiller, Dir.
The Left-Handed Woman - Peter Handke, Dir.

Plays
Big Love - Charles Mee, Signature Theatre

Reasons for Living - January 2015

Novels
Double Duce - Aaron Cometbus
Herzog - Saul Bellow

Prose
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York - Luc Sante
Up in the Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell (excerpts)
The Anxiety of Influence - Harold Bloom

Movies
Kingpin - The Farrelly Brothers
Cast Away - Robert Zemeckis
Mean Streets - Martin Scorsese

Poetry
Mayakovsky's Revolver - Matthew Dickman

TV Shows
Broad City

Reasons for Living - Dec 2014

Movies 
The Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson
Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu
Almost Famous - Cameron Crowe
Thief - Michael Mann

Novels
The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem

Prose
Roxane Gay essays
The Aleph - Jorge Luis Borges
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Peter Biskind
Jonathan Lethem essays
The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein
Do The Right Thing: The Book  - Spike Lee

Poetry
John Berryman
Ted Berrigan
Ted Hughes

TV Shows
True Detective - Ssn 1

Reasons For Living - November 2014

Plays
Our Lady of Kibeho - Katori Hall
The Seagull - Bedlam Theatre
Straight White Men - The Public Theater

Movies
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues - Adam McKay 
Mutual Appreciation - Andrew Bujalski
Boyhood - Richard Linklater
Eyes Wide Shut - Stanley Kubrick
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Julian Schnabel
Slacker - Richard Linklater

Novels
Madame Bovary - Gustav Flaubert
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

Poetry
What Narcissism Mean to Me - Tony Hoagland

Prose
Jonathan Lethem essays
The Job - William S. Burroughs
Big Two-Hearted River - Ernest Hemingway

REASONS FOR LIVING - October 2014

Poetry
Robert Lowell - The Dolphin
Eileen Myles, Adam Zagawjewski, Walt Whitman, Federico Garcia Lorca

Movies
Boogie Nights - P.T. Anderson
Walden: diaries, notes, sketches - Jonas Mekas
Grizzly Man - Werner Herzog
Rescue Dawn

Novels
Running Dog - Don Delillo

Plays
Train Story - Adam Rapp

REASONS FOR LIVING - September 2014

Poetry
Destroyer and Preserver - Matthew Rohrer
West Running Brook - Robert Frost
The Late Parade - Adam Fitzgerald

Plays
Krapp's Last Tape -Samuel Beckett

Movies
La Collectionneuse - Eric Rohmer
Slacker - Richard Linklater

Reasons For Living - August 2014

Movies
Lord of War - Andrew Niccol
It's Impossible to Learn How to Plow By Reading Books (Partial)- Richard Linklater
Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman
Deux Hommes dans Manhattan - Jean-Pierre Melville
Dazed and Confused - Richard Linklater

Plays
Balladeers Play To The Moon - Matthew Vitticore, Writer - Joe's Pub
Othello - Shakespeare in the Parking Lot - Hamilton Clancy
Me, Myself and I
Seascape - Edward Albee

Novels
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
Tonio Kroger - Thomas Mann

Reasons for Living - July 2014

Plays
American Buffalo - David Mamet
Melancholy Play, Eurydice - Sarah Ruhl
The Zoo Story - Edward Albee
King Lear - Public Theater, Starring John Lithgow
Movies
Wayne's World - Penelope Spheeris, Dir. 
A Master Builder - Jonathan Demme, Dir.
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
Phil Spector - David Mamet, Dir.
TV Shows
Dexter
Prose
Essays - Jean Baudrillard
Poetry
The Religion of My Time - Pier Paolo Pasolini
Comix
Undeleted Scenes (selections)- Jeffrey Brown
Tunes
Lil Wayne, Three 6 Mafia, John Denver, Bob Dylan

Reasons for Living - June 2014

Prose
Travels in New England - Spalding Gray
Lucinella - Lore Segal

Plays
The Killer - Eugene Ionesco - Theatre for a New Audience feat. Michael Shannon

Reasons for Living - May 2014

Plays
Manhattan Repertory Theatre's Spring One-Acts

Poetry
Robert Duncan

TV Shows
Mad Men

Novels
Big Sur - Jack Kerouac
Ulysses - James Joyce

Movies
Escape From L.A. - John Carpenter, dir.
Certified Copy - Abbas Kiarostami, dir.
Pootie Tang* - Louis CK, dir.
Tree of Life* - Terence Malick , dir.

Prose
Gary Snyder essays
Marshall Mcluhan, Joseph Campbell, Robert Anton Wilson, Stuart Gilbert on James Joyce

*partial

Reasons for Living - April 2014

Plays
The Day Room - Don Delillo
4000 Miles - Amy Herzog
Dead City - Sheila Callaghan
King Lear - TFANA, Arin Arbus, dir. feat. Michael Pennington as Lear
Body Awareness - Annie Baker

Poetry
W.S. Merwin Translations
Hymn to Life, The Morning of the Poem, A Few Days - James Schuyler
Holy Sonnets, Divine Meditations - John Donne
Song of the Open Road, Calamus, Salut Au Monde!, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life - Walt Whitman
Mayakovsky poems

TV Shows
Silicon Valley - Premiere
Mad Men

Novels
Blood Meridian: or The Evening Redness in the West - Cormac McCarthy
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P - Adelle Waldman

Movies
Inside Llewyn Davis
Duck Soup

Prose
Empire of Illusion - Chris Hedges
Wendell Berry essays

Reasons For Living - March 2014

Plays
Thom Pain (Based on Nothing) - Will Eno
Love and Information - Caryl Churchill, NYTW. James McDonald, dir.
Ten Minute Plays at Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater
The Christians - Lucas Hnath, Humana Festival, Actors' Theatre of Louisville

Poetry
North - Seamus Heaney
Friends You Drank Some Darkness - 3 Swedish Poets - Robert Bly, Ed.

TV Shows
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee - Jerry Seinfeld
Portlandia

Novels
The Names - Don DeLillo
Americana - Don DeLillo
The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy

Movies
The Wheel of Time - Werner Herzog
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga - Werner Herzog
Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the Sun - Werner Herzog
Vegucated 
Brokeback Mountain - Ang Lee

Reasons For Living - February 2014

Novels
Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner
Shoplifting From American Apparel - Tao Lin
How Should a Person Be - Sheila Heti

Movies
Nebraska
Minnie and Moskowitz
The Grapes of Wrath
The Squid and the Whale

Plays
Intermission, The Flu Season, Tragedy: A Tragedy - Will Eno
Orson's Shadow - Austin Pendleton
The Revisionist - Jesse Eisenberg
America Hurrah - Jean-Claude van Itallie

Poetry
Begging for It - Alex Dimitrov
The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart - anth. compiled by Robert Bly, James Hillman and Michael Meade

Reasons For Living - January 2014

Movies
Blackfish
The Joneses
JFK 
Mister Lonely (Partial)
Julien Donkey Boy (Partial) 
Before and After Dinner (Documentary on Andre Gregory)

TV Shows
Mad Men (entire series)
Orange is the New Black (Ep 1)
House of Cards (Ep 1)
Wonder Years (Ep 1, 2, 3)

Books
Libra - Don Delillo 
The Wild Swans at Coole - Yeats
Taipei - Tao Lin


Plays
Circle Mirror Transformation - Annie Baker
The House at Falling Hanging - Frank O'Hara
The Mystery Chef Mystery: A Play for Two Pianos - James Schuyler
Our Late Night - Wallace Shawn 
Women of Manhattan - John Patrick Shanley
Infrared - Mac Wellman

Reasons For Living - December 2013

Books
Point Omega
Mao II
Into the Wild
Life Work - Donald Hall

Movies
His Girl Friday
Crybaby
Into the Wild
Assault on Wall St.
In the Name of the Father
Side by Side
Room 237
Shepard and Dark

Articles
Samsa in Love - Murakami
On Norman Rockwell
Interview-Errol Morris on JFK Assassination
On Boredom

Reasons For Living - November 2013

Movies
The Darjeeling Limited -Wes Anderson
Paris, Texas - Wim Wenders
Wings of Desire - Wim Wenders
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania - Jonas Mekas
Don DeLillo BBC Documentary
Vine Compilation Videos

Books
Try! Try! - Frank O'Hara
New York: A Serendipiter's Journey - Gay Talese
Return to A Native Country - Aime Cesaire
Reality Hunger - David Shields
Salinger - David Shields, Shane Salerno
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Train Dreams - Denis Johnson
Impossible Vacation - Spalding Gray
Stories and Texts for Nothing - Samuel Beckett
Chekhov short stories
Guy de Maupassant short stories

Plays
Grasses of a Thousand Colors - Public Theater, Andre Gregory, Dir.
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Theatre for a New Audience, Julie Taymor, Dir.

REASONS FOR LIVING: The Best Shit I Read, Watched or Heard in 2012

Typically people do this in December, so people can read it during their downtime for the holidays, so they know what new shit to buy for X-mas, but I'm only getting around to it now. This is the best media I experienced during the year of our lord, 2012. The year the world didn't end.

Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen
The Branch Will Not Break, Shall We Gather at the River - James Wright

Travellers on the lost highway. Makes me think Springsteen should've never had a band. He should've made weird little tapes like this. The songs move slower, so they have more impact. They're not overwhelmed by the bravado of the band. The characters are alone, so the sound should be sparse. It reminded me of James Wright's poems. Poems of an abandoned landscape, an abandoned people, aimless, lost in a cold wind and a grey sky. Springsteen is an actor in every song. He's a serial killer, a highway patrolman, everybody's on the run. They don't know where they're headed. Probably nowhere. The glockenspiel makes it cosmic. It brings the stars, so high over our dirty, hard earth, and the delirious stupor of a living death. These characters have been pushed beyond hope, into the grace of helplessness, the same grace that one might experience as they fall after they've jumped from the ledge. They're almost like kids again in that they're not in control of their lives, at the mercy of some massive, unknown authority. They are beginning to enter the abyss. They've reverted to the cocoon of hypnotism. They've gone into a void, not heaven, but a few different kinds of hells. They will soon find out some answers to the mysteries. They are living in the night, the dark sky closing in, the same kind of dreaminess that one feels in the jaws of a leopard. The brain is releasing the dreamy narcotics to soften the bite of death.


Run With the Hunted - A Charles Bukowski Reader
This is an excellent retrospective of the man's work, culled from the span of his career and assembled into something of an autobiography. I'm not wild about the guy's poetry, but his prose is brave, and he's able to write about the darker impulses of man and granting us an understanding of them, rather than villifying or alienating us from them.

Adbusters - Issues 2009-Present
http://mentholmountains.blogspot.com/ - David Berman
I've always been a little bit reluctant/cheap to give an ear to anyone close to my age because of what I saw as a lack of sincerity or perhaps politcal conscience, but David Berman kind of eased me liking something resembling a more contemporary, "hipster" artist. He's something of an anomaly, an accessible and popular modern poet, and his music is clever and funny, although sonically it leaves a little bit to be desired. Now he's chosen blogging as a platform, collecting poems, articles, videos, songs all charged at renovating our modern mass consumer society and the cultural imperialism it wages on our consciousness, perhaps the rectify the sins of his father, who is a successful lobbyist in Washington for seemingly all of our worst habits and industries.

As for Adbusters, I was visiting my cousin a few weeks ago in Evergreen Park, Illinois, a suburb on the South Side of Chicago where the Unibomber's from, and noticed a copy of Adbusters in his bathroom. I'd never read it before, but heard a little about it at OWS. He saw me looking through it and came in with a whole stack of them, every issue from the last three years. It being Chicago in January, we had a lot of time downtime indoors, which I spent reading every issue he had, cover to cover. He came in a few days later and said, "You doing okay in here, Kazcinski?"

Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes
I was sitting
Youth away in an office near Slough,
Morning and evening between Slough and Holborn,
Hoarding wage to fund a leap to freedom
And the other side of the earth -- a free-fall
To strip my chrysalis off me in the slipstream.

The Cruise - Bennett Miller, starring Timothy "Speed" Levitch



David Attenborough Documentaries -
These should be our biology classes in high school. I don't know how this guy gets his footage, but he's one of the greatest filmmakers in the world. Netflix has helped me discover a new love for documentaries. These movies show that the world outside of man, the world of nature, is beautiful and imaginative far behind any artistic capability we have. Watching these movies is a good way to gain a new consideration for the natural world, which is now being fatally overlooked, occupying little space in anyone's consciousness.



Shakespeare Behind Bars -
The greatest film adaptation of Shakespeare. Watch it on Netflix. An Othello monologue performed by a man doing life for killing his wife is as authentic emotionally as it gets. It's hard to picture, but Shakespeare writes about real people. These murders, rapes, betrayals, maneuvers, amputations, androgenies, these are real events, not fictions.

"Walking" - Henry David Thoreau
The Songlines, In Patagonia, On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin


"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of walking". These guys are one or two. Werner Herzog is another.

Diaries of Anais Nin, Vol. 3 1939-1944

Wandering - Herman Hesse

"By Blue Ontario's Shores", "When Lilac's Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" - Walt Whitman
The Civil War - Ken Burns
I was taken by the eloquence and strength of even the young soldiers during this war. In this movie, we see the beginnings of modern warfare, and the horror evoked by it in those who were the first to witness what was being unleashed. You can feel the dignity of the whole world unraveling, and death taking over.


Black Coffee Blues - Henry Rollins
The funniest shit I've read in a long time. Rollins is the greatest. Here's an interesting website that argues that Bob Dylan's more recent albums have borrowed heavily from Rollins' books.

Residencia a la Tierra - Pablo Neruda

The Stepfathers set at the Del Close Marathon at the UCB Theatre, NYC.
Hello Lazer at the Magnet Theatre, NYC.
One of the advantages and beauties of improv is that it's theatre stripped to its most essential, and Hello Lazer performs with the logic of the dream. Probably my favorite improv group. The Stepfathers one word suggestion was "Rewind", and about 2/3s of the way through a funny set about a gang of saxophone players, Bailiff school, Chris Gethard steps out and says "and now we're going to rewind to the beginning of our set" and they proceed to perform the whole thing exactly as it happened IN REVERSE. We were all lucky to be there that night.

Truth in Comedy, Art by Committee - Del Close, Charna Halpern, Kim "Howard Johnson
Impro - Keith Johnstone
Mastery - George Burr Leonard
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
Buck - Cindy Meehl
These books helped me a lot this year. The principles of Improv aren't just helpful to would-be improvisers, they're a pretty solid foundation for living well. Steven Pressfield's audio books are pretty hilarious, as he sounds like a grizzled survivor of "The War of Art". Impro by Keith Johnstone is a spooky, magic assessment of modern society and how to re-animate our spontanaiety and humanity.

The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry - Edited by Paul Auster
It's all there. Auster's introduction is stellar. I discovered Apollinaire, Artaud, Francis Ponge through this book.


"What People Say About Paris" - Kenneth Koch
People also say these things about NYC.

"The Exstacie" - John Donne

Duino Elegies - Rilke
Maybe my favorite poems.

They Live - John Carpenter starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper
The prophets Carpenter and Piper. The scene where they bulldoze the encampment is exactly what happened in Zuccotti Park.



Encounters at the End of the World - Werner Herzog

REASONS FOR LIVING: April 4th 2010

LAKEBOAT - Written by David Mamet, Directed by Joe Mantegna

A hilarious, beautiful movie about a vanishing way of life (or maybe one that's already disappeared), Mamet based the play (and subsequent film) on experiences he had on a boat as a youth one Summer on Lake Michigan. The excellent cast includes Peter Falk, Denis Leary, George Wendt, Andy Garcia, the great Charles Durning, Mamet's brother Tony, and Chicago theatre legends (and guys who should be famous) J.J. Johnston and Jack Wallace. Robert Forster gives a tender, gorgeous performance as Joe Litko, a brooding lifer not quite sure how the hell he became himself. Mantegna gives the subject a wonderful dignity, capturing the crisp, autumnal nature of working on a freighter. He elicits stellar performances all around, but screws up by inserting flashback footage over some of the monologues, which are delivered with such mastery that they don't require the over the top reenactments. I love this movie so goddamn much.

GLENGARRY GLENROSS - Written by David Mamet, Directed by James Foley

Watching this movie has become a nightly, post-bar ritual (well, we don't go to the bar every night, but when we do, the movie invariably follows). A once-in-a-lifetime cast, the movie gets better with every viewing. The script, I think, is much better than the play. We get more Moss, get to see Levine in action on a sit, AND we get Alec Baldwin as the yuppie from Hell. A modern classic.

A WHORE'S PROFESSION - Essays by David Mamet

A compilation of Mamet's essay collections "The Cabin," "Writing in Restaurants," "Some Freaks," and "On Directing Film," I picked this up a few years ago at Half Price Books and it is one of the five books or so I hope is always with me. Mamet's essays are endlessly readable. His life has been extraordinary, his opinions are always welcome, and I've learned more about theatre from him than anyone. I would advise, however, taking everything in "On Directing Film" with a grain of salt, as I think he is a much better writer than a director. I don't agree with much of anything he says about filmmaking, and, although many great films have been made from his scripts, I think his material is usually handled better by others. Also recommended is "Make-Belive Town," a later collection of essays. I was a drama major in College, but I found myself consistently at odds with what they were teaching me, with what everyone else was doing, what they expected me to do, and Mamet seemed like the only one on my side. His books have been my real education.

RHAPSODY - Frank O'Hara

(The final stanza)

I have always wanted to be near it
though the day is long (and I don't mean Madison Avenue)
lying in a hammock on St. Mark's Place sorting my poems
in the rancid nourishment of this mountainous island
they are coming and we holy ones must go
is Tibet historically a part of China? as I historically
belong to the enormous bliss of American death

REASONS FOR LIVING: DECEMBER 10 2009

THE CIRCUS - CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Never seems to come up much in discussion of Chaplin, a really funny movie, with perhaps the most astonishing image I've ever seen in a Chaplin movie, the finale where the Circus train speeds away, leaving the Tramp behind in the center of the traces of the Circus Ring. A bittersweet punctuation on the end of the silent era, the end of vaudeville, the end of the golden age of comedy.

ELVIS PRESLEY - THAT'S SOMEONE YOU NEVER FORGET


Written by Red West based on something Elvis said, may be The King's most haunting record. A hymn to his dead mother.

GREAT JONES STREET - DON DELILLO
Pee-pee-maw-maw

THE RANDYS
The best band in Columbus, Ohio, but you aren't gonna find another band like this anywhere. Romantic without being schmaltzy, harmonies like clouds of perfume, a crowd full of girls in pretty dresses dancing, actually dancing.

THE DICTIONARY
Frank O'Hara supposedly read a page every day. I thought that sounded like a good idea, so I started. Try it. It's a weird experience.

MERLE HAGGARD
The guy invented the identity that essentially every male country singer utilizes today: rich baritone, twangy guitar, bump-chicka bump-chicka beat, songs about America, hard work, and drinking. Great because you can't really call him one thing or the other. His beliefs are complicated and his music is deceptively simple.