Adrian Tomine at Quimby’s!
Thursday, November 8th, 7:00 PM
FREE
Join us for a Q+A with Adrian Tomine to celebrate the release of his new book SHORTCOMINGS. After the Q+A Tomine will be on hand to sign books and comics. Irma Nunez from the Chicago reader will be leading the Q+A.

About Shortcomings:
Ben Tanaka has problems. In addition to being rampantly critical, sarcastic, and insensitive, his long-term relationship is awash in turmoil. His girlfriend, Miko Hayashi, suspects that Ben has a wandering eye, and more to the point, it’s wandering in the direction of white women. This accusation (and its various implications) becomes the subject of heated, spiraling debate, setting in motion a story that pits California against New York, devotion against desire, and trust against truth.

By confusing their personal problems with political ones, Ben and Miko are strangely alone together and oddly alike, even as they fly apart. Being human, all too human, they fail to see that what unites them is their shared hypocrisies, their double standards. This gray zone between the personal and the political is a minefield that Tomine navigates boldly and nimbly. The charged, volatile dialogues that result are unlike anything in Tomine’s previous work or, for that matter, comics in general. But shortcomings is no mere polemic. Any issues that are raised stand on equal footing with expertly-crafted plot turns, subtle characterization, and irreverent humor, all drawn in Tomine’s heart-breakingly evocative style. What Tomine ultimately offers is more provocation than pronouncement—a brutal, funny, and insightful reflection of human shortcomings.

About Adrian Tomine:
While still in high school, Adrian Tomine started writing and drawing his mini-comic Optic Nerve. After some success Adrian began producing Optic Nerve as a regular comic book series for Drawn & Quarterly. D&Q also published Sleepwalk and Other Stories collecting the first four issues of Optic Nerve. It remains a best-seller for the company. Adrian’s work has graced numerous CD and album covers as well as magazines like The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Time.

Akashic presents an evening of readings with Lydia Lunch, Joe Meno, & Arthur Nersesian.

Wednesday, November 7th, 7:00 PM
FREE

The Swing Voter of Staten Island a novel by Arthur Nersesian is the much-anticipated new novel from New York City’s most celebrated hit downtown writer. Up until now, Arthur Nersesian’s six novels have focused on the tragicomedy of fin de siècle New York City. Now, in his boldest novel yet, he has broken through into a new landscape that at once fuses the real with the surreal, the psychological with the psychedelic. Actual characters from the ’60s and ’70s Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Daniel Ellsberg, and the Berrigan Brothers are but a few of the folks who populate this alternate version of American history.

ARTHUR NERSESIAN is the author of six novels; including the smash hit The Fuck-Up, Chinese Takeout, Unlubricated, Manhattan Loverboy, Suicide Casanova, and dogrun. He is also the author of East Village Tetralogy, a collection of four plays. He lives in New York City.

Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary by Lydia Lunch with an introduction by Jerry Stahl and an afterword by Thurston Moore is the unspeakable sexual confession of underground legend LYDIA LUNCH . . .Paradoxia contains frank and often shocking confessions. LYDIA LUNCH relays in graphic detail a predator’s diary, revealing the true psychic repercussions of sexual misadventure. From New York to London to New Orleans, Paradoxia is an uncensored, novelized account of one woman’s assault on the male of the species.

LYDIA LUNCH was the primary instigator of the No Wave Movement, and the focal point of the Cinema of Transgression. A musician, writer, and photographer, she exposes the dark underbelly of passion confronting the lusty demons whose struggle for power and control forever stalk the periphery of our collective obsessions.

Tender As Hellfire by Joe Meno is the paperback reissue of the debut novel by the author of the bestsellers The Boy Detective Fails and Hairstyles of the Damned. Long before he established himself as an indie-publishing sensation Joe Meno brought out his debut novel, Tender As Hellfire. Here, with a re-edited paperback edition, Meno limns a near-fantastical world of trailer park floozies, broken-down ’76 Impalas, lost glass eyes, and the daily experiences of two boys trying to make sense of their random, sharp lives.

JOE MENO was the winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.

www.akashicbooks.com