The Great Literary Swindle
The Great Literary Swindle — Books? Who has time for books when there are so many fascinating celebrities to follow?Jason Anderson and Brian Joseph Davis do, that’s who! In fact, these guys have time for both! Pages Books & Magazines, Coach House Books, ECW Press and NOW Magazine invite you to join Jason Anderson, author of Showbiz, and Brian Joseph Davis, author of Portable Altamont, as they celebrate the publication of their new books and revel in celebrity culture. Anderson and Davis will not only be discussing celebrity culture and displaying some of the pop artifacts that informed their respective books, but they will also be leading the audience in a star-studded game of trivia. (You could win amazing prizes!) Afterwards, stick around, get a couple of books signed, and rock out as Jason Anderson takes the stage with his band, The Two Koreas.
Showbiz: In 1963, Jimmy Wynn was the second most famous man in America. The comedian’s uncanny impression of the president made him a star. But when the genuine article died in a hail of bullets on a sunny afternoon in New Orleans, Jimmy’s career met a fate that was nearly as grisly. What happened to the funnyman next became a mystery that no one cared to solve. Twenty-five years later, an ambitious young journalist named Nathan Grant retraces Jimmy’s route to the bottom. Nathan soon realizes the Oval Office’s forgotten court jester may have played a deadly serious part in the country’s favourite conspiracy theory. The reporter’s strange and increasingly dangerous odyssey through the entertainment world’s nethermost regions takes him from a dingy New York record store to the glitzy hotels and showrooms of Las Vegas, a ghost town in the Mojave Desert and a dinner theatre in Niagara Falls. A dark comedy about the cost of fame, Jason Anderson’s Showbiz is the story of one man who became a walking punchline and another who’ll do anything to hear the rest of the joke.
Jason Anderson is a Calgary native who lives in Toronto. His arts journalism appears in the Globe and Mail, Toro, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, and eye Weekly. His fction has appeared in Taddle Creek and THIS Magazine. Showbiz is his 1st novel.
Portable Altamont was originally published, anonymously, as the first selection in the Pocket Canon chapbook series. It was a huge underground hit, and speculation ran wild as to who had penned these deliciously wicked satires of celebrities. But who other than Davis could have imagined Margaret Trudeau as a disco Moses, Reese Witherspoon as a Communist cell leader, James Spader as a mewling cat, or Don Knotts as a New Age guru? The wordplay and wit found in these prose poems evince an irrepressible and uncanny grasp of the zeitgeist, its machinations and manipulations, its possibilities and puerility. Davis uses every literary form available to revel in and hilariously rearrange pop culture.
Brian Joseph Davis: For several years artist Brian Joseph Davis has created deceptive films, writings and projects. He was called a genius by Alex Ross of The New Yorker for turning the writings of philosopher Theodor Adorno into a punk rock seven-inch. Frieze magazine said of the same project, “serious hilarity … a joyous and thoughtful thing.” Davis recently held auditions for the US Presidency on the streets of Toronto, and he developed a role-playing game set in the art world. Portable Altamont is his first book.
