Passing on word that there will be a celebration of West’s life on Friday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Palladium Ballroom, 1135 S. Lamar.  West’s son, Jeff Jr., posted about the event on Facebook, saying its for those who knew West and want to “reminisce about the good ol’ days (meaning no crying allowed – Jeff Sr. would just laugh and look at you quizzically if you did.)”

Congratulations to Ian Aberle of Allen, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest! You might remember Ian as he was the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Month for March. He follows last week’s winner, Matt Harvey.

If you would like to participate in the Flickr Photo of the Week contest, all you need to do is upload your photo to our Flickr group page. It’s fine to submit a photo you took earlier than the current week, but we are hoping that the contest will inspire you to go out and shoot something fantastic this week to share with Art&Seek users. If the picture you take involves a facet of the arts, even better. The contest week will run from Monday to Sunday, and the Art&Seek staff will pick a winner on Monday afternoon. We’ll notify the winner through FlickrMail (so be sure to check those inboxes) and ask you to fill out a short survey to tell us a little more about yourself and the photo you took. We’ll post the winners’ photo on Wednesday.

And now, here’s more from Ian:

Title of photo: Spanish Moss
Equipment used: Tower in the Clouds
Tell us more about your photo: Three photos were captured with a Canon EOS 7D. The photos were then merged and tonemapped in Photomatix Pro, and the resulting photo was processed in Adobe Lightroom to increase clarity and crop.
Tell us more about your photo: After enjoying some cupcakes for my daughter’s birthday from Crave Cupcakes in Houston, my wife noticed the Cameron building across 610. I quickly pulled over and took out my camera to fire off a couple of shots. I guess I was a little too jacked up on sugar, cause my hands were not very stable. My wife likes the photo, so I’m happy.

St. Vincent is the stage name for singer-songwriter Annie Clark. She has released three studio albums,  all to high critical acclaim.

Raised in Dallas, Clark graduated from Lake  Highlands High School  in 2001, attended three years of school at Berklee College of Music, and then dropped out to move back home and pursue a music career. After touring overseas with the Polyphonic Spree and in the U.S. with Sufjan Stevens, Clark began her solo career in 2006.

Her albums – Marry Me, Actor and Strange Mercy - reflect a critical stage in Clark’s life, whether it was her transition to college, the relaxation period after her first solo tour, or simply her path to self discovery and awareness. By incorporating various instruments, including guitar, piano, organ, violin, trumpets and others, St. Vincent creates a unique sound that must be heard live to be truly appreciated.

See St. Vincent in all her glory at KXT’s Summer Cut Happy Funtime Festival at the Gexa Energy Pavilion on June 1.

Get tickets for Summer Cut here!

Want to know more? Visit her website.

Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.

We don’t touch on the culinary arts too often here, but these seem like helpful tips.

This Big Deal sends two winners off to the Wednesday May 30 performance at Kalita Humphreys Theater. (Note: This play contains adult themes and language.)

You must be an Art&Seek e-newsletter subscriber to win. You can take care of that in a sec.

And you might like to check out this week’s other Big Deals: tickets to Fort Worth Opera’s Tosca or tickets to Ring of Fire at Casa Manana.

Enter below for God of Carnage.

Well, you know who we’re talking about here: Johnny Cash. And if you burn, burn, burn for the legend’s music, then you’ll want to enter this Big Deal. Two winners will each receive a pair of tickets to  June 2 opening night of  Casa Mañana’s Ring of Fire, a musical revue featuring performances based on 30 of Cash’s songs.

You must be an Art&Seek e-newsletter subscriber to win. But that’s free and easy.

You might want to check out this week’s other Big Deals: tickets to Dallas Theater Center’s God of Carnage at the Kalita Humphreys, and tickets to Fort Worth Opera’s Tosca.

Enter below for Ring of Fire.

Our heroine Tosca makes a deal with a real lech to save her lover from doom.  Four lucky winners will get a pair of tickets to see the June 2 performance of Tosca at Bass Hall. Get lost in Puccini’s classic tale, starring soprano Carter Scott.

You must be an Art&Seek e-newsletter subscriber to win. But how hard could that be? (Hint: It’s not, and it’s free.)

And you might want to check out this week’s other Big Deals: tickets to Dallas Theater Center’s God of Carnage at Kalita Humphreys and tickets to Ring of Fire at Casa Manana.

Enter below for Tosca tickets.

LOCAL MUSIC BITS: Becki Howard talks about how she goes about programming the Patio Sessions at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. (DC9 at Night) … Fort Worth’s new Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge opens in June, and the venue has announced the first acts who will perform there. (dfw.com)

PARTIAL TO PARIS: For Cicerone, Ochre House’s Matthew Posey delivers us to 1930s Paris to watch the maturation of a young Henry Miller. Along the way, we run into Anais Nin, Salvador Dali and a host of other characters as the aging Miller (Posey) recounts his heyday. “The strength of the play is in Posey’s extraordinary sympathetic portrayal of Miller – and the actor looks awfully like the photos of Miller from the ’40s after he returned to America,” Martha Heimberg writes on theaterjones.com. “As always at Ochre House, the performances are terrific,” Lawson Taitte writes on dallasnews.com. “Company regulars Mitchell Parrack and Trenton Stephenson could be the Marx Brothers as they pop up from time to time as friends of Miller’s.” Catch the show through June 9.

The Lips have steadily released albums every few years since 1986’s Here It Is.  And the band’s also released oddities like a 12-part pieces intended to be played simultaneously on YouTube, or a microchip embedded in the gummy brain of a seven pound limited release gummy skull. Yes, I said gummy skull. Seven pounds of it. These guys don’t mess around. That almost makes the 24-hour and six-hour-long songs released in 2011 seem tame. Almost.

The Flaming Lips have been nominated for six Grammys, winning three. Many of their songs have been featured in movies, such as Spiderman 3, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, The Heartbreak Kid, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and a few others. In 2008, the Flaming Lips released an indie movie of their own, Christmas on Mars, written, directed and filmed by the band and their friends and family. They played the movie at various rock festivals during the summer of 2008 before it was released on DVD.

June 1, the Flaming Lips will headline KXT’s Summer Cut Happy Funtime Fest at Gexa Energy Pavilion. Get more information and your tickets online. See for yourself the show that this band presents, including balloons, lights and a human size plastic ball. No, I wouldn’t want to miss that either.

Find out more about the Flaming Lips at their website.

It was Career Day at Rose’s school last Friday and, as usual,  we waited until Thursday night at bedtime before selecting the proper attire for a pint-size veterinarian.  Sadly, my Anne Klein cotton blouse was a casualty because no other “lab coat” could found at that hour.  A toy stethoscope, a stuffed dog  and an old KERA name tag with tape over it and we were good to go.  The next morning at school as we encountered no less than a dozen other mini-vets two things struck me.   (1) Many high-end ladies blouses died bravely for the “lab-coat” cause that day and (2)  the love affair between kids and animals is very evident on Career Day.

I don’t have to tell you that a visit to the local zoo is a great treat for the animal lover in your life.  Besides the obvious entertainment value it’s also great exercise hiking around to all those exhibits and then back to the car at the end of the day.  Of course, both Fort Worth and Dallas have fabulous world-class zoos, but here are are two smaller zoos that are worth a visit.

Don't forget to feed the giraffe while you're at the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville

The Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville (named after native son Frank “Bring Em Back Alive” Buck  who collected wild animals from all over the world), bills itself as “the best little zoo in Texas”.  The zoo started as the Gainesville Community Circus in 1930 and is currently home to more than 130 animals.  It’s the perfect zoo for little ones with it’s loop design. The mile-long path around the zoo is handicapped/ stroller accessible and features an elevated walkway over the kangaroos, giraffes and zebras.  I think the best feature of this zoo is that kids get to see the giraffes at eye level. They can also feed them during the public feeding every day.  Another attraction near the zoo in Leonard Park  is the 1/4 size replica of a steam engine train.  The train’s route is only about a mile but the ride is a nice relaxing end to your day in Gainesville.

Feeding chickens at The Gentle Zoo is just the ticket for city kids

The Gentle Zoo in Forney should also be on your summer bucket list.  Rose and I and her friend Zoe visited last weekend and we had a super time.  Besides the bumper crop of animals to pet (and feed) there are also also pony rides, a bounce house, a playground and a train ride.  The ”train” is actually several small cars pulled by a John Deere tractor, but the girls loved it as we bumpty-bumped all around the property.  My favorite moment of our visit was watching a girl of about 8 or 9 “play” with a pony in a corral.  They were on opposite sides of the fence and as she ran back and forth the length of the fence the pony would follow. As soon as she stopped the pony would rear up on its hind legs and beg for more.  Yes, the place is small  but it’s packed with simple pleasures.

Therese Powell is an Art&Seek calendar coordinator and KERA-TV producer.  She spends most of her free time seeking out adventures for her 7-year-old daughter, Rose.  Tell us about your time at the zoo or clue us in to your ideas for quirky kid adventures by leaving a comment. Or e-mail Therese at tpowell@kera.org.

Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.

The White Stripes song “Union Forever” was inspired by Citizen Kane. So it’s only natural that it would be set to footage from the movie.

And as we mentioned , Art&Seek is sponsoring a special vendor village chock full of handmade goodies from local artisans, such as Banner Theory, MegMorgan, Dowdy Studio, folksie, Eco Armoire, OneEyeOpen and others.  And what’s a fest without food trucks these days? They’ll be on hand too.

Will you? Well, let’s hope so.

Enter below to win a pair of  reserved seats to the show.  We’ll pick two winners and notify them tomorrow.

UPDATE: Got our winners! See you at Summer Cut!

MAKING PLANS: The schedule is out for the first ever Oak Cliff Film Festival, which runs June 14-17 at venues throughout the neighborhood. Opening night features The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, a sci-fi comedy musical that should set the tone for the remainder of the weekend. Local band the King Bucks will play the opening night party at the Texas Theatre.

DINO DRAMA: Over the weekend, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions facilitated the sale of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton. There’s a good chance that the dinosaur was found in Mongolia, which has the Mongolian government not very happy. In fact, so not very happy that it has sued Heritage over the sale of the fossil. All the details are laid out over on Unfair Park.

Before he took over the Sixth Floor Museum as its executive director, Jeff served only five years at the Dallas Theater Center but he worked with three artistic directors: Adrian Hall, Ken Bryant and Richard Hamburger. And because of Ken’s untimely death, Jeff more or less ran the DTC during 1991-’92 season while it searched for a new director. Before the DTC, he ran the Dallas Shakespeare Festival, and while he was at the Sixth Floor for 10 years, Jeff executive-produced documentaries about JFK in Dallas and established an oral history program. He seemed capable of running anything arts-related.

Although married and with children, Jeff, while working at the Dallas Theater Center, came out as a gay man and eventually worked with DIFFA, the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS.

The last time I saw him was at Bright Lights, Great City?, the panel discussion on the exterior illumination of downtown skyscrapers held by the Dallas Center for Architecture. I was surprised to see him there because I hadn’t known he was a vice-president at Matthews Southwest, the development company responsible for the Omni Hotel, the subject of much talk at the panel.

That was typical of Jeff: He always seemed to be involved in something combining arts, business and politics — and involved whole-heartedly, trying to sell you on it, finding a way to get you to sign up. He once told me that he came from a religious background, he’d studied to be a preacher. But in the end, he joked, theater, politics and preaching, they were all about the same thing.

Getting people in a room and yelling at them. Getting them to convert.

Only a week after New York City planner Amanda Burden spoke at NasherSalon — extolling the kind of zoning regulations and dense urban developments synched to public mass transit that, you know, Dallas does so well — William Doig in Salon concludes what any half-awake person has noticed about downtown Dallas’ Victory Park, our very own ‘urban lifestyle destination’:

A pre-planned billion-dollar collection of imposing hyper-modern monumental structures, high-end chain stores, enormous video screens, expensive restaurants, a sports arena and tons of parking, completely isolated from the rest of the city by a pair of freeways, Victory Park is like the schizophrenic dream of some power-hungry capitalist technocrat.

Needless to say, the last thing it is is ‘entertaining.’ (‘Who wants to hang out at the mall?’) I should add that some of this wasn’t news even before VP was built: The late architecture critic David Dillon said — before a spade of ground was turned for the development — that it was in the wrong place and he wasn’t exactly enamored of the design, either.

Doig then goes on to blast the Arts District as well, quoting the Chicago Tribune on how we’ve built ‘the most boring arts district money can buy.’ It’s just a lifeless museum exhibition of  designer-class architecture.

Doig gets some major things right about pre-planned ‘entertainment districts’ like Victory Park , the ones cities and developers try to manufacture out of whole cloth:

It’s not just that the developers are boring people — the economics of single-owner districts incentivize blandness. Chain stores and restaurants can afford to pay higher rent, so they get first dibs. To boost rents even higher, tenants are sometimes promised that no competition will be allowed nearby.

In this context, it’s worth noting that VP — currently owned by a German investment fund — announced last week that it’s going to undergo a retail re-do (pay wall), courtesy of Fort Worth’s Trademark Property. They’re going to try to get away from the more high-end outfits that filled the place originally and soon died:

While the offices, apartments and hotel rooms at Victory Park have done well, the retail portion of the project on the northwest edge of downtown faltered during the recession. Sections of the ground floor shopping and restaurant space at Victory Park have been empty for more than two years. …

The developer also will be looking at how to use undeveloped land in the project for additional retail…

Preliminary plans call for a total redesign of the streetscape throughout the project.

Well, that should certainly solve all its horrible isolation/location problems.

But what Doig certainly gets wrong  – at least as it relates to the Arts District — is his conclusion: “But mainly, it shows that these districts work better without all the bureaucratic attachment parenting.” True, in the sense that any monolithic planning-and-design authority tends to dampen the funky, exciting, make-do nature of the arts and of urban nightlife in general. But a chief weakness of the Arts District from the start was our city’s traditional laissez-faire abnegation of any influence on the free market . The arts groups and, of course, the developers soon realized it was ‘every man for himself.’ Recall my opening sarcasm, above, about Amanda Burden and our city’s great successes in encouraging and directing viable urban density.

The fact is — as much as people like Patrick Kennedy of Walkable DFW (and me) may denounce the Arts District with all good reason — features like affordable housing and pedestrian access were actually part of the original plan. Once upon a time, Dallasites weren’t stupid. They knew that fancy buildings alone would not do the trick. Read, for instance, theater consultant Richard Pilbrow’s account of the development of the Arts District in his new memoir, A Theatre Project. What happened to scuttle all that early idealism/sensible urban thinking? The ’80s recession.

And the originating purpose of this public-private venture did its part as well. The idea was to re-invigorate a dead portion of downtown. That pretty much meant that after the city’s investment, nearby landowners would profit by doing whatever they could to get the highest return. Hence, the near-total lack of coordination amongst the arts groups and developers, the lack of any retail, until after the AT&T PAC started to go up. That’s when people began to realize, this thing ain’t gonna work. We need, uh, trees. And people, yeah, that’s right, people. And maybe some food trucks.

What Doig and Kennedy (and often me, too) generally relegate to a non-mention is one of the Arts District’s smartest things and signs of life, one of those idealistic inclusions that didn’t die off through the ’80s because, frankly, it was already there: Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet High School.

Image from HighRises.com

Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back weekdays at 1 p.m. for another one.

Take a look at works of art made from Legos that take thousands of hours to complete.

Conduit Gallery, with owner and director Nancy Whitenack at the helm, offers inspiration and an exceptional mix of talent in the Design District. In a recent interview, Whitenack talked about her 28 years in the gallery business and how she decides which artists to show.

Tina Aguilar: Tell me about your array of artists and who you cultivate.

Nancy Whitenack: We have a tremendous group of artists that we work with and a number of those artists are people I have worked with for 25 years. They are at this point mid-career artists, who are not going away; they are committed to what they are doing. And even though maybe we’ve had some ups and downs, in terms of what their direction is, I am very loyal to the artists I work with and I am going to be with them through those ups and downs. We have a really strong group of artists who steadily work. For each artist the work changes, and we are privy to studio visits and are always tracking where those changes are, where those 90 degree turns happen and so forth. And those are people I really count on – those artists, they are generous, bright to brilliant, and they keep us going with their own enthusiasm for their work and the amazing things they come up with. Along with that we represent a group of young artists who are more recently out of school, having just completed MFAs. It’s really a treat to introduce those artists to the community and begin getting people interested in looking at the work and following these young careers.

T.A.: Three words that describe the gallery?

N.W.: Changing, constant change. We don’t show one kind of work. Variety, we show a broad selection of images, media, and I enjoy that about our program. I think the quality is of a certain character, and that’s important.

T.A.: Tell me about the beginning of Conduit Gallery and some of your stepping stones.

N.W.: I started the gallery in 1984 with no prior experience in the gallery business, so it was kind of a leap of faith for me. I had to really learn everything about what you do to run a gallery. How you support artists, where you find clients and the whole ball of wax. I was a teacher previously, and I have always loved the visual arts. I’ve been an inveterate gallery and museumgoer all of my life, so that part I kind of knew about; but running a gallery is a whole different thing. It’s been quite a journey. I opened the gallery when the economy was in the tank. The good part of that, probably, is I had nowhere to go but up. I started in Deep Ellum on Elm Street, and my former husband and I worked on the space. We literally did the plumbing and all the sheet rocking. Every part of it was an enterprise that we put our blood, sweat and tears into, so I feel like I can do most anything, out of necessity. I moved the gallery from Elm Street over to Main Street – seven years after we opened the other space – to Undermain Building, which is a building I have always loved, and I was really delighted to get into that space. It was on the second floor, so it was a little more out of the way. It was definitely a destination.

And in 2001, I decided that I needed to leave Deep Ellum and either do something different or just really find a different neighborhood for the gallery. I started looking around and found this space in the Design District. It was a perfect gallery space, they wanted way to much rent and while I was thinking about it, 9/11 happened, and so all bets were off. Then, by the end of October that year, I said “No, I’ve got to do this anyway.” And so, I started negotiating for the space and ended up moving in May of 2002 into this space in the Design District, and it has been a great place for the gallery.

T.A.: What’s the benefit to being in the Dallas Design District?

N.W.: There are great showrooms here that have fantastic furniture and so forth, so it’s a very sympathetic arrangement, I think. People come down here anyway, there’s great parking, and I’ve been lucky enough to encourage other galleries to move down here. It’s become the main gallery destination in Dallas. That’s been helpful to all of us because we do openings together and it encourages large numbers of people to come out.

T.A.: Tell me about the Project Room?

N.W.: Danette Dufilho curates the Project Room. That is a space reserved for artists not represented by the gallery. Generally they are young artists who have just finished an MFA or BFA in schools anywhere. Danette finds really good people from across the country, so we’ve shown a really broad array of artists, materials, installations, videos – all kinds of things in the Project Room. It is a really exciting part of our program because people never know what to expect. When you come in the two main galleries, primarily those are artists we represent, you know the artists, generally; but in the Project Room you never know, so it gives us a good element of surprise.

T.A.: With the range of your artists and the opportunity with the Project Room, is there a certain process that you prefer when you are looking for artists?

N.W.: Probably the way I am most inclined to look at work is if an artist I represent says, “This is an artist whose work I find interesting and I think you ought to look at it.” Then I absolutely pay attention to that. We get a lot of submissions and, frankly, I feel covered over already just trying to keep things moving. And I’m not as attentive to looking at things that are mailed in to us as I should be. If someone sends a link via e-mail, that’s probably the easiest way to get a sense of stuff and I am more inclined to do that. Sometimes Danette will go through and cull submissions and put a stack for me to look at. And that helps a lot. I try to pay attention to juried shows and things that are going on, so I do see what’s out there. That’s important, and I want to make sure that I know what’s going on.

Stephen Knapp, False Prophet, 2012, light, glass, & stainless steel hardware, on view in the Project Room

T.A.: Tell me about your May artists.

N.W.: We are showing Margaret Meehan. It is the exhibition that comes from Women & Their Work and is an installation that I think is powerful. Along with her work is an installation by Heyd Fontenot, who is here at CentralTrak. His work is figurative. I think the two artists work really well together.

T.A.: During this interview we’ve had a sort of “day in the life of” energy all around us with guests coming into the gallery and even a purchase.

N.W.: You know, maybe that’s one of the things I like most about the gallery business. There is no typical day. You start off with your list of things. Inevitably, something comes in or somebody comes in that you were not expecting or you get a phone call and you’ve got to run off. It’s just so varied, and I love that. Always I plan for studio visits. We are always working to get people in, and we make huge amounts of phone calls to get people in to see particular shows. So we are always delighted when those people show up, and I am always working months and months ahead on shows coming up and working on PR and stuff. So those are all things that happen ongoing. There are things that interrupt that are sometimes great interrupters that you were not expecting, that take you on a different path.

T.A.: Before we end our conversation, what’s new with Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas (CADD)?

N.W.: We are back and really making some exciting things happen. We currently do bus tours. We did five during this year. We will start again this summer and do a series of six through the fall and spring of next year. Those bus tours include visits to artist studios, collector’s homes, galleries, sometimes the Cowboys Stadium, sometimes a non-profit area. We offer a varied mix of things, so we are committed to continuing to do that. We are going to do our second mystery dinner, which was terrific; people are already saying “When is it going to happen again?” We are also going to do a series of panel discussions that follow up, kind of in line with the State of the Arts back in January, and try to get more dialogue going among artists, dealers, collectors, interested people. So keep tuned.

DOLLARS IN DENTON: Michael Seman is a Ph.D candidate at UT-Arlington who’s interested in the effect a city’s music scene has on a city. And what better city to explore than Denton? In a story for The Atlantic, Seman writes specifically about what 35 Denton has meant for the city. “It’s hard to remove what’s going on with 35 Denton and the energy it’s put into downtown venues that host music throughout the year,” Denton city councilmember Kevin Roden tells Seman in the story.

QUOTABLE: “My goal is to have a piece of art that even without anybody, you see it as a sculpture, as an art piece. And then when you have people there, you have a second level of interpretation, the relationship to that. And when you are the person inside, you have a third level of interpretation.”

- Ernesto Neto, discussing his interactive sculptures on display at the Nasher Sculpture Center. Read more from Neto on Front Row.

Wendy Rene
John Mooney

Wendy Rene – “After Laughter (Comes Tears)” (LP Version) – After Laughter
Whiskey Folk Ramblers – “Night Of The Indian Man Morning” – …And There Are Devils
Jethro Tull – “Only Solitaire” (2002 Digital Remaster) – Warchild
Soko – “I Just Want To Make It New With You” – I Thought I Was An Alien
Donna Summer – “Last Dance” – Greatest Hits: Donna Summer
Booker T. and The MG’s – “Mo’ Onions”  - Green Onions (US Release)
Bon Iver – “Skinny Love” – For Emma -  Forever Ago”
Ramones – “I Don’t Want To Grow Up” – Adios Amigos
Hares on the Mountain – “Rosemary Breen” - It Will Only Hurt Forever
Atlas Sound – “Parallax” – Parallax
John Mooney – “I’m Mad” – Comin’ Your Way
Malvina Reynolds – “Little Boxes” – Ear to the Ground
Sealion – “Dick Dale Earnhardt” – Keep the Camera Rolling
Pogo – “Cryface” – Wonderpuff
Blitzen Trapper – “War On Machines” – Furr 

Esperanza Spalding – “I Know You Know” – Esperanza
Nervous Curtains – “The Crooked Telepathic” – Fake Infinity
M83 – “Raconte – Moi Une Histoire” - Hurry Up We’re Dreaming
Bethan – “Katie K” – Chapter 1:
Brewer & Shipley – “Have A Good Life” – One Toke Over the Line: The Best
of Brewer & Shipley
Yellow Ostrich – “Hold On” – The Mistress
Hank 3 – “I Promised” – Ghost to a Ghost/Gutter Town
Iron Maiden – “Sun and Steel” – Piece of Mind
Tears For Fears – “The Big Chair” – Songs From The Big Chair
Richard Buckner – “Figure” – Devotion + Doubt
The Treelines Music – “It’s Not Me” – EP
Brian Eno – “The Fat Lady of Limbourg” – Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy
Wayne Horvitz – “Otis Spann – 9/8” – Otis Span & Other Compositions
Ken Nordine – “Grey” – Colors

About the only reviews, so far, that leave a sour taste is Publisher’s Weekly’s (‘often campy writing style and canned dialogue” — say what?) and Michael Bourne’s in the LA Review of Books, with its condescending dismissals (“not the book our grandchildren will be reading 50 years from now to find out what life was like in this country during the Iraq War, but it is entertaining enough to pass the time until such a book comes along” — i.e., ‘a diverting, minor talent’) and its gripes about how long it took Fountain to write his second book (“Billy Lynn is very much the work of a writer still plodding through the formal complications of transitioning from the short story to the novel. Fountain is 53. Two or three books from now, he may be capable of turning out a work of lasting genius, but at this rate he’ll be into his seventies when he does” – a point so petty, one wonders why Bourne cares).

So, in the spirit of glossy-snappy media coverage of the Cowboys (and to save you the time to read all those reviews), we offer this highlight reel and convenient blurb tally for the paperback edition:

Washington Post: “A masterful gut-punch of a debut novel.”

Janet Maslin, NYTimes: “a gripping, eloquent provocation. … The effect on readers … will be just as devastating.”

Adam Langer, San Francisco Chronicle: “A bracing, fearless and uproarious satire of how contemporary war is waged and sold to the American public … The book’s not merely good; it’s Pulitzer Prize-quality good, so much so that readers might find themselves wishing it had been published last year so that the Pulitzer committee could have saved themselves the bother of a hung jury, and just given its damn award to Fountain.”

Kirkus Reviews: “War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.”

LA Review of Books: “This spectacle-heavy, elongated short story shouldn’t really work as a novel, and for long stretches it doesn’t . . . In the end, as smart and funny as it is, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is the literary equivalent of a particularly good Jon Stewart routine on The Daily Show. Is it a pleasure to watch? Oh, yes. Are the jokes laugh-out-loud hilarious? At times, hell, yes. But if you don’t already agree with the authorial stance, will it make you rethink your views?”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Interesting book. A bonus: The Bears beat the Cowboys.”