Proteus Gowanus » Libellulæ

Proteotypes Launches New Book, ‘Painting at Dora’

Tammy — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 13:48:29 +0000

Friday, June 27, 6-8pm
Free

Please join us as we launch the latest Libellula from Proteotypes, the publishing arm of Proteus Gowanus. Painting at Dora was written by François Le Lionnais in 1945, months after his escape from the forced labor camp at Dora-Nordlingen. The memoir movingly describes the game (or spiritual practice) he played with a comrade, in order to keep from despair in brutal circumstances. In 1960, Le Lionnais went on to found, with Raymond Queneau, the OuLiPo — the French association of writers and mathematicians dedicated to producing constraints for literary and other sorts of composition, constraints currently practiced and imitated at Proteus Gowanus in the Writhing Society‘s weekly salons.

Painting at Dora has been translated by another member of OuLiPo, Daniel Levin Becker, who will be on hand on the 27th to sign books and chat. Levin Becker is also the author of Many Subtle Channels (Harvard), a portrait of the OuLiPo, and the translator of Georges Perec’s dream-book La Boutique Obscure (Melville House).

Launch party for Proteotypes latest Libellula: Martin Nakell’s A Subset of Chance

Tammy — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:26:28 +0000

Friday, April 25, 6:30 – 8:30pm

Proteotypes’ Libellulæ series brings creaturely new texts to life, and we are very proud to have A Subset of Chance as our latest and fifth. A far-flung, full-frenzy poem, A Subset of Chance dips a web woven of geography and philosophy into the polychromic vat of language. In it Martin Nakell obeys two constraints you might think hard to combine. The first, derived from Chaos Theory, posits that “any arbitrarily small perturbation of the current trajectory will lead to significantly different future composition.” The second is the rigorous Kabbalistic procedure of gematria, whereby letters are given their numerical value. Martin will read, explain, and sign copies.

Please join us this Friday evening to meet Martin and send this new Libellula whirring out into the world! There will be wine and snacks.

Martin Nakell is an award-winning poet and novelist who believes that the experience of art is energy – in literary art an energy achieved by discovering a language new to each work, a discovery which can be achieved by submitting the language to a turbulence. His books includeThe Library of Thomas Rivka (Sun &Moon), The Myth of Creation (Parentheses Writing Series), Ramon (Jawbone Press), Two Fields that Face & Mirror Each Other (Green Integer), Goings (Margin-to-Margin Press), Form, Settlement, and Tautological Eye (all Spuyten Duyvil). He is married to the writer Rebecca Goodman and lives in Orange, CA.

Party for New Proteotypes Book by James Walsh

Tammy — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:21:30 +0000

Friday, April 20, 7pm

James Walsh, a longtime friend of Proteus Gowanus as well as a founder/collaborator of Observatory, has just brought out his latest book, There was Something in the Weather, in the Libellulæ series published by Proteotypes, our print arm.

There was Something in the Weather consists of extracts from the early journals of John Ruskin, the most influential art critic of 19^th century Britain. These entries, however, were written when Ruskin was sixteen and making his first journey to Switzerland and Italy, shortly after having been denied the love of Adèle-Clotilde Domecq, daughter of his father’s partner. By using a traced-type calligraphy and reformatting journal entries as lines of verse, James Walsh has moved Ruskin’s text nearer the reader and brought out the suppressed feeling in what might otherwise appear neutral observations of rocks, buildings, glaciers, and skies.

James will read, and there’ll be wine and refreshments. Copies of There was Something in the Weather will be available for purchase and signing.