Once Upon a Place
A Conversation with Rich Benjamin (Whitopia) and Joseph O'Neill (Netherland)
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Date: Monday, October 19, 2009 Time: 7:00 pm Location: Idlewild Books 12 W. 19th Street (@ 5th Ave.) New York, NY - map 212.389.1399
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In Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, Rich Benjamin embarks a 26,909-mile journey throughout the heart of white America -- some of the fastest-growing and whitest locales in our nation. Benjamin calls these enclaves "White-opias." Benjamin's journey to investigate the existential crisis confronting mainstream white America took him from a three-day white separatist retreat with links to Aryan Nations to the inner sanctum of the Bush White House -- and many points in between. Barbara Ehrenreich calls this book "a daring feat of 21st Century exploration that will have you laughing and shuddering at the same time." Joseph O'Neill's Netherland renders New York City phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11. "Like Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, Joseph O'Neill's stunning new novel provides a resonant meditation on the American Dream," declared Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times. Netherland portrays "a multicultural New York, teeming with magical possibilities for self-invention." Harvard Professor and New Yorker critic James Wood called Netherland "one of the most remarkable postcolonial books I have ever read." In June 2009, President Obama declared Netherland "an excellent novel." Netherland won this year's PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The Conversants:
The Place: Idlewild Books is a beautiful independent store near Union Square, specializing in travel and international literature. Idlewild is a bookstore about places. It carries fiction and non-fiction from all parts of the world, including new and classic works, travel guides, literature in translation, language-learning books, maps and more - all shelved together by place. |
Rich Benjamin is Senior Fellow at Demos. His social and political commentary is featured in major newspapers nationwide, on NPR and Fox Radio, in many scholarly venues, and in the blogosphere. Rich holds a B.A. in political science from Wesleyan University and a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. Her belly swelling in the eighth month of her pregnancy, Rich's mother flew from Addis Ababa to New York City, via Rome, in the nick of time, to deliver his twin sister and him in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Joseph O'Neill was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1964 and grew up in Mozambique, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, and Holland. His previous works include the novels This Is the Life and The Breezes and the nonfiction book Blood-Dark Track, a family history centered on the mysterious imprisonment of both his grandfathers during World War II, which was a New York Times Notable Book (2002). Joseph writes literary and cultural criticism, most regularly for the Atlantic Monthly.