On his most recent visit to Busboys and Poets, George Pelecanos wasn’t just selling his own books—he was also hawking a slim New York Review of Books reissue of a 1966 novel whose out-of-focus Ken Light cover photo (above right) exemplifies the undeserved obscurity of its author: Don Carpenter (below right). The novel in question is Carpenter’s debut, Hard Rain Falling. In his introduction, Pelecanos says the book “sent me back to my desk, jacked up on ambition.”

Readers of a less writerly bent will likely experience a similar “jacking up”: Carpenter’s terse, overtly masculine prose, precise vernacular, and above all the unsentimental yearners who populate his book constitute a plausible, troubling world—one from which it’s hard to emerge without a bit of a head rush. The novel follows Jack Levitt, an orphan who bounces around the Pacific Northwest—between an orphanage, pool halls, reform school, dank hotels, and prisons—before marrying and siring an heir in San Francisco. It’s a volume fairly dripping with testosterone—the women get a fair shake, sure, but exclusively through the eyes of the men who sympathize, or try to; not for nothing is the book’s most intense relationship between Jack and Billy Lancing, a light-skinned black pool prodigy from Seattle who rematerializes next to Jack in San Quentin.

Read More “Exhuming Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling:
An interview with Edwin Frank” »

As previously reported here, the latest issue of the Chicago-based cultural magazine Stop Smiling is all about D.C., with Backyard Band’s Anwan Glover featured on the cover. The D.C. release party for the issue on Nov. 13 has a pretty impressive lineup: Glover and George Pelecanos are guests of honor, with DJs Ian Svenonius and Kevin Coombe spinning.

Info: Nov. 13, 7-10 p.m., Civilian Art Projects, 706 7th St. NW. $5 donation requested (included copy of the magazine). RSVP to rsvp@stopsmilingonline.com.