{"id":1565,"date":"2014-04-21T13:13:03","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T20:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2014-04-21T13:16:47","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T20:16:47","slug":"housing-for-artists-upcoming-doc-and-what-twain-tells-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2014\/04\/housing-for-artists-upcoming-doc-and-what-twain-tells-us.html","title":{"rendered":"Housing for Artists, Upcoming Doc and What Twain Tells Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"200px-Mark_Twain,_Brady-Handy_photo_portrait,_Feb_7,_1871,_cropped\"<\/a>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”hLRQi16APGHGAa7vr6agsGJdgdO8X6ef”]<\/p>\n

IT\u2019S taken a while, but as rents and real estate prices have surged over the last few years, the issue of living space for artists has started to get the attention it deserves; David Byrne and Patti Smith have helped shine a light on the plight of creative folk in New York. A new story<\/a> by fiction writer Catherine Lacey highlights the problem and describes a solution she and her posse made work for them: running a New York bed and breakfast.<\/p>\n

MY experience with a small cooperatively owned business offers one possible solution, especially for those with a craft or passion project vying for their attention. The only reason I can see why artists aren\u2019t starting more worker co-ops is the challenge of getting such businesses off the ground.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She makes clear that her group was not a bunch of hippie layabouts that the reader might imagine; they were a group of dedicated, pragmatic artists willing to work hard to lead the creative life. Lacey has a novel coming.<\/p>\n

ALSO: There’s also a documentary<\/a> on the subject coming, called Miracle on 42nd Street, <\/em>about the Manhattan Plaza complex, where a number of actors and performing artists, including Samuel L. Jackson and Larry David, once lived. Director Alice Elliott has been nominated for an Academy Award. They’re currently (like most artists I know) looking for funding to complete the project.<\/p>\n

FINALLY: We generally think of Mark Twain as one of the bearded and august elders of American literature, a white-suited, white-haired gentleman essentially born into the literary canon. But Twain struggled mightily as a young man in 1960s San Francisco. The writer Ben Tarnoff, who I met about a week ago to discuss his group biography of Twain’s circle, The Bohemians<\/em>, has an excellent piece<\/a> in the Daily Beast about how Twain’s formative experiences, especially his reliance on a group of fellow writers, can help guide writers today.<\/p>\n

As I got to know Twain better, however, I discovered that the swaggering narrator of his sketches and books bore only a passing resemblance to the man himself. He projected an aggrandized likeness, a garish outer layer engineered for maximum publicity, like the sealskin coat and white suit he would later wear to make himself the center of attention. Underneath was someone who looked a lot more like me and the other young writers I knew: anxious, moody, paranoid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tarnoff’s book will interest anyone who cares about West Coast history, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”hLRQi16APGHGAa7vr6agsGJdgdO8X6ef”] IT\u2019S taken a while, but as rents and real estate prices have surged over the last few years, the issue of living space for artists has started to get the attention it deserves; David Byrne and Patti Smith have helped shine a light on the plight of creative folk in New York. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,108,34,48,46,581,404,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-documentary","8":"category-literary","9":"category-new-york","10":"category-new-york-times","11":"category-rent-too-high","12":"category-san-francisco","13":"category-west-coast","14":"entry","15":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}