[Aaus-list] Book launch: My Orchidia by A. Motyl

[ajmotyl at andromeda.rutgers.edu]

Remembering The Orchidia with Alexander Motyl

Book launch Friday, October 5, 7 p.m.

The Ukrainian Museum
222 East 6th Street btw 2nd & 3rd Aves.
New York City 212-228-0110

Join us Friday evening, October 5, for the launch of Alexander Motyl's My
Orchidia, a lighthearted novella that explores nothing less than memory,
time, history, death, faith, and meaning. It features two talkative
characters who take a serious walk through an imaginary Lower East Side in
Manhattan, with one of them "remembering" primarily by mangling the
historical record of actual people, places, and events. Their
conversations give meaning to a seemingly meaningless world in which The
Orchidia, a once-famous but now-defunct Ukrainian-Italian restaurant on
9th Street and 2nd Avenue, is the only beacon of hope.

Advance praise for My Orchidia:

My Orchidia is a wonderfully urbane urban fantasia. Two people walk the
East Village neighborhood that was once the bustling center of New York’s
Little Ukraine. On their way to the long-closed and much-lamented
restaurant The Orchidia, they discuss the ideal dumpling. The talk is
wide-ranging, fantastic and unhinged. This is Penn & Teller meets David
Markson, a post-modern fiction that happily confuses geo-politics with
nostalgia and conflates history with wishes, dreams, and lies.
—Judith Baumel, poet, critic, and translator; blogs at www.judithbaumel.com

I have been reading and discussing the fiction of Alex Motyl for a number
of years and any time spent within his imagination is time well spent. A
walk through history with Alex is a delight and always a surprise. Just
when you think he is going to turn one way, he fakes you out and takes you
with him on a journey full of wittily imagined side trips that are always
informative and full of chuckles.
—Neil Felshman, author and playwright

Alexander Motyl lays a palimpsest over the Lower East Side that brings the
vibrancy of the past full-throttle into the present. My Orchidia is
time-travelling itself, a mad dash into a new reality anchored in history
so acutely that you may not want to return to the world you think you’re
living in.
—Bob Holman, poet, proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club

This is existentialism and cheese varenyky served on a single plate; My
Dinner with Andre taken to the streets of New York’s Lower East Side.
There’s nothing here that doesn’t belong. An exhilarating read,
characteristically smart, hilarious – the Motyl Effect at its best.
—Dzvinia Orlowsky, poet, translator, and winner of the Pushcart Prize for
Poetry

Alexander Motyl is a writer, painter, professor at Rutgers University
‒and former patron of The Orchidia.

Copies of My Orchidia ($10) will be available for sale during the launch.
Admission (including reception) is $15; $10 for members and seniors; $5
for students. Tickets may be purchased online or at the door.