Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red Times Square Blue (NYU Press)
Samuel Delany’s non-fiction masterpiece is a melancholy analysis of the disappearance of the porn cinemas of Times Square amidst Rudy Giuliani’s war on sex. While Delany is incisive on gentrification, I return to this book again and again for his memories of the blue movies of a bygone era. The twilight of hardcore New York still bathes these pages in the neon of shuttered marquees.
Bruce Hainley, Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant’s Volte-Face (Semiotexte)
In this deliberately unwieldy study of the pugnacious plagiarist Sturtevant, Bruce Hainley takes a circuitous route in attempting to better see an American artist who spent her career obscuring herself in the work of others. Hainley experiments with form—the book dabbles in theatre, duelling essays (à la John Ashbery’s ‘Litany’) and traditional biography—only to find himself repeatedly short-circuited by the mega-wattage of Sturtevant’s practice.
Moyra Davey, Index Cards (Fitzcarraldo)
Moyra Davey is as great a reader as she is an artist and writer. This new collection of short essays on art and daily life evince the eclecticism of Davey’s approach to books, paintings, photographs and films. ‘Often I find a spark where I least expect it,’ she writes. What follows are fireworks.
Andrew Durbin (born Orlando, USA) is an author, critic, poet, and the editor in chief of Frieze. His recent publications include MacArthur Park in 2017 and Skyland in 2020, both from Nightboat Books. Before joining Frieze, Durbin served as director of Company Gallery in New York and was a talks curator at the Poetry Project.