BOOKS & AUTHORS
Raking through Books with Banville
Join us for Raking Through Books, The Rake’s monthly happy hour
book club, at Kieran’s Irish Pub. This event offers readers the chance
to discuss literature with writers and each other in a super-casual
setting. This month, join John Banville (a.k.a. Benjamin Black). The inimitable Quirke, the irascible and formerly hard-drinking Dublin
pathologist, returns in another spellbinding crime novel, The Silver Swan. —Jennifer Havrish
5:30-7:30 p.m., Kieran’s Irish Pub, 330 2nd Ave. S., Minneapolis; free.
Richard Price
Bronx born and bred, Richard Price is arguably the country’s grittiest version of a zeitgeist Renaissance man. Following his first two novels The New York Times Book Review
dubbed him “The Fonzi of Literature,” which may or may not have been
intended as a compliment. But if early Price seemed like a flyweight
greaseball with a Mean Streets obsession that verged on the romantic, his 1992 crack masterpiece Clockers
established him as a writer without peer when it came to breathing life
into a subject that hadn’t yet become an abstract hip-hop cartoon to
millions of white kids. These days Price may be better known as a
screenwriter than a novelist, but his work on HBO’s The Wire has been offered as conclusive evidence that television can possess all the power of great literature. In Lush Life, his first novel in five years, Price returns to his hometown and finds the streets as mean as ever. —Brad Zellar
7 p.m., William Mitchell College of Law, 875 Summit Ave., St. Paul; 651-225-8989; free. Also tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-4611.
FILM & VIDEO
Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema on DVD
At the turn of the last century, Georges Méliès was literally a stage conjuror, and his eye for the magical led to the creation of some of the most startling silent films ever made. Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema is a thirteen-hour collection of 173—count ’em, 173!—short. —Peter Schilling
THEATER & PERFORMANCE
Blues in the Night
If you’re up for some bluesy torch songs — and who isn’t? — then you’ll want to check out Blues in the Night. The Sheldon Epps musical is set in a boarding house, but forget about the story; you can’t go wrong with the songs of Bessie Smith, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Ida Cox, and other great blues legends of the ’20s and ’30s.
8 p.m., Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington St, St Paul, 651-224-4222; $40.50-$50.50.
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