Ben Greenman is a writer of virtuosic range and uncanny emotional insight. As Darin Strauss has noted, "Like Bruno Schulz, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme, and no one else I can think of, Greenman has the power to be whimsical without resorting to whimsy." The stories in this new collection, What He's Poised to Do, showcase his wide range, yet are united by a shared sense of yearning, a concern with connections missed and lost, and a poignant attention to how we try to preserve and maintain those connections through the written word. From a portrait of an unfaithful man contemplating his own free will to the saga of a young Cuban man's quixotic devotion to a woman he may never have met; and from a nineteenth-century weapons inventor's letter to his young daughter to an aging man's wistful memory of a summer love affair in a law officeeach of these stories demonstrates Greenman's maturity as a chronicler of romantic angst both contemporary and timeless, and as an explorer of the ways our yearning for connection informs our selves and our souls.

What He's Poised to Do: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Greenman, Ben

Dramas & Plays

Harper-perennial

The Slippage is a wry, wistful tale of marriage, lust, and disconnection from Ben Greenman, the critically acclaimed author of What He’s Poised to Do.
William Day must confront some uncomfortable truths about his life and his future when his wife Louisa asks him to build her house. The take-it-or-leave-it demand becomes all the more difficult to swallow when he finds himself grappling with a past recklessness, an ex-girlfirend’s son he considers his own, and his own wants for what lies ahead.
Sure to appeal to everyone who has ever been in love and had their heart broken, The Slippage shares uncanny truths about intimacy and modern relationships.

The Slippage: A Novel

United States

I Am Brian Wilson

For the first time in his own words, the legendary musical genius of The Beach Boys reflects on his tumultuous life and astonishing 21st-century comeback to live performance and renewed creativity. Brian Wilson was the driving creative force behind The Beach Boys, a band that defined an era and charted nine consecutive gold albums and hit after unstoppable hit. But he was derailed in the 1970s by mental illness, drug use, and the shifting fortunes of the band he'd helped to create. In the late 1980s, while still under the thumb of a disreputable therapist, he reemerged as a solo artist, though his living conditions made that unsustainable. Amazingly, he persisted. He found the right support network, including his second wife, Melinda, the right doctors and the right medication and, with their help, he found his way back to the foundation of his creativity. In the 2000s, for the first time ever, Wilson became a viable solo performance artist. And he was at last able to complete Smile, the unfinished Beach Boys record that had become both the symbol of his genius and of his destabilization. I Am Brian Wilson is the story of Brian Wilson's life, told by Brian Wilson. But he's not the same man who had a nervous breakdown on an airplane in 1964 or the one who ballooned to 300 pounds and couldn't get out of bed in the 1970s. This Brian Wilson is older, calmer, filled with perspective regarding his extraordinary accomplishments and forgiveness for the people who complicated those accomplishments, and his life. Wiser, more measured, though still possessed of the youthful spark that helped him rise to the top of the rock and roll world, Wilson relates his life with a level of emotional honesty that has eluded authors of scores of previous works on Brian and The Beach Boys: "Telling my story honestly means remembering things I sometimes prefer to forget. I would like people to get to know what I've gone through, and I hope that my story will give them strength."

Biographies & Memoirs

WILSON, BRIAN

Arts & Literature

Random House Canada

For the first time in his own words, the legendary musical genius of The Beach Boys reflects on his tumultuous life and astonishing 21st-century comeback to live performance and renewed creativity. Brian Wilson was the driving creative force behind The Beach Boys, a band that defined an era and charted nine consecutive gold albums and hit after unstoppable hit. But he was derailed in the 1970s by mental illness, drug use, and the shifting fortunes of the band he'd helped to create. Amazingly, he persisted. With the right support network, including his second wife, Melinda, the right doctors and the right medication, Wilson found his way back to the foundation of his creativity. In the 2000s, he was able to emerge as a solo performance artist, and complete Smile, the unfinished Beach Boys record that had become both the symbol of his genius and of his destabilization. I Am Brian Wilson is the story of Brian Wilson's life, told by an older, calmer Brian Wilson. He reflects on his difficulties, his extraordinary accomplishments and forgiveness for the people who complicated those accomplishments, and his life. Wiser, more measured, though still possessed of the youthful spark that helped him rise to the top of the rock-and-roll world, Wilson relates his life with emotional honesty: "Telling my story honestly means remembering things I sometimes prefer to forget. I would like people to get to know what I've gone through, and I hope that my story will give them strength."

Vintage Canada

A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both is a collection of stories about love, the most elusive and problematic of all phenomena. With a mix of traditional, literary prose and bold–some might even say irresponsible–experimentation, Ben Greenman explores the ins and outs of modern romance. Expect tears, nudity, and recrimination. From the half-hearted summer affair between a part-time bartender and a married doctor in a Miami hotel to the cryptic pseudo-erotic love letters to a friend who is “more than a friend,” we experience the love of pop songs, the love of cohabitation in Chicago, and love that is so transporting it takes us to the moon–literally.“Like Green Day did for punk rock, and The Matrix for kung-fu flicks, this new collection from New Yorker editor Greenman could well become an advocate for the short story with those who haven’t been interested in the form. Amusing, palatable . . . it’s precisely the sort of thing that can gain a new audience for a genre.” Time Out Chicago “A smart, tightly structured collection . . . playful, wryly comical.”  The Brooklyn Rail “Seriously funny.” San Francisco Chronicle“Wildly inventive, sometimes surreal, but tenderly told, these stories give a glimpse of what Phillip K. Dick might have written if he’d allowed himself a sincere broken heart.” Paste Magazine

A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love

Short Stories & Anthologies

Anchor Canada

In somethingtofoodabout, drummer, producer, musical director, culinary entrepreneur, and New York Times bestselling author, Questlove, applies his boundless curiosity to the world of food. In conversations with ten innovative chefs in America, Questlove explores what makes their creativity tick, how they see the world through their cooking and how their cooking teaches them to see the world. The conversations begin with food but they end wherever food takes them. Food is fuel. Food is culture. Food is history. And food is food for thought. Featuring conversations with: Nathan Myhrvold, Modernist Cuisine Lab, Seattle; Daniel Humm, Eleven Madison Park, and NoMad, NYC; Michael Solomonov, Zahav, Philadelphia; Ludo Lefebvre, Trois Mec, L.A.; Dave Beran, Next, Chicago; Donald Link, Cochon, New Orleans; Dominque Crenn, Atelier Crenn, San Francisco; Daniel Patterson, Coi and Loco'l, San Francisco; Jesse Griffiths, Dai Due, Austin; and Ryan Roadhouse, Nodoguro, Portland

something to food about: Exploring Creativity with Innovative Chefs

Arts & Photography

Questlove

Photography & Video

Clarkson/Potter

Ben Greenman's raucous new collection of stories and pieces ranges from the traditional to the impossible, from the Italian to the Russian, from the musical to the minimal. Greenman constructs layer upon layer of artifice, filling the spaces between with thousands of smooth, brown pellets of insight and humor. An editor at the New Yorker and a frequent contributor to McSweeney's , Greenman seamlessly assimilates Borges, Bartheleme, Chekhov and Calvino, developing asensibility at once wholly contemporary and tenderly reminiscent.

Superbad: Stories and Pieces

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

McSweeney's

Named one of the best music books of 2017 by The Wall Street Journal
A unique and kaleidoscopic look into the life, legacy, and electricity of the pop legend Prince and his wideranging impact on our culture
Ben Greenman, New York Times bestselling author, contributing writer to the New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet who shattered traditional ideas of race and gender, rewrote the rules of identity, and redefined the role of sex in pop music.
A polymath in his own right who collaborated with George Clinton and Questlove on their celebrated memoirs, Greenman has been listening to and writing about Prince since the mid-eighties. Here, with the passion of an obsessive fan and the skills of a critic, journalist, and novelist, he mines his encyclopedic knowledge of Prince’s music to tell both his story and the story of the paradigm-shifting ideas that he communicated to his millions of fans around the world. Greenman's take on Prince is the autobiography of a generation and its ideas. Asking a series of questions―not only “Who was Prince?” but “Who wasn’t he?” and “Who are we?”―Dig if You Will the Picture is a fitting tribute to an extraordinary talent.

Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince

Henry Holt and Co.

A New York Times Bestseller Mo? Meta Blues is a punch-drunk memoir in which Questlove tells his own story while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes, the philosophers, the heavyweights, and the true originals of the music world. He digs deep and unearths some pivotal moments in black art, hip hop, and pop culture. More than just a memoir, this is a dialogue about the nature of memory and the idea of a post-modern black man saddled with post-modern blues.

Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove

Thompson, Ahmir QUESTLOVE

Thorndike Press

MO' META BLUES The World According to Questlove Mo' Meta Blues is a punch-drunk memoir in which Everyone's Favorite Questlove tells his own story while tackling some of the lates, the greats, the fakes, the philosophers, the heavyweights, and the true originals of the music world. He digs deep into the album cuts of his life and unearths some pivotal moments in black art, hip hop, and pop culture. Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson is many things: virtuoso drummer, producer, arranger, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon bandleader, DJ, composer, and tireless Tweeter. He is one of our most ubiquitous cultural tastemakers, and in this, his first book, he reveals his own formative experiences--from growing up in 1970s West Philly as the son of a 1950s doo-wop singer, to finding his own way through the music world and ultimately co-founding and rising up with the Roots, a.k.a., the last hip hop band on Earth. Mo' Meta Blues also has some (many) random (or not) musings about the state of hip hop, the state of music criticism, the state of statements, as well as a plethora of run-ins with celebrities, idols, and fellow artists, from Stevie Wonder to KISS to D'Angelo to Jay-Z to Dave Chappelle to...you ever seen Prince roller-skate?!? But Mo' Meta Blues isn't just a memoir. It's a dialogue about the nature of memory and the idea of a post-modern black man saddled with some post-modern blues. It's a book that questions what a book like Mo' Meta Bluesreally is. It's the side wind of a one-of-a-kind mind. It's a rare gift that gives as well as takes. It's a record that keeps going around and around.

Grand Central Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Greenman, Ben. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Greenman, Ben

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Greenman, Ben. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

What He's Poised to Do: Stories

The Slippage: A Novel

I Am Brian Wilson

I Am Brian Wilson

A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love

something to food about: Exploring Creativity with Innovative Chefs

Superbad: Stories and Pieces

Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince

Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove

Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove