Sasha Frere-Jones will be reading the first piece he wrote for The New Yorker (*) on Wednesday, January 23rd, at KGB Bar, on East Fourth Street. The theme of the evening is “Design Criticism.” The organizers are being more than kind to think that his take on Arthur Russell constitutes a fruitful engagement with the concept of design. But he is told that someone will be playing the Russell songs mentioned in the piece, and that is a thing worth leaving the house for, as is the opportunity to hear his co-readers: Jody Rosen, Rob Giampietro, and Stuart Bailey. Even if you already have the Russell records, you do not have these people on your shelf. So come on out.

People seem to like the place.

(*) To tempt you to click through, I'll excerpt the opening sentence:

This story begins, as many good ones do, with a gay man from Oskaloosa playing cello in a closet in a Buddhist seminary.