The Correspondences Party December 5, 2008

Ben Greenman, Hotel St. George, Jack Spade & Idlewild Books invite you to an evening toasting Correspondences and more...

Please join us on Friday, December 5, from 6:30pm-8:30pm for a celebration of New Yorker editor and author Ben Greenman's new collaborations with Hotel St. George and Jack Spade -- and with complimentary cocktails -- at Idlewild Books, glowingly described by the New York Times as "a cozy mezzanine-level space [wherein] the classic travel texts of guidebooks, maps and phrasebooks are grouped with literary fiction, memoirs, romance novels, spy thrillers." Idlewild Books is located at 12 West 19th Street near Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District. Reservations are required: [email protected].

Greenman's newest book is Correspondences (Hotel St. George Press; limited edition, $50), a multi-dimensional exploration of letters sent (or not), places seen (and missed), and loves lost (and found) that ambitiously expands on his reputation as a daring writer and a relentless innovator at home both in prankish humor pieces and dead-serious works of literature (Superbad, Superworse, A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, Please Step Back). In addition to the book, there is a second project premiering at the party: a collaboration between Greenman and Jack Spade. Approached by the designer with the idea of providing text for a new line of leather passport covers, Greenman wrote three original very short travel-themed stories: one about a man, one about a woman, one about a child.

Finally, for this special evening, we will debut "The Correspondences Cocktail," the intriguing creation of mixologist-to-the-stars St. John Frizell, a bartender and writer whose work has appeared in Saveur, Fine Cooking, Islands, Time Out New York, epicurious.com, Edible Brooklyn, Edible Manhattan, and Bon Appétit, which published his online cocktail column, "Life Behind Bars." In 2008, Frizell's biographical article on Charles H. Baker, Jr., sportsman, adventurer, and one of 20th century's greatest food and drink writers, appeared in the Oxford American. For years Frizell tended bar at Manhattan's legendary Pegu Club, and his own cafe-bar, called Fort Defiance, will open in Brooklyn in 2009.

For more on: Hotel St. George, please visit hsgpress.com; Jack Spade, please visit jackspade.com; Ben Greenman, please visit bengreenman.com; Idlewild Books, please visit idlewildbooks.com.

Official Website: http://www.idlewildbooks.com