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Poetry/Nonfiction | $14 ($12 direct from UDP)
Perfect-bound. 88 pp, 5 x 7.5 in.
ISBN 978-1-933254-67-8
Publication Date: 2010
Distribution: SPD
Series: Dossier
Read Press Release (PDF)
Ten Walks/Two Talks combines a series of sixty-minute, sixty-sentence walks around Manhattan with a pair of roving dialogues—one of which takes place during a late-night "philosophical" ramble through Central Park. Mapping 21st-century New York, Cotner and Fitch update the meandering and meditative form of Basho's travel diaries to construct a descriptive/dialogic fugue.
"Perambulating with Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch in Ten Walks/Two Talks makes me wonder if conversation leads anywhere, nowhere, or everywhere. Their meandering is an aesthetic and intellectual stretch, since they walk and think artfully, poetry in motion. Maybe 21st-century dandies or rootless homeboys, they observe the unexpected in urban landscapes, notice people stunned or easy. Their weirdly astute dialogues flirt with being a novel or a play of manners. What stops them in their tracks or starts them? Why are they fascinated by what fascinates them? Their boasts, vulnerability, and modesty presume a profound and unusual friendship, itself in motion, treading on and between the lines."
—Lynne Tillman
"Like the propositions of Brainard, Schuyler, or Wittgenstein, Andy Fitch’s declarations of ambulatory fact—of 'mere' observation—are barbed with genius: clever, defamiliarizing, cushioned by a hum of meditative stillness. His sweetly Oulipian sentences give back to the ordinary its modicum of glow. And when he starts talking with the profound Jon Cotner, a latter-day Plato, we remember that philosophical inquiries have every right to take root in daily curiosities and drolleries, like the 'smell of hip-cream,' or the metonymic relation of 'my first oral sex experience' to the 'mace flavor' of a cup of tea. Neurasthenia never had finer spokesmen."
—Wayne Koestenbaum
"Perhaps it was in the 5th century—I know this for a fact—that a certain government official in China chose to drop out of public life and devote himself to music and poetry, drunkenness and pure conversation. Soon he had a group of friends who had also left their 'lives' and this group became poster children for the ideal life in Asia for a very long time. Even today. When Jon and Andy walk around Manhattan talking about things I feel like they are a moving page from that very fine idea in which small talk is large and nothing is more interesting or full or more entrancing than allowing the city to model for you—and walking among it too, becoming it."
—Eileen Myles
“Magic… A new way of moving through our worlds.”
–The Boston Phoenix
“Fantastic… A deceptively simple book, Ten Walks/Two Talks demands little but offers
much. Cotner and Fitch invite us to experience our city with fresh pleasure and renewed
awe.”
–Time Out New York
“Ten Walks/Two Talks is not a destination; it’s a gentle journey with a pair of
companionable friends.”
–The Stranger
“Unusually quiet and beautiful… This book isn’t like anything I’d encountered before.”
–Time Out Chicago
“A clever, well-executed investigation of the poetics of the commonplace.”
–BOMB Magazine
“Ten Walks/Two Talks helps instill what is too frequently missing from books on
buildings: the experience of the city.”
–A Daily Dose of Architecture
“Ten Walks/Two Talks is an associative journey where scents, noises, people, and
buildings are meticulously described through the eyes of intensely attentive explorers.”
–The Architect’s Newspaper
“I hate exercise, and I hate conversation, but I love Ten Walks/Two Talks.”
–HTMLGIANT
“Cotner and Fitch’s conversations zigzag between the philosophic and the comedic.”
–Paper Magazine
“I’ve noticed more since I read Ten Walks/Two Talks. I’ve listened more. It’s made me
feel better. This is a gift, a beautiful book, and nothing in it is forgettable.”
–Bookslut
From Ten Walks/Two Talks:
A: Have you noticed this man going at the lampposts with what I’d consider a Thai boxing style—lots of knee, knee, knee-thrusts?
J: It’s certainly not jujitsu.
A: Just as…
J: I could imagine he gets invaluable practice. The lampposts allow him to hone some moves.
A: This afternoon I tried (while on the phone with Kristin) spinning like a ballerina: lifting one foot so that your knee stands, so that your thigh hangs parallel to ground…
J: Right.
A: lifting…or holding a foot perpendicular and twirling? I forgot centripetal force…
J: Did it stretch new muscles?
NEWS AND REVIEWS
04.03.13 | Jon Cotner’s Dental Date is posted by The Hairpin
11.26.12 | Jon Cotner’s Thanksgiving Slideshow posted on The Hairpin
11.14.12 | Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch is reviewed in Cutbank
09.07.12 | The New York Times Covers Jon Cotner and Claire Hamilton’s Fire Island walk
05.09.12 | Jon Cotner and Claire Hamilton on the Guggenheim’s Transhistoria Project
05.04.12 | GOOD Magazine covers Jon Cotner’s walk through Central Park
04.02.12 | Ten Walks/Two Talks Co-Author Andy Fitch interviews David Lazar for Bookslut
04.02.12 | Ten Walks/Two Talks Co-Author Andy Fitch interviews Craig Dworkin for Tremolo
01.27.12 | Jon Cotner and Claire Hamilton’s Fire Island slideshow is reviewed at The Rumpus
01.27.12 | Jon Cotner’s Poem Forest is featured at The Millions
01.25.12 | An audiovisual tour of Jon Cotner’s Poem Forest is now online at the BMW Guggenheim Lab
11.21.11 | Walk on Fire Island with Jon Cotner and Claire Hamilton featured in The Believer
11.10.11 | Jon Cotner, co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks, featured in the Wall Street Journal
11.01.11 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed in Jacket2
09.29.11 | Interview with Jon Cotner, co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks, on Urban Omnibus
09.21.11 | BMW Guggenheim Lab features slideshow by Jon Cotner, co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks
08.22.11 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks is featured on Full Stop
06.15.11 | Jon Cotner is featured in The Faster Times
06.14.11 | Jon Cotner is featured on the New Yorker book blog
06.13.11 | Jon Cotner, co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks is featured in Bookforum
04.28.11 | Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch appear on The Awl’s ‘Cooking the Books’ show
04.19.11 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks is featured in the Boston Review
04.04.11 | Jon Cotner writes in Bookslut about the 2011 Chapbook Festival
03.10.11 | A ‘Conversation over Stolen Food’ by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch in The Faster Times
02.17.11 | A response to Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks on the Lemon Hound blog
01.24.11 | Ten Walks/Two Talks is featured on the Second Pass blog
01.09.11 | Multiple UDP titles are included in Coldfront’s best of 2010 lists
12.24.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks chosen as one of the books of the year on Bookslut
12.22.10 | SPD’s 2010 bestsellers include Nets, Ten Walks/Two Talks, and Notes on Conceptualisms
12.21.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks chosen by Time Out Chicago as a best book of 2010
12.19.10 | UDP’s Dossier Series is chosen as one of the year’s best on The Millions
12.14.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks chosen as one of the year’s best by Timothy Donnelly
11.06.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks is featured on The Nervous Breakdown
10.30.10 | Cotner & Fitch have self-interview on The Nervous Breakdown
10.14.10 | Andy Fitch, co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks, has new work in Octopus
10.01.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks is reviewed in the Review of Contemporary Fiction
09.14.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed on the Thought Catalog blog
08.23.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks is reviewed by the Front Table blog
08.19.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks featured on Brooklyn Based
08.05.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed in Time Out Chicago
07.27.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed in 3:AM magazine
07.20.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks is featured on Serial Consign
07.06.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks featured on the Daily Review at Bookforum
06.28.10 | HTMLGIANT interview with Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch about Ten Walks/Two Talks
06.16.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed on the Traveler’s Notebook
05.27.10 | The Rumpus reviews Notes on Conceptualisms, Ten Walks/Two Talks, and Boris by the Sea
05.19.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks featured in Paper magazine
05.05.10 | Video teleportal reading with Jon Cotner, co-author of Ten Walks/Two Talks
05.04.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed in Bookslut
04.20.10 | Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch reviewed in Seattle’s The Stranger
03.19.10 | HTMLGIANT reviews Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch
03.15.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed in Vol. 1 Brooklyn
03.09.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed in The Boston Phoenix
03.09.10 | Cotner & Fitch’s Ten Walks/Two Talks reviewed in A Daily Dose of Architecture
02.16.10 | Interview with Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch, authors of Ten Walks/Two Talks, on the BOMBlog
02.08.10 | The Architect’s Newspaper reviews Ten Walks/Two Talks by Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch
01.16.10 | Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch discuss Ten Walks/Two Talks in the Brooklyn Examiner
Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch are the authors of Ten Walks/Two Talks, which was chosen as a Best Book of 2010 by The Week, The Millions, Time Out Chicago, and Bookslut. They recently completed another collaboration called Conversations over Stolen Food. Cotner and Fitch have performed their dialogic improvisations across the United States and internationally. Cotner has done walk projects for the BMW Guggenheim Lab, Elastic City, and the Poetry Society of America. Fitch has books forthcoming from Dalkey Archive and Ugly Duckling Presse. Cotner teaches in Pratt Institute's Creative Writing Program. Fitch teaches in the University of Wyoming's MFA Program.
Author contact: jon.cotner [at] gmail [dot] com.
