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Tuesday, 7:30 pm EDT May 5, 2020
7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT
Join us online for a conversation about the treasures, oddities, and characters at the old Chelsea Flea Market, as well as art, New York City, and living in the iconic Chelsea Hotel. In The Golden Flea, acclaimed writer Michael Rips takes readers on a trip through this charmed world. He will discuss his work with Ethan Hawke.
Featuring
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Michael Rips
Michael Rips
Michael Rips is the author of The Golden Flea, Pasquale’s Nose, and The Face of a Naked Lady. He is the executive director of the Art Students League of New York and lives in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.
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Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke is an actor, writer, musician, and director. He has been nominated for four Academy Awards and a Tony Award. Hawke has directed three feature films, three Off-Broadway plays, and a documentary. He has also written three novels and one graphic novel.
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The Golden Flea
By Michael Rips
Published by WW Norton
Across America and around the world, people wander through flea markets to search for lost treasures. For decades, no such market was more renowned than the legendary Chelsea flea market, which sprawled over several blocks and within an old garage on the west side of Manhattan. Visitors would trawl through booths crammed with vintage dresses, rare books, ancient swords, glass eyeballs, Afghan rugs, West African fetish dolls, Old Master paintings, and much more.
In The Golden Flea, the acclaimed writer Michael Rips takes readers on a trip through this charmed world. With a beguiling style that has won praise from Joan Didion and Susan Orlean, Rips recounts his obsession with the flea and its treasures and provides a fascinating account of the business of buying and selling antiques. Along the way, he introduces us to the flea’s lovable oddball cast of vendors, pickers, and collectors, including a haberdasher who only sells to those he deems worthy; an art dealer whose obscure paintings often go for enormous sums; a troubadour who sings to attract customers; and the Prophet, who finds wisdom among all the treasures and trash.
As Rips’s passion for collecting grows and the flea’s last days loom, he undertakes a quest to prove the provenance of a mysterious painting that just might be the one.