Refreshments to Follow
Why I don't like readings, and the story of my best reading.
One thing a writer does is read their work aloud to people. I’ve done a lot of it, but I never loved it. The point of writing it all down is partly so as not to have to say it again and again. Socially, I wince at repeating myself when I trot out a well-worn anecdote.
I like writing. I like rewriting. I like the process of finding a way out of my own way and honing the story or the idea down to the correct mix of details and action. I like the process of making something, and I like finishing it. But afterwards, saying those words isn’t fun. I fear that I’ll discover a better way to have said things in mid-talk, and unravel the text in public.
Eleni’s Midnight Cafe
One of the first readings I recall doing was at Eleni’s Midnight Cafe in Worcester, a diner with a small stage that stayed open all night on the weekends. I’d work there when I was a little older, washing dishes ten to six.
In the ‘90s, slam poetry was the thing. You’d perform your piece for judges, and they’d rate you. The host was Bill MacMillan, a member of Worcester’s poetry slam team, which was raising money to go to nationals. He’d open and close each open mic with a few well-rehearsed pieces. That day, Bill was at Eleni’s, hosting a slam to choose a few high school poets to read on one of the lesser stages at Lollapalooza in Rhode Island.
After I finished saying my piece to the diner, I was ready to start finding a ride to Rhode Island. But lo, I lost! The judges chose my buddy instead. I like to remember that I took it in stride. I did more readings there, mostly on Sunday afternoons. I may have competed in other slams. I only know that I never won one.
The scene, 1999-2001
In my final months of college at The New School, I started hosting a series of readings. It wasn’t entirely my idea. A fellow student, Patrick, influenced by the mutual-promotion strategies of literary movements throughout history, selected me, and two other guys to be the scene. We were young and anything seemed possible.
Of the group, I was the one most comfortable to play emcee. I wasn’t eager to tread the boards, but I was an angry young man. That defiant attitude toward the audience that brought volume and volatility to the proceedings. The whole scene would eventually break up when a probably well-provoked friend rushed the stage to attack me with a broom handle.
Sometimes as many times as three nights a week, I’d host readings at a place on East 3rd Street called Latin in Manhattan, a bar on Orchard called Angel then later Dharma after the owner changed girlfriends, and finally at Bullet Space Gallery. We got decent crowds -a mix of students and East Village writers, notably John Farris.
The story was that John had been a onetime confidant of Malcolm X and Ornette Coleman. He was a regular presence at these events, reading from a funny novel-in progress based on a millennia-old book by Apuleius about a donkey desperate to be turned into a man. The significance of the plot was lost on me at the time, though less so now. He'd live at Bullet Space until he died there in 2016.
I’d try out new poems, and trot out a few tried-and-true warhorses. I got free drinks - good pay, for poetry! It was a good time. But it wasn’t the thing. Writing was the thing. And when one reading got a little too crazy, and some people got pushed and shoved and cussed out, I decided not to go back.
Not long after, Patrick joined the Army. We did a reading together more than ten years later when his book about Iraq came out, at the lost and lamented St. Mark’s Books. He still writes poems.
The pews
I could never stand church. The listening, obedience and self-negation of just sitting there while some stranger droned on. Same with school.
Almost everything in my life has been better than sitting in school. I love to read and to talk about books. But from the age of four to the age of 22, I hated nearly every minute of school.
What else is a reading but standing up and saying something to people who have agreed to sit quietly in a group? By dint of the golden rule, it’s something I ought never do.
Your work reminded me of…
The Q&A part of the reading is almost always the worst. The crowd at any reading consists of an unbearably large proportion of writers. And the collective self-negation required to get through more than ten minutes of watching someone read from a page needs some release.
As a result, the Q&A is often a diarrheic explosion of self-professed, self-involved exposition from people who want mostly to prove that it should have been them onstage instead. They offer a mini-essay ahead of the question, if there’s a question at all. Or they start their question by bringing up something obscure they’ve read. They’re mostly informing the rest of the audience that the smarter person is not only smarter, but better - look how patiently they waited their turn! Painful - but what do you expect from someone who’s been held captive?
Captivity
The problem with readings - the captive audience - is why they’re very nearly worth doing. It’s not easy to get people to notice or care about a work of literature. Like a time-share salesman, you have to hold them captive. You have to promise them something, a drink at least, to come out and have them agree to let you go on at some length.
Exceptions
My general preference is for words on a page. I like to flip back. I like to have multiple attempts to understand. I like to catch the writer in a lie. I like to catch the writer being smarter than me.
But when read aloud, poetry tends to play better than fiction. There’s just so much administrative work involved in fiction - who’s saying what, where are the characters, what kind of relationship do they have, what kind of building they’re in, or what the weather’s like, and so on. It’s a lot for the ear. And in a folding chair, it’s a lot for the ass.
Some writers are so good at performing the written word that the performance is more the final form of the work than the words on a page. One example is the late, great Sekou Sundiata, who was something else when delivering his work out loud. In college, I took a course from him. And in person, he was something else too.
Three weeks ago in Philadelphia
The Forget This Good Thing event at Iffy Books was the first time I’d gotten up to declaim anything in front of people in about six years. Over that time, I’d published three novels and three books of aphorisms connected with Forget This Good Thing. I’d held a pair of book launches, but avoided reading, for all the reasons I’d listed.
The event was a gigantic success, due to the really cool staff and atmosphere at Iffy Books, but mostly to my friend Jessica, whom I’ve known since Catholic school when we were twelve. She was able to get about thirty inquisitive and indulgent people into the small shop. And Matthew Dublin, my partner on the project, came down from Brooklyn. So even if we bombed to an empty house, it would still be a night with two of my favorite people.
We billed the evening as a demonstration of the capabilities of Forget This Good Thing. Matt and I said a few words about what the app is and how it works, then asked everyone to scan the QR code on the stickers we’d handed them on the way in, which took them straight to the oracle. We asked them to shout out the first aphorism they saw, or the first one they liked, or the first one that would sound good in a funny voice, or the one that answered their deepest question, or the one that would make us most uncomfortable.
I kicked it off, taking my own medicine and reading the first one that came up. Then people started barking them out - the funny, the lewd, the absurd - for about ten minutes. I wasn’t worried about finding fault in what I’d written, or about anyone reciting them wrong. It was playful and fun.
With 30 phones separately running through about 2,400 aphorisms served up by 30 random-number generators, no one knew what would come next. It wasn’t a recitation so much as a role of the dice, an exploration, where everyone could get a little loud.
Once the cadence slowed, we stopped, and did a spirited Q&A, then hung around the shop for another hour, signing books, drinking and chatting. And after four-plus years working on Forget This Good Thing in isolation, it was both a proof of concept and a creative vindication for Matt and I. Personally, it was one of the best events of my career.
Esoteric vs. exoteric
Some authors will disagree with my dislike of readings. Some authors write from the podium, and see their written work as inherently and entirely social. Some like to wax rhapsodic about the primeval importance of the ancient storyteller around the fire.
For my own reasons, I don’t trust things said to a crowd. I’m more a creature of the written word, where a solitary writer can sneak up to a solitary reader and say now that the fuckwits are gone, I can tell you something.
But there are nights, not many and not often, when we can all escape the fuckwits together, and tell each other something truly unexpected.
Selected bibliography
How Many Suns Burn Over Babel Where Poets Die? by Patrick Kosiewicz
A long poem by Sekou Sundiata, with music
A chapbook by Worcester poetry stalwart Bill MacMillan (PDF)
A long poem I used to read in front of crowds in 2000, with music
Forget This Good Thing – Try it now!
Forget This Good Thing – The free app for iPhone and iPad
Forget This Good Thing – The free app for Android
Forget This Good Thing - Paper book 1 - Paper book 2 - Paper book 3
Forget This Good Thing - All About It
Forget This Good Thing - A reintroduction - Its creation - What it can do for you - Why it matters - Thirteen descriptions - The risks - Case study - Case study #2 - The secret history
"And when one reading got a little too crazy, and some people got pushed and shoved and cussed out, I decided not to go back." LOL.
The use of “unbearably” was exquisite here - “ The crowd at any reading consists of an unbearably large proportion of writers.” Another great one. Thank you!