Sweet smokin' Moses, I get a charge out of a good literary event! Just like a great concert, an effective author reading can energize me for days (sometimes longer), and after Saturday night, I’m still abuzz. I caught Fred Venturini – The Samaritan, John Hornor Jacobs – Southern Gods, Aaron Michael Morales – Drowning Tucson and Frank Bill – Crimes in Southern Indiana mouthing off and I’d bet an ugly penny that I was privy to a snapshot of the very solid future of several of my favorite genres.
My experience with readings is varied though. I’ve gone to see some of my favorite writers read from books that I already loved and had them fail to excite me. On the other hand I’ve grudgingly attended events for books or authors I was not particularly interested in only to have them throw sparks at the powder keg of my enthusiasm.
Personalities and personae vary wildly from stiff and awkward to quick-witted and engaging to provocative and confrontational. Sometimes they don’t even (have to) read. Last time Randy Wayne White was in town he skipped straight to the Q&A, while Philip Kerr and Michael Connelly relied primarily on anecdotes that lent (much appreciated) accents to their writing voice. Both Megan Abbott and Theresa Schwegel were so smooth and polished in their delivery – Cary Grant had nothing on them.
Perhaps taking his cue from legendary live provocateur and human sound-bite factory James Ellroy, Matthew McBride (whose Frank Sinatra in a Blender has me reconsidering eBooks) didn’t waste any time grabbing the audience’s attention, while Sean Doolittle went to a whole other level of hero-hood for me when he was interrupted mid-reading by a rock band - poise, improvisation and never backing down an inch = H-E-R-O. I’ve heard a similar story (from several different eye witnesses) about Reed Farrel Coleman and Ken Bruen pressing on with an aggressive rise in pitch on the other side of a thin wall separating them from the Korean Britney Spears, (ask around, it’s a good story.)
I once saw Scott Phillips’ eyes go wide when somebody showed up with some young kids in the middle of a raunchy passage he was reading. The kids weren’t paying any attention, but Scott started substituting hand gestures that the adults could “read” for phrases the kids, had they heard, would otherwise certainly have asked their parents about later.
Laura Benedict gave me a whole new appreciation for a piece I already loved and Kyle Minor made all fifty people squirm with such gentle relentlessness that by the time he’d finished, the audience had bonded the way soldiers in combat might.
Chuck Palahniuk was a circus and there were four hundred people pressed together to see it, (actually something like the Mo Willems event I once took my youngsters to, come to think of it,) and Steve Earle borrowed from his legendary song-writing legacy to rend a ten minute passage of I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive a complete tour of emotional landmarks.
I hate to hear I missed Alan Heathcock (Volt) the other night, but next up for my summer I’m catching the scary-good Donald Ray Pollock (The Devil All the Time) and the reading-as-outlandish-performance stylings of Jesus Angel Garcia (badbadbad) and I’ve got no idea what to expect from Jane Bradley – I just know I loved her book You Believers.
What are your favorite or most memorable author event stories?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
