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I'm a busy, busy man. Sure, you might find me sleeping at my desk at work, or sitting for hours in a bar after work, watching baseball on TV and drinking beer--but don't be deceived. I'm wicked busy. It's just that much of my good work requires alcohol, closed eyes, and baseball on TV. By necessity, promotion takes up a certain amount of temporal real estate. I'd like to be just an artist, working away at my stories and essays and unreadable poetry, but we live in a filthy world, and that world requires that your writing be marketed or it will likely be completely overlooked. Since most writers--myself included--are pasty and nerdy and lacking in star appeal, the only marketing tool we have at our disposal is the reading. This is a sad, unfortunate state of affairs, as your typical reading event is so boring people gladly chop off limbs in order to avoid them. Believe me, I know--I've been both audience and reader often enough to have some experience in this milieu. There is precious little you can do to make a reading entertaining. It's almost always going to be an event made up of the nervous, stuttering author, some of their friends and family for an audience, and the vaguely embarrassed MC/venue owner creeping about wondering how they got talked into this madness. There are exceptions. Some writers do possess a certain knack for public speaking, and some written pieces are closer to slam poetry or performance pieces--they seem ridiculous and simplistic on the page, but when boomed out in an enthusiastic voice in front of a crowd, they suddenly become brilliant bits of comedy. Comedy always works best in these readings--the audience always likes to laugh. They do not want to hear you drone on about pain and suffering. My literary efforts, however, are generally not that funny. There might be humor in there as an ingredient, but it's not exactly a stand-up routine. And while I hold my own up on a stage--meaning I don't vomit all over the audience while my pants simultaneously fall down around my knees--my readings are, at best, mildly entertaining. Actually, if I could rig my pants to drop the moment I grasped the microphone, the entertainment value of my readings would probably double. So, I've put some thought into how to make readings a better experience for everyone, and the answer came to me last night in a blinding flash: Hold all literary readings in taverns. Last night I did a reading in support of Danger City, an anthology published by Contemporary Press that contains my short story Ringing the Changes. As usual I was neither the best reader or the worst; some people go up there and drone through five pages of their work so tonelessly you're fucking relieved when they finally give up and step down, others get up there with fire and energy and make you feel dull and stupid for trying to read on the same stage. I fall somewhere in the middle, I think. But this is the second time I've read in a bar, and I've come to the conclusion that there is no better place to perform them, if perform them you must. First of all, everyone in the place is drunk by the time you get up there to read. You're drunk, they're drunk--everyone is pie-eyed. You're drunk so you don't care much what anyone thinks, and can barrel through your reading with all the false confidence and bravado that The Drink affords you. Instead of reading in a choked whisper, eyes glued to the page because if you look up you'll hurl, you swagger up, make yourself heard, and ignore any heckling because, hey, you're drunk. Drunk people are also more forgiving when it comes to your sputtering, slurred delivery, and when you're done you'll get a big round of applause just because you finally stopped--it doesn't matter whether anyone pays any attention to you or not, the applause feels good. Second, half the place--at least--will be completely ignoring you. This might seem like a Bad Thing at first, but in reality, it's great. People will be talking loudly, ignoring you, and this a) encourages people to read fast and get off the stage, and b) insulates you against any smartasses out there, because hecklers need quiet. When you have to pretty much shout to be heard, it forces you to read, goddammit, and not whisper, and the wall of noise is strangely reassuring. The noise is, in fact, much preferred to the tomblike silence of a bookstore or library setting, where bored people sit fighting sleep while you fight the creeping certainty that you're suffering from the Infinite Jest malady, wherein your words sound perfectly sensible to you, but like a horrible, disturbing noise to everyone else. Finally, let us not forget that bars are the greatest places in the universe. They are egalitarian, giving everyone the same treatment--want a drink? Step up to the bar and fight your way in. They are filled with booze. They are places where you can either be with people or enjoy some solitude, often in the same evening. And they are places where you can rely on finding people all there for the same purpose: A little alcohol, some conversation, perhaps, and the brief reminder that we are not, after all, alone in this world. If I have anything to say about future readings, friends, they will all be held in bars. However, I rarely have control of anything, these days, especially in the writing world, where Jeff only pawn in game of life. If necessary, however, I will bring my own booze and get drunk in the bookstore in order to replicate the experience as much as possible. If my pants fall down the moment I stand up to read, however, None of you, I don't think, will be surprised. Jeff |
May 10, 2005