As Friday night and my first NYC literature reading approached, I have to confess that I got a little nervous. While I typically try to include others in my plans, I had purposely set this event apart as something that I would attend alone, so as not to be distracted or deterred from my cultural quest. Unfortunately it made me antsy, realizing that I would have no fallback if the reading turned out to be something dreadful or dull, but at this point I was committed, so after work I got on the train and made my way to KGB Bar.
Despite trying to leave a little early, I ended up arriving about fifteen minutes into the first reading, which was a shame, because the first reader turned out to be absolutely hillarious. I quickly found myself laughing along with everyone else in the room as he calmly walked us through his diary-esque depiction of one unfortunate man’s attempts to cure a stubborn sinus infection with a series of increasingly bizarre herbal remedies. The deadpan delivery, along with the comical absurdity of his character’s mounting plight were enough to make this an instant hit with me, as well as with the rest of the assembled listeners, who showed their appreciation with chuckles, giggles and outright peels of laughter. As far as I could tell, that poor sick man never did get cured, but at least we all could take something positive from his experience.
After being primed by this first author, we were introduced to the second reader, whose work was considerably more serious. To me, this requires a different approach to listening if you want to get anything out of what is being said. In my experience, reading a good piece of literature is a very personal, even introspective act, so finding ways to appreciate the same work in a public setting can be daunting, but by no means impossible. I think that the key is not to get too caught up in your surroundings. I try to clear my mind as best I can, focusing solely on the voice of the reader. I find that if you ignore everyone around you, and allow your mind to add a few layers of image and sound to the scene, you might just find yourself transported. At this point I should note that KGB Bar proved to be an excellent venue for this sort of focus. Thanks to a curteous audience and a competent reading, I was actually able to get a lot out of this particular performance.
Finally, following the serious second reader, the third and final reader, Melissa Kirsch, stepped up to the podium. As she began to speak, I got a sense that this woman would be, in some way, the headliner of the evening, and I wasn’t disappointed. While she declined to read from her major work, The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything, she chose instead to read some of her poetry and discuss, as she put it, “misery.” This may sound like the beginning of a long and painful episode, but it was actually quite the opposite. I’m not typically a connoisseur of poetry, but i found her readings to be fantastic, witty and in some cases very funny. Even her discussion of what she described as misery was in fact an entertaining and inspirational tale of how she came to be a writer, a journey that many in the audience could commiserate with.
After the readings were finished, I was able to mingle with the other patrons and even speak briefly with Ms. Kirsch. While I hadn’t necessarily anticipated bumping into any of the readers or taking time to chat with the rest of the audience after the event was over, the post-reading atmosphere that pervaded the bar was very relaxed and sociable. The relative smallness of the space worked to great advantage here, and I found this part of the evening every bit as enjoyable as the readings themselves. All told, my first cultural expedition was everything I had hoped it could be, and it had cost me nothing more than than about three hours of my life. Dare I say, “Mission Accomplished?”