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Just got back from the last event in UNCG’s alumni reading series before spring break and now can’t stop thinking about how writers read their own work. Novelist and nonfiction writer Nancy Lemann (author of The Lives of Saints) had some interesting approaches – to say the least. She asked the audience up front, an intimate one consisting mainly of MFA students and faculty, “What should I read?” We had plenty options to choose from. So we suggested her first book. Okay, Lemann said, then prefaced that she’d written it over 20 years ago. After that long, “You’re really not the same person,” she said, and sighed. Then Lemann read impatiently for a few paragraphs until finally looking up. “Then it just goes on and on.”

We laughed as she put the book aside, then stopped and remembered one good part to read – just a paragraph or two. Then the same question presented itself. What about us? What did we want to hear? She herself wanted to read a nonfiction piece about her friendship with her all-time hero, Walker Percy. The audience had to coax her to read from the piece; she was afraid reading aloud would reduce her to tears.

I enjoyed the reading but left thinking, at first, how strange and different this one had been than all the others I’d attended. I now sit at home, meditating on all the readings I’ve attended and what to make of them. I’ve been to two Mark Strand readings. The first time, at USC, he was fantastic – creepy, dark, funny, wild. The second time, here at UNCG, he read in a much quieter and subdued vein. Novelist and jazz critic Stanley Crouch took a bathroom break right smack in the middle of his reading. Francine Prose, I remember, read a chapter from her novel A Changed Man despite a sultry sore throat and then answered questions in a hoarse groan for almost twenty minutes. I wanted to throw her a cough drop. Kwame Dawes has been known to sing at some of his readings. Joe Queenan was supposed to read, I think, but decided to talk instead, and it was hilarious. I’ve seen famous writers lose their place during a reading and start over, only to give up and start rambling about what they had for breakfast. The more I reflect, the more I realize there’s no single way to read your work.

I remember a great piece of advice one writer gave me. Sure, practice reading. Speak slowly. Enunciate. All that stuff. But then she said it’s a good idea to edit your work for a reading, even after it’s been published. Good prose aloud and good prose on the page aren’t always the same. Pick something funny, she said, with plenty of dialogue to keep your audience engaged.

All of this churns in my brain while I wonder how good I’ll be at reading my own stuff. Well, let’s hope all those workshops and prose-poetry readings I volunteered for at USC have helped. In the mean time, I’m going to take cues from my own new hero – Neil Gaiman, who reads his work amazingly. You can listen to him read all of The Graveyard Book on his website:
http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx

The SC Book Festival was great fun this year despite cold rain and recession. Not too often can you catch so many writers in one place and spend all day browsing books.

Not that I want to turn this into a post just for aspiring writers, but the keynote speaker, Scott Turow, gave some great advice: You become a writer by writing–not by thinking about it, or talking about it in cafes and bars. His address hit all the right notes: funny, inspiring, informative. In his stories, professors whacked their students with pencils and famous right fielders chased down authors for autographs.

The festival took place only a short time after the NEH released its sobering report on reading in the U.S. The report shows that only 22 percent of 17-year-olds and 43 percent of those 18-24 read for fun or read literature. Here’s a link to a story about the report in the AWP Chronicle: http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/mburriesci01.htm

You might think popular books like Harry Potter and the Twilight Series work against these trends, but studies have shown these books don’t necessarily push their fans to read beyond the series. Personally, I think we should do all we can to promote reading in all genres – literature or popular fiction. We should resist the pessimism that often comes with these kinds of reports. I’ll echo what’s been said in the NY Times and elsewhere: we have to work harder to justify reading and what people can get out of it. Gone are the days when the intrinsic values of reading and writing were self-apparent and obvious. In fact, a close look at history might say those values were never all that obvious in the first place.