7pm at Library Bar, details here.
what are you doing on november 14th @ 8pm? i know i’m going to be listening to jeffrey eugenides and jennifer egan read at the 92y uptown. only $10 if you’re under 35!
usually at readings i take copious notes to try and hold on to the feeling i get from hearing writers i admire talk about their craft. tonight i skipped the note taking and just enjoyed listening to jennifer egan speak about a visit from the goon squad and her creative process. i was blown away by how articulate she is—writers aren’t always the most verbal and socially functional people. i was sitting directly behind hermione lee’s perfectly coiffed bob—her hair is the literary equivalent of anna wintour. also of note: jennifer egan has got some serious cheekbones on her. anyone else see a michelle pfeiffer resemblance?
leaving the reading tonight and walking through the marble hallways at the nypl and out into the mild spring night with the chrysler building in the background, i could not imagine living anywhere else.
tonight the 92y hosted an evening with patti smith—writer, visual artist, musician, national book award winner and performer extraordinaire. smith read excerpts from just kids, some selected poetry, and performed songs off horses, the seminal album of the patti smith group.
of all the events i’ve been to at the 92y, this was one of the most memorable. i don’t think the 92y has ever housed that many leather jackets and aging hippies before. the people in attendance were a mix of older fans who knew her first through her music and a newer generation that found her through just kids. myself being one of the latter, the musical portion of the reading floored me, especially when smith was joined onstage by sam shephard and lenny kaye.
hopefully the 92y will upload the audio from tonight’s reading. it is well worth a listen, if only to hear patti smith rave about hickory, the deerhound she fell in love with while watching the westminister dog show under the influence of jet-lag. apparently she focused on sending mental signals to the italian judge because ‘she has always had a good relationship with italy.’ hickory the deerhound won westminister and tonight patti smith dedicated her poem about bob dylan’s dog to hickory.
lorrie moore was exactly as expected—warm, with a seductive and subtle wit. jonathan franzen on the other hand was much more animated and effusive than i had painted him in my mind.
what a great night at the 92y. i wanted to hear more about franzen’s unexpected birdwatching hobby that was a product of writing freedom.
moore’s reply to the audience question about how writers come to endings in their stories was beautiful and succinct—that short stories hearken back to the past when you have finished them, while novels drive the reader and writer to imagine the unwritten pages in the characters’ imagined future.
nicole krauss and cynthia ozick reading @ 92Y.
the bite in the air signifies more than just sweater weather, it also points to the return of the reading series at the 92Y. tonight’s reading featured nicole krauss reading from great house and cynthia ozick reading an excerpt of her new work, foreign bodies.
nicole krauss charmed the audience from the start by surveying the crowd, commenting that she hoped that some of us were there to see her. apparently during the signing portion at a recent reading a young woman walked up to her and said, “i just love the movie of your book!” after some confusion it was sorted out that the girl had her mixed up with nicola krauss, writer of the nanny diaries. oof.
nicole krauss is equally well spoken and thoughtful behind the podium as she is on the page. before diving in to the reading portion she pulled out a glass of water from behind the podium and commented, “oh! my water has my name on it” then paused a beat and said in deadpan, “i drank from cynthia’s.”
hearing krauss speak about her characters gives a sense of just how deeply she inserts herself into their experiences and thoughts to give them authenticity. the section she read from tonight was about an old israeli man contemplating the end of his life and a strained relationship with his son, whom he has never been able to understand. when asked by a member of the audience why she identified so much with the thoughts of an old man, krauss responded that she likes using characters to express and talk about things that feel like herself without overtly focusing on the personal—a marriage of the personal with the invented.
next week: jonathan franzen and lorrie moore, 11/15, 8p.
a flash-free photo from tonight’s ben folds/nick hornby collaborative musical literary reading at housing works bookstore.
" We have giants or nothing. There are no mediocre writers. It is like the Easter Island statues are standing behind us saying ‘what have you done little man?’
— John Banville on the anxiety of influence as an Irish writer.
Last night I attended the John Banville and Colum McCann reading at the 92nd St Y. Banville kicked things off by reading from his latest novel, The Infinities. This was my first exposure to Banville’s writing and the passage he selected to read was both lyrical and hypnotic but maybe not the wisest selection for reading aloud to an audience. I typically do not have a problem staying engaged at readings but my thoughts kept wandering elsewhere and for the first time at a 92y reading I did not feel compelled to add the accompanying writer to the ongoing “books to buy” list I track on my BlackBerry. This feeling was dispelled during the q+a session at the end but more on that later.
Next, Colum McCann took the stage and I was surprised to find that he was not the graying, subdued older man I had pictured him to be. McCann addressed the audience before diving in, admitting that he was feeling nervous and providing some background on his decision to write a book about New York and 9/11 as an Irish immigrant. McCann put it eloquently, that when he moved to New York he could not stop thinking about dust, how in New York City there is a lot of dust and dirt, and that the dust can be someone’s curriculum vitae or an eyelash. He read from three sections of Let The Great World Spin, first setting the tone by introducing the allegory of the tightrope artist walking between the Twin Towers that is the common thread throughout the kaleidoscope of narratives in the novel. McCann also read from sections about a Park Avenue housewife who lost her son in Vietnam and a prostitute from the Bronx.
The q+a session rounding out the evening had everyone in fits of laughter thanks to Banville’s dry wit and McCann’s gregariousness. The first question was directed at both writers and focused on the anxiety of influence as Irish writers. Banville leaned toward the mic and said, “We have giants or nothing. There are no mediocre writers. It is like the Easter Island statues are standing behind us saying ‘what have you done little man?’” Banville’s q+a made me more interested in reading him than the excerpt from his new novel—now I am determined to check out his books.
Next up at 92nd St Y: The Critic’s Voice with James Wood on 3/22 and Ian McEwan on 4/6.
