With momentum from the previous night’s readings from around the world, I headed to Joe’s Pub for PEN World Voices Festival’s “An Around the World Reading.” Maybe it should have been titled, “Across the Pond and Back, and Bring the Aussie” since most of the writers hailed from the U.S. and Europe. Does Australian Christos Tsiolkas get the prize for the longest trip to PEN WVF?
I’ll take this moment to repeat one of my complaints from last year’s event: where are the African voices? There were none on stage for last night’s “around the globe” readings, and only half of one (see below) on stage at Joe’s Pub. If you flip through the event guide (with 150+ writers from 40+ countries) and count the African writers participating this year, you will only need one hand. Actually, only three fingers. Those writers hail from three African countries—Kamal Khalladi of Morocco, Ben Okri from Nigeria and Anne Landsman from South Africa. But even Okri and Landsman live in the U.K. and U.S., respectively. I urge PEN, again, to do better to get more African writers here in the future.
With that off my chest, a quick review of the night. The line-up included: Preston L. Allen (U.S.), Siri Hustvedt (U.S.), Karl O. Knausgaard (Norway), Anne Landsman (South Africa, U.S.), Thomas Pletzinger (Germany), Monique Proulx (Canada), Lee Stringer (U.S.), Christos Tsiolkas (Australia), and Tommy Wieringa (Netherlands).
I camped out at the corner of the stage bathed in red lights. Ambience included forks scraping plates, glasses clinking, and the subway rumbling underfoot. My glass of cabernet added just the right touch to an evening of literary delights.
And always present, that empty chair. Don’t forget why it’s there, people. Don’t forget.
I looked for themes present amongst all of the readings, and came up with nothing. I even kept score as to who read excerpts from first person (5) and third person perspectives (4). The joyful hazard of rapid-fire line-ups like this is that once you get settled into a story—SNAP! The book closes, the writer takes a bow, and then shuffles off stage, only to be swiftly replaced by a new writer with a new book and a new narrative. He or she gets settled into the rhythm, the audience becomes engaged, silently urging the story on, and then… SNAP! Next!
And so it was tonight. Themes jumped wildly. Here’s a snippet: a young born-again Christian -> animal sex -> the flooding of a valley -> a girl’s rainy, rowing lesson -> a love triangle -> nature -> a neighbor lady and a doormat -> slapping children -> driving in Holland.
Here are some highlights of the evening:
Preston Allen started us off with a reading from his novel, Jesus Boy (Akashik, 2010). What would happen, he asked, if a born-again Christian fell in love with a born-again Christian, and then did some naughty things together? Allen underscored his narrative with soft gesticulations and ended his excerpt—premature of a story he really wanted to tell—with a subdued crescendo reading that mimicked the train grumbles under the stage.
Siri Hustvedt claimed she was about to read a “tangent” from her forthcoming novel, and she was right, but it was more of a biology lesson we received. He story started off fine, an erotic narrative (from a forthcoming novel) between a young woman and a man named Mr. Bedgood. But then, Hustvedt took a turn that many authors take, one I am usually inclined to frown upon—the lesson. I felt like I could see the way her writerly mind was at work when she was crafting the piece. She began to write about sex and orgasm and to muse on the clitoris, did some research to make sure her fact were straight, and then—this is where authors often go wrong—she she felt compelled to jam the findings in the story. Hustvedt’s biological tangent on the role of the clitoris and sexual pleasure amongst female mammals makes for a more interesting aside for Salon.com or Discover magazine, not a novel. Clearly Hustvedt did her homework on this topic, but is it necessary to the story to share the information? In this case, no, it wasn’t, because when her tangent was over, Hustvedt kept reading, bringing us back to the bedroom scene which had entirely disappeared from my mind at that point. I had forgotten she was actually reading from a novel and not National Geographic. Don’t get me wrong: her material was witty and informative, just out of place in the story, a square peg for a round hole (see Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum for an example of this egregious abuse of doing a lot of research and seemingly having no other outlet for it than to cram it down the throat of the reader).
Karl O. Knausgaard read in Norwegian from A Time for Everything(Archipelago, 2009); Thomas Pletzinger read in German from Funeral for a Dog (English translation forthcoming from Norton, 2011); Christos Tsiolkas read in Australian (!) from The Slap (HarperCollins, 2009); and Tommy Wieringa read from his novel, Joe Speedboat (Grove Press, 2010): “I’ll be reading in Dutch. It’s a language,” Wieringa quipped. Yet he felt compelled to be his own peanut gallery, interrupting his own reading to convey, in English, the thoughts popping into his head (especially about his pothead translator). 
Monique Proulx, who hails from Montreal and writes in French, chose to read from her book Wildlives (Douglas & McIntyre, 2010) in English because she likes direct translation. And besides, she hoped the audience would find her French accent charming. (We did.) Anne Landsman read a short piece from The Rowing Lesson (Soho, 2008), but failed to make an impression on me.
By far the highlight of the evening, for this viewer, was Lee Stringer. I had read his stirring, often biting, and wholly inspiring book, Grand Central Winter (Seven Stories, 1997, 2010). I knew that he was once homeless and a crack addict. The man has seen—and survived—dark times. I came seeking his wisdom, and he delivered. As he prepared for the evening reading, Stringer came to the realization that all of his writings circle back to the same struggle: The “struggle to remain human” is at the bottom of all literature, art, and life, he said. Stringer shared with us an excerpt from his memoir-in-the-making, about his neighbor who refuses to return his politeness, no matter how hard he tries to create an amicable, neighborly relationship.
And so, with a quaking voice and tears welling in his eyes (and goose bumps on my skin), Stringer revealed that, whether the conditions are monumental (being homeless and addicted to crack) or trivial (an unfriendly neighbor), the way to remain human and reasonable to each other, is to get up every morning, do it again, and give it our best shot.
Amen, brother.
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