A second look at spoken word
Russell Smith’s screed against author readings in last week’s Globe and Mail apparently generated a number of intelligent responses. Smith had complained in his weekly column that author readings are not only generally dull, they undermine one of reading’s greatest joys: the intimacy created between author and reader through the solitary (and silent) act of reading a book. Though Smith does not back down from his main point that books are best enjoyed in silence, he concedes, as some of his readers argued, that “on the rare occasions that authors are dramatic and entertaining, they can bring new levels of understanding and appreciation to their work.”
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Read Russell Smith’s Globe and Mail column
