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On the subject of readings

“Why are literary readings so excruciatingly bad?”

That’s the title of an essay by Michael Carbert over at the Maisonneuve site. But Carbert’s no agent provocateur; the piece is actually a very thoughtful and entertaining look at the pros and cons of readings. Carbert isn’t ready to give up on the form altogether; he just wants to maximize its potential.

Many writers are not natural performers. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask that authors be prepared to read with a certain command of their material and with expression and clarity. If listeners must strain to comprehend what is being read the whole purpose of the event is defeated. It is also defeated if things drag on for too long. “Leave them wanting more,” is a maxim unfamiliar to many readers.

Ideally, the possibility should exist for an active listener to be captivated, maybe even transported. It happens. I’m thinking at the moment of listening to Clark Blaise read some years back in Toronto. There was nothing flashy about his performance, but his diction was superb and I was transfixed by the intensity of his delivery. Unfortunately, we more often settle for writers who deliver their lines like a burned-out high-school secretary delivering the morning announcements.

However, in the writer’s defense, it doesn’t require much imagination to see how an inspired performance is difficult to muster when the host forgets to pick you up at the bus station and your name is misspelled on the poster. And judging from how often I’ve heard about them from writers, such screw-ups happen all too frequently. Of course many reading events are handled extremely well, but too often the planning is careless, slapdash, last-second. If organizers and hosts are not going to honour writers and give them the respect they are due, how can we expect anyone else to?

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