Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Books / Talks and Readings Franklin Park Turns Three
Posted by Henry Stewart on Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 12:00 PM
These barroom readings work best when the writers draw the audience into poignancy and insight through laughter. Melissa Broder's poetry is lovely, but it seemed too somber for the room last night. John Dermot Woods' comics and illustrated stories made for a relatively ambitious multimedia presentation—but not terribly effective, until he read his silly and surreal collaboration about cats, Five Cats.
On the other hand, Crown Heights local Ben Townsend, whom Penina discovered at the Renegade Reading Series, read with deadpan self-deprecation (and at least one prop) an essay called "My Stalker," about a man (possibly) who inundated the author with letters during college, which he found more amusing and sad than frightening. And Adam Wilson read a passage from his buzzy novel Flatscreen. "I thought I'd read from the beginning of the book," he said, "but everybody said I should read a sex scene." So he decided to read an orgy scene—a sad one, "as most orgies tend to be." The coke- and oxy-fueled bacchanal is not particularly erotic, but it features knee-slapping conversations between a dimwitted but enthusiastic stripper, a crusty and pompous older fellow, and the straight man narrator. Wilson read them all in different voices, turning what's amusing on the page into a hoot. Aside from being provocative, poignant, and/or hilarious, that added value is exactly what you want from any reading.
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