TWO Outside Readings -- Brittany Perham & Justin Torres, David Vann (Raymond Jeong)

Brittany Perham & Justin Torres Reading

I never expected myself to attend a poetry reading. I ain’t no poet. I ain’t even a writer. To be honest, I should say that I didn’t think that I would enjoy Brittany Perham, but I loved the poem “Ambulance.” Actually, all of her poems about her brother in the hospital were very effective for me. I can’t say that, listening to Brittany Perham’s reading, I understood the meaning of each poem, but I found them to be extremely emotional. It’s my guess that much of the emotion that I felt during her reading came from how she read them. She had this softness in her voice, the kind that a mother would use when trying to get you to go to sleep at night. I realized that, in a way, poetry relies on a type of vocal narrative. It’s a performance. The way the words roll of the tongue, the slight and inconspicuous pauses between sounds, and the general intimate tone of a reading are all involved in the actual narrative of a poem because a poem is meant to be read aloud. To clarify, I should mention that her voice would trail off at the end of each line, as if she were blissfully falling to sleep. Such a subtle yet peaceful effect allowed me to flow with each poem, to smoothly pay attention without anxiously trying to interpret its meaning. In the end, I understand that interpreting a poem during its reading is second to, at least for me, experiencing the range of emotions that the performance and the text itself creates inside of me.

Justin Torres performed his text in the same way. He wasn’t David Vann or the author of the first reading that I attended. He also had Brittany Perham’s softness in his voice, and, in his spoken words, I felt the nostalgia with which the text is imbued. For me, his novel, whose name I don’t remember, was the first piece of prose that is told from a “we” perspective. I am uncertain whether his novel counts as an example of that form (because, once in a while, the narrative would be told from “I”), but I don’t believe that I have read anything that used “we” so prominently. I can’t say whether the use of “we” worked and what that use did for me, but I thought that it was particularly effective in the chapter about the brothers’ father digging a hole in the front yard. Here, Justin Torres’ vocal performance raised goosebumps on my skin because it allowed me to feel a calm sadness for the novel’s characters. In fact, he was especially like Brittany Perham, because his work read like a poem, or, at least, how he read the text made it seem like a poem. The dreamy quality of Justin Torres’ voice either created or added to the nostalgic sadness that I felt throughout the second half of the reading, and I don’t believe that the reading could’ve produced that emotion if Justin Torres had been another David Vann.

David Vann Reading

On one hand, the David Vann Reading was different from the first and only reading that I have attended at Stanford. Instead of reading from just one book, David Vann read from four of his works, which include Caribou Island, Last Day on Earth, Dirt, and a work whose name I cannot remember (but the section of the book that David Vann read was about a dead poacher falling from where he was originally hooked). On the other hand, however, the David Vann Reading was very similar to the first in that the reading would have been interesting...if I had read them myself.

Well, I think that I expect too much from these readings. I attended the David Vann Reading with the same expectation that I had for my first one, where I hoped to find an emotional and engaging experience that only the author him/herself can deliver. At my first reading, I wanted the author to read her characters’ dialogue with emotion and personality. I also wanted the author to dramatically approach her text, adding pauses at suspenseful moments or reciting certain lines with appropriate emotions. Like a parent reading a bedtime story to a child. However, what I experienced at both my first reading and David Vann’s reading was the opposite. At both of these readings, I listened to a bland delivery of the authors’ texts, which I found to be just a bit more entertaining than listening to the works read aloud by a computerized voice. I guess that I shouldn’t expect authors to be actors/actresses, but is a little bit of emotion too much to ask for? After David Vann’s reading, I wondered whether attending a reading is worthwhile if the author’s delivery will be less entertaining than how I would read his/her work in my head.

There was something that David Vann provided that I didn’t experience at my first reading. Instead of going straight to the text, David Vann shared his views on issues like gun control and gave brief accounts of his life that have some relation to his texts. As I listened to David Vann, I realized that it was nice to see how an author approaches his work. The work becomes so much more personal and, as a result, much more realistic. Well, it was slightly disturbing to hear how lightly David Vann discussed certain aspects of his life, which include family suicides, but I guess that writing books is how he handles some of his, what I believe to be, traumas.

During the Q/A of the reading, I was amazed to hear David Vann’s interpretation of and praise for Blood Meridian. Listening to David Vann’s technical interpretation of Blood Meridian was astounding. First, I should admit that I haven’t finished the book, but I know that my mind is going to be blown when I return to it. Second, his idea that Hell is an American literary motif/device was brilliant. David Vann’s concept of Hell has completely changed the way that I will view the appearance of those burning depths in the novels that I read in the future.

The David Vann Reading is only my second, and I understand that I can’t expect to listen to dramatic interpretations of authors’ texts. It has also saved me from thinking that I am going to see the same thing at every reading, and I look forward to my next one.