| Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:54AM | | | | A Taste of This, A Taste of That | Posted By: Masha Hamilton
|
| Tags: Readings, Nadas, Rushdie, Brossard | Evolution/Revolution. PEN’s opening reading event. It’s called a feast, but it is better to imagine a tasting. Think of a group of incredible chefs who have assembled delicious dishes, but you are only allowed two bites of each. Joy and frustration at once. It reminded me a little of a dance performance I saw a couple weeks ago at Galapagos: 60x60, sixty choreographers given one minute each, one dance blending into the next, each with different moods and attitudes. This was last night.
And PEN does this wonderful thing: each writer reads in his native tongue, which is so respectful, and the words are spilled in English on two screens. Although I was seated up front (coincidentally next to the warm and interesting Jane Ciabattari, another fortuitous random seating) so it was relatively easy to read the screens, I found myself torn between wanting to focus on the words and wanting to simply absorb the sounds.
All the readers were great, and Salman Rushdie was the kicker, reading from Shalimar the Clown, which I love. But since these blogs can be personal, I’m going to single out two who I hadn’t heard of before to mention here…
Peter Nadas, a Hungarian novelist and essayist, read from “The Great Christmas Killing,” an essay of great specificity and honesty that is included in his book Fire and Knowledge. The essay is about the 1989 executions of Romanian despots Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. Dispassionately and with keen observation, he analyzed his responses as he watched the executions on television:
“I believe in just, legal procedures. Despite this belief, my conscience was conspicuously silent. I do not believe in capital punishment. Still, the brutality of the procedure I was witnessing did not offend me. Being vaguely aware that there had to be something I should object to in this outrageously unlawful, dilettante farce -- though I had no objection -- and that there should be another law-abiding and humane person within me to protest my moral indifference and oppose my aesthetic naivete -- though there was no such person to be found -- created a strange vacuum.”
Nicole Brossard, a French Canadian poet, novelist and essayist, read from Fences in Breathing, a novel written in poetic verse which, from this brief excerpt, seemed to be as much about words and resonance as it is about being outside of something, a sense of an uncrossable border. Then she read some letter poems, choosing three letters, and that was truly a roller-coaster of sounds that became musical. The last one she didn’t even bother to translate, saying “Just listen.” She drew a big round of applause.
There were many others; check out the schedule, or fellow blogger and novelist Elise Blackwell, who was also there. I would write more, but I’m headed to my independent bookstore to pick up a few of these authors I tasted last night.
Just for the record: we were told there are 160 writers from more than 40 countries participating in this year’s PEN World Voices. | | | |
| | |
|
