hooves on the turf

Jennifer Egan / photo: kashish

Matt Ashby writes: Amid torrential rain, Happy Ending’s innovative reading series still managed to fill the room. Somewhere around 50 people sat or stood wherever there was space, on the floor, in the hall, at glittery tables inside the red velvet partitions. It was the first time I’d been to Happy Ending and, from the looks of it, I was pretty certain it wasn’t a very good place for a reading. There wasn’t enough space and everyone was holed off in little divots about the room, unable to view the readers without wrenching his or her back. I sat on a small, cushioned stool and rolled myself against the end of a partition in the space between two tables. I had a good view of the podium.

More after the jump

Amanda Stern, the multi-talented and jocular creator of the series, hosted. Right away, it was clear Stern had a vision for the evening, her vision of the series, and it wasn’t a gimmick or a goof, despite all her joking. She wanted to create a comfortable, intimate environment in which the listeners and readers could engage each other in the ideal atmosphere for a reading. What was even clearer, as the night progressed, is that Stern knew exactly how to do that.

Amanda Stern / photo: kashish

Hannah Marcus opened with some lyrically strong, Americana-tinged, folk music. Music more than words opens the ears and calls for attention. Then, Peter Behrens read an intense passage from his book, Law of Dreams. He capped this off by participating in the hallmark of the series, the author risk. Each author who reads must take some risk they would never do in front of a crowd. Behrens told a long joke in an Irish accent. Jennifer Egan followed him, opting to be done with her risk in the beginning. She seemed to be the most earnest in her participation in that she did something which clearly made her uncomfortable. She read from her journal an entry from the winter of 1999. The details of who and exactly where were left out, but the entry spoke primarily about the machismo that male writers try to project. Egan said, writing is a quiet, peaceful act, but certain unnamed male writers (who had produced “small amounts of not so good work”) talked about writing “as if it were hunting caribou.” Egan had a laid-back elegance. She read from her imaginative novel, The Keep, a sort of modern day medieval adventure.

Peter Beherns / photo: kashish

Marcus returned for a few more songs. Musicians are required to play a cover song and try to get everyone to sing along. Marcus chose”Angel in a Centerfold,” and played her part on the violin, an instrument at which she is a novice. Again, this little feature succeeding in breaking down boundaries and reconnecting the audience. Should they have diverted their attention at all in between performers Stern was there employing her middle school teaching skills and demanding there be no talking.

Lastly, David Rakoff read from an essay called, “Shrimp.” He said he would only be reading a third of it so he was afraid it might be like baking a cake with just baking soda and vanilla. “Shrimp” was a hilarious account of the trauma of being incredibly small, Owen Meany diminutively small, well into his high school years. Because of his style and delivery, Rakoff probably gets many comparisons to David Sedaris, but he’s certainly his own voice. The audience laughed and gasped through the whole piece. For his risk, Rakoff sang a song, Servia Jonny, in German while cutting a silhouette of Hannah Marcus. He prefaced by saying that as a writer this is the type of stuff you do all day, besides checking your email like fifty million times and abusing yourself to the point of almost needing to go to the hospital, you learn songs in German.

David Rakoff / photo: matt ashby

Amanda Stern and her series are the embodiment of what Bookish Love celebrates. She has found an innovative way to engage audiences and to create new ones. I hope the spirit of Amanda Stern’s Happy Ending reading series carries over into some other formats. It’s important to find whatever ways we can to create readers and listeners, to get all to participate in the greater discourses… even if it means slapping their knuckles with a ruler, saying ‘no talking,’ joking endlessly about nothing, or getting the performers to expose themselves in more vulnerable ways. It works. It creates intimacy and a presence of attention where a more open and impressionable exchange occurs.

Happy Ending
November 8th, 2006
Peter Berhens, Jennifer Egan, David Rakoff
(and the music of Hannah Marcus with Zeke)