Wred Fright and Crazy Carl Robinson, two first-time novelists and kick-ass outsiders recently came through Baltimore.  It was the first stop on their “Underground Literary America” tour.

Baltimore is a great town for independent artists.  There are three major independent bookstores that support outsider literature: Atomic Books, Red Emma’s and Normals Bookstore.  The latter-two are collectively run.  All three bookstores have to pinch pennies to survive.  Wred tried to book the reading at Atomic but it fell through for some reason. 

Red Emma’s was a nice choice.  They’re into alternative literature but it’s mostly a political store, geared toward anarchists and socialists.  I was super-happy when I noticed that they had an entire section dedicated to surrealism. They also had a punk books section and their literary section, though small, consisted of mostly writers that were on the cutting edge during their times.  They have a lot of Burroughs, a good selection of Miller and some Kathy Acker. 

There was a pretty decent crowd of twenty or so with various people coming in and out of the reading at various points.  Wred was first up, reading a selection from his novel, The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus.  He let an audience member choose a chapter and, as luck would have it, the chapter was pretty political.  Wred was energetic, although I was disappointed that he didn’t do the cartoonish character voices that I’ve heard him do before.  He did add a dramatic touch to the whole thing, however, when he fell to the floor and read from there for a little while.

Sean Stewart was up next.  Sean does a great zine called Thoughtworm.  He read a short story about his time as a professional dog-walker.  He was hard to hear at times, but this was understandable.  He is a librarian by trade.

Crazy Carl Robinson was the headliner for this stop on the “Underground Literary America” tour.  Carl’s novel Fat on the Vine is easily the best novel released so far this year and is on my top ten list of novels released in the first decade of the 21^st Century.  I’ll explain exactly why I think so in an upcoming review of his novel.

Carl basically performs off the top of his head.  He improvises the telling of stories that can be found in his books.  He’s a loud and boisterous speaker and he interacts with the audience, handing out random gifts and asking them questions.  The gifts for this show included a gavel, a pack of Baltimore Orioles trading cards and a country-western cassette tape.  Carl went a step further in audience interaction at this show.  He let the audience pick the stories.

There was a merch table but I think Wred and Carl realized pretty quickly that they weren’t going to sell much.  Anarchists have very little money and even though the books were discounted to $10.00 each during the tour, it was still out of many of their price ranges.  Wred did sell two copies of his novel and Carl sold one to a very enthusiastic Taiwanese professor who talked with Carl for about ten minutes after the show.

It’s nice to sell some books and it’s a bit of a shame that they didn’t sell more but I think the audience was pretty into the reading itself.  Which was good because Wred, Carl and Sean made sure to provide a show, not the usual boring lit-reading where an author stands stiffly in front of an audience and reads their work in a near-monotone voice.

Wred mentioned something about hoping to set up an indie-author circuit with this tour.  I hope so.  I’d sure love to host other outsider writers and show them around Baltimore.  It was fun and I was sad to see them go after such a short time.  But this was only the first stop on their tour.  They were heading up to Philadelphia the next day and NYC the day after that.  Other stops on the tour include Pittsburg, Cleveland and Chicago. 

Last update : 21-07-2007 21:49

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