The 510 Reading series in Baltimore has been going on since the beginning of the year.  It’s the only reading series strictly for local prose writers.  It’s organized and hosted by Jen Michalski and Michael Kimball......

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The 510 Reading Series: April 19, 2008

The 510 Reading series in Baltimore has been going on since the beginning of the year.  It’s the only reading series strictly for local prose writers.  It’s organized and hosted by Jen Michalski and Michael Kimball.  Jen’s a local short story writer and Michael is a recent transplant to the city.  Jen runs the web/print litzine, JMWW.  Michael’s had several books published and famous authors have blurbs on them.  I finally had a chance to catch one of their readings last weekend.

                The readings take place in a boutique and gallery called Minas.  It’s in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood, famous for the indie bookstore, Atomic Books.

                Downstairs, the boutique sells various hipster gear: clothing, music, books.  Probably other stuff.  I didn’t look around much.  At the far end of the store, up a narrow flight of stairs is the gallery, where the readings take place.  The gallery is actually a sort of attic.  Not a lot of space up there.  But it’s a nice space.  There’s a window in the back of the room that bathes the place in sunlight on a nice day.  Though there were twenty-some people in the audience, stuffed into this little room, it was pretty comfortable.  The seats were a little small for my fat ass, but that says a lot more about my ass than the seats.

Jen and Michael keep the reading under an hour by limiting three readers to fifteen minutes each.  I’ve attended a lot of readings and usually after a writer has been reading for over fifteen minutes I stop paying attention so much.  I fidget, daydream or think of drinking.  Little whiskey glasses dance around my head and I really can’t get into the performance anymore.  So I think they have the right idea there.

The first reader actually went a little long.  His name was Michael Dows and he’s a professor at Towson University.  He read a short story that was published in the Missouri Review.  I haven’t read a college literary journal since my first year or so in college, when I actually thought you needed to read them to become a writer.  I don’t really put a lot of stock in being published in them either. Which is to say that, I have a certain preconceived notion of what these journals are selling.  Downs’s story didn’t do much to change my mind about ‘em either.  It was a slow-paced story that hit all the right notes: cynical intellectual types, literary references, quirky habits.  Basically the exact kind of story I would expect from an academic lit journal.  In other words, it was well written, polished and…..not bad.

The second reader, Maud Casey, was more my speed.  She’s a professor herself, at the University of Maryland.  She had a long list of credentials.  Awards, fellowships, that kind of thing.  Rick Moody was mentioned.  Again, something that is expected of a professor but something that’s always seemed  superfluous to me.  I don’t know.  Others might dig that kind of thing.  I just want to hear the words.  And, as far as Casey’s words went, I dug them.  The story she read was called “Fugueur,” which translates from French to mean “runaway.”  It takes place in 19^th Century France.  A man wakes up from long trances, having walked great distances without remembering them.  The story was metaphysical, lyrical, pretty.  Had kind of a fluffy feel to it.  And no, I don’t know exactly what that means.  But I don’t know what else to say.  The excerpts that she read took place mostly inside the main character’s head.  It was a journey that I was happy to take, even though I don’t really recall many specifics.  Maybe some day, I’ll look the story up or run into it somewhere.  It seems like the kind of thing I’d like to absorb slowly.  A multiple reading kind of thing.

After Casey read, there was an intermission.  Fun!  I love intermissions.  My ass tends to stick to a chair if I sit in it too long.  Plus, I’ve had a bad knee since I was a kid and it was really flaring up that night.

The last reader, the headliner, if you will, was Michael Kimball.  Before recently moving to Baltimore, he lived in places as varied as New York City and Lubbock, Texas.  Michael was a cool reader.  How to explain?  He had cool pants for one thing.  Shaggy hair.  Barely animated reading voice.  That kind of thing.

Michael read from his newest book, Dear Everybody, an epistolatory novel.  Or maybe it wasn’t totally epistolatory.  From what I’ve read since, the book builds the story through all sorts of primary documents, including letters.  But Kimball just read letters.  He read selections from the beginning to the end of the book.  The amazing thing was that I didn’t feel like I was getting fragments of the story.  The selections he picked made a complete narrative.  It was a brilliant approach to a reading, actually.  He understood that a reading can be an art form in itself.  It doesn’t have to be advertisement for a book, though a good reading will generate excitement for an unknown author more than just about anything.

Nowhere to stop but there, eh?  Yeah,  overall it was an enjoyable hour and fifteen minutes or so.  Of course, the most fun was what happened afterward, when a bunch of us gathered at a local watering hole for a beer or a dozen.  All three readers made it to the thing and all three seemed to enjoy themselves.  I never talked to either of the professors.  I wasn’t trying to be an asshole or anything.  I’m just very socially awkward and they were on the other side of the table.  At these kinds of things, I usually just place ass in seat and beer in front of me and talk to whoever happens to be sitting within yelling distance.  So I spent a couple hours talking to my girlfriend and a local experimental writer named Adam Robinson, each on either side of me.  Toward the end of the night, Kimball was in earshot and I talked to him for a while.  About what, I have no idea.  I think I said something rude about Stephen King, who blurbed one of Kimball’s books (Didn’t know that at the time but….ooops…) and I might have gushed about a writer who enjoys snake handling and riding motorcycles naked.  Something to that effect.  Then a psychedelic band started playing and it was time to go.

Comments (1)

	1. 06-05-2008 15:23
	Good write-up Pat. I like hearing about what\'s going on and where and why. So...I wrote one too - over at my zine http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com Guest Report

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