Lydia Davis is reading Thursday at NYU. I’m getting people together. You should come out!

Muffin Man: Thank you for jacking off to my website. I’m glad we could make you horny.

Alec: I’m not really worried about it. I’m just not used to all this attention. For a long time I felt like I was putting on a rock show for my bedroom wall only to turn around and there’s an audience standing in my doorway. Which, I guess is the reason I started trying to put out fires that may or may not have existed in the first place. I feel kinda dirty using negativity to boost hits and gain attention (all together now: “then wtf are you doing on the internet?”) I guess I was just trying to keep things civil and cordial. I hope we succeeded.

Thanks everyone for checking out this post and making comments. It’s awesome to hear from yall and get your thoughts on readings.

gotta say, though, I can picture this gig: the good and the arguably less so. thanks for the review, chris.

I’m with you 100% on this point: “if you’re going to be reading in front of people, it better be engaging and it better be entertaining…. I want to see them perform…. I crave spirited readings.”

my two cents: if writers can’t — or for whatever reason aren’t able or willing to — read with presence (just like musicians who shoegaze or choke live) then they should stay home or send a proxy. I’m not talking gimmicks or acrobatics… just living energy… from the words and the reader.

can I get a witness?

Thanks for the post and pictures. Like you, I thought it was neat to see so many people whose work I know from online in the real world.

I thought the space was really beautiful and a neat change of pace from your normal venue. It was indeed a little awkward getting beer during the reading segments though, I agree. But Brigid is right that there was a staircase in the back where you could go through some dungeon like passage to the bar area, which was really beautiful. An interesting space even for restaurant.

Oh and Deb Olin Unferth rocked it.

Man, not coolish. Use the stroke-through thing so people like me could read what you really wrote.

The bar thing would have annoyed me.

readings are always hit and miss and I always argue to read something brief, funny, sexy, something but what to read at reading discussion has been more than disco so I will stop now.

Interesting post and comments here

I only stayed for about half of the event, as I had a 3-hour commute back to where I live, but I really enjoyed it–all of the readings held my attention, and I thought Diane Louvel (the Niko Case lady) had a lovely voice. I hope Tao Lin gets over his cold, or whatever was causing him to cough. I still enjoyed his reading, and plan to buy “Richard Yates”.

Oh yes–and maybe you realize this now, but there was a staircase in the back of the room that led to the bar (or to the exit if you needed to leave). Initially I thought we were blocked in too, but I couldn’t imagine that the restaurant would pass fire code if there was only one staircase.

Thanks for posting the photos–the glare does tend to give everyone within the flash-bulb range white eyes, so it looks a little like Rumpus Party of the Damned, but that is definitely a “feature” of those cameras. Hope I can make it to the next Rumpus event.