Kara Painter
This was the most unconventional Writers Read I’ve witnessed so far — and that includes the time Nicolas Carr spent an hour berating millennials for making themselves stupider through the use of technology. To be fair, these events are usually pretty straightforward: An author reads some of their work, usually introducing most of the passages or poems in some way, then spends the last 10-15 minutes fielding questions from the audience.
In his discussion of his novel “Both My Sons,” Reed decided to take a different approach, with mixed success. He explained what he had planned for the evening, including “a little PowerPoint presentation that I call ‘Carving Klaus Greenywalt.’” “And then,” he said, “I will become Klaus Greenywalt.”
“My books always start with a question,” he said. “And the question in my mind this time was, ‘Who is Nicholas Stoltzfus? Who was this man?’ My great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather.” He then proceeded to tell the bits of his ancestor’s story that he had reconstructed, and how this evolved into the character of Klaus Greenywalt, the main character in his novel.
Let’s ignore that PowerPoints are the death of creativity, and that as soon as you whip one out, you’ve established that you’re about to give a dry lecture rather than a riveting reading. I appreciated that Reed gave some background about how the book was conceived — even some historical context.
But while he was giving fairly interesting information, he presented it in a meandering way that made me wonder if he would ever get to the good part. I don’t want to write Reed off because of his age, but if he wants to appeal to student audiences, giving a 20-minute history lecture won’t cut it.
He took a break and came back wearing his original costume with the addition of an Amish beard and hat and carrying a stage rifle. “You can call me Greenywalt,” he said. “That’s what the Quaker man down at the docks … called me because he couldn’t get his tongue around my good German name, Grunewald.” He proceeded to tell, from Greenywalt’s perspective, his character’s story — that of a Mennonite man who emigrated to the United States at the invitation of William Penn, temporarily leaving his wife and son behind. He fathers an illegitimate son with Janie, his indentured servant, and tells the story of his two sons and his relationship with them and their mothers.
I enjoyed this part of the evening. His acting wasn’t professional-quality, but he isn’t a professional actor, nor am I a professional judge. He was good enough that it didn’t distract from the story. I was impressed with his memory, and even during the times that he did forget his lines or misspeak, he recovered well. It wasn’t a show-stopping performance, but it was nice.
There were a lot of elements of the program that seemed underprepared or unpolished, though I realize that Reed probably had a lot less time to prepare than usual, as it was added to the schedule relatively last-minute.
When an audience member complained that he had trouble hearing, Reed offered to face forward more, adding that he was usually “rebuked for [his] loud voice.” I don’t know who rebuked him, but he must have taken it to heart, because his volume — or lack thereof — continued to be a problem throughout the rest of the evening, specifically during the monologue.
Sometimes it felt like he was getting to his point painfully slowly, but again, he is a writer, not a public speaker. I can’t say if his writing was better because I never did hear any of it.
He had a sort of folksy charm about him that was half natural, half pretense. The former was endearing, the latter, irritating. There were also several times throughout the evening that he shamelessly plugged his book in an off-putting way. I understand that part of the reason for these events is to sell books, but he even effectively broke character to do it, saying toward the end of his monologue, “Well, you know the rest, right? You know how the story goes. You read the book, right? No?” — looking at the audience with a good-natured, self-aware half-smirk — “You’re going to read the book?”
I applaud Reed for trying something original. The two marks of a successful Writers Read are an entertaining program and an impression of the author’s writing, and he partly succeeded at both. But both would have been much more successful had he kept the monologue, but scrapped most of the history lecture in favor of reading excerpts from his book.
