Public Reading Followed by Discussion

Danielle Mémoire, K. E. Gormley

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781943150601
• eBook ISBN: 9781628973808
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Literatura general

Who's really telling this story? That's the mystery at the heart of Danielle Mémoire's novel, which opens with a writer on stage at a public reading—a public reading that isn't one, because she never reads a word, much to the audience's annoyance. When an audience member finally heckles her, the writer's response sets off a chain reaction of nested stories that tumble one after another like a row of dominoes.

Each storyteller in the series (most are writers at public readings) builds on what's come before while often radically changing its meaning. Along the way, we encounter fatal stepladders, a painter obsessed with a transom window, a lovestruck dog-walker, and a lost cat restored to its owners through divine intervention. Playful, thought-provoking, and utterly unique, Public Reading Followed by Discussion defies classification and invites every reader to join the game.

Public Reading Followed by Discussion

— Sometime today would be nice! We’ve been waiting here for ages now, and …

— Could you repeat that?

— What?

— What you just said. Repeat it.

— I asked you whether …

— I’m not asking you what you asked me, I’m asking you to repeat what you said. I’d be extremely grateful, moreover, if, before the words you’re about to repeat—provided, of course, you consent to repeat them—you’d be so very kind as to … No, never mind, I can just as easily take care of it myself. And I will take care of it myself: Begin quote.

— What do you mean?

— The quotation. I mean I’m beginning it. That it has begun. I’m declaring it to have begun. Could you repeat that, please?

— I’m declaring it …

— What you said, repeat what you said. That sometime today would be nice. That you’ve been waiting here for ages now (ages, really!). And how much longer am I going to stay stationed here like a potted plant—stationed here like a potted plant, to my mind, suggests a standing person rather than a seated one. That would’ve been all I needed, to be left here standing up! Incidentally, I wouldn’t say stationed in regard to a potted plant, I’d say set—set here like a potted plant, staring you down (speaking of which, have you not noticed my great difficulty in staring anybody down? It’s because of my strabismus. The divergent variety. And stare down whom? Certainly not you, sir. The audience as a whole?), between my water pitcher and my bouquet of lilacs. End quote—No! One more moment, please. I have to thank the friend who sent me these lilacs. Thank you for the lilacs. Thank you very much indeed. End quote.

— And now?

— Now, what?

— And now, what are you waiting for?

— Now, I’m waiting for your questions. Your objections: I’m also waiting for those. Shouldn’t we open the discussion?

— What? You’re not going to continue?

— No. I’m finished.

— Finished? But that’s not possible, you couldn’t be finished …

— Yes, yes, I could be, I assure you.

— And you shouldn’t be finished. You’re here to read a work in progress, either in its entirety or as fragments.

— In its entirety. I have no other fragments.

— In that case, why did you agree to come? You should have declined.

— Because I thought I did have a work in progress. I thought so when I accepted the invitation, and it seemed to me I had plenty of time. When I realized it wasn’t going to go any further than this, I tried to cancel: I phoned. No one picked up.

— You could have written.

— But, as you’ve seen, writing is a problem for me.

— And you gave up after—how many lines was that?

— I don’t know. They’re not written down.

— What are you talking about? Not written down?

— I gave up before those few lines, which I didn’t write down. I improvised them.

— So you have no work in progress?

— Those few lines, which I improvised, are part of a work in progress which, for the time being, goes no further. I’m sorry. End quote.

— Ha, ha, very funny. Now what else are you going to read us?

— Read? Nothing: I haven’t brought anything. I can improvise, if you like.

(This really isn’t what the audience would like, but they didn’t come all this way just to turn around again and leave so soon.)

— Fine, fine. Improvise.

— But surely you want to know the theme first. The theme is as follows: a public reading. It’s an open-air performance, given early in the morning at the top of a tower. The reader is a man. Stately and plump, he appears at the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lie crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, is sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He holds the bowl aloft and intones:

— Introibo ad altare Dei.

Then, halted, he peers down the dark winding stairs and calls out coarsely:

— Come up. Come up, you fearful jesuit. End quote.

— Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

— Excuse me?

— I said: “Come up, Kinch …” You forgot Kinch.

— I didn’t forget him, I omitted him. I also omitted Buck Mulligan. Why didn’t you correct Buck Mulligan?

— I couldn’t be sure. And then again, you did say you’d be improvising. “Stately and plump”: I had my suspicions, but I couldn’t be sure.

— Fairly strong suspicions, I would think. “Stately and plump”: those are two words you don’t expect to find together.

— You don’t, except in a single case.

— Except in Buck Mulligan’s case.

— Apart from Buck Mulligan’s case, one would presumably be either stately or plump, is that it?

— With the understanding that one might be neither, yes, that’s it. That’s precisely it.

— A bird, for example, a baby bird fallen from the nest; if it’s plump, which is entirely possible, it will, for that very reason, be non-stately.

— Almost for that very reason. Though, plump or otherwise, if it’s young enough there’s every likelihood of its not being the least bit stately.

— Or a dog, say. A big hunting dog. A pointer. Even a pointer on the stout side can be stately …

— To be truly stately, it would be better if it weren’t.

— Let’s suppose it is, though. Let’s suppose the dog, though a trifle stout to the eye of a trained expert, which neither of us claims to be …

— I’ll stop you there: I am an expert. Dogs are my specialty.

— We’re supposing they aren’t. This dog, which is stout, but almost imperceptibly so (and that, again, only to the eye of an expert, which you are), to the layman’s eye …

— No, I’m sorry, there is simply no way. That it could be stately despite being stout, if that’s what you were going to say … Was that what you were going to say?

— Yes.

— I cannot agree.

— Perhaps you’d rather take a different example. A woman? Would you rather take a woman?

— As an example? Yes. As an example, I’d rather take a woman.

— Then let’s take a woman as our example. A stout woman who is also stately. Literature teems with them. Or does literature teem with them?

— Literature does teem with them, particularly in the eighteenth century.

— Particularly in the eighteenth century, then, literature teaches us that a stout woman can also be stately …

— What in God’s name are they going on about?

— We’re just warming up. End quote.

(The large hall—it is in a large hall that this short reading has been taking place—the large hall begins to empty.)

PUBLIC READER

(a man)

You’re not going to stay? You’re not going to ask any questions? Is there to be no discussion?

SOMEONE IN THE AUDIENCE

Ask them yourself, since you seem so good at it.

SOMEONE ELSE

We’ve had enough. We’re leaving.

PUBLIC READER

I beg you, no, stay, stay. That was just one of the many works in progress I’ve brought. I’ll read you another you’ll like better. Stay, stay.

(They stay. The public reader pulls another sheet of paper from his hat.)

PUBLIC READER

Begin quote.

(End quote.)

— That’s all?

— That’s all I’ve written, yes. It’s a work in progress. It still needs an ending.

— What’s going to happen next?

— Next, you’re going to ask me questions. I’m going to try and answer them.

— I meant in the text.

— In the text, too.

— At this point in the text, the point where you left off, doesn’t the public reader read something else?

— Yes, he does read something else: another text, a short story. Then he ends the quotation, people ask him questions, and he tries to answer them.

— This story he reads, have you written it yet?

— I would have read it, if I had.

— But you are going write it.

— Sooner or later, yes, I hope so.

— Couldn’t you start with that?

— He arrives, he reads the story, and only then do they ask him questions?

— He doesn’t arrive. He doesn’t read the story. You write the story. You go home, write it, and, if it really means that much to you, you can come back later and read it to us. The story, that is. You can spare us the rest.

— That’s not at all what I had in mind. But I’m prepared to try. I will try. End quote.

— And that’s the place where he reads the story?

— The place?

— The place in the text.

— There is no more text. It’s very short. It ends there.

— You invited us here just to read us that?

— Ah, you didn’t enjoy it.

— We enjoyed it, we enjoyed it. Only, as you said, it was very short.

— I have something else, if you like. It’s also short. A poem. Do you want to hear it?

(One can see by the look in their eyes that they do want to hear it.)

— Ladies and gentlemen,

(spoken standing up)

In the beginning was the Word.

Those times ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface: Reading Aloud
• Introduction
• Public Reading Followed by Discussion