Dramatic words

Taking in an evening of 'Fiction Live'

New Yorker Fiction Editor Bill Buford introduces a night of "Fiction Live"

by Stephanie Bowen

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Nearly every table was occupied and not a bar stool empty Tuesday night at The Mint, a well-known Los Angeles dinner club. The audience did not come to see their favorite jazz guitarist or a rhythm-and-blues belter. Instead, they came to hear stories. Short stories, to be exact. Short stories read by actors Martin Mull, Julia Sweeney and Julian Sands.

In a two-night program co-sponsored by The New Yorker magazine, actors read short stories from the magazine's recent summer fiction issue and other issues. Wednesday night's readings were given by Will Ferrell, Swoosie Kurtz and Poppy Montgomery.

The performances were the fourth part of a series that started last year at the Public Theater in Manhattan and will travel to London in the fall.

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A new interpretation

Bill Buford, The New Yorker's fiction editor, said his perception of a story is changed every time he hears it performed.

"A good actor shows you that the stories can be interpreted in a way that you assume a piece of good drama can be interpreted," he observed. Audience member Christina Sprenger agreed with Buford. "I think when you read stories you're limited to your own imagination. ... Having it read to you broadens the story and gives it a life of its own."

Added Nerice Zavala, another spectator, "I think as adults, especially if you have children or read to children, you actually forget what it's like to be read to."

The audience erupted in laughter when Mull, best known for his role as Roseanne's boss on television's "Roseanne," read George Saunders' story "I Can Speak." The story is in the form of a letter written to a dissatisfied customer by a sales representative of the "I Can Speak" baby mask, a device that emulates speech.

"First may I be so bold as to suggest that your disappointment may stem from unreasonable expectations," Mull read. "Because, in your letter, what you indicated ... what you think and/or thought, was that the product could read your baby's mind. Our product cannot read your baby's mind, Mrs. Feneglia. No one can read a baby's mind, at least not yet, although, believe me, we are probably working on it."

Mull paused expertly, emphasizing the salesperson's unctuous attempt to shame and humiliate Mrs. Feneglia not only into keeping her baby mask, but also into upgrading to a more elaborate model.

A relaxed atmosphere

Buford noted "Fiction Live" is a literary event "but it's not literature with a capital 'L' ... it's not the Academy of Arts and Letters, but it's a literary event because it's about performing text that's very well written." The atmosphere, he continued, added to that conviviality. "There's not stuffiness, there's not reverence about literature ... it's actually very hip, often spontaneous, dramatizations of what's appearing in the magazine, to show just how alive and up-to-the-minute some of the fiction can be."

Julia Sweeney reads Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly Too"

Julia Sweeney, creator of the one-woman show "God Said Ha!" and a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member, read "You're Ugly Too" by Lorrie Moore. The story is about a small-town Midwestern professor who longs to return to New York, and earned laughs for its cleverness: "You had to get out of them occasionally, those Illinois towns with funny names: Paris. Oblong. Normal. Once, when the Dow Jones hit 200 points, the paper's banner headline read: 'Normal Man Marries Oblong Woman.' "

But "You're Ugly Too" also had a tinge of pathos and loneliness, the sense of being uncomfortable in your own skin. Sweeney's reading allowed those emotions to seep through.

She was followed by film and stage star Julian Sands, who gave a deft performance of Nick Hornby's "Serial Nice Guy." The tale, about a single man who, though once afraid of children, eventually finds benefits to dating single mothers, provided the basis for Hornby's bestselling novel "About a Boy."

Putting it together

How does The New Yorker put the show together? Perri Dorset, the magazine's public relations director, said the staff starts with a wish list of actors. "One of the main things [we're looking for] is someone who can read for the stage. Someone who has a stage presence," she said. For the actors, it's an opportunity to read great literature, often from their favorite authors. Ethan Hawke, himself a budding novelist, read a short story by J.D. Salinger in one of the New York performances.

Swoosie Kurtz performed a piece by favored author Alice McDermott. It's a perfect opportunity for actors to exercise their stage muscles without much preparation and a way for them to give back to the community, Dorset said.

Not that name performers are necessary to the popularity of the show. Dorset said the response has been overwhelming: Tickets have sold out within two days, even before the final list of actors has been announced.

The authors, however, often have mixed feelings, Buford said. It's an honor to have their stories read - but sometimes it's not exactly what they had in mind.

"Writers witnessing actors read their stories will often come away very confused because they'll have had this idea of their story in their head, which is a story that they read over and over again, then an actor will do completely different things that they didn't know were there," Buford said.

However, the exposure is valuable - something not lost on the authors. And, in these times, when memoirs fill the bestseller lists and fiction appears in decline, these evenings are a way of showing that few things can equal the value of a good story.

"There's a tendency to consider fiction marginal because it's not in the mainstream of conventional advertiser's concerns," said Buford. "What these things do is show how powerful fiction is ... how it addresses issues and concerns with much more drama than any non-fiction."

The New Yorker

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