The Politics of Art & Authenticity

I enjoyed having my elementary school teachers give the class story time when I was younger, and this reading made me feel like a kid again. It’s neat that we got to listen to the actual author, Katherine Vaz,  read her short story to us, but this neatness wore off after a couple minutes.  Although I felt special that I got to hear the Vaz’s unfinished story before it was published, I felt cheated that her reading was not fully capturing the emotions that it meant to portray. Literature is meant to be read not listened too. Usually when someone reads to me, I have a hard time paying attention, and the words go in one ear and out the other.

There is more insight to be gained during reading since the reader can use his or her imagination to make the story more interesting. Also, its more difficult to visualize whats going on in the story if someone’s reading to you.

Katherine Vaz is a great writer of a metaphors and uses an extensive amount of metaphors in her writing. In her Lisbon Story, she describes Mateus Soares’  flickering eyes “as if fireflies had stepped in the quicksand of his irises and were pulsating ferociously before they went under” (Vaz 3). Just this amount of detail allows the reader to clearly imagine his eyes is simply brilliant. I have never read an author like this before and it’s great that I got to experience something new. This metaphor makes perfect sense to me, but during her reading the metaphors were more difficult to understand. The metaphor about the cobb webs during her reading was very difficult to understand and allowed the listener to be lost in the story.

Besides using an extensive use of metaphors, Vaz is a very descriptive writer. In her  Lisbon Story, Vaz describes the the cupboards as “canary-yellow and apple-red, cheery plastics”(Vaz 3). Just by describing the certain shade of yellow or red shows the precision and dedication the author has used to make her story perfect. These descriptions are easy to follow while reading the story, but during Vaz’s reading the descriptions were more difficult to follow. I got lost at one point during her reading because it was way too descriptive. Her voice really didn’t connect with a writer that uses an extensive amount of descriptions either so this contributed to the disruption of the  flow.

Both her reading and the Lisbon Story share an authentic element of recreating the scenery. In her Lisbon Story, she uses authentic elements to make the reader believe that he or she is actually in Portugal. For example,  Mateus using the Portuguese word, “Pá” or the use of Portuguese names like Mateus or Toninho. In her reading, Vaz incorporated some elements of her travels into her story. This allows the listener to better visualize the setting and allows the reader to experience what Vaz experienced during her travels.

I thought that going to the reading was a truly unique and rewarding experience because I got to experience something new by  listening to a published author read her unreleased work.  I look forward to going to future book readings, and I also enjoyed experiencing a new style of writing.

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