The Politics of Art & Authenticity

Ever since I was a child, I never liked having books be read aloud.  My parents would always read to me, but I felt like I wasn’t grasping and taking in the entire story as I would when I was reading a book.  When I went to hear Katherine Vaz read some excerpts from her new novel, I had the same feeling.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q5bGq42-XmE/T3M3rYJ26iI/AAAAAAAAAYs/9KQfo2enznk/s1600/Katherine%2BVaz.jpg

Her novel sounded interesting from her description of it, but it was difficult to form a mental picture of the events she was reading.  I’m a very visual person, so I must see what is in front of me to fully grasp the idea.  What I did take away from the reading, though, was that her novel was full of description.  She uses a lot of similes in her work and describes every moment in fine detail.  Sometimes I felt like it was too much detail, especially when reading something aloud, it can make listeners lost.  I know I was lost at times when she was reading.  When Katherine Vaz was reading parts of the novel with dialogue, I felt that she wasn’t capturing the emotions of the characters.  She was just reading the line, instead of taking on the role of the character.  I know I probably sound very critical of the reading, but I feel that way towards anyone who reads aloud.

A week before I heard Katherine Vaz read from her excerpt, I went to Lincoln Center to hear J.K. Rowling speak about her new book, The Casual Vacancy.  Even when J.K. Rowling was reading her novel (with her amazing British accent!) I still felt like I wasn’t fully delving into the story.  There is so much that gets lost between the reader and listener when reading a book aloud.  I feel that reading is an intimate and one-on-one experience with the reader and the book, and is up to the reader’s interpretation.

With that being said, when I read Vaz’s Lisbon Story, I could actually picture what she was describing.  I still think that her writing is very passive and at times too descriptive, but I was now able to get my own experience out of it.  I gave each of the characters their own voice and set the pace of the story to how I thought it would be.  While reading it, though, I could see the same style in the story and the excerpts that Katherine Vaz read aloud.  At least she has a consistent and defined writing style.  Although Katherine Vaz might not be my favorite writer, I did learn a lot from her reading and motivated me to apply for the Harman Writer-In-Residence Program at Baruch.  If I could learn so much from one reading by an author, imagine how much I would learn in a semester!