Jeff Bursey on Ratcheting Up Your Readings …
Jeff Bursey’s Verbatim: A Novel (Enfield & Wizenty) is an unusual and highly political book to say the least. Jeff, from St. John’s and now living in PEI, tells me, “First, it’s not a narrative set on The Rock. It takes place in an unnamed fictional province in Canada–definitely not Newfoundland and Labrador–in the 1990s. Second, it’s a book that uses politics as its base and is set in a fictional legislature. Third, it’s told in lists of members of the fictional political parties, letters between bureaucrats, and debates in the legislature–and those are set out in two columns on each page. This looks different on the page, and it’s a heckuva handsome physical book.” It’s a new form, “combining emotion and realism, that is timeless and timely.” The country’s hippest new literary journal, Riddle Fence, gave Bursey’s innovative novel due praise, and the Review of Contemporary Fiction called it “a tour de force of verbal dexterity that wields irony so deftly that the book, despite its intimidating scale, both challenges and delights.”
Point being it’s an atypical novel that posed a unique challenge for readings as Bursey geared up to go on tour. Here’s how Jeff presented the novel while out on the literary equivalent of a politician’s stump.
____________________________________________________________
When Verbatim: A Novel came out I knew I’d be doing a book tour. That would be exciting, and new, and a challenge. Of course, any book tour is a challenge, but this would be of a particular kind. Why? The bulk of my novel has various politicians speaking on a variety of topics, and they get introduced by the Speaker, as well as interrupted by other members. Was I going to read all the parts, and what amounted to stage directions? How tiring would that be for me? Would the audience be bored?
In 2006 I went to the launch in Charlottetown, PEI of The Enchanted House, a poetry collection by Beth Janzen. She had the nifty idea of asking her writing group to read poems from the book that they liked, and she read some as well. That meant variety, and brought idiosyncratic line readings of her work to the audience. When it came time for my launch in October 2010, also in Charlottetown, I took that approach and changed it a bit. I asked members of the Prince Edward Island Writers’ Guild, as well as some friends, if they’d take this or that part, and we wound up with a great set of readers. Let me say their names here, in thanks: Kathleen Hamilton, Beth Janzen, Richard Lemm, Brent MacLaine, Liza Oliver, Kele Redmond, Patti Sinclair, John Smith, and J.J. Steinfield. We interrupted each other, ran over the other’s lines, and made faces and noises, exactly what members do in a legislature. Six of us were visible on the stage we used, and three jumped up from the audience, startling the people near them.
However, we needed one more element. As a look at any Hansard transcript will show, there are often calls from unknown members, or just one, that are in agreement or disagreement with the person speaking. These are set down as “Hear, hear!” and “Oh, oh!” When something, or someone, is regarded as particularly odious there may be calls of “Shame, shame!,” or if a member has behaved in a way that’s regarded as poor, “Resign, resign!” will ring out. Those familiar with Greek drama will know that the chorus is the voice of the people, and it often interprets (as well as projects) the worries of the populace. The unknown backbenchers in a democracy who call out this or that remark are both representatives of the people and a debased Greek chorus. Brent, who introduced me and the reading, asked the audience if they’d join in by calling out those things as the spirit moved them. They warmed up to this unusual request, and by the time we were into our parts a collective had formed before our eyes. The audience has become one; and they had become backbenchers.What I’ve witnessed, reading in different cities, is that people are much more inclined to say Hear, hear! than Oh, oh!, perhaps out of courtesy, but I encourage them (though those who find a public display of distaste in itself distasteful might term it goading) to think of my reading (usually from inflammatory passages) as an opportunity to enter the spirit of the book, and to be, for about thirty minutes, the members of unnamed political parties. Perhaps this form of participation is the closest any of them comes to political involvement. Wanting to cover other bases, I say that if they don’t like my writing, or my delivery, then they can use “Oh, oh!” as a way of expressing dissatisfaction. How often does an audience get invited–and sanctioned–to boo a writer?
What starts out quietly increases in volume by the time the reading is over.
The launch went very well in this regard, as did the reading a week later in St. John’s, where I tapped some people I knew to take different parts. Thanks to friends in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and BC, two writers in Toronto, and one in Ottawa, as well as helpful library or book store staff, since October I’ve had the chance to introduce unfamiliar voices into the experience and make my book, or my House, include them, if only temporarily. In fact, they helped make my House.
At one reading in Vancouver, to an audience filled with writers and their friends, and where alcohol flowed freely, I asked them to toss in those choral remarks. To say they got into the spirit of the event would be an understatement. The reader after me, a young poet, was the recipient of good-natured cries of “Hear, hear!” and “Oh, oh!” when he made this or that remark, or after finishing a poem.
What I’ve learned is that each audience is unique in its energy, and that each is united in a desire, when given the chance, to take part in a communal event if it’s fun. It enlivens the evening for them, and allows bottled up resentment, amusement, and who knows what else, to come out. The evening is more pleasurable for us all, and more memorable too.
I don’t know if this experience can be taken with every novel, but for writers out there, perhaps the next time you read, if there’s dialogue and a friend or willing salesperson is present, think about asking him or her to join in the reading with you.