Litquake is San Francisco’s major literary festival, and the Litcrawl (scheduled for this Saturday, October 11) is its closing ceremonies of sorts. Litcrawl is fundamentally a pub crawl with readings, but there are some venues in addition to bars. One memorable moment I’ve heard described was watching people read erotica while jumping up and down on Posturepedics at the mattress store.
My reading this year will be at a clothing store, and the topic will be “Unfit to Print: Writers Read Lost Scenes from Unpublished Writing that Lived Fast, Died Young, and Left a Beautiful Corpse.” I always get nervous before any kind of reading, and this one is no exception. No one likes to bomb, and let’s face it, when you stand up in front of an audience, there’s always bomb potential. It hasn’t happened so far (I am actually knocking wood as I type this) but flop sweat is nothing to be cavalier about.
But I am looking forward to the Litcrawl reading for a number of reasons. For one, group readings are the best. You don’t have to hit up every friend you have and beg them to attend for fear that it’ll end up just being you and the bookstore owner (not that I’m speaking from experience here at all.) For another, Litcrawl gives you a fantastic (and often tipsy) audience. They’ll take any opportunity to laugh. And this year, I think I have the goods. It’s from my aptly titled, mercifully abandoned memoir project “Good in Theory.” The whole thing reads like a joke that I wasn’t in on at the time, but my unconscious was. So I’m hoping people will come out and laugh with me.
Saturday, October 11 from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Minnie & Wilde
3266 21st Street
San Francisco, CA
(See http://www.litquake.org/the-festival/lit-crawl-2008/ for the night’s complete schedule.)