October 20, 2009

Frequency North Series, October 8

The first of the season's readings at the College of St. Rose, which is coordinated by prof. Daniel Nester, was an interesting mix of prose: magically written non-fiction & over-imagined fiction.

Peter Connors read from his memoir Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead. He considered that great philosophical question that has made egg-heads spin for ages, "Aren't all Deadheads just a bunch of middle-class white kids?" Like all good histories should, he began with the Beats & the disintegration to Hippies, to "straights" striking back & on to entrancing descriptions of concert experiences. Good story telling no matter what the genre label. Oh, yeah, "not all Deadheads are alike."

Jessica Anthony read from her debut novel, The Convalescent. The story is built around a main character who is a short, hairy mute who sells meat out of a bus. A classic outcast that all kinds of outrageous incidents can be created around. It sounds forced & she read too fast.

Shows you that reality, even tinged with psychedelia, can be more interesting than forced imagination.

The series continues into the Spring semester, find 'em on Face Book.

1 comment:

Jason Crane said...

I knew Peter when I lived in Rochester. He edited a wonderful collection titled PP/FF -- an assemblage of prose poetry and flash fiction. Back when I was hosting The Jason Crane Show, I made a recording of the book release reading by Peter and the other PP/FF writers. I should dig that out of the archives and repost it. It was great.

Thanks as always for keeping track of things, Dan.