October 2- 8, 2003

art

My Novel Wants to Kill Your Mama

LIT UP: Members of the 215 Board -- (from left) Arij Faruqi, Sara Goddard, Mary Richardson Graham and Mike Barsanti -- with Tritone bartender Rick D. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Literature rocks out at this year’s 215 Festival.

by Michael Pelusi

Writers are regular people. They eat, sleep, struggle to pay the bills and try to scrape together enough change for a six-pack. Just like you and me.

And, like everybody else, writers wish they were rock stars.

This, you see, is where the 215 Festival comes in. Now in its second year (though its roots are in the McSweeney's festival held at the Philadelphia Free Library in 2001), it's a literary event plugged into a Marshall stack, allowing writers to realize their indie-rock aspirations without requiring that they be Nick Hornby.

So, while plenty of 215 events occur in places like the Kelly Writers House and Big Jar Books, you can find others at Tritone, La Tazza and Signatures Gentlemen's Club (more about that one later).

Says co-organizer Mike Barsanti, the 215 serves as "a way of presenting both music and literature that connects with a lot of writers with performing arts ambitions and musicians who also have literary ambitions. Because it meshes so well with what a lot of people want to do, a lot of people want to be involved. It seems to have its own sort of momentum."

Indeed, the organizers -- Barsanti, Mary Richardson Graham, Sara Goddard and CP contributor Elisa Ludwig -- have discovered that this year the 215 has grown in reputation. Last year they almost had to build from scratch, figuring out the who, where and when. This time, says Graham, "we had a lot of other organizations set up their own events. We had an amazing response. People are so interested in the festival and so interested in being a part of it."

The line between literary icon and guitar-slinger has become ever more blurry. Rick Moody, the controversial Ice Storm/Black Veil scribe, will be at the 215 -- along with his band, The Wingdale Community Singers, which also features David Grubbs, formerly of uber-post-rockers Gastr del Sol. David Rees, who helped alleviate and articulate a whole lotta post-9/11 angst with his clip-art-and-cuss-words satirical comic strip, Get Your War On, will not only be bringing his strips for a slide show at the Free Library, but also his band, The Skeleton Killers, for a gig. And what would a party be without Neal Pollack, who spearheaded the initial McSweeney's festival in '01? Whether you think the onetime Philly resident is an asset, puncturing writerly egos like balloons with his parodies, or just an ass, one can't help but be curious as he directs his goofy glare toward rock criticism with a new book, Never Mind the Pollacks, and band The Neal Pollack Invasion. (All three shows take place at Tritone.)

"Even the very first year Arthur Bradford played guitar and Zadie Smith sang. And that's sort of our model," Graham laughs.

Says Barsanti: "Most literary readings [consist of] the author standing up in front of the podium and reading. What ties together a lot of the people who are performing in the festival is this drive to make it more fun: to do the readings in bars, to do them with bands, to do them --"

Graham: "-- in a strip club."

Ah yes, the strip club. This past spring, The Painted Bride Quarterly celebrated the one-year anniversary of its monthly readings, usually held on first Mondays at The Khyber, as well as the 30th anniversary of the publication itself. After participating in other conferences this year, though, the PBQ staff knew they had to take a different route for the 215. According to managing editor Kathleen Volk Miller, they decided "this is the rock 'n' roll literary festival. What can we do to give it some kind of angle and not just have a reading?" After a little brainstorming, they settled on the Sex in Our City theme, and from there, it wasn't too much of a leap to call Signatures, whose proprietors, Miller says, were "intrigued" by the prospect of housing a reading.

The night will feature short readings from contributors to PBQ's usual monthly events, followed by an open-mic segment. According to Miller, one reader declined upon learning where the event was being held, feeling "that it's cliched and represents a narrow vision of sexuality. And we are thinking the exact opposite, that it's turning it right upside-down by being that open.

"And how fun for everyone to be able to say they read at Signatures."

The 215 may narrow the distance between art and entertainment, but it's arguably for the better. The organizers cite the increased approachability of authors when they're reading at a bar instead of Borders, not to mention the opportunity for networking.

As David Rees puts it, "I think it's fine if writers become more like rock stars as long as they're not the crappy kind of rock stars -- unapproachable cokeheads who are really rude."

The 215 Festival runs Oct. 8-12. Visit www.215festival.com for updated information and a full schedule of events, venue and ticket information.