my notes

there's a bunch of notes i have on seeing both amy tan and david sedaris live, but still they are a bit unorganized so i will just put them out there, on the world wide web - for now here are my notes:

David edaris
Hearing his coming out story, his actual life experience told as he wants it.

Different moments of humor

The power of ‘confessional’ lyric writing vs. hearing it performed aloud

Experiences are more vivid?

References another writer, Susan Sheehan, shocked to find no one has read her work

Bar run by midgets in Manilla, then “sells” Tokyo

Proudest to be published in New Yorker, will leave the table of contents open and walk by and look at it in pleasant surprise.

Radio personality? How are people funny to read? To what percent of an author’s personality infuses their work?

Amy Tan – Vision and Voice series

Tells her life, her relationship with her mother, her mother’s voice resonating in the dead travel guide in new book

Her understanding of great works and great authors – and how they gotta be dead. Saw her book in Cliffs notes and thought “But I’m not Dead, yet!!” – joking about how reading the CF on Joy Luck Club informed her of what she “meant” – invisible power of strength, three metaphorical readings – “I’m deep!” \
Read her own work, had music playing (?)

She viewed stories as working out confusions in her life

Ambiguity and ambivalence are two great places to start writing

What two experiences shared:

Actually seeing the author, their personal ways of presenting themselves, body language, etc mannerisms in talking, all paints a much clearer picture than other biographical means… get a better idea of their writing style, their “voice” to a large extent… hell, Tan’s talk was part of a series on Vision and Voice, and once you get a personal taste of both, live and in person, there’s no real mystery left.

What is it about writers? Stereotyped as being so eccentric and intelligent, yet they share such a large part of their personality, their selves.

What happens when you just listen to an author read? When it’s a text you know extremely well, by heart, and they change it?
Correlated to live music performances, possibly… ?