The rollicking Lighthouse party at the Jet Hotel on Friday had only one downside: a lot of us missed the Keret/Saunders reading. Fortunately, Lighthouser Mary Gattuso Chesis (you might remember her rocking the joint with her novel excerpt at The Draft 5.0: Mysterious Ways) managed to do both in one night. Here's her report (to which Wordpress will not allow me to add white space for ease of reading or paragraph breaking--sorry!):
Etgar Keret:I'd never heard of Etgar. On Friday night when he first opened his mouth, I thought, Oh Shit, he has an accent and I'm going to miss some of his words and it'll suck because I hate to miss even one word.Etgar told a story of a boy who makes best friends with a glass piggy bank. And another one about a writer held hostage by his own characters. How'd he do that? Then he read "Fatso" the only title I remember. He intro'd it as a story he wrote for his wife when she said something like, "You write about everyone, family, friends, everyone, but what about me?" He came up with a sort of twisted Beauty and the Beast. When he finished, I wanted to be his wife.By the end of his reading I was thinking, I wonder if he narrates his own books on tape? I wanted to hear him say PEACE-TOLL for pistol again. Seriously.***George Saunders:Never heard of him either. He read a story about two teens, a dancer girl, a skinny cross-country runner boy, smart kids who might not know what's right or wrong based on what their OCD parents drill into them. There's a manicured lawn, a man in a van and a knife. Any more will kill it for you.It was dry in the Centennial Ballroom. Each of the four times George Saunders stopped reading to take a drink, I was screaming inside NO! DON'T STOP! NO!I recommend you read both of these dudes if you haven't already.Thank you for doing another uniquely Lighthouse event. I had a blast!Mary
