Queens College Celebrates 25 Years Of Literary Evenings

"Over the past 40 or 50 years," Cuomo said, "todays participants have been among the most influential writers of our time. They make us see with their eyes."
The format was a limited one; no exchange of views from the writers or questions from the audience. The magic came in the readings chosen by the authors who were each given 30 minutes for their presentations.
Although the evening was in no sense a competition among the writers, Susan Sontags readings from her new novel, In America, which won the National Book Award, seemed to captivate the audience. Sontag, who has written and directed four feature-length films, directed plays and acted, showed her theatricality. She chose portions of a final chapter from In America to read.
It was a monologue written about the famous American actor, Edwin Booth, who had just finished a performance of Shakespeares Merchant of Venice with the novels heroine, the Polish actress, Maryna Zalezowska.
"You see my dear Marina. I trust we may dispense with Madame Marina and Mr Booth now that were alone and Im exhausted and sated with applause and quite as drunk as I need be, I must tell you that I didnt approve when you came downstage and touched me tonight. Keep your eyes fixed on me throughout, ignoring the others in the courtroom, no objection to that. We both agree the speech is addressed to Shylock. The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. . . . "
The reading mimicked a one-woman show Off Broadway as Sontag exhibited the trained voice of an actress.
Sontag has had two writing lives, according to Cuomo. "An essayist and novelist." Her books include four novels, six works of non fiction and stories and essays.
Norman Mailer, who woke up one day at the age of 25 to learn his war novel, The Naked and the Dead, had become an overnight sensation, took a different approach in his reading selection. He read from his Egyptian novel, Ancient Evenings.
It was a recitation of an ancient Egyptian being prepared by embalmers for burial and the afterlife. It was typically Mailer whose writing has a preoccupation with time, sex and death. The author was quoted in interviews as saying that Ancient Evenings took 11 years to write and "took the most out of me."Mailer also read a couple of poems including one about his beloved Provincetown on the Cape.
John Updike, a Pulitzer Prize winner, read from his latest book, Licks of Love. It includes the sequel to his Rabbit series, Rabbit Remembered. The Washington Post Book World has compared Updikes work to that of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot and James Joyce.
Cuomo, in introducing Updike, cited "the uncanny beauty of his sentences." Updike also read some examples of his poetry including Landing in the Rain at LaGuardia, in which he describes Queens from the air.
The Readings Series continues on Mar. 13 with W.G. Sebald reading from his work and speaking with Joe Cuomo.