Kevin Brockmeier fiction reading

I attended the Kevin Brockmeier reading at the Helmut Auditorium in the Museum of Art. He read a 45 minute excerpt of one of his stories.

The first aspect of the reading that appealed to me was his reading style. He read deliberately and he carefully allocated emphasis to each word and sentence. Unlike the experience of simply reading an author’s work, hearing Brockmeier read his story allowed me to imagine the actual writing process that the author had to go through. For example, the fact that he never misread a word reflected a great sense of familiarity with the words. This intrigued me as I imagined him carefully crafting and revising out each line of the story. The pace with which he read was much slower than the pace at which I would have read the story on my own. The pace ended up shaping my perception of the story and made it sound more poetic as the descriptions and events seemed to linger for a longer time.

I found the story to be quite relevant to my life right now. It is about the high school aged experiences of a boy and girl, which are based on that of the author’s life. They two characters grow to become good friends during their years in high school. They are experience periods of boredom and passion, they complain about their tedious classes and stress over college applications. The chronological timeline of the story dedicates much time to the high school years, but abruptly cuts to a conversation between the two characteristics as they catch up over coffee many years later. This severity of this transition struck an emotional cord in me as I listened to the reading because I am at the age where I am slowly losing touch with my high school friends. As Brockmeier described the awkwardness of their reunion years later, I panicked by envisioning myself down the line catching up with old friends that I have not seen in years.

There were certain aspects of the story that stood out in particular. For example, the girl character involves herself in many after school activities such as Odyssey of the Mind and student government. As a result, she is required to spend much time at school after hours. Brockmeier described her as enjoying the school late in the afternoon when all the students had left as if the building was hibernating. For me, the metaphor me makes reminded me so vividly of staying late after class at my own high school. There is certainly an eerie feeling that presents itself after all the bustling students have cleared out and Brockmeier certainly captured that slumbering feeling.

“She felt the gravity of her entire body shifting. She refused to let him sink into the bottomless world of her memories.” That quote stuck out to me during the reading. Based on Brockmeier’s description, I envisioned her emotions shifting like tectonic plates inside of her.

At the end of the reading, Brockmeier discussed how he goes about writing stories through a series of questions from the audience. He recited a favorite quote of his in that writing is to “give away something that is precious.” Its served as an inspirational thought for his story, which I found inspiring as well in relating it to my own writing.