Since virtual reality—from World of Warcraft to VH1’s “I Love New York”—is the current preferred mode of connectivity among most culture junkies, it is brave and admirable that a group of Portland writers would even consider starting something as doggedly old-fashioned and decidedly un-hip as an evening reading series focusing on “true stories.”
Oregon Book Award winner Marc Acito and his friends who produce the series aren’t, it turns out, completely crazy. And if the January 31st second installment of their new “Portland Authors/Musicians Tell True Stories” series at Mississippi Studios only occasionally hit the mark (based on the evening’s first half this writer was able to attend), it’s a smart new literary endeavor in town, and one that deserves to thrive.
Featuring Acito and other more-or-less noteworthy PDX writers like Scott Poole, Chelsea Cain, Stacey Bolt and Courtenay Hameister, as well as Mississippi Studios owner/musician Jim Brunberg, “True Stories vol. 2″ included poetry, prose and song. There was a strong accent on professional aspirations versues personal embarassments. “True Stories, Volume Two—now with even more humiliation!” joked Hameister, the cutely awkward series host.
She delivered on her promise. Scott Poole, in his tiny nasal voice, read an especially pungent poem that began with the line, “As my scrotum falls away from my leg.” Jim Brunberg, in a surprisingly affecting reading (surprising because he’s a musician first and foremost), fantasized about graffitying the new chic local baby boutique. Hameister’s reading was the cleanest, sounding a familiar lament about an artist trying to make ends meet in a capitalist world.
But it was Acito who came away with the most satisfying readings—and the biggest hand. In a pair of new essays detailing epiphanies and bodily functions, Acito treaded some of the same paths as his reading colleagues—”how to make a living while still having a life”—but his wry observations and singular voice earned him the biggest laughs of the night. Sure, other writers have done some of this material before, and sometimes better. And Acito’s telling of a harrowing boil-lancing was awfully close to a similar story from David Sedaris, but Acito’s a local favorite with an enthusiastic following, and the audience ate him up.
(photo above: Marc Acito, taken from the author’s website)
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