Time Out New York, Issue 344, May 2-9, 2002.

GRAY MATTER

To hear the latest from sharp emerging writers, grab a seat at the Little Gray Book Lecture series.

by Angela Gunn

The audience in the back room at Williamsburg’s Galapagos is restless, like a bunch of high-school jocks at a poetry reading. Eventually, they settle down for this evening’s Little Gray Book Lecture, a 15-month-old, performance-oriented spoken-word series named after the Little Blue Books, a line of instructional pamphlets (No. 518: “How to Make All Kinds of Candy”) published from the 1920s to the ’70s by E. Haldeman-Julius. Despite the sports angle of tonight’s topic, “How to Throw a Curveball,” the folks here are the sort who prefer a literary night out over a night game, and the only item being tossed around is an asthma inhaler, which series founder and host John Hodgman cheerfully confiscates, huffs on and then slips into his pocket.

Hodgman, whose deceptively gentle deadpan delivery makes him something of a Garrison Keillor for the young and expensively educated, begins each program with a brief word on the evening’s theme before turning the lectern over to his presenters/writers who bring in previously published pieces, works-in-progress and other sundry snippets that touch on long-standing obsessions. What makes this series unique is that in addition to straightforward readings, it includes multidimensional works; like variety-show acts, these may incorporate song, comedy, visual art and who knows what else. Tonight, Adam Mazmanian’s piece on baseball statistics stands out for both its prose and its affectionate salute to the single-minded love felt by hard-core hardball fans, almost none of whom are in this room. (One exception is guest reader and TONY Sports editor Brett Martin, a devoted Mets supporter, who reads his piece on the travails endured in high-school gym class.)

Between presenters, Hodgman draws viewers into amusing audience-participation games, which add to the evening’s unrestrained atmosphere. While he's been known to hold auctions and spelling bees, tonight he conducts a sports-trivia quiz, in which the questions are far less obscure than the unpopular scoring method that has Hodgman randomly awarding extra points based on personal whim (one audience member playfully flashes him the finger). A contributing writer for Men’s Journal and McSweeney’s, Hodgman stocks his roster with “artists I like in front of an audience,” including (at various points in the series' history) Amy Fusselman, Patrick Borelli, Mike Daisey, Lynn Harris, Darin Strauss, Jonathan Coulton, and the duo Slovin and Allen. Hodgman, a former literary agent, says that putting together the monthly series “allows me to whistle and point at creators” in a number of media: fiction, photography, journalism, comedy, songwriting, memoir and so on, up to and including “inexplicable overhead projection.” The evening draws to a close; a glass hits the floor near the bar in the back of the room, and 60-odd attendees settle in for a little casual conversation among themselves. Hodgman, who has four weeks to construct the topic, lineup and game for the next event, moves away from the podium and greets his wandering guests. One of them has a request for the return of an earlier-expropriated inhaler.
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