Helen Schulman & Jeffrey Frank
August readings are tough. Who is left in the city? Who wants to leave their air conditioned room to sweat it out on a steamy subway platform to wait for a downtown train? When the readers are fiction great Helen Schulman and New Yorker editor Jeffrey Frank, more than enough people to make it standing room only in a yoga studio.
A captive audience in Clay's yoga studio wait for the reading to begin.
Our last few readings have been hosted by the slick and modern gym called Clay just five doors down from Paragraph on 14th Street. Clay is a gracious host, providing plentiful seating and pitchers of ice cold water, and it's not every weekend you can say you attended a literary reading in a yoga studio.
Jeffrey Frank reads from Trudy Hopedale.
Jeffrey Frank read from his novel Trudy Hopedale, a tale set in our nation's capital loaded with political cameos and characters pitted in their relationships and in the case of the title character, the loathing of younger, more attractive co-workers. Frank's reading leant a delightful spin to already delightful prose.
One of the more surprising moments of the reading was when Frank asked a member of the audience to read the Trudy Hopedale portion of his reading selection. The woman was such a fantastic reader, we were convinced she was a plant.
Jeffrey Frank negotiates with his Trudy Hopedale for the evening.
Next up was Helen Schulman reading from A Day at the Beach, a novel that recounts the day in the life of a family escaping Tribeca for the Hamptons on September 11th, 2001, anything but a day at the beach. The story is enrapturing in its slow recount of the day, details of the shower tiles mixed with the haunting image of people jumping from the burning towers. The reading left the audience somber and thoughtful, as any powerful fiction should.
Helen Schulman reads from her latest novel, A Day at the Beach.
After the reading, we all walked five doors down and three flights up to Paragraph for a wild afterparty, or at least it was blessed by a photgrapher and reporter from The New York Observer, so what it lacked in wild was made up in snark.
We like the wavy mirrors. Groovy.