A line stretches around the block outside a bar in New York’s East Village, but the crowd hasn’t gathered to hear a band. Instead, they’ve come to attend a fiction reading at the place New York Magazine has called “the best literary venue in New York” — the fabled KGB Bar.
You’ve got to love it when a fiction reading packs them in.
The image above is from James Ponsoldt film The End of the Tour (2015), based on the David Lipsky book Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (2010). In the film, David Foster Wallace is about to deliver a reading from his novel Infinite Jest. Describing the actual event (which took place in 1996), New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote:
Wallace steps inside to find a narrow staircase mobbed with people. They are merely the spillover. The real crowd waits in a room at the top.
Of course, every writer isn’t going to command a spillover crowd down E. 4th Street to 2nd Avenue, but every reading I’ve seen or heard about at KGB has been SRO, and I’m hoping to see the same when I return there for a reading with Mary Robinette Kowal on June 20.
It’s going to be a special night, taking place a few weeks before the premiere of Nightmare Cinema and on the same date that Fantasist Enterprises will be releasing the ebook edition of Voices: Tales of Horror. The collection first appeared in print in 2011, but until now it has not been available in digital format. And to make the release even more special, Fantasist will be including some bonus features unique to the ebook.
I’ll be sharing more about the ebook’s bonus content in an upcoming post.
Until then, save the date … and scop on!
Images:
Crowd outside KGB Bar from The end of the Tour.
Voices: Tales of Horror, cover art by Jason Zerrillo.
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