The Day I Used Gravity's Rainbow for a Dramatic Reading -- A Brief Reminiscence

[Rodney Welch]

Whenever I start reading Gravity's Rainbow again, it brings back 
several memories -- one in particular I thought I may as well relate to 
this group: the time I foolishly used the opening for a dramatic reading.
	The time was 1978; I was a student at a small college in the 
midwest who had somehow latched on to the oral interpretation team. This 
was one of those nerdy groups that competed in dramatic reading 
contests. I figured, quite wrongly, that the greater the literature, the 
better the reading. I figured that with a selection like the first 2 and 
a half pages of Gravity's Rainbow, I couldn't go wrong. For reasons that 
had a whole lot to do with low participation, I was "selected" for my 
first and last regional tournament.
	What I didn't know is that if you're far more likely to succeed 
at these "oral interp" contests if you have 1) zero taste in literature 
and 2) a highly-developed histrionic style. The best choice for a poem -- 
and probably still is today, at high schools and colleges across the land 
-- is Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo," with its immortal 
mumbo-jumbo-hoo-doo-yoo refrain, which basically allows the reader to ham 
it up like a native. Or you might want to try a scene from "The Odd 
Couple" -- whose Felix and Oscar will allow the reader to display such 
emotions as petulance and brooding anger. One of my fellow contestants 
picked some Gwendolyn Brooks poem about slum children -- offering her the 
plum chance to look pained and horrified and offended and wounded when 
she whispered "the smell of urine" or some such phrase.
	Of course, by the time I figured out that sentimental trash was 
vital to one's success, I was already well into the contest. Here I was, 
stuck with some surrealistic scene about a bombing. I figured that if I 
wanted to acquit myself respectably I had better start chewing the 
scenery, milking my tattered copy of GR for all the cheap melodrama I 
could find.
	"A scr-e-e-e-e-e-e-aming comes across the SKY!" I announced to 
one and all, getting their attention and quickly squandering it with a 
lot of hurried blabber about the fall of a crystal palace.
	My poetry reading, if anything, went worse. I chose "Sunday 
Morning" by Wallace Stevens, quickly discovering that while many phrases 
can be shouted for dramatic effect, "complacencies of the peignoir" is 
not one of them.
RW