A Marathon Event
3:00 a.m. 2/16/17 In each of my six marathon reading events at FSU, I have been asked two questions: "What is this?" "Why do you do it?" I can thoughtfully answer both. This year, however, I was struck dumb for a little while by a new question: "Why are we reading to no one?" Often in the 24 hours or more of a marathon reading on a university campus for which I have only recruited readers and not listeners, we technically "read to no one." People wander in and sit for a bit and people wander away. Some students with a strong conscience sit while they eat the cookies we offer. Some friends come to support a particular reader. But no one ever comes to listen to the story, really. At least not in the past. In the past the story was too long. So initially I had no answer to "Why are we reading to no one?" because it was not a question that had ever occurred to me. The person who asked this question that threw me was a volunteer reader who came, saw the room, asked the question, and left without reading. I thanked the reader for volunteering anyway and then sat so that I could be read to for hours. In the wee hours, when readers are temporarily non-existant, I have built an answer for my colleague about why we "read to no one." It is really two different answers, one for the novel marathon and one for the tale marathon. We read to no one in a novel marathon to get through. We are, after all, a part of a relay team. We do our part to move our team closer to the goal of finishing the entire novel. Metaphysically, we read to put the words into the public sphere so that they cascade across the ears and minds of those in the library who can't help but hear us. We remind them that words are beautiful, even out of context. We remind them that stories matter enough that a whole group of people will change their schedules and some will lose sleep in order to read a powerful story out loud to themselves and each other. An answer that applies to both marathons is that we can never actually read to no one. We are always listening to ourselves and words sound different aloud; ideas travel at different speed and in different keys; our chests and tongues and vocal chords actually embody the words and the words then become a physical part of us. For this year's tale marathon my first response to this question should have been that I would be listening and I am not no one. Beyond that, other readers come and listen. Librarians come and listen. New readers, not yet signed up, come and listen. We take our chances and hope someone arrives while we read and we catch their attention. We read aloud because we want to and because these tales are ordained for oral reading. I also know that theatre and speech students come and read to practice their craft. Students who hate reading aloud come to conquer their fears. Some read to allow their sports team to support the event and others read for extra credit. None of those reasons require an audience other than the self. I am open to the idea that tales read aloud might demand an audience in ways an epic novel read aloud does not, for truly the audience's experience is different. One can wander in and hear an entire tale in a short amount of time. Stay for a bit longer and one can hear three or four entire tales. Because we are not rushed to complete an enormous quantity of reading, and because new listeners are not constantly coming into the middle of something, there is often conversation after tales and explanations before. We hear why someone chose a tale and we exchange what we know about other stories that are similar or contradictory. We tell tales about our telling of tales to other audiences and how they reacted. And tonight we became a group participant in a tale through call-and-response. In a right world, I would host two marathon reading events every year at FSU: one in the fall for an extravagant novel and another in the spring for stories readers select to share. Tonight I have heard a Venezuelan creation tale in Spanish read by the Panamanian son of a Venezuelan mother. I have sung in response to a Yoruba tale told by a Yoruba Nigerian. I have listened to an African American woman sing and dance while she told about Brer Rabbit and the Tar Man. I have listened to a white woman growl in an ogre's voice and another offer up her Irish brogue. I have heard feminist tales, environmental tales, trickster tales, and Herodotus histories made up of oral stories. I have been graced to sit for hours and hear cultures and languages find welcome and offer welcome. I have heard strangers talk excitedly about each others' stories, and I have collected a long list of folk who thanked me for the opportunity, want to do it again next year, and promised to bring folks with them. Stories for me in this event - both as novels and as tales - have always been about community. They draw us together, give us shared a experience, help us see our fears, failures, and foibles in someone else, and show us again and again that resilience is possible and transformation necessary. In the very acts of risking ourselves to read for others, listening carefully to tales not from a childhood like ours, and exchanging ways our stories might fit with someone else's we become community. I am not sure stories can actually be read to no one. I am sure that I will always find new value in words heard from my own voice, felt across my own tongue, vibrating through my own bones. So sign me up for next year. I welcome the stories. I welcome the readers. I welcome the community no matter how large or how small.
