The Reading In The House Chamber |
Nez began his presentation by explaining that his novel began as an Internet project that turned into a novel and it was up to us to determine if he was an author or not. (He had a big grin on his face as he spoke the words) He gave a brief summary of what the book was about stating "The book is sort of autobiographical and it is also written in the first person, but it's not entirely true, which I think is pretty cool for an autobiography, it's just a lie! Don't know what you're doing, you just make up stuff." There was much laughter from the audience. Nez continued to amuse us with his charm by saying "One of the things I like about not being an author yet is I get to experiment with these $25 words." Nez explains one of the words he's found was mansuetude and what it means is the essence of gentleness. He said "I kept waiting for the right time and place to use mansuetude, it's not the kind of thing you can say at a cocktail party, aren't these beautiful curtains, they have a nice mansuetude."
Nez then read the very serious and traumatic section of his novel (pages 58 to 62) where he falls of the cliff and into the water and is saved by Neffie.
The last line is "She had heard me and returned to me and saved me; embraced me, in her might as much as her mansuetude." We were all sitting there breathless by Michael's story wrapped up in the drama. After the applause stopped, he pulled his reading glasses down low on his nose and looked up from over his glasses with the most adorable look on his face and said 'So that was the best I could do with mansuetude." Needless to say, the audience loved the comment.
Michael began to explain the next passage of his novel, pages 62 through 70. "But now Nez is unconscious and so I've got another problem as an author, which is how do you write unconscious? I tried ,you know, 35 pages of zzzzzzz's but I got really bored at about the 14th page." Michael explains that he is now pulling thoughts from his deepest past of his youth in the 50's in Texas as he has Nez drift off in an unconscious state as he is being nursed back to health by Neffie and her Dad. He then says "So here we go, we'll drift away together on this." Hearing Nez read this section of the book was very different from me reading it myself. Nez brought the story to life and it took on a different meaning hearing the words and feeling coming directly from him.
The last passage Michael read from LSHONZ was page 98 to 99
that talks about "When we are born into this country we are
born with this potential, this Tupelo to Vegas thing, this
America gene . Michael explained this passage is the basic seed
of what his next book America Gene is about.