Humorous performance aims to popularize books

 

The second Literary Death match, a humorous literature-reading competition, was held at The Bookworm Tuesday night. Photo by Liang meilan

 

By Liang Meilan

The Bookworm became the Beijing literati’s equivalent of a Roman coliseum Tuesday as it hosted the second Literary Death Match, a humorous literature-reading competition.

The event aims to “make literature a part of pop culture again, by exploring innovative ways to present text off the page,” said Todd Zuniga, co-organizer of the competition and editor of New York City literary magazine Opium.

“It (literature) has sort of been pushed back by television, film and now the Internet. What I wanted to do was make people come out and celebrate literature in a really exciting way,” Zuniga said.

The Match’s four contestants – Susan Barker from the UK and China-based Mark Kitto, John Leary and James Palmer – had seven minutes to perform a piece and wow the audience and judges.

Unlike the first Match, which centered on sexual matters, this week’s competition covered subjects as diverse as death, the cultural differences between Mongolian and Han Chinese and the character of Shanghai.

Leary, a writer living in Shanghai who presented a stream-of-consciousness piece about death, emerged the champion. Gady Espstein, one of the three judges, described it as “opera, Giselle Knowles, Jimmy Carter, lesbian sex and a marriage to Beyonce, all in one presentation.”

To audiences, the event meant forming closer bonds with people in Beijing’s literature community. “I came to support my friend who was one of the contestants,” said Lynne Smith, an expat from the US. “But now I know six more writers whose works I find interesting.”

Beijing was the 24th city to host the Literary Death Match, which is held regularly in major metropolises such as New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris and Montreal. Zuniga said the organizers are just getting warmed up and that they are hoping to bring the event to Shanghai next month.

Zuniga also said they are planning a larger, bilingual match in Beijing to get more people involved. “I think we can have at least one round of Chinese writers and another round of English writers,” he said.

“It is really exciting to think about what that would mean to the domestic literary community, because China has such a huge population of literature lovers and experts,” he said.

The Match is apparently not going to stop at book shops. “We’ll be pitching it as a TV show, and I hope audiences in the US will see a TV show of the Literary Death Match in the future,” he said.