Colum McCann’s Hand-Picked Stories

Early in his introductory remarks last night, Colum McCann recalled a bit of literary insight another writer had passed on to him: The Irish were brilliant short story writers, he’d been told, because they had practice going to confession. (It was true, he added, describing how he’d catalogued all sorts of imaginary sins rather than tell the priests what he’d really done.) But the stories he chose to present for an evening of the “Selected Shorts” series at Symphony Space were only “confessional” in the broadest sense of the term. It began with McCann’s own brutally suspenseful “Everything in this Country Must,” read by Amy Ryan, followed by Mary-Louise Parker’s hilarious but poignant treatment of Anne Enright’s “(She Owns) Every Thing.” And then, after a brief intermission, Michael Cerveris read Nathan Englander’s haunting “Free Fruit for Young Widows,” which held the audience riveted in silence for something close to half an hour.

Selected Shorts host Isaiah Sheffer had mentioned in his opening remarks that McCann had needed some persuading to commit to the evening, as he’d really been meaning to take time off from all the extracurricular aspects of the literary world and just sit down and write for several months. But I know the audience was grateful that he decided to spend one more night sharing three amazing stories with a few hundred of us—many of whom, as the photo above suggests, were eager to thank him directly afterward.

9 December 2010 | events |