April 19–26, 2001

arts picks| reading

Dave Eggers

McSweeney’s kingpin Dave Eggers has been a busy guy lately: delivering a new issue of his idiosyncratic literary journal, featuring, among others, Zadie Smith, Ian Frazier, They Might Be Giants and Philip Glass (the latter two on an accompanying soundtrack CD); continuing the expansion of the McSweeney’s franchise into book publishing; turning out a 15,000-word appendix to his wildly successful and famous-making memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for its paperback release; and bloodying his rhetorical knuckles in a knock-down drag-out online donnybrook with a playa-hatin’ New York Times hack who crossed him in print. Next up: Eggers brings his traveling literary roadshow to Philadelphia. If dispatches from the front rows of previous readings are to be believed, expect go-go dancers on tables, costumed attendees among the crowds, Eggers himself belting out Journey’s "Any Way You Want It" and maybe, if you’re lucky, a lecture on car safety and maintenance by a duly appointed representative of the American Automobile Association. Tickets to the main auditorium are sold out, but no doubt it’ll be just as strange on the closed-circuit simulcast upstairs.

—Mark Lotto

Thu., April 19, 8 p.m., Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322.