There are some works that are better heard and seen rather than read silently to oneself.  In a piece where words spar and fly about, acting as lightening rods for ideas which are not then developed but left to float in our consciousness for later digesting (or forgetting), the performance of the words is necessary to fill out (to  supply the meat to the bones of) our experience.  A performance complete with voices and even better, faces,  to express the personalities behind the characters and the myriad of possibilities behind the words,  can render a clever piece more articulate and more meaningful.

Most plays fall within this category of “better seen and heard than read”, and Aaron Petrovich’s novella The Session does too.  It is a fast and funny book, and mostly a dialog between Smith and Smith that is so much like a play (and playful and playing with words in all their meanings) that it deserves a full performance.  I enjoyed reading this slim book but I wanted more; the more could be supplied through actors’  faces and gestures and tones.

The question of who supplies the meat to the bones of a book is one that can be debated, of course, but I want the writer to give me as least the muscles and the tendons (as it so happens, the organs are missing too but that’s a plot point).  When reading, the meat is often supplied by the reader; it can come from what I myself bring to the book, for example, my experiences with crazy philosophies or religions  (a theme in A Session) and my own fun with words (another theme).  But we need more than just the bones to make a book.

Petrovich can either require (or advise) the performance of this work or he should give us more tendon and muscle in the form of character, interior and exterior.  In the weaving of words between Smith and Smith, we want to know more of the who and why of Smith and Smith.  Then A Session would be more than great dialog: it would be a good book.