DEATH MATCH VICTORS: NEW WORKS FROM ELIZABETH SEARLE AND MATTHEW SALESSES

Boston’s Literary Death Match is a rollicking good time. It’s that rare kind of community event where writers are called forth from their ivy-covered hovels to do hyperliterate stand-up comedy and just enjoy each other on a human level. In a town renowned for its scholarly austerity, its nice to see authors ham it up a little.

“Fun is key,” says 2010 Literary Death Match winner Elizabeth Searle.

“So many literary readings are too academic in feel, with audiences uncomfortably seated in folding chairs in brightly lit spaces … events like Death Match and FourStories take place in sexy club-style settings.

I am all for mixing it up with fellow writers, who are a kick.”

Searle and fellow Death Match vet Matthew Salesses may be reuniting for a more routine book release, but are not without the same gusto that they have brought to their Death Match personas. Searle’s newest release, Girl Held in Home, carries a familiar gravity as a capsule of post-9/11 suburbia, while Salesses’ book, The Last Repatriate, follows a returned soldier through his emotional journey home after the Korean War.

Both of these new books have roots in true, local stories. Searle tells the tale of her characters’ genesis in her hometown of Arlington. Salesses, on the other hand, sums it up simply: “I actually typed ‘Korean’ into a search of all of the archives in Boston, and there was one result. Luckily, the subject was war and law and trauma. I very quickly became fascinated in the life of this POW.”

Although it may be said that each book is loaded with its own dark discoveries and precarious desire, Searle and Salesses apply heaps of heartfelt wit to the seams of their stories.

In this way what might in less capable hands come off as dry wartime narratives, each becomes a complex deconstruction of that strange gray area that eclipse hero and traitor, hostage and terrorist. These are both extremely contemporary writers, which is to say they understand our experience of moral and social ambiguity now, even when reflecting upon another time.

When I asked Salesses about how he balances his multiple literary personalities, he responded, “Oh, I stay far away from my self-concept as a writer. I know how awkward that guy is. At Death Match, I would wait until everyone was having fun before reading something I hoped could break some hearts. In the novella, the approach was approximately the opposite. I started with the POW camp and then went from torture to a love triangle and seizures.”

Elizabeth Searle reminded me that in good writing, comedy and tragedy are intertwined, and shared a statement of this core philosophy that she received from Steve Almond: “Race toward the dark and SHINE!”

This book release event (read: party) will likely be filled to the brim with that sentiment.

NEW WORKS FROM THE FRONTLINES OF BOSTON’S LITERARY DEATHMATCH
FT. ELIZABETH SEARLE, MATTHEW SALESSES

WED 1.18.11
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7PM/ALL AGES/$5
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