BRATTLEBORO — Last year, at the Centre Congregational Church, two literary heavyweights met on the stage: National Book Award finalist Andre Dubus III, bestselling author of House of Sand and Fog, and the soon-to-be National Book Award winner Phil Klay, who'd just published his first book, Redeployment, about serving in the Iraq War.
While reading from one of his works, Dubus, clearly the more flamboyant of the two, kept catching himself swearing during off-the-cuff remarks - and looking a bit nervous about it.
He was, after all, in a church.
“I really shouldn't use the F-word in the house of God,” he told the audience.
A few minutes later, though, Dubus caught himself again and, apparently exasperated, turned to Klay, the younger of them, for commiseration.
“It's not easy doing this in a church, is it?” Dubus said.
Klay agreed, and the audience had a polite laugh with the authors about these old New England towns, always wanting to meet in their churches.
What was interesting was what happened next: Dubus, deciding it was not enough to simply acknowledge this predicament, suggested to Klay that they “get it all out” and shout the f-word simultaneously to purge themselves of their blue-tongued demons.
What followed is exactly why I love the Brattleboro Literary Festival so much - these moments where a reading turns into an illuminating moment between the writers on stage and the people in the audience.
In this case, Dubus was assuming he had already offended the crowd, so why not push the envelope? It did not seem to be an option to just not engage in any further profanity.
Klay, for his part, looked downright dubious that bellowing the f-word would have the desired effect, but he very sportingly went along.
Dubus braced himself in front of the microphone and counted down. “One...two...three...!”
Both men shouted the flagrant word into their respective microphones. The sound of it went ringing through the nave of the church, out of the speakers, in stereo.
And the audience just looked at them, then each other, and let out a collective “Mehhhhhhh....”
Dubus was bowled over. Dropping the f-bomb in a church did not shock the audience. In fact, the audience had only offered an obligatory laugh, more to do with the elaborate wind-up.
What was illuminated in that moment was something no one had expected: these world-weary authors were more prudish than their audience.
Dubus and Klay did not utter another curse word for the rest of the reading.
* * *
As it turned out, letting fly the f-word in church did have the desired effect - just not the one anybody expected.
This alchemy between authors and audiences - and sometimes a combination of larger-than-life egos in intimate spaces - is what makes the Brattleboro Literary Festival, year after year, so profoundly engrossing.
Writers do not just give readings, they give performances, and through events such as Friday's Literary Death Match and paired readings held throughout the weekend, authors dive deeply into subjects in common and in depth. They debate, they square off, and they frequently challenge their listeners - with surprising and delightful results.
The playful conviviality and sharp spontaneity of the festival is what makes it so unique and, with its outstanding stable of towering intellects and Pulitzer Prize winners, the question is never who are you going to see, but how many writers can you squeeze in before the festival is, all too soon, over?
This year's pairings include National Book Award finalist Francine Prose and Rome Prize winner Mary Morris; 2015 Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gregory Pardlo and National Book Critics Circle award winner C.D. Wright; and in nonfiction, Michael Blanding and Tom Clynes, who delve into the world of high-stakes map-thieving and, uh, underage-nuclear-fusion-tinkering, respectively.
And just to be clear for any authors who might be picking up a copy of The Commons and are reading this now, be warned.
Brattleboro enjoys a little salty language with its literary offerings.