Thank you.
James Allen Hall has said that he
loves the idea of the essay as a kind of museum.
And the subject being both static, suspended, looked at.
And then having energy and motion in the mind, the memory.
All of James' work masters this curatorial mode.
Often he dwells on a single object and captures
with often alarming precision the multitude
of emotion and depth.
The complications of time and space between we
or he or you and the object itself.
James begins his essay, Adventures
in Old Lady Land, a rumination on the queer body
and the aged body--
or as he said in an interview, an answer to the question
of why is my grandma so freaking fabulous?--
with the description of a photograph.
His grandmother in a hideous tablecloth-like dress
holds his two-year-old self.
His baby face looking royally pissed
because his oversized nightcap has partially
covered his forehead.
But then he admits that he doesn't, in fact,
and doesn't seem even to care, why exactly toddler James was
so red-faced writhing in his grandmother's lap.
Perhaps, he speculates, someone in the room
was preventing him from watching The Sonny and Cher Show.
Or maybe he was upset about the recent death of Pope John Paul
I being covered on the news.
Or, he confesses, maybe grandma just reeked.
His speculations are a source of humor,
yes, but they also serve as a preface
to an essay that celebrates his love for old lady regalia.
Just as it meditates on the hefty themes of shame and pain.
Queer pain, human pain.
The pain of words.
One word often.
Of body pain and brain pain.
This preamble articulates, I think,
one of the things I appreciate so much about James' work.
A reminder and a tolerance of the fact that
just like the body and its actions, the mind
and its memories can be and are deeply flawed.
But as Rigoberto González says of James' work,
his personal essays are more than an expression of pain.
They're testaments to perseverance shaped
by the acceptance of a flawed self,
love for a complicated family, and then unflappable wit.
All true.
His essays are simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking.
Let's pretend that James' essays are
that which is hung on museum walls and let's stop and stare.
Please welcome James Allen Hall.
[APPLAUSE]