VOTM: What’s the most unusual experience you’ve had at a reading?
MACDONELL: Earlier this year I had a blowout with my wife. I surrendered and drove alone to a scheduled reading at Stories Books and Café in Echo Park. The Stories employee who had booked the event was not there. Maybe thirty people, most of whom I believe love me, sat watching me reading. I reached the good part, and I thought, Why am I imposing myself on these people? Why do I take advantage of my friendships in this way? Maybe that’s not such an unusual experience after all.
Allan MacDonell is the author of Punk Elegies: True Tales of Death Trip Kids, Wrongful Sex and Trial by Angel Dust (Rare Bird, 2015) and Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine (Feral House, 2006). In the late 1970s, MacDonell was a defining voice of the groundbreaking punk periodical Slash. On his off hours, he co-invented slam-dancing. MacDonell lives in Los Angeles and is the editorial director of The Kind.
Come see Allan read at Book Show in Highland Park on Friday, October 30 at 7:30pm.