Arts/Cultural Response: Catch 22 reading

This event that I attended was the marathon reading of the book Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.  Joseph Heller was once an English professor at Penn State, and because of this the English department decided to sponsor the marathon reading of Catch 22.  The even took place outside behind the library, in-between the two walkways.  There was a tarp put up over where the reading was and chairs in rows for the audience to sit in.  It took place on Thursday to Friday and went on until the book was over.  The room felt kind of gloomy because there weren’t a lot of people there and the people that were never stayed to long.  The audience was mostly kids that were getting extra credit from their English teacher for reading the book, or people that seemed to know a lot about Catch 22 and be very passionate about the book.  I personally didn’t participate in the event because I have always had a fear of public speaking, and I was afraid to totally mispronounce a word so I decided against it.  Personally my favorite part of the reading was when my friend went up to reed and kept cracking up because she laughs when she’s nervous.  I have never been to an event like this before and I was expecting it to be really crowded.  But to my surprise there was only five to eight people there at a time and no one really stated for that long they just kind of came to read.  The friends that I went with thought it was a lot of fun mostly because they got to get a free tee shirt, but also because they got a lot of extra credit for going to this event.