Hilton Als, long-time theater critic for The New Yorker and 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, stares at the ground and tightens his green polka-dot bandana-scarf.
He’s thinking (long pause). An audience member has asked, “What advice would you give aspiring writers?”
The audience for the Visions & Voices event, composed of many aspiring writers, matches his anticipatory hunched-over posture. “Think before you speak,” he says. As a single unit, we recline under the disappointment of an axiomatic response. Yet Als glares us in the eye and penetrates the discomforted silence with a sudden firing, “Read before you think.”
He pauses. “Don’t react.” His eyes return to the audience, “Shut up.”
We are in his hands. He’s got the controls.
While the message is blunt and cold and possibly on paper could seem cliche, it is articulated with a cadence and corresponding eye contact that undeniably says, “I care about you.” Als continues to talk about how the introduction of the internet has made nearly every person with a Twitter account believe that anything is important enough to be written about and shared. He wants to penetrate the indifference.
“The fact that people are using language makes me happy,” he says. His mood turns, “I am sad when they don’t make it art. Just because it happened to you, doesn’t make it interesting.”
As one of the more visible people of color in the art criticism world, he uses his platform — in this case a public conversation hosted by David Bridel, USC School of Dramatic Arts Dean, and creative writing Ph.D. candidate, Mary Alice Daniels — to discuss issues of race, a topic that he presents with a surgeon’s (or journalist’s) exactness. Race is described by Als as “endlessly fascinating;” it inspires and influences his worldview, and his theater reviews for The New Yorker. He introduces the personal particulars of his life in a way many can understand, describing what he calls “the black nod” that he and a black security guard share every morning. The two have never spoken; they possess no discernible friendship, yet every time they see one another, they nod, just as if, as Als puts it, “to make sure we’re here.”
This story comes after he tells us about a frequent interaction he experiences when he meets New Yorker readers, who, more often than not, blurt, “I didn’t know you were black.” Als states that beneath the surface, he wants to respond with, “I didn’t know you were an idiot,” but he restrains himself. He ties this repeated experience in with the “black nod” by saying that his position as an intellectual elite, who lives in a “nice” neighborhood leads him to be viewed in the prevailing context of “I can’t believe you exist.”
There’s a small pause after Als makes that statement. Bridel trusts Als with the silence and doesn’t interrupt. “We’re targets,” Als says, “You have to know what the world is before it knows itself.”
From left: USC School of Dramatic Arts Dean, David Bridel; Hilton Als; and creative writing doctoral candidate, Mary Alice Daniels in conversation (Photo by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging)
Silence and pauses and the leaning-forward moments make this conversation a performance, and also real. Als is without doubt the author. The director. He knows his cues. He is also the actor.
Bridel brings up how many are calling Als “the next James Baldwin” and while complimented by the comparison, Als steers his identity in a different direction. He wants to be the first Hilton Als.
Hilton Als reads from one of his pieces for The New Yorker (Photo by Ryan Miller/Capture Imaging)
Als doesn’t talk fast. He doesn’t even talk much, taking a moment before every thought on February 7 at USC’s Cammilleri Hall as if to ensure its perfection. He sounds like he follows his own advice. When he gives an opinion, he states it and how he arrived there. Transparency rules his day. He’s intellectually adventurous, yet cautious. Through his engagement with both words and listeners, he displays what one audience member described as a writer’s sense of “joy.”
Audience members left the packed black box theater with Als’ posture and his tenets in their bones and blood, pulsing to the tunes of his:
“don’t react,”
“read,”
“shut up.”