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I've been proven wrong. It is apparent to me now that the book really is dead. Although a few hundred people spent a lovely evening in the park listening to readings, more T-shirts seem to have been sold than books. Surely this is a sign that all hope is gone.

In all seriousness the event was a complete success, one which I watched between my volunteering duties. I got to watch a bit of each set, enjoying a poem about tampons, a tale of a french woman with a perfect complexion being married into a Hindu family, an airplane flight and a conversation between a girl and each of her dead parents. I didn't get to hear the explanation as to why one reading duo included a stripping Ryan Kamstra and a police man in short shorts providing shade from the moonlight with an umbrella. I must have been selling T-shirts at the beginning of that act and watching the barren book table.

I myself picked up a copy of the Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper and The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark as Remembered by Fourteen People in a Basement. For anyone else who picked up the chapbook, my single addition to the work was the line about the "undiscovered country". For me, the rest of the story went down the memory hole.

What else can I say? There must be some real literature lovers still surviving to have braved the mosquitoes to listen to some good poetry and prose. Another year of the Scream Literature Fest has come and gone, and a little bit of life has been pumped back into the book.

We did do a good job of throwing off our mourning-wear for the Joy-athon! I myself was clad in a light green Scream Fest T-shirt and manning the merchandise table. While the view wasn't the best from there, I did get to hear the readings and observe the goings on.

All of the readers did an excellent job with engaging and often amusing performances. Most of them were assigned readings with little choice in the matter, but all did an excellent job. My personal favourite was the reading of a new Bruce LaBruce script by Maggie Macdonald. An amazing performance of a script included stage directions and descriptions, as well as dialogue delivered to the best of her vocal range ability, from naïve and high pitched Steve to the predatory porn agent.

A few highlights of the event include the raffle, where winners got to spend 60 seconds grabbing as many books as they could from the book table, and an impromptu auction of the Dennis Lee Book length Dinner tickets that occurred after two winners in a row already had tickets. In the end, the lot owner bid $40 on her own item in donation to the Joyland’s story-sharing tour. Brian Joseph Davis and Emily Schultz might just be able to make it home now.

The readings themselves varied from the heart-wrenching to the gut-splitting, but it seems we will all survive to scream another day. And to get back to our mourning for a weekend packed with funerary events.

I must say, if the future of the book relied on the participants of Scream in TYPE's bookstore basement there would be quite a problem.

Do you remember grade 12 English class? Sitting at the back of the class twiddling your thumbs hearing nothing but the mumble jumble flowing out of your teacher's mouth? I'm sure you do. That was probably during the unit of Shakespeare's play Hamlet . Well if you attended Scream Festival's "The Book in the Head" event then you were pretty much doomed.

In a small tight-nit space a dozen readers attempted to put together the famous works of Hamlet. Prompt book (actor in the role of dead text who aided participants when stuck on a line) was their only source of help in putting Hamlet together in modern day. Sadly, only a few out of the dozen actually had some knowledge of the lines, where many others knew the general story line. Though some lines were remembered, quite a few were spoken out of order or included filler words like, "something, something." Others were able to paraphrase lines with versions of what we would call modern day lingo such as hoe and dude.

Putting together Hamlet became a game of broken telephone and you know what that means. Scenes would change, or appear earlier in the text. Main characters would die slightly differently. Not to mention movies which have added and subtracted stage directions, character roles and actions while emphasizing and opting out particular scenes. Movies have already changed our recollections of the book making it easier for the book to get lost in time or changed drastically.

After a few beers and a ton of laughs we managed to put together most of Hamlet. Hamlet might have lost his life in the book, but he continues to survive into our future... or what's left of him.

However, what would happen to the future of books if they actually relied on world of mouth or the movie version? The story would be forever changing. When you are reading a book really appreciate how authentic it is. Realize that you have that ability to grasp the whole book in full and in your own way and not have to rely on someone's broken versions.

Last night the Book in the Head Salon was held in the basement of Type Books. In this event, a dozen booklovers were asked to reconstruct a literary text from memory, the goal being to see how much of the story would survive without the book. The participants were not given any hints prior to the event as to the tale they would have to tell, but they did so with astonishing detail.

Inspiring of a much loved episode of the Simpsons and from which The Lion King is loosely based, it is probably the most referenced of literary tales, the most quoted, most satirized, most familiar of stories. You guessed it: The Tragedy of Hamlet.

Although the Prince of Denmark could not survive his own play, his story will survive the death of the book. Many of us could only form a general story arc and recall a few iconic phrases, but some of the participants provided ample entertainment as they pieced together line after line. They took away the show by reciting entire scenes, and could easily have gone the whole night without much paraphrasing.

The game started out with surprising accuracy, but as time grew short the scenes were summed up by “the poison fight” and “when they started stabbing each other.” The players worked co-operatively to remember particular lines. However, after a few beverages this process became a little bit silly. Hamlet’s innuendos were paraphrased as “the dirty parts”, and my own personal favourite, the suggestion of “How now brown cow,” instead of “How now Ofelia.”

An interesting addition to the game was the Prompt Book: the actor playing the dead text. When the players needed a point in the right direction, the melancholy book would give them a line. Some of Shakespeare’s most melodramatic lines were read with a completely inert tone. The role was well played and provided many laughs for the participants.

There may be a reprise of this experience at the Main Stage so that all might see what we came up with in recollecting a classic. A good time was had by all.

Hullo Kids,

It's happening!

I'm going to be a no-show for the opening night Tony Burgess-and-Derek-McCormack-and-many-more themed festivities, but having scrutinized the Scream schedule, I feel I can properly plan my way through the upcoming two weeks. My absence from certain events has more to do with work requirements than taste. If it was up to me, I'd see em all. If only this "Death of the Book" festival could arrange all its literary content into some sort of portable word-storage device that I could bring with me and read on the subway. Oh well, until such a thing it reinvented, here's what I'm going to:

July 5th, 7pm. Incidental Reading: Melvil Dewey fights back
From what Aaron Tucker has told me, this will be not unlike the scene in Ghostbusters where the librarian gets her hair blown back by Slimer. It's inspired by Martha Baillie's The Incident Report, which I haven't read but I hear is the bee's knees. The layout is essentially this, a bunch (like, eleven) readers are all spaced around the Yorkville Library like some sort of talking statuary exhibit, and you basically get guided around. Fun? I think so. And I'm not just saying that because I'm one of the eleven.

July 7th, 7pm. Five Manifestos in the Book
This one is shaping up to be the intellectual heart of the festival. Five people with their own take on the the state and fate of the book spar it out in a big five-way talkin' fight. One of the five is Big Festival Cheese Bill Kennedy, and we already know what Bill thinks here: http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2009_scream_edition/artic.... I expect I'll come home all aflutter over these supermodern thinkers and their supermodern ideas, and want to pen a rebuttal, because a lot of this stuff reminds me about how we are all going to be driving electric cars by 1985, at the latest.

July 8th: 8pm. The Joyland Joy-athon
Brought to you by the feverish soul of Canadian online literature, www.joyland.ca, this looks like a busy night of short fictioneering. Readers include Claudia Dey, Rebecca Rosenblum, Kevin Connolly, Zoe Whittall, and Carl Wilson.

July 10th, 7pm. If Hope Disorders Words: Dennis Lee Reprised
I'm affording to go to this $40 dinner because I promised to help serve food. So, if you like $40 dinners with thumb prints in your steak, you'll love this. But seriously, Dennis Lee is the great folk-hero of contemporary Canadian poetry. I've said all I can think of on this subject already for Open Book Toronto, so just go there if you're not already convinced: http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2009_scream_edition/artic...

July 11th, 8pm. Til Death do us Party: The Scream Gala
It's a party. I'm probably not going to go because I'm shite at parties, but you should. The band is called The Bandiniband, which is exciting, because if the main character from those Fante novels had a band, it would be really great.

July 13th, 7pm. The Scream in High Park
Mainstage, baby! Oh man. I'm so excited about this thing it hurts. There is literally nobody on this bill I don't already love. Lisa Foad's new book is occasionally staggering. Jeramy Dodds is the real deal, that rare hyped-to-the-gills new poet that deserves the hype. Ryan KAmstra is maybe my favourite Toronto poet. And there's like ten more. This stuff sells itself.

See you out there, kids! I have a thing to go do. I'd like to apologize now for any lapses of grammar or non-words that appear above.

-Jmm

We are gathered here today to pay our last respects to an ancient and long treasured friend. My most sincere, heartfelt sympathies to all the friends, family members and lovers of the newly departed. I too feel the loss of our passionate, thrilling, memorizing and tantalizing companion. Though sometimes an untameable lover, quick to sweep us up in its grasp and take us to unknown reaches, the book has always been a reliable source of escapism. Today we mourn its passing.

That may seem a bit melodramatic, and in truth my first reaction to the theme of this year's Scream Literary Festival was defensive denial, but it does appear as if literature may be in the decline. But it is not yet time for the eulogies. There is still hope! This summer Toronto will rise to put the spark of life back into the oldest form of literature, hopefully resuscitating it once and for all. Though avid readers like myself may protest fervently that literature is still flourishing, why not bring back the love of reading for everyone?

And who might I be? My name is Mia, and I am neither a published writer nor an eloquent poet, but a simple bibliophile and English Major. My favourite genre of literature is science fiction because I love how speculative and futuristic universes can say so much about human nature. I keep a sci-fi blog here, and also write short stories in my spare time. I’m really glad that I have the opportunity to be involved in this great event and I can’t wait to get it started.

Thank you all for reading and enjoy the wake. Refreshments will be served.

Hey Eager Screamers!

My name is Cassandra Federbusz, but usually people call me Cas. I am a writer, poet and blogger. I love to write poetry; I keep a journal and I blog every so often. I absolutely love Scream! I am amazed at the incredible amount of time and effort that has been, and will continue to be, put into this festival with the helping hands of all the co-coordinators, volunteers, readers and performers.

When I heard about the Scream Literary Festival in 2008, I underestimated how creative, funky and exciting this festival would be. When I volunteered, I was amazed at the turnouts, the events, and of course, the brilliant readers and performers.

My expectations for this year - bigger and better! I know this year Scream is going to scream louder than ever before. I look forward to the events to come later this month into early July. Can't wait!

I like to keep my blogs very detailed. So keep checking for updates!