{"id":12879,"date":"2008-05-23T07:02:35","date_gmt":"2008-05-23T11:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=12879"},"modified":"2014-01-15T10:11:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T15:11:13","slug":"tell-me-you-love-david-selby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/23\/tell-me-you-love-david-selby\/","title":{"rendered":"Tell me you love David Selby"},"content":{"rendered":"

I headed over to the Martinsburg-Berkeley County Public Library last night to hear actor and West Virginia native David Selby talk about his novel Lincoln’s Better Angel<\/i>. For those of a certain generation, Selby will forever be remembered as Quentin Collins, the werewolf character from Dark Shadows<\/i>, whom he brought to life from 1968 through 1971, but he also did a long stint on Falcon Crest<\/i>, and recently popped up on HBO to portray Jane Alexander’s partner in the controversial series Tell Me You Love Me<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\"DavidSelbyScottEdelman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The event was billed as a reading, but what the the 60 or so of us who showed up ended up experiencing was less a reading than a full performance. Lincoln’s Better Angel<\/i><\/a> tells the story of a Vietnam veteran who works as a caretaker on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. One night, mourning the loss of his child, he encounters Lincoln’s ghost, and together they wander the city, discussing issues of race, family, and self-worth. Selby said that he wrote the novel based on a play he wrote and performed in many years ago, which is perhaps why, rather than simply reading from the book, he took about 90 minutes acting out the events of the story, fully inhabiting all of the characters. Though he kept a copy of his novel in hand, passages marked with yellow post-it notes, he rarely referred to it.<\/p>\n

Selby was obviously moved by his material, which he said was inspired by an actual event of a Lincoln Memorial worker who died while on duty over a July 4th weekend. Even though we were a small audience, at least when compared to what he would have faced in a theatrical situation, I was still impressed by his ability to connect with the crowd. He worked the room well, moving up and down the rows, making eye contact with each of us. After the reading, he answered questions, and then hung around for photos (as you can see above) and autographs. <\/p>\n

I come away from meeting most actors unimpressed, as they are usually far shallower, less articulate, and smaller<\/i> than the characters which they are called upon to inhabit, and it’s difficult for real people to compete with those fictional creations. But Selby seemed personable, friendly, and intelligent. He seemed comfortable among us. Some of that may be because, as he told us at the beginning of the evening, he truly considers West Virginia home, the place he returns to again and again in order to recharge his batteries. His looseness and ease may have been because he felt surrounded by friends and family, and so he let his guard down. Whatever the reason, the evening was far more entertaining that I’d expected,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I headed over to the Martinsburg-Berkeley County Public Library last night to hear actor and West Virginia native David Selby talk about his novel Lincoln’s Better Angel. For those of a certain generation, Selby will forever be remembered as Quentin Collins, the werewolf character from Dark Shadows, whom he brought to life from 1968 through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[438],"class_list":["post-12879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-selby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12881,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12879\/revisions\/12881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}