“Endurance Texts” take the form of energy-sapping activities for the author, and have included the following as he reads: the author pulled through the audience by a rope, audience members chasing and hitting the author, audience members asking the author to do push ups, give a lap dance, etc., the author eating matches while screaming a poem. These “Endurance Texts” seek to address these key questions: if the audience is kept from being bored, does this give value to the reading? Does the audience deserve-or even have a right-to be entertained? Does entertainment-as-performance strip away some aspect of literariness? Can the reading be cheapened by cheap tricks? Therefore, as with the fire eating, some of the content is deliberately organized along the lines of a circus act. The performer always dresses conservatively, has a serious bio read to the audience, and comes on as a fairly buttoned-down member of the academic class. The expectations of the audience are manipulated by the theatrical juxtaposition, at first, and then by the larger spectacle of the increased absurdity of the “gimmicks.”