There’s a phrase: “You could hear a pin drop.”

That’s what it sounded like this evening at the Thacker Mountain Radio recording session in Oxford, Mississippi, when Kevin Brockmeier, of Little Rock, read one of his uncanny, evocative short stories, the one that begins “Once there was a man who happened to buy God’s  overcoat.” The story is called “A Fable with Slips of Paper Spilling from the Pockets.” It appears in Brockmeier’s new book, “The View from the Seventh Layer” (Pantheon, $21.95)

The reason that this silence was interesting in that Thacker Mountain Radio is a raucous affair. Usually, the event is held at Off Square Books, the used books annex to the well-known and beloved Square Books, an institution in the literary town. Tonight, however, Thacker moved to larger quarters in the old Power House, two blocks off the old town square. The facility features a huge industrial space with a stage and lights and rows of padded seats. And to add to the audience for this debut, this is also the first day of the 15th Oxford Conference for the Book (which is why I’m in the town Faulkner made famous, to serve on a panel Saturday), so the audience swelled to unprecedented proportions; staff members brought in more chairs and still people lined the side walls and crowded at the back. As master of ceremonies Jim Dees said: “One can only hope that the fire marshal is under sedation.”

In my “Book Folks” column, I have written the words “Thacker Mountain Radio” a thousand times, but I had never actually been to one until a few hours ago. Chiefly, it’s a broadcast devoted to music and literature. In the music vein, the house band is the Yalobushwhackers, one member of which is the legendary songwriter, performer and producer Jim Dickinson, a figure that Memphis can legitimately claim, but he was ill, so the group went on without him, substituting the sweet-voiced Tricia Walker on the piano. Music was also provided by local favorite — I mean Oxford-local, though they’ve played at national festivals and have a CD out soon from Fat Possum — Color of Revolt and, at the conclusion, the riveting North Mississippi Hill Country Review, starring Cody Dickinson, one of Jim Dickinson’s sons; no note goes untouched, unburnished yet precisely unadorned.
The first literary figure was Christopher Paul Curtis, who read a funny and poignant passage from his young adult novel “Bud, Not Buddy,” the first book to win both the Newbery Honor and the Coretta Scott King Honor Awards. And then, for some reason, the artist William Dunlap read an excerpt from one of his journals, which many people in the audience found amusing; it must be an Oxford thing.

During all of these performances, people were snapping photos like crazy, an activity that led me to understand that there are cell phones now with better cameras than my camera, hence none of the shots I took appear with this post. Sorry. I need a new camera or a new cell phone.

While Kevin Brockmeier was reading, however, no one shot a single image. No one spoke. Perhaps no one breathed.

Brockmeier is slight and pale. He wore a black shirt, not tucked in, and jeans. He has closely trimmed black hair and a neat beard and mustache. He wears steel-rimmed glasses. His voice is high, and there’s a sharp intake of breath before every sentence. He doesn’t move, except to shift his head back and forth slightly from the microphone (which he handles very well) to the page. During this reading, which lasted 10 or 12 minutes, his left arm hung at his side and did not move the slightest. He reads with rapt attention to the words and phrases but with little emphasis. He does not look at the audience. The effect is mesmerizing, almost disturbing. I think if he had read for an hour, no one would have moved.

Local readers will get a chance to meet Brockmeier and hear him read — or is it perform? — in Memphis on April 22, at 6 p.m.,when he appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers. Don’t miss it. His previous books are the collection of stories, “Things That Fall from the Sky,” the novels, “The Truth about Celia” and “The Brief History of the Dead,” and two books for children.