Friday is Billy Corgan's 8-Hour ‘Siddhartha’ Interpretational Performance

Calling all hardcore fans of the Smashing Pumpkins and/or German novellas. Really, really hardcore fans.

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan announced that he’ll be doing a 8-9 hour performance at Madame ZuZu’s Teahouse, which he owns, on Feb. 28.

“Performance will be centered around an ambient/musical interpretation of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha; built by modular synthesis, on the fly,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

The show, which starts at noon, is free and first come, first served. On its website, Madame ZuZu’s cautions that because its space is small, it may rotate seating “in order to accommodate as many of our customers as possible.”

Some of the commenters on Corgan’s Facebook page are thrilled at the idea and seriously sad they can’t be there. Here’s one example: “Film this, please. This sounds like a truly special event, one that I'd be humbled to take in, even if a recording is the only way to do so.” Others are calling the event “pretentious.”

Chicagoist has some fun with the notion, pointing out that Siddhartha is only 152 pages long.

“Granted, Siddhartha packs in a lot of insight and dense thought provoking passages,” the Chicagoist article reads, “but, assuming Corgan performs the whole nine hours, that averages to around 16 minutes per page. It didn’t take us that long to comprehend the gist of it in high school.

What do you think? Is this an epic event worth attending or your idea of a torturous way to spend and afternoon (and evening)?