By sandy
My evening last night had strange parallels with Answer Girl's: rainy but literary. The International Festival of Authors continues in Toronto, and I braved the cold and wet fall weather to attend a reading (one of five that went on yesterday) by David Baddiel and Julian Barnes from the U.K. and Canadian Michael Crummey at the Premiere Dance Theatre. They didn't dance, but boy, did they read, to an audience of about 250.
The event was hosted by U.K. author C.C. Humphreys (who will be participating in a round table discussion tomorrow night), who introduced each author before his reading, although there was no interview such as what I experienced at Sunday's reading. Each reading lasted 20-25 minutes, with a break after the first two to allow for people to buy books and have them signed by the authors. I hadn't noticed this at Sunday's reading since I only spent a few minutes in the book stalls before fleeing the crowds, but they were selling some of the books (the ones from tonight's authors, which I had considered buying on the spot) at inflated prices: I saw a price of $22.50 stated for one of Michael Crummey's books that had an original price printed on the cover of $21. I can understand that someone would probably pay the inflated price if they wanted to stand in line and have the author sign the book after the reading, but it seems like the festival (or whoever was running the book stalls) is taking unfair advantage of a captive audience.
Enough griping, on with the readings. David Baddiel, also well known as a comedian and co-author of the popular football anthem "Three Lions" from 1996, has taken a detour into the dramatic with his latest book The Secret Purposes. It's about the internment of refugees (many of them Jewish) by Britain on the Isle of Man during World War II, causing the separation of one particular couple: him detained on the Isle of Man, and her in Cambridge with their baby. The portion of the book that he read, which included some very funny writing in spite of the serious subject, didn't address the estranged couple, but focused on a conversation between a translator and a high-level director at the U.K. Ministry of Information during the war. Although the scenario is fictional, the crux of the conversation is an actual memo that was distributed within the M of I during that time, and can apparently be seen at the Museum of War in London. Basically, the memo stated that descriptions of the horrors (particularly the concentration camps) that were starting to emerge from Europe should be toned down before being released for general consumption, unless the targets of the atrocities were "indisputably innocent", and "not violent criminals or Jews". I found this particularly interesting because a few hours before the reading, I had read the Economist's obituary of Simon Wiesenthal (paid subscription required for link) which described Wiesenthal's dedication to ensuring that future generations knew about the Holocaust.
Next up was Michael Crummey, a poet and former finalist for the Giller Prize, reading from The Wreckage. Like Baddiel's book, it's set during the second world war, and it also tells about a couple separated by wartime events: him in a Japanese POW camp, and her in Newfoundland awaiting his return. He read three sections, two about the couple, and the last a flashback from a Japanese prison guard to his boyhood in British Columbia, which reminded me of the shameful behaviour of Canadians towards Japanese-Canadians before and during the war. I enjoyed watching and listening to Crummey read: he looked about 12 years old, but read a passage about oral sex; and he read his prose with the cadence of poetry, each sentence distinct. He's from Newfoundland, and I was surprised to hear that he has no discernible "Newf" accent, although there was a touch of it when reading the dialogue of the characters from the book. Crummey's also taking part in a round table event tonight on “The Writer’s Life in the Information Age”, along with Mohammed Naseehu Ali, Neil Bissoondath, Alison Pick and Christopher Wilson, moderated by Lewis DeSoto.
I haven't read anything of Julian Barnes’ since A History of the World In 10 1/2 Chapters; last night, he was reading from his new novel, Arthur & George. The eponymous Arthur is Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, although this book is a fictionalized account of some events in his life. Some story lines carried from real life, such as his tubercular wife and their travels to exotic warm places to ease her: the character mused about golfing near Meno House -- funny coincidence, since I lunched one day six years ago at that same Meno House in Giza, outside Cairo, looking at the pyramids while I ate. A three-time contender for the Booker Prize, Barnes was clearly the big draw for last night's reading, and likely the reason that it was held in the 450-seat Premiere Dance Theatre rather than one of the smaller venues around Harbourfront. He's in another IFOA event tonight, being interviewed by Martin Levin, if you want to catch him before he leaves the country.
The really fun thing about going to these readings is the other audience members: readings draw a diverse and sometimes weird lot, and it's easy to strike up conversations with the people around you before the lights go down. The youngish couple (well, younger than me) on my left were huge Julian Barnes fans, and had come just to hear him read although they appeared to enjoy the other readers. They seemed to have read all of his books, judging by the way that they quizzed me about various titles, and she admitted to having read one of her favourites five times. They even knew an interesting bit of trivia: Barnes had an uncredited cameo role as himself in the movie Bridget Jones' Diary.
On my right was an older man who confided that he never thought that when he retired, he could spend more than his pension amount on books in a week. Like me, he's attending several readings this week, and he was toting an armload of books. His real concern, however, was that he had brought two of the books in with him rather than purchasing them there (as many people do at these events), and he thought that the booksellers might think that he had nicked them from the stands since they weren't in a bag! I assured him that he wasn't the only one carrying in his own books, and to go ahead and get in there for an autograph.
The fun continued on the way home: I hopped on a streetcar for the short ride, and was joined by several people who had obviously attended one of the readings at Harbourfront that evening. Two women who had just met at the streetcar stop were having a lengthy discussion about authors several blocks later when I hopped off. Literature can be so contagious!
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