Tuesday 19.08.2008
I confess my enthusiasm was wearing a little thin at the end of week one. A couple of poor events i.e events with too much reading and not enough chat had left me dissatisfied. I want to hear the authors speak about writing, not read a book I’m capable of reading for myself. But a couple of days rest and respite saw me returning to Edinburgh ready for the adventures of week two.
My first event was with booker-longlisted Mohammed Hanif at WordPower Books. The booking confirmed prior to the longlisting and word obviously hadn’t got around because only 4 people turned up. The good side of this was that we had Hanif to ourselves and could ask him anything we wanted. So we did and I’ll write up a separate blog posting on that.
Back to Charlotte Square via Princess Street gardens and I managed to sneak in an hour’s reading. Although it wasn’t sunny, it was pleasant. As I got up to go to my next event, the heavens opened and the rain was torrential. The weather this summer is minging – even by Scottish standards. I think I can count myself lucky, having dodged the showers to sneak in 60 minutes reading in Princes Street Gardens. In past times the place where witches were executed, thrown from the crag into the castle moat. Morbid beast that I can be, I often wonder how many skeletons were found when the moat was drained to make way for the gardens. (I think it’s because I wouldn’t have rated my own chances of survival highly, had I lived in that era.) Not that normal tourists think of this these days. The gardens are far too pretty for that.
Mavis Cheek spoke with great passion and humour about “The Flanders Mare” Anne of Cleves, subject of her novel Amenable Women. That epithet “The Flanders Mare”, not coined in Anne’s lifetime, but in 1610, long after her death in 1557. Mavis Cheek’s fascination with Anne spawned at the age of 13 and one she decided to play out in this her 13th novel. The facts speak for themselves, she said, there’s no need to sensationalise, although there’s fun to be had when other people do that. Talking of the TV series The Tudors, she asked viewers to remember that the next time Henry’s six-pack is shown rolling around in bed, the man was in reality already 40 years old with a 60-inch waist. Originally Mavis Cheek was scheduled to share this event with Philippa Gregory, who has been criticised for sexing-up the facts in her historical fiction. I wonder if Cheek would have been so outspoken if she had been sharing the stage …
The fact that Anne of Cleves survived her disastrous marriage to the monstrous Henry is not the only surprising thing about her. It is generally assumed that once she was cast off, she lived a quiet life in retirement. Not something Anne would countenance. She received a generous settlement which she used to party, party, party, refusing to behave like the expected stereotype.
A trait Anne of Cleves shares with the mothers in Colm Toibin’s collection Mothers and Sons. The traditional picture of Irish mothers being of a submissive, downtrodden, self-sacrificing breed. Turns out Colm Toibin’s mother was nothing like that either and her son is still trying to work through the legacy! The stories in Mothers and Sons are quite intense and, by the author’s own admission, he waited until his mother’s death before publishing. He wouldn’t have got away with it if she were still alive.
Colm Toibin was sharing the stage with Patrick McGrath, whose character in Trauma is also dealing with the legacy his mother left behind. The pairings of events like these at the EBF are sometimes inspired and this was one of those. The subject material in both books fascinating with both authors in fine fettle. Credit too to Ramona Koval, the chairperson, who knew when to back off and let the discussion flow. As I expected, there was plenty of psychiatry in this conversation. McGrath’s fascination engendered by his upbringing at Broadmoor, his father a doctor at the UK’s main hospital for the criminally insane. However, the limitations of psychiatrists were also acknowledged. McGrath’s psychiatrist in Trauma famously in a worse state than his own patients. Toibin spoke of his friend, a psychiatrist, who may know an awful lot about human behaviour and more about Toibin than Toibin himself. Clever as this psychiatrist may be, he doesn’t know everything …. the sentence structure in the forthcoming autobiography, for example, requiring a semi-colon here, another comma there ….
Concerning the writing process, McGrath of the need to kickstart a novel, of finding that something that ignites the writing. A technique he uses that of gender reversal. He said he does this after the first few chapters ( I think or was it after the first draft?) are written. He changes the sexes of the characters – so a male protagonist becomes female and vice versa. The dynamics injected are quite surprising. Sometimes the novel stays as originally intended and sometimes not. But this exercise always helps.
Toibin spoke of the unspoken. That frequently the most illuminating elements of a story are the things not said. The silence between the lines. An audience question asked about the unresolved endings of the stories in Mothers and Sons. Toibin stated this was quite deliberate. He has written as much as he knows of the events and no more. He wants the reader to project the outcomes. He considers his stories a success if they make the reader shudder and put the book down to reflect on what they have just read. On that criteria he can consider Mothers and Sons a success – but more on that in my forthcoming review.
Audience questions moved us onto the films of McGrath’s books, Spider and Asylum. McGrath generous in his praise of both. He told how the screenplay of Spider presented challenges. McGrath described the book as an internal monologue of a schnizophrenic and his attempt to get the voice onto film involved writing much flashback. The director, however, removed it all and told McGrath to trust him. The result McGrath said is a masterpiece …
as was this particular event, which has set the standard for week two.
First fifty or so pages of the first draft.
I don’t know why I’m even going to anymore events as I’ve peaked midway with Colm Tóibín and McGrath.
I can’t wait for your Hanif post – I read Mangoes before it was longlisted.
Thanks Stewart. I knew 50 pages came into it as did 1st draft – couldn’t remember how to combine the two. That’s what you get when you don’t take notes and are relying on (an increasingly) senior memory! And yes, I agree this event is going to be hard to beat …..
Raidergirl3 – won’t be long …..fortunately I have taken notes so I should get things right.
Rabih Alameddine was in fine fettle today, although he could have done with someone to banter with the way Tóibín and McGrath did. But, when the authors are on their own, as Adriaan Van Dis was earlier in the week, you get more quality time in discussing their work.
Poor Mohammed Hanif! It must be rather disheartening to have just four people turn up to your EBF event!
I’ve got Mothers and Sons in the TBR pile but haven’t got to it yet. Ramona Koval is an impressive moderator/interviewer- she hosts the book show on radio national in Aus and is a pleasure to listen to.
Loving these reports from the frontline, Lizzy! And naturally very envious of you for getting to see Tóibín and McGrath in full flow – surely two of ‘our’ finest novelists. Reminds me I must read Mothers and Sons – another title to add to the post-Booker list…
Crikey! That makes me feel less bad about the time I went to see Gordon Burn at the Belfast festival a few years ago and there were only 20 or 30 people there. Having said that, given that I enjoyed Mangoes to begin with but ended up feeling so indifferent to it that I have since been putting off writing anything about it for my blog, maybe that fact that only four people turned up means that word had got around. 😉
What was the turnout like for Tóibín and McGrath?
Oh, and cracking photo of the two men also!
Reading your entry Lizzy, I feel like I was there. (ha).
McGrath and Toibin was an incredible combination – what fun we had and it must be said that they were having fun too.
“Is that right, Patrick?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
That’s how the banter started and it just got better and better. With many events, an hour is plenty but I could have listened to these guys for much longer.
In answer to JS’s question, the event was held in one of the medium-sized venues at EdBookFest and it wasn’t quite full (this I am sure of as I had a spare ticket I would have liked to have had a refund for).
It is pretty amazing how the Ed book fest organizers manage to choose the correct sized venues for their events. Contrast this to Hay where events are often moved around from what the printed tickets say, depending on demand. You can imagine that causes a bit of confusion!
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