[me and Sir Ian]I tip my cap at Linwood Barclay today because he really is brilliant and charming and funny and last night he was in a sticky spot the: I’M SIGNING WITH RANKIN spot. This has been a kerfuffle in the past, as well. Author who is offered a spot with Rankin can look at it in two ways: 1.) great exposure with ( what an usher last night told me) was the biggest signing of the festival ( and most usually is) 2.) a lot of sitting by yourself at a table with a bottle of water and a few stragglers who heard you read and hit up the Ben McNally booth.
As I was standing in line waiting for Rankin, I kept looking over at good-natured Linwood and reminding myself exactly how pitch-perfect his reading and chat earlier in the evening were. He was funny, down-to-earth, Canadian, bright, intelligent and though I tend to prefer my hardboiled ( or soft boiled in the way of tea cosy) UK mystery authors, Barclay inspired me to hunt down his fiction.
I stood and shifted my weight and wondered, having read none other than his magnificent Toronto Star columns , would his fiction be the same? Last night’s intro and readings were entertaining and amusing because he emphasized, cajoled and teetered with his prose in a comfortable way that, he: the author, could slip into like an old University hoody.
Would the Linwood Barclay I saw at the Norma Fleck Dance Theatre: the Barclay of great dialogue, nuance, script and humorous undertone, translate to book form?
Is seeing an author live before reading their book the same as watching a movie before reading the book?
Hmmm. Barclay’s a fantastic reader, does that ruin the reading experience if I detach his prose from his presence?
I got to thinking about the good, the bad, and the ugly of IFOA readings during my half a dozen years of attendance.
Rankin is always a hit with the audience because he has this lackadaisical rock-star thing going. Very much like Neil Gaiman, his mere presence asserts an immediate sit-up-in-seat reaction. I had read him long before I saw him and seeing him read again and again just heightens and rounds-out my love for his fiction.
Kenneth Oppel’s reading of Airborn was the most innovative I had ever been to. The kids in the audience were mesmerized as he donned a white lab coat, and used a meter stick to point out the different parts of an airship on an overhead screen. He was the zany scientist: a thorough geek who loved his subject matter and had the kids in awed giggles. When I was midway through Oppel’s Starclimber and felt he was unforgiving in his departure from great adventure story to stodgy: “must round out Matt and Kate relationship” I called this moment to the book’s defense and let Oppel off the hook. Personalized moment=influencing book.
Then you have Michael Crummey who was born to spin a yarn ( and is, as you know, Canada ’s cutest author--- hate to be superficial, but its true) and invites you into a long oral trajectory from St. John’s--- all down-to-earth, clear and engaging like the audience is sitting round a campfire listening to something that strings them along....
And CC Humphreys who knows he is a good reader and uses that confident flair ( and British accent) to present dramatically in a very captivating way.
If we go back to Dickens and Twain we know that an author’s on-stage marketing of their work ( and simultaneously themselves) is not something new. Heck, even Coleridge and Wordsworth were considered celebrities. Had spunky Jane Austen and eruditely unique Charlotte Bronte decided to unlatch their pseudonyms, I have a feeling they would have been wonderfully eloquent in drawing rooms.
Also, I don't usually get my picture taken with authors (read:this is the first time. But, Ian Rankin is a ROCK STAR)
