Tales of horror: coming face-to-face with authors

There is an author who sometimes stands just inside Ottokars and asks me if I ever read crime fiction. I always say no and scurry away, but next time I will say yes and see what happens. I suppose he will try to flog me his book.

Judy Blume lives here, on Martha's Vineyard, and I know a couple of people who've worked for her as landscapers and house-cleaners. She's horrid. Absolutely loathsome to work for. I've seen her do her personable-writer schtick for the public, too. A brilliant performance, apparently.

Not a meeting as such, but on the theme of wishing you hadn't learned more about an author ... I was so disappointed to read this interview with Sebastian Faulks in last week's Sunday Times. I've only read On Green Dolphin Street of his and knew nothing about him (except that he never gets feted like McEwan, Barnes, and all them) but I enjoyed it very much, largely because it dodged all the things that are wrong with every other Great British Author - exercises in style, writing about each other, the sort of ignorant clever-cleverness that doesn't actually produce anything new or interesting to say. Basically, I liked Faulks because he didn't seem to care about that, he just seemed interested in people. But now I learn he appears to attend the same dinner parties and to have the same self-absorbed, vacuous thoughts as all the others. [i]"...You can’t solemnly say — as Philip Roth might say, ‘I’m going to write about a family of glovers in Newark’ — ‘I’m going to write about a family who make luggage in Leicester.’ People would just laugh.” Get lost. And the pictures are horrible too.

On a more positive note, I met David Simon last night and he was very impressive indeed. Confident and engaging in conversation; has really thought about things and so has interesting stuff to say (and doesn't stray from it into nonsense); and then took loads of time at the end to chat with hundreds of people.

I've relayed this elsewhere, but...

Back when I worked in a bookshop, I got Alasdair Gray's agent to get him to come in (as he was passing through) and sign my copy of the Anthology of Prefaces, which had just come out and which I had brought in first edition - very handsome it is too.

Anyway, when he came in, it was rather busy and I was rushing around a bit, eventually managed to duck out from behind my desk and speak to him.

'Hello young man.' (or whatever)
'Er, yep, hi.'
'So, I hear your a fan of my work.' (as indeed I was then, and I'm sure I would be now if I ever read any, although with slight reservations about a certain parsimony about his prose - a touch of the Scottish schoolmaster perhaps)
'Yes, yes I am.'
'What is it you like about it?'
'Er,' I said. 'Er.'

Then I stared for a bit, sweating, mind revolving like a dead planet.

'Er.'
'Would you like me to sign your book.'
'Yes,' I said, rather gauchely handing it over, like an awkward rube.

And he did. And then he left. Presumably to relay the contents of our gay repartee to his Caledonian confreres. Me and my f'ing peasant mind.

And just to second what IK said - David Simon, thoughtful and interesting person, who takes care about what he says without being exclusively pedantic or knowing. Just came across really well.

While drunk at a publisher thing (I was working in a bookshop and had managed to get an invitation), I charged up to David Malkouf, full of bravado and sure I was going to be witty and have a chat, but realised I had nothing to say.

Me: * Um *
Malouf: Er. Hello?
Me: (blathering) Iloveyourbooks!
Malouf: Oh, thank God. I thought you were security, come to chuck me out.

ALSO: J M Coetzee lives about 5 minutes walk away from me, and when I walk past his house with his dog, I sometimes see a Nobel-winner's underpants flying in the breeze (from a clothesline, not the man himself). At a neighbourhood gathering, I offered him some vegetarian food my wife had made (given that she and I are both pro-animal-right vegetarians, i thought this might give me an in to make intelligent conversation with him, rather than drooling fanboy stupidity), but it was full of coconut, and he's allergic to coconut, so instead I almost killed him.

that's pretty nice of you to walk his dog

Long ago, when I was 21, I asked Lorrie Moore to dance with me at a zydeco show, but she rebuffed me.

I met Coetzee and Derek Walcott around the same time, and they're like the two severest men on Earth.

Er, my dog, I meant. I can't type.

ismael klata obviously this is the choice bit of that interview

Faulks turned to the Koran for his research, and was appalled: “It’s a depressing book. It really is. It’s just the rantings of a schizophrenic. It’s very one-dimensional, and people talk about the beauty of the Arabic and so on, but the English translation I read was, from a literary point of view, very disappointing.

“There is also the barrenness of the message. I mean, there are some bits about diet, you know, the equivalent of the Old Testament, which is also crazy. If you look again at those books of the law, Leviticus or Deuteronomy, there’s a lot about who you are allowed to sleep with, and if a man had lost his testicles he wouldn’t enter into the presence of God, that is just terrible. But the great thing about the Old Testament is that it does have these incredible stories. Of the 100 greatest stories ever told, 99 are probably in the Old Testament and the other is in Homer.

“With the Koran there are no stories. And it has no ethical dimension like the New Testament, no new plan for life. It says ‘the Jews and the Christians were along the right tracks, but actually, they were wrong and I’m right, and if you don’t believe me, tough — you’ll burn for ever.’ That’s basically the message of the book.”

I ask if he had talked to many British Muslims before beginning to write. “I didn’t, actually, no. I read some books and I’ve got a few Muslim friends, but I thought I’d get it better from books and from reading the source.”

That's what I meant by the vacuity of the Great British Authors, I suppose - that the guy's identified an important subject and gone to considerable trouble to research it, and has come up with nothing new or insightful to say about it. I'm reading a pop book about the old testament just now which looks at exactly the same points, except that the author displays some curiosity as to why the book might be like that - and consequently displays a thousand times more insight, understanding and warmth than any of these guys could ever come up with. Yet who are considered the important thinkers, and who's the hack?

i think someone needs to assemble for the sake of british authors a list of other things that young british muslims do that aren't "debate whether to become terrorists"

security grabbed my arm and led me away.

If I ever see that woman again, I will knock her out.

― Jessa (Jessa), Thursday, February 19, 2004 4:49 PM (sixteen years ago)

I don't get why security taken you away.

Great thread. More please.

Westlake seems like the worst in the thread.

i can't think of many authors i've met -- we have a big local book festival here so i've gone to listen to quite a few authors read, but haven't really had any profound interactions with anyone. i did get to chat with rick perlstein for a few minutes as he signed my copy of nixonland, which was pretty cool. i also met george saunders very briefly after he did a reading here. very nice guy. so, no horror stories!

Embarrassing story: Umberto Eco was doing a signing at The Strand here in NYC. After he signed my book, I smiled and said "Grazzi", one of the three Italian words I know. At that, he uttered about five sentences to me in Italian. I just smiled and walked away, looking and feeling like a complete moron.

underrated