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The author as standup performer
Sep. 13th, 2008 09:55 pmWe went last night to Gateshead, to hear Iain Banks speaking at an event organised by the library. The venue was the upstairs hall where I've previously been to a craft fair and a klezmer concert, as well as a poetry reading - but last night it was arranged cabaret style, with chairs and tables scattered randomly about the room. Iain Banks was introduced, given a wireless microphone, and left to entertain us however he saw fit.
I don't know whether he had expressed a preference for this format, or even whether he had had advance warning of it: he seemed surprised - and rather impressed - by the wireless microphone, which allowed him to pace up and down as he spoke. But he took to it like a duck to whisky: he was confident (as you'd expect), fluent (as in 'unstoppable') and entertaining - standup comedy that'a all about books and writing, what a brilliant idea.
Similarly, I don't know whether it was the library's stipulation or his own preference that the evening was not in any sense a promotion for his latest book. Although there was a board proclaiming Iain M. Banks to be the author of Matter, with a cover image, he announced that he would talk about all his books, beginning at the beginning. Since he started with his unpublished juvenilia, and spoke in some detail about each of them (including the reasons why they were not only unpublished but unpublishable), by the time he reached The Wasp Factory it was time to stop for questions - which might have been a disappointment had the questions not launched a series of equally entertaining riffs on cars, books, SF, Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire and a proposal to move the border south so that we could all find ourselves part of a more civilised country.
I don't know whether he had expressed a preference for this format, or even whether he had had advance warning of it: he seemed surprised - and rather impressed - by the wireless microphone, which allowed him to pace up and down as he spoke. But he took to it like a duck to whisky: he was confident (as you'd expect), fluent (as in 'unstoppable') and entertaining - standup comedy that'a all about books and writing, what a brilliant idea.
Similarly, I don't know whether it was the library's stipulation or his own preference that the evening was not in any sense a promotion for his latest book. Although there was a board proclaiming Iain M. Banks to be the author of Matter, with a cover image, he announced that he would talk about all his books, beginning at the beginning. Since he started with his unpublished juvenilia, and spoke in some detail about each of them (including the reasons why they were not only unpublished but unpublishable), by the time he reached The Wasp Factory it was time to stop for questions - which might have been a disappointment had the questions not launched a series of equally entertaining riffs on cars, books, SF, Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire and a proposal to move the border south so that we could all find ourselves part of a more civilised country.
