Rob Reports: Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry at EdBookFest 2010

And so after weeks of bombarding you with uncontainable excitement, the day finally dawned when I would get to see one of my contemporary literary heroes ‘in the flesh’, along with another short story writer who has fast gained my respect. That’s right dear friends, Monday was the night that Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry came to the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and now I present to you as thorough a rundown as I can offer, on what turned out to be an extraordinary evening (as if I thought it would be anything else but ‘extraordinary’ ).

Before I do launch in to telling you about my trip to see Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry, I want to apologise for the length of this post. Normally I keep a check on myself (because I am prone to rambling on), and I try to keep things as reasonably short as possible. However, I have such a reverence for these writers that I want to tell you as much as possible about their EdBookFest event. I do so in the hope that 1) you get a real sense of ‘being there’, and 2) you gain some impression of why I wouldn’t hesitate to kiss the ground that these two writers walk on (and before you ask, no I didn’t ). So I’m sorry if you think this post is so long it’s unreadable, but if you’re a fan of either Simon Van Booy and/or Kevin Barry, then I urge you to read it. In my mind I think it’s unmissable (even if I do say so myself).

So I ventured across to the Edinburgh Book Festival with my daughter on what was actually the final evening of events. And if being the final day had put a bit of gloom on to the proceedings then the weather had quickly wiped it away again. I arrived in Edinburgh around 5pm to glorious sunshine. It was a perfect evening for Charlotte Square, and a perfect evening for meeting literary heroes.

Now, I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to clocks and schedule, and I like to arrive at an event in good time. With the Van Booy/Barry event starting at 6pm I wanted to get to Charlotte Square for 5:30pm. I did, much to the discontentment of my sixteen-year-old daughter, who’s at that age – as many of you would know – where it’s more ‘cool’ to turn up fasionable late. We weren’t late we were early. Extra early. In fact the first and only people in the queue. And if I didn’t look like a crazy obsessed fan before, with all of the tail wagging I’ve done in the weeks leading up to the event, then I certainly looked like one now.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before other people started to join us and I (we) didn’t look quite as conspicuous. Not long after, the doors opened, and the advantages of being first in the queue were revealed. You get to pick any seat you want. You’ll never guess? Yep I picked front seats (again much to the annoyance of my daughter), just so we could get closer to the action. How close? THIS CLOSE (obviously I took this photo before the event started, and before a really nice EdBookFest girl told me that cameras weren’t allowed during the event..booo!!)

And so we waited – accompanied by a ‘mixtape’ of piped music – as more of the audience wandered in. One of those ‘wanderers’ was none other than Colin Galbraith – Edinburgh writer/poet extraordinaire, a man who I’d only met up to that point on Twitter. I recognised Colin by his photo (strangely he didn’t recognise me from my cartoon avatar ) so I went up to say Hi. Thankfully his initial look of panic and horror soon vanished when he realised who I was i.e not an escaped mental patient who was intent on causing him harm. After a quick chat with Colin – what a great guy – I returned to my ‘ringside seat’.

Finally the literary entourage appeared on the path outside. I didn’t notice Kevin Barry at first. He was dressed down in jeans (I think), wearing a simple blue shirt with a black scarf around his neck (am I sounding like Gok Wan yet? ). He kind of blended into the group as they made their way along to the Writer’s Retreat, and that’s how I never picked him out at first. Simon Van Booy however, I recognised instantly. Looking majestic in a brass-buttoned blazer, cream trousers, and a shirt and tie (good heavens I do sound like Gok Wan!), Simon strolled towards the tent with one hand in his pocket, and the other tapping a brolly on the ground beside him, as he walked. Taking nothing away from Kevin Barry at all (because he’s no less splendiferous), Simon Van Booy walked as though he were surrounded with an aura of literary magnificence.

With the writers seated and the EdBookFest ‘mixtape’ silenced, it was the cue for the assembled crowd (of around 30) to hush down (not difficult because we were pretty silent already) while the wonderful ‘chair’ for the event – Ali Bowden, Director of Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust, kicked things off by introducing the writers.

First to ‘take the stage’ was Kevin Barry, and it was instantly clear to see that he was as full of life and as comical as the stories he writes. “Can we agree straight away that Simon and I are the most dapper pairing of the entire week at the Edinburgh Festival?”, he said. “No competition!” He then began to read one of his stories.

And the story that Kevin had chosen to read is one my favourites, the opening story from his There Are Little Kingdoms collection, Atlantic City. And what an absolute pleasure it was to hear Kevin read it. He didn’t hold back any on the theatrics either. And with all-out animation, Kevin really brought his story to life.

If you don’t know the story already then I’ll tell you a little about it (or you can read my full review of it HERE). Atlantic City focuses on a group of teenagers as they assemble at their usual hangout on a warm summer’s evening, a jerry-built arcade on Broad Street. It’s a great story and the star of it is a character called “Jamesie”; a master of pool and pinball. And after hearing Kevin Barry take on Jamesie’s voice and personality, one is left without any doubt who the real ‘boss man’ of this story is. Jamesie is the king of the arcade – he’s a character in a million – and in his reading Kevin Barry brought him (and his other characters) to life, exquisitely.

Attention then shifted to Simon Van Booy, who up to this point hadn’t really said anything. I still really hadn’t heard the sound of his voice, and so I waited with bated breath as he prepared himself to speak. He began by first giving a bit of background information to the story he was going to be reading from his The Secret Lives of People in Love collection (US edition), The Still But Falling World. For inspiration for his story Simon had taken himself off to the tiny Italian village of Morano Calabro, which is found in the Calabria region in southern Italy.

Simon told us that most of his time in Morano Calabro was spent wandering around hungry, with nothing to do. The place was deserted, aside from roaming dogs and teenagers tearing around the narrow streets on Vespas, because most of the population had moved down into the valley (mainly for logistical reasons – the streets were too narrow for cars/vans etc. to drive up). Those who remained living in the village were mostly old. And garbed in traditional dress i.e. widows in black, they would just sit there in their homes, looking out of the window.

Curiously though as old and traditional as Simon found Morano Calabro to be, he also found signs of modernity that made the whole experience for him kind of bizarre. On the one hand he would see old men in three-piece suits making their way to church on a Sunday, after being summoned by the old church bell. And then he would walk past a window and inside there’d be someone in there playing Grand Theft Auto on a Playstation. Simon summed it up by saying that on the one hand it was like being in a 1950s Ermanno Olmi movie, while on the other it was “strangely, bizarrely modern.”

Simon also related a tale of profound connection that he had had with some of the local children while staying in Morano Calabro. As he had taken up temporary residence in a house not lived in since the 1960s, there was much curiosity surrounding Simon, and what he may be up to in that old house. While he was inside writing up lists of people he knew from school, and making notes on what he thought of them, he could hear the voices of children outside. “What’s he doing in there?” they whispered. “Why has he even come here?” they said. Then a small crumpled-up piece of paper flew through the open window. Simon picked it up and opened it. Drawn upon it was a ship with a person standing on it. Simon presumed this person to be himself. Touched, he wrote something on the paper and threw it back outside. And this then began an exchange of crumpled messages between Simon and the children, which was finally interrupted when an old woman dressed in black emerged from one of the houses, chasing the children away with a broom.

However, Simon said that his most lasting memory of Morano Calabro was a condom machine which was bizarrely positioned on a wall next to the church. When he asked someone about this they responded that they like to be practical in Morano Calabro; this is a village remember, where nothing ever happens.

Simon then continued on to read a portion of The Still But Falling World, the short story that was inspired by his stay in Morano Calabro. If you know how much I idolise Simon then I don’t need to tell you what an incredible experience it was for me to hear him reading out aloud, one of his stories. It was an incredible moment, and every bit as soul-touching as I’d dreamed it would be. It was one of the most profound moments of my life so far. What more can I say?

Following Simon’s exquisite reading, Ali, the ‘chair’, then began to ask questions. She mentioned that with both writers there was a really strong sense of place about their stories, and she wondered whether ‘place’ was the spark that first brought about the writing of their short stories. Kevin Barry answered the question first, with the following response:

I think one of my more esoteric beliefs is that human feeling settles into a place, and landscape gives back kind of a memory of human feeling that has occurred there sometimes. You’ll have a town that’s a very happy feeling town. You’ll have a town with no cheer. Very often when I move around, when I travel a bit, stories start to come. And it does seem to be just new places and just new things opening up to me.

Kevin then went on to briefly mention John Cheever having once said that one of the most beautiful things about writing short stories is that they give the writer a kind of memory hoard for him/her self.

Passing the question over, Simon immediately jumped on the opportunity of telling an andectocal story about John Cheever. Not knowing whether the story was true or not, Simon told us how Cheever would kiss his wife and children goodbye of a morning before going down to the basement, locking the door, and stripping off naked. He would then write like this until five before donning clothes once more and leaving the basement to rejoin his family. Simon was clearly tickled by this story. Then he suddenly realised that he had not yet answered the original question. He responded, succinctly:

“I think place for me is a character, in addition to the human characters”

Moving on and Kevin took the opportunity to make it clear that he considered the short story to be a phenomenally difficult thing to write. He said that he hated it when people often think that the first step to writing a novel, is writing short stories. He disagreed with this view vehemently, calling the short story “a much higher form”. When he gets a good idea for a story, his biggest ambition he said, is to turn that idea into a short story. He called the novel “an accident of nineteenth-century printing industry practises”, and the short story by contrast “a fundamental, natural human form”. He said of writing a short story:

It’s like a high wire walking act. Every sentence is like a step along the wire and it’s so easy to fall off and bust your neck and you’ll never get the story back. It’s really difficult. I write lots of them [short stories] and I’ve a very low strike rate. I write maybe one a month, and usually at the end of the year there’s only one or two halfway good ones.

Kevin then went on to say that Ireland is the perfect place for writing stories. “It’s phenomenally boring a lot of the time,” he said. “And we make up stories to give ourselves something to do, to pass the slow winter nights”. And in an earlier reference to Simon, Kevin also said that Ireland had condom machines too, and many churches.

Ali then asked Simon about the novel-writing process. Simon agreed that it was a very different process to that used for short stories. He went on to show his admiration for the way in which Victor Hugo writes novels, and how Hugo likes to ramble off on a tangent before returning to the matter in hand. He hailed Hugo a “miraculous storyteller” and he called Les Miserables, “one hell of a novel”.

After the briefest of mentions about Kevin Barry’s upcoming novel (City of Boheme) – and with only five minutes of the event remaining – Ali opened up the floor to questions. An audience member asked Simon in particular if he was tempted to develop any of his characters further. She made particularly reference to the character of George in the story, The City of Windy Trees.

Simon answered – after telling us that he often takes great delight in bumping into characters that he’s created, in the street – saying that he would love to further develop some of the characters that he’s quite fond of, putting them into different contexts etc.

Kevin responded to the same question saying that there are definitely characters who he is drawn to go back to again and again. Usually if he can hear them speak, then he knows there’s more for him to go back to. Kevin also said that many of his characters are based on people he knew. He said that he tries not to base a character entirely on a person he knows. He did this once, with a DJ from Northern Ireland, and it all backfired on him.

Kevin then asked Simon if any of his characters are based on anyone he knows. Simon responded by saying that all of his characters are based on someone he knows or has seen; he usually imagines the life they must live. Simon went on to ponder whether the characters he doesn’t like – the ones he never wishes to see again – are actually the more interesting ones. He also wondered if those characters resolve some kind of ‘unresolved conflict’ in his life. He also wondered whether the characters he does like, stand for some kind of nostalgia. Realising that this kind of question is one that could take a lifetime to answer, he passed over to Kevin. Kevin responded by saying that Margaret Atwood once said that writing the short story “brings you very close in on yourself and very often it’s family entanglement and things like that that come into your stories”.

The mic then moved to another audience member who specifically asked Kevin Barry if he adhered to formal rules when he was writing his short stories, or if he really just went with his ear? Kevin responded by saying it starts with the ear but he never really knows where his story is going “down the line”. He said he was shocked at the “macabre reenactment” of one his characters in mimicking his father’s death (the character’s father). He felt however that it gave something of the history of the character so he let the scene remain in the story.

Barry admitted that every story is different. He called stories a “protean form” and in terms of the craft of writing stories he said that he thought that the only way it changes is in the number of drafts:

Some stories come very quickly and I think the best ones are often done inside a week. The Atlantic City story I wrote in a couple of days; a couple of two hour sessions. Just a couple of drafts and it didn’t seem to need much more than that. There are other stories in there that I have on the laptop at home. I have like version 45, version 46 and they’ve literally taken years.

With time running out Ali Bowden brought the event to an end, and it was to rapturous applause that Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry left the tent (That’s actually not quite true. The audience left before the writers did, but I wanted to close a little bit more dramatically )

And so dear reader that is how Monday’s Simon Van Booy and Kevin Barry event went. I hope I have given you something of a strong sense of ‘being there’, and I also hope I have given you some sense of how incredible and intelligent both writers are. Furthermore, I hope that I have passed on to you some of valuable nuggets of wisdom that were imparted to the gathered audience during the course of the hour. Personally, I considered the whole thing life-changing (my daughter quite enjoyed it too). It was an inexpressible privileged and honour to be in the presence of two remarkable human beings (three if you count Ali Bowden. Her ‘chairing’ of the event was flawless), and it’s a day that I will remember with fond memories, always.

And so I left the event then with a massive smile on my face, and a visible bounce in my step (and my daughter in tow of course, because it wouldn’t do me any good to forget her ). I thought that the evening couldn’t get any better. After a quick word with that aforementioned legendary writer/poet, Colin Galbraith (he loved the event too by the way. I thought he would), I headed on over to the Festival bookshop for the book signing session. I had no idea then that my evening was just about to get a whole lot better. And on that Flash Gordon cliffhanger I’ll leave you for now. Come back tomorrow when I’ll tell you what it was like to finally meet one of my A-list literary heroes.