Reading at literary festivals: ‘It’s all a bit like childbirth really’

Seems like there’s one ineluctable rule when it comes to reading at literary festivals and it’s almost certainly to do with the beings involved being writers, ie, persons who spend days, months, years alone in rooms silently hacking away at a cliff face in search of a seam of gold.

Hack, hack, hack, you lonely soul.

So, when the phone rings, Dring! Dring!, and a friendly voice at the other end invites you to come and read in the distant future, in a distant location, at such and such a prestigious literary book bash with food, good company and expenses thrown in, you immediately say, Yes! Wonderful! Thank you for thinking of me! And you mean it. For godsakes it will be a day away from the laptop, the notebooks, the uncorrected, unfinished manuscripts, not to mention the un-done housework. Hurrah! Yippee! etc, etc.

It will be fun. It will be good for you. And, unanswerable apparently this one: It Will Raise Your Profile. Your darling children, your friends, your wonderful agent urge you on – Go get ’em tiger, you’ll be brill.

Inexorably as the day, then the hour, of the reading draws near your blood turns to iced water, the odd butterfly in your stomach metamorphosises into a sickening blizzard, and, just to place the cherry on the cake, out of nowhere, your hair looks hideous. Absolutely hideous. You look absolutely hideous. What on earth were you thinking of? You hate being in public. You’re irrelevant, and now hideous, and who in their right mind would want to listen to you anyway? YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SAY.

Zero as our French brothers have it.

As a final wee test of your sanity, when you arrive you are invited to attend the performance of another author, one you HUGELY admire, one of the best writers in Ireland today, and, as you sit watching their flawless delivery, the eager audience plashing around happily in the palm of their hand, you whisper to your friend: Let’s go home. Now.

Luckily your friend is composed of stiffer stuff. She marches you to the nearest caff for espressos and a pep talk. Before you can say “throw us another coffee there, love,” you’re on.

Everyone is incredibly nice. You get handed a lanyard and a badge loudly proclaiming: Artist. Artist, no less. You can do this. A friendly hand leads you gently to the podium as if you were a thoroughbred being led to the ring. The lovely sound check guy smiles, mouthing “you’ll be fine,” the nice man who is going to introduce you introduces himself and you notice out of the corner of your glasses, which have suddenly steamed up, (jeeeeez), people, actual human beings, are coming in to the hall; you are not going to be reading to bare walls. The relief!

Somewhere in the throes of your abject panic something must have gone slightly right because soon the reading is going along nicely (laughs, coughs, chair shifting etc.), and you realise people are actually listening. The words on the page, which seemed like so much wet cement half an hour ago, are dancing, and it’s almost time for the Q and A. You’re so buzzed at this stage you’re afraid you won’t be able to hear the questions, never mind answer them, but the audience, whom you see properly for the first time, are all looking up, smiling, friendly, ready for more action.

Wow.

Let us begin; since the reading was passages from your coming of age novel, Fathers Come First, written 44 years ago (sweet Lord) then re published two years ago as a “modern classic” by the Lilliput Press, the Qs and the As kick off with girls’ convent boarding schools, gallop on as to how girls are taught to be bitches, to women’s liberation, to how women are not educated to support each other, to (the largely forgotten) liberation for boys and men, the terrible cost of the repressive nature of Catholicism in Ireland and what that repression did to so many of us, to what is the value of a classical education over good emotional formation, to the incredible value of free secondary education in Ireland, and how, under patriarchy, we have trashed the Garden of Eden, and if, IF! the Age of Aquarius heralds a new matriarchy, with men’s role that of supporting women, BRING IT ON!

Fantastic stuff.

By the time your (wonderful, wonderful) friend drops you home you're still high as a kite on adrenaline, way too whirrey to sleep. You take a little lie down and next thing you wake up and it's 2am; you're fully dressed, all the lights are on, the World Service is going full bore on the radio, and the cup of tea made hours ago is well cold on the bedside table.

You are happier than a sand boy.

Wonderful, you think, as you stagger around your bedroom yanking off clothes, stubbing off the radio, quenching the lights, what a wonderful experience that was.

It’s all a bit like childbirth really – the agony of the before wiped out by the relief of the after, followed by total amnesia.

Brilliant really.