HumourOne night, about five years ago, I turned up to a reception at a Dublin bookshop and was surprised to be greeted quite so warmly by the proprietress in the doorway.
An excellent lady of mature years, and a resolute supporter of Irish writers, she embraced me vigorously before happily informing me that my parents were inside. I was puzzled by this news - my folks hadn't mentioned being invited to the event - but I allowed her to usher me through the throng of revellers. I must admit, I was enjoying the attention.
As she led me along, she garlanded me with compliments: how extraordinarily well my novels were selling; each was more wonderful than the one before; everyone in Ireland was proud of my achievements. I modestly replied that I was only doing my artistic duty, but was gratified, of course, to have lifted the nation's spirits.
Yes, it was lonely on the rock-face of language, but one felt one had a calling - a vocation if you like. By now we had reached a corner where an elderly couple were quietly enjoying a glass of wine. "Here is your son!" my admirer announced. To Rory and Ita Doyle, the parents of Roddy.
I can't actually remember what happened next, but remarks about spectacles were hurriedly made. I think Mr Doyle - or "Dad", as I prefer to call him - was kind enough to say I looked like his son, or would do, perhaps, if the lights were dimmer and Roddy was fatter by several stone. I felt many emotions, only one of which was embarrassment. But, reading this book, I now realise I got off lightly.
Mortification is a collection of writers' tales of ignominy, a grimly compelling anthology of shame. Significantly, almost all these humiliations have to do with publicity and promotion. (There are few stories about writing, per se.) Anyone who has ever fancied an author's life would find this book an eye-opener. All the degradations of the profession are here exposed: the readings unattended, the signing sessions ignored, the doltish queries put by interviewers.
Margaret Atwood is asked: "Do you consider yourself feminine?" Jonathan Coe is faced with: "Why are all your women characters so crap?" Michael Longley is introduced to an audience as "quite well-known". "True," he concedes, "but a somewhat detumescent overture."
Far from being an ego-boost, the book tour is presented as a torment. Carl Hiaasen risks death, flying through a storm to a reading in Arkansas, only to have nobody turn up to hear him. John Banville, in Miami, draws three people to a signing, one of whom says: "I'm not going to buy a book, but you looked so lonely there, I thought I would come and talk to you." Meanwhile, the Pulitzer laureate autographing books alongside him has a queue stretching "halfway up the spine of Florida".
Assaults on authorial self-esteem fill these pages, but the prize for the ghastliest tale goes to Rupert Thompson. His girlfriend informs him excitedly that he has appeared on Granta's influential roll of Best Young British Novelists, her evidence a photograph of him in a hastily scanned newspaper. But, on closer examination, the article announcing the list contains no mention of Thompson. And the photograph is not of him. It's of Jeanette Winterson.
This collection is an entertainment, the kind of literary confection that appears in the bookshops at Christmas. But it also reveals much, and in surprising ways. It is often frank about the strangeness of the writerly existence, the dizzying vicissitudes and neurotic self-doubts that are part of making things up for a living.
It's a fascinating miscellany, a pleasure to dip into, an odd carnival of masochistic revelation. Reading it brings to mind Oscar Wilde's remark about his trial: how marvellous if the denunciations he had to endure had been spoken by himself. These 70 writers seem to have enjoyed recalling their abashments; most confess with heroic gusto.
The Irish wordsmiths included here are among the most impressive, all bravely sharing groan-inducing admissions. Hugo Hamilton tells of wrecking a dinner party attended by an eminent writer by steadily increasing the stereo's volume when he thought he was turning it down. Patrick McCabe gives a brilliantly toe-curling account of a reading where the audience of one departed before he began. ("I just came in out of the rain," she explains.) Colm Tóibín offers a hilarious anecdote of meeting Norman Mailer, who has got it into his head that Tóibín's novel, The South, is actually called "The Outh". ("I thought it was an Irish word," Mailer admits.)
Generally the contributors display this likeable willingness to tell stories against themselves. The tone is black comic, almost relentlessly so. But sometimes you sense more complex confessions trying to break out from behind the jokiness. (Odd, for example, that Louis de Bernières facetiously refers to his famous novel as "Captain Gorilla's Mandarin", as though to distance himself from the book, or from its success.) Occasionally, you feel such self-effacement may be either a protection or a subtle form of bravado. ("Irony," comments Michael Holroyd, in an absorbing essay, "is often a defence against mortification.") Certainly, it is hard to believe we are always getting the unadorned truth. A book about authors' humiliations, and only two stories (William Boyd and Julie Myerson) about receiving harsh reviews.
That said, this is an engaging and constantly enjoyable collection, and anyone interested in writers will find it enlightening. Read it and weep. And the next time your favourite novelist is appearing at a local bookstore, for God's sake, go. You'll make a friend for life.
Joseph O'Connor's novel, Star of the Sea, is published by Vintage at 9.95
Mortification: Writers' Stories of their Public Shame Edited by Robin Robertson Fourth Estate, 289pp. £16.99