Globe and Mail books editor Martin Levin lead an author panel at Harbourfront’s Lakeside Terrace last night. As Torontoist Erin Balser reports, the panel, which consisted of Colm Toibin, Quintin Jardine, Ian Weir, John Bemrose and James Nichol, were asked to comment on Saul Bellow’s statement, “there is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.”
The panelists spent the next hour and a half trying to decide who Bellow’s enemy was, and in turn, theirs. Was it the mythical Other? The reader? Themselves? From this enquiry spiraled debates about whether Bellow was right in the first place, and how the relationship between the writer and the enemy changed throughout history.
The role of the author in times of political and cultural conflict divided the panel. “Our first jobs as writers is to entertain,” Jardine argued. However, Toibin was quick to point out that “the Latin root of entertainment means ‘to come between.’”
While no definitive conclusion was reached, all agreed that writing played an important part of forming culture, which, in turn, influenced one’s relationship with the enemy. “There are moments in history when vacuums arise,” Toibin pointed out, using W.B. Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival as an example “and these vacuums can be filled with books, theatre and culture. Out of these, a sense of nation grew, which turned into an actual nation.”
Quintin Jardine resolutely rounded up the panel’s myriad opinions when he declared: “Writing is not about destroying. It’s about creating, creating characters, and creating life.”
New Torontoist correspondent Melanie Janisse spent the evening at the Fleck Dance Theatre, where host Ian Rankin, celebrated author of the Inspector Rebus novels and crowned “the king of Tartan Noir” by by James Ellroy, was the perfect ringleader for a night celebrating crime, political thrillers, and poems about macabre meat.
The audience were drawn into the evening with a cliffhanger of a reading by Denise Mina from her novel Still Midnight. In her reading, Mina sculpted an unforgettable scene of a pair of novice criminals forcing their way into the entranceway of a home, where things soon go very wrong, with gunmen and detainees wedged into a small pink hallway unsure how to proceed. Add to this cramped scene a sexual attraction between the teenager daughter and the most tentative of the two gunmen and a strange mosque-shaped clock ticking in time with the tension and you have a scene of classic suspense.
Author and lawyer William Deverell then charmed the crowd with personal stories of life in the Canadian political scene, poking small fun at a few of Canada’s political elite before launching into a reading from Snow Job, in which Author Beauchamp, old-school lawyer, finds himself living in Ottawa with his lovely wife and reigning queen of the Green Party. The highlight of the reading was a scene of Beauchamp contemplating his dinasour-ness while sitting with group of young, shiny politicos.
Next poet Dani Couture read from her collection Good Meat, filling the theatre with surreal images of girl hunters in grocery stores settling on canned tuna while a frightened old lady looked on (clutching her small purse, of course) and bachelor hunters that give good advice such as: do not touch the butt of a gun as you will leave smudges and don’t forget to wear warm socks. Couture weaved in scenes of graphic butchering, leaving the audience with an odd feeling that something disturbing was about to happen.
Michael Connelly finished off the night with a fabulously crafted scene from his latest novel, Nine Dragons. The thriller features homicide detective Harry Bosch, who is forced to wait as other officers investigate the murder of John Li, a shop owner and personal friend. Connelly read a scene that takes place on Bosch’s deck, as the hardened cop eats his favourite neighbourhood cheeseburgers and looks out over Los Angeles wishing deeply to be on the beat, to keep moving, to keep on the trail. His love for the city and his desire to protect its citizens resonated through the reading, reminding us of old noir, Hollywood-style beat cops and that a good burger might be the end to a most satisfying night of thrills.
