In May I saw Tana French being interviewed by Anna Carey in Smock Alley. The event was part of the International Festival of Literature. I am a huge admirer of her writing but I’d never heard her speak about it before so I was really looking forward to the event. She didn’t disappoint.
– Do you want to go see BJ Novak in the Project?
– Is he doing stand-up?
– No, I think it’s a book reading?
– Reading from the kids book?
– No, I think it’s a book of essays, like Mindy Kaling’s.
– No, I think it’s short stories.
– Sure we’ll go and find out.
We didn’t really know what we were going to when we booked tickets to BJ Novak at the Project Arts Centre a couple of Sundays ago. As it turned out, he was readings from his book of short stories One More Thing.
One More Thing is a collection of over 60 stories of various lengths. Some are eleven pages long, some might be only eleven lines. As we learnt on the night, the version published in the UK has 2 fewer pieces than when it was published in the US. The stories that were removed both feature real people and were excluded because the laws relating to real people in fiction are different in the UK and the US. One of these was “The Something by John Grisham”, about what happens when John Grisham finds out that his latest novel has been published as The Something because that was what he scribbled on the front page and never got round to changing it. The other, which Novak managed to smuggle into the country and read to us in Project, is called “The Comedy Central Roast of Nelson Mandela”. It was very very funny. He also read a couple of stories about the trials of dating – “All You Have to Do” and “Missed Connection: Grocery spill at 21st and 6th 2:30 pm on Wednesday” and a wonderful imagining of the after-life in “No One Goes to Heaven to See Dan Fogelberg”, as well as “Julie and the Warlord” which was done as a radio play for This American Life. I haven’t heard that version but I doubt it could be as much fun as the author reading it aloud and doing all the voices.
It was an interesting experience hearing stories read aloud with other people and experiencing the anticipation, the pay-offs and the laughs as a group. Most writer events that I’ve been to include a reading, but it’s only ever a small part of it. The focus is really on the interview and the Q&A. Here there was no interviewer and it all about the stories. There was even a request section. There were a few questions at the end, and a brief discussion about where to go for live music in Dublin on a Sunday night. The event ended, as all literary events do, with a book-signing. I didn’t buy a book on the night because I want to get my hands on a American version. I really want to read “The Something by John Grisham”.
And according to Twitter, BJ Novak ended up in the Workmans. Nights out in Dublin always end up at the Workmans.
