The Author was coming for dinner. She had come from the East to give a reading at our modest local literary festival.
As soon as we saw her name on the program we phoned her… her husband, really, because him I knew rather better through our academic conferences. Though my wife had not, I had met her and the occasion had not diminished the respect her considerable literary reputation had embedded in us both.
She would be delighted to come. In fact, the prospect of a warm, homey evening with new friends made almost bearable the prospect of yet another flight, yet another signing, yet another inspired soar through her natively silent prose. She would be delighted.
Of course we invited our a-list. One couple was artists, both very successful. The other was a Ceylonese couple, he an accomplished novelist and academic, she an esteemed child psychologist. We rose to some recommended wines. We bought her latest novel. We read it.
The dinner was at the end of her visit. She had her hotel room for an extra night so I attended her reading, picked her up at her room an hour later and drove her home, where my wife had spent the day dicing and preparing.
“My God, I was just awful,” she said, as she blew into my passenger seat. “And those questions! So inane. It must be awful for you here.”
I dutifully started at the top. “No, you were terrific. Vivacious. You created the sense you were moving through your material for the first time. Discovering your words, thinking, feeling them for the first time. I think that’s remarkable.”
“You’re sweet to say that but I don’t believe it for a moment. So how are you?”
“Not bad, but the winter….”
“Are you writing anything?”
“I’ve been toying with a short memoir but mainly editing for the reissue of my old book on….”
“Wonderful! I have the germ for my next novel. But, to be frank, when I’m reading and touring I just can’t switch gears into writing. Dickens may have been able to, but I can’t and I can’t think of anyone else who could either. Separate parts of the brain, I suppose. I’ll be so relieved when the dust around my last book has finally settled and I can curl up with my new one.”
She was gracious when I showed her into her house and introduced Franny.
“What a wonderful table you’ve set, and just for me. You really needn’t have gone to such trouble. But I do appreciate it. I’m sorry you had to miss my reading. Perhaps your Jake will fill you in how positively bathetic it all was.”
“Don’t listen to her. She was terrific. But the guy who asked the first question? Of course, it was that lunatic who always begins with ‘I am 68 years old and have visited 47 countries.’”
“Oh, him. He goes to everything. And he’s always first at the mike for the questions.”
“My plan is one day to squeak in past him and begin with ‘I am 48 years old and have visited 118 countries, mostly through my stamp collection.’”
She laughed and sipped her martini. The martini was one of Franny’s several excellences. Of course she had planned the seating arrangement as carefully as the hors d’oeuvres. The Author was planted between the male artist and my novelist colleague. Clearly she was an old hand at this. She made a point to spend the same amount of time conversing with each before leaning across to their wives.
“So you’re a colleague of Jake’s?”
“Yes, but in a different faculty. My PhD is in English Literature but my appointment is in the Faculty of Management.”
“But Jake said you were a novelist. Why on earth would you go to management!”
“That is where the vacancy was when I applied. My situation has gone quite well, though. I teach writing, composition, some ethics courses, and my colleagues in the Faculty quite respect my difference.”
“You must be a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I would go mad in Management.”
“I believe you underestimate your adaptability.”
“And what have you written?”
“A few novels about cultural tensions in India and Ceylon. I doubt that you’ve heard of them.”
“And you’re the artist.”
“So I’m told.”
“What’s your chosen medium?”
“I’m primarily a painter, though I have also done prints and, of course, drawings. I have had some commissions for installations in the US and South America.”
“Fascinating. Art and writing, you know, we’re all about the same things really, aren’t we? I mean, we both create our little imaginary worlds in which people will, we hope, lose themselves to find themselves.”
“I suppose, yes.”
“And do you make a living at that?”
My friend was about to explain that he also has a senior position teaching at the art school but I cut him off.
“I’m surprised you don’t know his work. He did that massive trompe l’oeil building on King Street in Toronto, you know, the wall full of false windows?”
“Oh, that! Of course. You did that! And what kind of art do you make?” She had turned to his wife, a quiet blonde woman whose artistic reputation was only slightly less than her husband’s. and who tended to be excessively recessive.
“I’ve done a few murals, though nothing on that scale. I also teach at the art school.”
“If you have time tomorrow,” I added, “before your flight, she has a very good mural on 17th Avenue here.” But the author had moved on.
“I forget, dear, did Jake tell me you’re an artist too? Or just another of those academics?”
“No,” she replied warily. “I’m in child psychology.”
Franny slipped in quickly: “Ranna heads the psychology department at the Children’s Hospital here.”
At this the author dropped her cutlery firmly beside her plate. “My, how wonderful,” she said, for once genuinely impressed. “That must give you all kinds of material to write about.”
“No, in fact, I don’t write. I leave all that to my husband. And to you. I just work with the children.”
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