Dateline IFOA: David Mitchell & Audrey Niffenegger

So now that I live in Toronto, I’m slowly trying to ingratiate myself into the so-called literary community here. Which essentially means crashing book launches and drinking heavily. But these things happen in baby steps, of course, and so I figured I’d head down to the Harbourfront Centre and see what was going at the International Festival of Authors.

It’s the 25th Anniversary of the IFOA, which means it’s a fairly big deal. Although I only got my act together last night, the festival actually began on October 20th and has featured some heavy hitters like Art Spiegelman, Russell Banks, and Susanna Clarke. Kathy Reichs showed up to be interviewed last Saturday, and Koji Suzuki (of RING and SPIRAL fame) was similarly interrogated on Sunday. Though the biggest piece of news involved Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez opting to cut her first appearance in half and then not show up at all for her second event. Luckily, Ernesto Quinones, who’d already taken part in a round table and a reading, stepped up to the plate and impressed those in attendance. Out of lemons, and so forth.

But I was there, along with a reasonably packed house (including fellow IFOA invitee Jasper Fforde) to see David Mitchell (so ably interviewed by Ed “Bat Segundo” Champion) and Audrey Niffenegger be interviewed by the Globe & Mail’s Girl Friday, Rebecca Caldwell, and the two authors, whose books have little in common but they found common ground with some of their tastes in music (the Beatles’ REVOLVER was a mutual favorite) were highly entertaining as they answered questions about their books (CLOUD ATLAS and THE TIME TRAVELLER’S WIFE, respectively), why being a full-time writer isn’t always conducive to writing, early influences, and whether nationality plays any role in the writing (the answer: not really.)

Caldwell did a very nice job in keeping things moving and giving each author equal time. Although Niffenegger’s very personable (and has a sort of kindler, gentler Tori Amos vibe), Mitchell more than lived up to hype and IMO, stole the evening. Let’s put it this way: I’ve wanted to read CLOUD ATLAS before, but now I simply gotta. Sure, it’s famously Booker-shortlisted, but how pretentious can it be when the author spends much of the interview throwing in references to Scooby Doo and mocking his frontrunner status for the very prize?

Once the “formal” interview was over, the Q&A begin in hilarious fashion because host Stephen Finucan kept repeating the questions…asked by those sitting in the first five rows. And Finucan, unfortunately, was somewhat paraphrase-challenged, leaving Mitchell, in one case, to answer both the real question (which he’d heard just fine) and the Finucan translation.

The authors then signed books for a long procession of patient fans, but I didn’t stick around and went out for dinner and drinks with a group including Ms. Caldwell (who I got to meet properly after a blink-and-you-miss-it sighting at Bouchercon) and some of her fellow G&M colleagues. I’m not sure when I’ll go to my next IFOA thing–I’m eyeing the Colm Toibin/Allan Hollinghurst double interview on Friday, just because I might as well see more Booker-shortlisted types–but I suspect it may not be as much fun as last night’s event was.