Review: Tobias Wolff and David Vann
The biggest crowd I’ve seen so far in the Watergate Theatre were in their seats early for one of the biggest events on the literature strand of the festival.
After being introduced by curator Colm Toíbín, David Vann was up first, his second consecutive appearance at Kilkenny Arts Festival. In fact, he made a joke about how he had begged to return this year such was the fun he had last year. This certainly wasn’t disingenous. And it definitely worked. We had met Mr. Vann for an interviewing at last years event and he was definitely one of the friendliest and most engaging artists that we had the pleasure of interviewing. Which considering he was promoting a book with the dark overtones of Legend Of A Suicide came as somewhat of a surprise to us at the time.
This time around he was reading from his newest novel Caribou Island, a novel he described as about marriage, something he inadvertantly ended up focusing on much to his wife’s chagrin. His affability shone through in his introduction and his two excerpts from the book went down exceedingly well. He stopped suddenly, afraid he was going to risk ruining his book and thanked everyone before walking away to a huge ovation.
Tobias Wolff certainly was the bigger draw here but he was most gracious on giving a rub to David Vann, giving over his introduction to talking about his friendship with Vann and how much he admired his work. The great American writer first read from his 2003 novel Old School, introducing it by talking about the autobiographical elements within. To the delighted of the assembled crowd he finished his reading with an entire short story, the profane and violently funny Bullet In The Brain. He introduced it by saying how he had wanted to call his entire collection at the time Bullet In The Brain but was persuaded otherwise by Colm Toíbín who had told him that his mother would never buy a book with that title. The story went down a storm with the audience and again ensured a huge ovation at its finish.
There were no shortage of questions in the post show Q&A and again Wolff deigned to deflect most questions pointed at him towards Vann. They spoke about the humour in their novels, how short stories manifest themselves and Vann gave a very humourous and insightful description of his struggles to make it as a writer. It was highly illuminating and entertaining stuff. For this reviewer, it was certainly the highlight of the literary strand so far (although I’ve got John Banville’s Benjamin Black reading tonight so I may need to hold my praise) and the packed audience were certainly captivated.
Both writers held court in the foyer of the Watergate signing books for audience members. Suffice to say, they holding court for a very long amount of time.
John
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