On the Friday night at Aberdeen's Word festival, I had the pleasure of chairing an event at the Belmont Cinema with Mark Millar, the Coatbridge-born comic-writer who now decides what happens to Captain America.
I don't think I've laughed as much at a literary event, ever. From getting his daughter to sign copies, reminiscing about "the most complained about comic ever" (and revealing the issues that were too offensive to print), giving an inside scoop on ho
w they filmed certain fight scenes with the five months pregnant Angelina Jolie in the forthcoming Wanted, to his great declaration to an audience member – "I've sold out 100%. But I could have sold out 150%" – Millar charmed, wise-cracked and wowed. After seeing a Wanted trailer, Millar confessed this was his first ever appearance at a UK literary festival, before signing for over two hours, much to the envy of poets and novelists.
Wonderful Word set in GraniteIn general the Word festival in Aberdeen enjoyed glorious sunshine, a stellar range of authors and – perhaps most encouragingly – no perceptible dip in audience numbers, despite this being the first year that they have charged for tickets.
The focus was very much on Scottish writing, with bravura performances from James Kelman, Jackie Kay (above), Janice Galloway, Alasdair Gray, James Meek, John Burnside, Anne Donovan and the serene festival director, Alan Spence. Even when you've heard the authors plenty of times beforehand, there's always something new, or unusual, or unexpected. Who, for example, would have identified James Kelman as a closet devotee of the works of Enid Blyton?
Janice Galloway gave a wonderful disquisition on the difference between novels and memoirs – her own, This Is Not About Me, comes out this autumn – and recounted her travails in convincing critics that her novels were genuinely made up (and mentioned, in passing, that another book festival bills her new book as This Is All About Me).
Gray read from his still unpublished translation of Goethe's Faust; and John Burnside and James Meek dealt elegantly with the audience member whose only question was "Why should I read your books about such horrible people?"
Freeing us from history"The most important academic edition produced in the UK in the last 30 years". Chances are that you haven't heard of it, and chances are that is because it's the Edinburgh Edition of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. Professor David Hewitt gave this year's Word lecture – a real paean to Scott, delivered with infectious enthusiasm. As he said, Scott was "the historical novelist who freed us from history".
Surreal voice of the westI was saddened to learn of the death, at 72, of Jeff Torrington, author of The Devil's Carousel and Swing, Hammer, Swing! (1992 Whitbread winner). Along with McIlvanney, Kelman, Gray, Galloway and Agnes Owens, Torrington contributed a great deal to the resurgence of west coast writing. His novels were dynamic, evocative and full of the surrealism: his voice is a great loss to Scottish writing.
