Say what you will about blogs... Colm Toibin's reading mine.

Hi Colm. Hi Anne. Hi Dermot.

I learned something strange and a bit unnerving last night: a few of the Irish writers at this year's festival are actually reading this blog. Last night in the Hospitality Suite (oooh, I promised my superiors at Harbourfront I'd never start a sentence with "last night in the Hospitality Suite." I can almost feel the hairs going up on the back of Geoffrey Taylor's neck. You see, the Hospitality Suite is the Vegas of IFOA. It's strictly off-the-record - no media, no hassles. Just writers "relaxing" and "being themselves" in a well-appointed suite at the Westin Harbour Castle. To blog about the goings-on in there could be the single fastest way to "destroy" a young man's writing "career." Or so I've been told.)

Anyway, last night in the Hospitality Suite, Colm Toibin quoted from this blog, Dermot Bolger accused me (in a very friendly manner) of stealing his "best stuff," and Anne Enright introduced me not as an author but as the official blogger (it's OK, Anne... I know I'm already terribly overexposed in this capacity and sadly underexposed as a writer).

This led to the classic conversation about blogs themselves, and how many of us feel they are simply useless, or self-congratulatory, or both (Colm came up with a very good euphemism for blogs versus books, actually, but I'll not share it here for reasons of propriety already discussed above).

But this makes me wonder: what would make this blog better? What would pull it up and out of the mongrel blogosphere? And I think I know the answer. A pure-bred, world-famous, prize-winning, Irish-accented Guest Blogger!

So come on, Colm. Have at you, Dermot. Let's see it, Anne. Which one of you will rise to the occasion and offer to write IFOA's first guest-blog?

DAY FOUR: Hilarious and Irish!

"I'm Irish and Canadian," said Emma Donoghue.
"I'm Irish and German," said Hugo Hamilton.
"I'm Irish and bald," said Dermot Bolger.

I'm sitting in the Hospitality Suite as I write this (more on this to come), having just attended my first "It's Irish!" event at this year's IFOA. "It's Irish!" involves 16 authors from the Emerald Isle, and the events are curated by prize-winning novelist Colm Toibin.

This particular event, a conversation between Bolger, Hamilton, Donoghue and David Park (mediated by Bert Archer), was very informative. For instance, I learned that David Park accidentally plagiarized James Joyce in one of his novels, that Hugo Hamilton grew up wearing lederhosen and aran sweaters, and that Bolger's main problem when he was young was not procuring condoms (in a strictly Catholic atmosphere), but finding a way to use them. All in all, hilarious.

DAY TWO: The young man from Swansea

On the illustrated cover of Welshman Joe Dunthorne's hilarious debut novel, Submarine, there is a rendering of a naked woman from the waist up (find it here, down in the bottom-right corner). Or should I say, on the UK/Canada cover there is a rendering of a naked woman from the waist up. Incredibly, or perhaps predictably, the American cover for Dunthorne's book is identical except for one small detail. Find it here, and see if you can spot the difference.

This is the story Joe Dunthorne opened with last night, as he took the stage with an accomplished, world-renowned list of authors in the Fleck. Before him came Hermenegilde Chiasson (the Acadian Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick and GG-shortlisted poet) and Nadeem Aslam (IMPAC-Dublin shortlisted novelist). After him came the ever-casual, hand-in-pocket, glasses-on-string, sermonesque David Adams Richards (Giller winner, two-time GG winner). And I gotta say, Dunthorne stole the show. His protagonist, Oliver Tate, is hysterically funny as he seeks to unravel the secrets of his parents' hidden lives. He is also poignantly, sadly real. When Oliver purposely vomits on the hood of his pansexual neighbour's yellow Lotus, the audience - already overcome by the sheer power of Chiasson and the whisper-howl of Aslam's haunting voice - let it all out. We laughed, and boy it felt good.

I must admit, as a fellow debut author at the festival, I was terribly impressed by Dunthorne's self-possession on stage. I couldn't help thinking about my own upcoming event, and whether or not I would be able to banish my nerves in quite the fashion Joe did.

Anyway, enough about me. Later on over drinks in the Hospitality Suite, Nadeem Aslam seemed to loosen up a bit and told me a hilarious story of his own (the man is much funnier in person than his intense fiction might suggest). When he first visited Toronto from the UK, Nadeem - a massive Ondaatje fan - breathlessly asked a cab driver to take him straight to the Bloor Street Viaduct.

You can imagine the cabbie's response.

~

Quote of Day One (from Wednesday): cell conversation, overheard in Il Fornello bathroom:
"Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Your team's name is Journeyman's Elf!"
(thank you Dinah)

Quote of Day Two: over dinner at the Pearl:
"And therefore, I am one of the few people who can say he's been in bed with two Booker Prize winners. And both at the same time!"
- Dermot Bolger, author of The Journey Home. (There is a completely legitimate explanation for this quote. Ask Dermot about it if you run into him. Or try to figure it out for yourself here.)

~

Here's just a sample of the media frenzy going on around IFOA right now:
Canada.com, Toronto Star, The Ampersand

TONIGHT: Three events to choose from. Rohinton and Sheers, anybody? Barfoot and Prose, people? A fascinating round-table? See you there...