Books: Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame, edited by Robin Robertson

15 minutes of shame

By Tod Goldberg

If there is one particular joy in being a writer--beyond the women, the drugs, the late nights spent defragging the hard drive in lieu of actually writing--it is the opportunity to meet other working writers, though not for the reasons one might naturally assume. Sure, we network and trade gossip and troll for blurbs for our upcoming books, but the real grist is hearing about the horrors: the relative who left a two-star review on Amazon, the university reading held on the same night as Greek Row's annual all-night beer fest...and in the same location, the inevitable need to evacuate your bowels just as you're being called up to the lectern and the fact that no one has ever heard of you.

Writers revel in these stories because shame and humiliation don't discriminate over book sales: If it can happen to Margaret Atwood, we reason, no one is safe. All of which makes Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame such a treasure. Edited by acclaimed poet Robin Robertson, Mortification collects stories from 70 writers and poets about their very worst moments and, in the end, paints a hilarious and painful picture of what fame is and, normally, isn't.

The collection hinges on a simple understanding: Writers aren't actors or politicians for a reason--we are best suited to work alone, in the dark, without human interaction, or else the results can be deadly. Take Michigan-based poet/mortician Thomas Lynch, for instance. Flown to Ireland for a poetry festival, Lynch feels the first pangs of real celebrity--adoring fans, free food, a car and driver--and the general sense that finally, yes, he has made it. When he spots a familiar man in the audience before his reading later that evening, he mistakes him for a fellow mortician, possibly a rector, only to learn through an embarrassing and excruciating conversation that the mortician in question is actually the actor Ralph Fiennes.

British novelist Rupert Thomson's great indignity came shrouded in an attempt not to be mortified. Wanting to avoid the annual disappointment of not being named among the "Best of Young British Novelists" list published by the literary journal Granta, Thomson and his girlfriend escaped to an isolated farmhouse for the winter. One morning, Thomson's excited girlfriend came running into the bedroom waving the newspaper. "You've been chosen," she said. "You're one of the Best Young British Novelists." She pointed to the photo of Thomson, which, actually, was not Thomson at all. It was, in fact, a female writer named Jeanette Winterson who'd been so duly honored. They did bare a small resemblance, despite the differences in gender...

Real public shame occurs only when you are responsible for your own demise, as when a drug- and booze-addled Niall Griffiths decides to conclude the celebration of his first book release party by knocking one out in the restroom to a picture of Kylie Minogue, only to have one of his buddies walk in at the zenith of the experience, or when James Lasdun recounts the ill-made decision to perform with his band without actually knowing any songs, or a young Julian Barnes who cannot recall the title of his own work while trying to woo an influential editor at a cocktail party (a party where he'd already made a notable ass of himself with another author).

Predictably, many of the indignities faced by the 70 writers collected within are similar--aside from the writer upstaged by Dana Plato on an afternoon chat show--but what makes each essay entertaining and essential for the aspiring author is that the particular experience is always skewed by the perception that a greater horror has never been perpetuated on a human. What makes Mortification a must-read for nonwriters, however, is that it is like having déjˆ vu into perpetuity; for anyone who has faced an audience and failed miserably, no matter the occupation, the feeling is the same.