‘When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him.’ Hindu proverb
One story, of a bad experience in front of the reading public? Just the one? That’s impossible. There are far too many to choose from. Just off the top of my head, we have:
– The time when I agreed to appear at a crime writers’ festival (Why? I’m not a crime writer), was scheduled to read at the same time as Colin Dexter, and got an audience of precisely one. ‘I’m so glad you came along,’ I said to the amiable punter, after twenty minutes’ chat. ‘Think how terrible it would have been if there’d been nobody.’ ‘Actually,’ he admitted, ‘I’m the person who was supposed to be introducing you.’ (It was Ian Rankin.)
– The time I had another audience of one, in Stamford, Lines – a sclerotic middle-aged businessman who seemed to have wandered in by mistake – and when I told him I didn’t intend to write a novel about the collapse of the Berlin Wall (this was 1989) he started bellowing at me, ‘You’re a coward, man, a bloody coward!’
– The time I was on a panel discussion on French TV, and the recording over-ran, and knowing that I had to catch the last Eurostar to London I gestured frantically to the floor-manager, and he came over to fetch me but told me to leave unobtrusively, so in order to miss the camera-line I had to crawl off the set on my hands and knees in front of the studio audience, thinking, ‘I bet this never happens to Julian Barnes’.
– Signing-queue mortifications: the woman who picked up one of my novels in Brighton, read the author’s biog (a functional listing of my previous books), sniffed ‘Is that your only claim to fame?’ and when I said ‘Yes’ put the book back on the pile; or the female student (also in Brighton) who sweetly said to me, ‘Can I ask you a question?’ and when I said ‘Yes’, demanded briskly, ‘Why are all your women characters so crap?’
There are others, even worse, that I have probably suppressed. All helping to form the same resolution, taken time and again: not to put myself through this sort of thing any more. To stay at home, and sit behind my desk, as real writers are supposed to do.
My next scheduled reading is in two days’ time.