Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame by Robin Robertson Page B

dreaming of my brand-new life in an igloo somewhere north of Greenland.

‘Everyone in a crowd has the power to throw dirt: nine out of ten have the inclination.’ William Hazlitt,
On Reading Old Books
Deborah Moggach
    Writers can only moan to each other about all this, really: the humiliating reading to an audience of two, the book-signing where nobody turns up, the talk where the only question is ‘Where did you buy your nail varnish?’ (I nicked it from my daughter, since you ask). Nobody is really going to care, are they, if we sit alone and unloved beside our pile of books, approached only once in the two hours and that by a woman who is trying to flog us her self-published book on recovering from breast cancer? Or that we wait, alone in the darkness, on the deserted platform at Newark station, the only reading matter a VIOLENT ASSAULT: WITNESSES WANTED sign swinging in the wind, until we realize we’ve missed the last train home.
    There is, however, a certain existential quality to some of these experiences which others can surely share. Humiliation, though one of a writer’s specialities, is not an entirely unknown sensation to everybody else. We do expose ourselves, of course, by offering up our work to the world’s critical stare, or, worse, its indifference. It’s what we sign up for: that people give up their money and their precious time to read about characters who have never existed. And there’s a price to be paid for this chutzpah.
    I remember a corporate event in Bridlington, where bookshop staff were supposedly wooed by a dinner of scotch eggs and coleslaw into ordering a lot of our books. One of them was a Waterstone’s assistant, a stubbly bloke with an earring and a patronizing, ‘I only read Don DeLillo’ look about him. He was also very drunk. Swaying up to me, he said, ‘You write romantic fiction, don’t you.’ ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Yes you do.’ ‘Have you read anything of mine?’ ‘No,’ he slurred, ‘but I can tell.’ ‘How?’ I asked. ‘Because you’re an ageing woman wearing a leopard-skin top.’ To this I replied, with more dignity than he deserved: ‘That might make me a romantic, but it doesn’t mean I write it.’
    ‘Nationwide Publicity Tour’ usually means a couple of signing sessions and two minutes on BBC Radio Humberside. Never is the gulf between promise and reality wider than during an author’s publicity tour, at least in my experience. One occasion I remember, almost with fondness, was a promotion in a shopping centre in Maidenhead on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. The deal was that if a customer bought a copy of my novel (paperback), they also got a free box of Crabtree and Evelyn freesia soap and a glass of wine. In other words, they were practically being paid to take a book away. Even with these inducements, however, an hour passed and not one single person stopped. ‘Oh dear,’ said the manageress, ‘I don’t know what’s the matter, it’s so embarrassing. We had that Rolf Harris last week and his queue was an hour and a half long.’ For some reason she thought that this would make me feel better. Finally, after another half-hour a woman with Downs Syndrome approached me and asked, ‘Do you sell tights?’ I directed her to the nearby Dorothy Perkins and off she went. Nobody else came, so I went home.
    Often one travels long distances to do a reading. Getting food out of anybody, once one arrives, is always a problem. Drink is even trickier. I remember travelling to the Folkestone Literary Festival, a modest affair in the front room of a defunct seafront hotel, and being offered a small dish of dry-roasted peanuts, to be shared between three authors. We had left London in mid-afternoon and wouldn’t get back until midnight but our hostess obviously believed that writers, like Citroën 2CVs, run on very little fuel. Also on very little money, as we were all told, separately, ‘Thank you for waiving your usual fee.’ (It’s a well-known