Tom McCarthy: C-ing is believing

On Monday night I stared at a bald scalp for an hour. The event was a sell out—about 50 people, primarily bespectacled, cardigan-wearing males in their 20s, packed into the London Review Bookshop to hear Tom McCarthy talk about his new novel, C—currently 2-1 favourite to win this year's Booker prize. Having failed to arrive sufficiently early, my restricted view was unavoidable.

As I sat there, cursing the seating arrangement, staring at the aforementioned scalp, occasionally leaning into the aisle to catch a glimpse of McCarthy, I wondered why I had paid £6 for the privilege. After all, such talks are usually available as a podcast soon after the event. The LSE, RSA, and Intelligence Squared have made huge amounts of fascinating audio readily available to the curious internet user. The LRB has made particular effort with its own archive, with dozens of talks, beautifully recorded and presented, available for free on its website.

The live event, however, boasts several features no podcast can offer. For instance, there are the tangible treats: book signing, questions and answers, nibbles. But, in general, less than half of the audience capitalise on this trio. The real attraction of the literary event is vaguer: a feeling that one cannot know an author simply by reading their books and listening to their interviews. To get the real thing, you have to be in their presence. The popularity of literary talks is evidence of "The Author's" obstinate refusal to die. Such events feed the Holden Caulfield in us—the desire to befriend an author whose work you love, or at least to suss out whether they're the kind of person you'd like to be friends with. As Tom Chatfield recently wrote on this blog, conferences and talks are often less about what is said than the opportunity to judge whether the speaker really means what they're saying; whether their written and spoken personae match up and so on.

Yet all these wishy-washy feelings (which I share)—about getting to know an author, bathing in the warm glow of their presence, having one's eardrums caressed by the authentic sound waves travelling from the author's actual voice box—do not fit well with Tom McCarthy. Surely listening to McCarthy's disembodied voice on your iPod as you travel about on some transport network would be a more appropriate experience than going to see him in the flesh. After all, this is a man who explicitly opposes the “regressive sentimentalism” of the mainstream literary establishment; this is a man who, when fulfilling his duties as general secretary of the International Necronautical Society, frequently employs an actor to pose as him, sending out this fake Tom McCarthy to deliver pronouncements on behalf of the organisation.

Given all this, there was something a little strange about seeing the author of Remainder onstage simply giving a reading, doing an interview and answering audience questions, just as any McEwan or McCall Smith might (and even if a discussion with McEwan would be unlikely to tumble headfirst into Heidegger after barely a minute). Had form and content meshed more seamlessly we would have filed into the room only to find a tinny little radio on the table where McCarthy was supposed to be sitting, with Rourke (in the room) and McCarthy (in the ether) exchanging ideas across crackling radiowaves. Perhaps the most appropriate moment of the evening came when, after much discussion of technology and communication, an audience member's mic flicked farcically between on and off as he attempted to ask his question. We may be many years into the age of mechanical reproduction, but we still haven't moved past the age of mechanical breakdown.