Back to Reviews By Title - M

Mortification – Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame, Robin Robertson (Editor)
HarperCollins
Reviewed by Jan Treliving-Brown (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

Seventy specially commissioned contributions make up this highly entertaining book. I say "highly entertaining" as a writer. For the non-writer it is an irritating navel-gaze by writers about experiences only they care about.

I know a non-writer who only made it to page 69. Had he continued for just one more vignette, he would have enjoyed a marvellous piece of writing by the now famous author of Vernon God Little, D.B.C. Pierre. Pierre reveals: "The Art Beast spoke to me on the road to becoming a writer. It urged me to explore every opportunity for life experience, because as an artist it would be my job to probe the edges where others mightn't go. The taste of these edges must one day fly off a written page, said the Beast. This was a bloody stupid thing to say to me."

Mortification comes swiftly to Pierre, as it does to all 70 contributors. These are writers who share common sick-making moments. They have frequently read their wonderful work to audiences of less than two. They have been introduced to the audience as someone else. The novels they have written have been publicly given new titles. Attendees have openly slated their work and threatened all kinds of retribution. Too much alcohol has been consumed.

One writer, so nauseated by her book-launching experience, raced to the toilet to vomit noisily, only to be interrupted by the host suggesting her lapel mike would be better turned off. Radio interviews have been embarrassing interludes best forgotten; meals at the home of the event organiser's mother, even worse.

London author Deborah Moggach writes: "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."