reading: Timothy Findley reads from Spadework
James R. Calhoun, The Peak

Celebrated Canadian author Timothy Findley was in town this Wednesday Oct. 31, reading from his latest novel, Spadework as part of the Vancouver International Writers (& Readers) Festival. In a season when notables such as Salman Rushdie and A.S. Byatt are forced to cancel their appearances in Vancouver, it was a feather in the Writers Festival's cap to have a crowd-pleasing author such as Findley end their season on the upswing.

More than 600 people braved the downtown traffic on Halloween night so that they could cram themselves into the pews of Christ Church Cathedral to see Findley, who divides his time between Stratford, Ontario and the south of France, and so, is in Vancouver far too infrequently. Findley mentions this early on in the reading, speaking of his home in "Provance..." making an elegant theatrical gesture as he said it. He digresses immediately, "I know it sounds snobbish...but that's just how one says it..." This was just one of the many incidents where Findley absolutely charms the audience, getting a laugh, and several rounds of spontaneous applause. In the Q&A session following the reading, someone in the back asked about Findley's motivation in writing Pilgrim - his previous novel. "Well," Findley says, "I needed the money."

Findley's roots are in theatre (his Governor General's Awardwinning play Elizabeth Rex just finished a successful run at the Stanley the night before) and this translates into a marvelous presence before a crowd. I often leave a reading slightly disappointed because the author fails to live up to the perception I've constructed from reading their works; they lack that presence that turns a reading into a performance. Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient, Anil's Ghost) and Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) both lacked verve when I saw them read not so long ago; they read as if they were grudgingly fulfilling an obligation to a publisher. But not Findley, which came as something of a pleasant surprise.

Age has begun to catch up with him. His new motto, he says, is "don't get older" which got a laugh, but was painful at the same time, as it was an acknowledgment of his need to lean heavily on someone to get onto the stage or rise from his seat. I wondered initially if he would have the stamina to make it through the reading, but when he began to speak the vigour of a man 25 years younger surfaced. We were told that he would read for 45 minutes; he gave us more than an hour. And the reading! It was like being at the theatre. Hearing Findley read the flawlessly written dialogue of Spadework with all of the little nuances of a masterful performance was moving - it was intense. And then when it was all done, he had the grace to sign several hundred books for a very appreciative audience.

Findley's reading was marvelous, and drove home the point that art has very little to do with appearances; that a man "made weak by time and fate" can nonetheless be an instrument of the sublime.

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