Welcome to my message board.

New member registration has been disabled due to heavy spammer activity. If you'd like to join the board, please email me at MaxDevore at hotmail dot com.

Another lifetime achievement award

2»

Comments

  • BevVincentBevVincent
    It was a lovefest at the showcase BOOKED! event, the Stephen King tribute on Friday evening. The 1,300-seat John Bassett Theatre looked to be at least two-thirds full, and the crowd response started at “wild” and went from there. The first of many standing ovations came when King was spotted simply taking his pre-show seat in the front row.



    Once the presentation got underway, authors Margaret Atwood and Clive Barker each spoke briefly about King’s influence; Barker essentially credited his own career to an early King review of his work. Susan Moldow, King’s publisher at Simon & Schuster imprint Scribner over the pat 10 years, also spoke briefly.



    The main event was an onstage interview with Chuck Klosterman, pop-culture commentator and King’s fellow Simon & Schuster author. Among other things, Klosterman asked King why people like to be scared; whether King considers himself a literary version of the band AC/DC; how fast he could write a novel at the height of his powers (”could you write one here, right now?”); and whether King thinks about his literary legacy now that he’s, ah, getting on. (To be fair to Klosterman, all of it came off better at the time than it probably sounds here.)



    King was genial, relaxed, and funny, and took the chance to praise a few Canadian books, mainly Robertson Davies’ Debtford Trilogy but also Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Alistair MacLeod’s Island, and the work of Robert Charles Wilson and Andrew Pyper. “I’ve been reading Canadian fiction all my life – I understand the sensibility and devotion to story. I love story,” said King, decrying the “look at me dance” approach. “I have very little use for novelists who turn their books into discotheques of the mind.”



    Canadian Booksellers Association president Steve Budnarchuk presented King with this year’s Lifetime Achievement Libris Award. King is the first non-Canadian to get the prize, which was launched in 2001. Past winners include booksellers Charles Burchell and Judith Mappin and authors Pierre Berton, Carol Shields, and Timothy Findley.



    In return, King injected the fledgling BOOKED fest with some valuable star power. Friday’s event – billed as King’s first public appearance in Canada – was well-covered in advance and was filmed by Book Television (one measure of King’s celebrity was the fact that even before he took the stage, a camera was trained on him at all times to catch reaction shots). And although advance notices about the show explicitly stated that there would be no signing, a handful of book-wavers pressed (vainly) toward the front row anyway as King exited.
  • Lou_SytsmaLou_Sytsma
    OK, here is the first one. Part of Chuck Klosterman Interview with King.



    Here King relates an incident where he earned honest money. The irritating cackling in the background is me and my brothers. :D
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    That was great -- King changing someone's tire.



    (Complete with obligatory cell phone ring in the background!)
  • Lou_SytsmaLou_Sytsma
    Yeah, obviously the offender has not read Cell yet!
  • Lou_SytsmaLou_Sytsma
    Here is the video of King's Acceptance Speech.



    Good stuff - pretty damn funny!
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    I'll watch this tomorrow. I'd fed him some hockey lines, but he said he wanted to get out of Canada alive! Particularly by not mentioning how long it had been since Toronto won a Stanley Cup.
  • Lou_SytsmaLou_Sytsma
    As a long time suffering BoSox he could have offer some great words of encouragement to Leaf fans but he totally stayed away from hockey.
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    Lou_Sytsma wrote: Here is the video of King's Acceptance Speech.



    Good stuff - pretty damn funny!


    Fantastic! Thanks for capturing and posting this. Sephera says it's going to be on TV at some point, too.
  • Lou_SytsmaLou_Sytsma
    Yes it will be probably be on the Bravo speciality cable channel for one of their book shows.


  • BevVincentBevVincent
    From absk -- another guess at the story title.

    One thing I do remember was that Susan Moldow mentioned that Mr. King had given her a manuscript that morning in the hotel room of what would probably be a short story, to be published sometime after Duma Key in 2008.  It is about the dying of parents and I think she said it is called something like "Illychena".  It was hard to hear what she was saying so please forgive me if the details are incorrect.  If someone has the patience to listen to the videos on myspace they might be able to figure it out better than I.
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    Video will be posted on The Hour's web site at some point, too.
  • LiljaLilja
    Does the fact that King give a shortstory to Scribner mean that there will be a collection after Duma Key?



    Lilja
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    I suspect that he passes all of his stories past his publisher as a matter of courtesy. That's my take on it, anyway.
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    Viral video -- expect lots of hits on your YouTube video, Lou. A link to it was posted at the Locus Magazine web site.
  • Lou_SytsmaLou_Sytsma
    Thanks for the heads up Bev. Hope I don't get into trouble! :-/
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    Fourth time's the charm: The real title of the story is "Ayana."
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    A blog report about the evening
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    The full text of Clive Barker's speech.
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    The issue of The Paris Review containing Ayana is now available for order online
  • BevVincentBevVincent
    An Evening with Stephen King airs in Canada tonight on Bravo
Sign In or Register to comment.