FESTIVAL BOOKS PREVIEWS
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NILE RODGERS The man who helped shape a generation of pop
As the Book Festival programme announces, Nile Rodgers is ‘The Man Who Brought Us Disco’. As befits a pioneer who has sold over 100m records, conquered addiction, seen off cancer and written some of pop’s greatest songs – Chic’s ‘Le Freak’ and Sister Sledge’s ‘We Are Family’ for two – Rodgers is a terrific storyteller. His autobiography, Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco and History, is enthralling. Did Rodgers realise what impact he’d make on
our culture? ‘I don’t think when you’re creating art that you’re thinking that far into the future, even though we called ourselves futurists.’ Rodgers’ Book Festival appearance promises colourful anec- dotes from throughout his life. It’s not just about Nile Rodgers. It’s about pop
music as we know it. (Nicola Meighan) ■ 19 Aug, 9.30pm, £10 (£8).
DAVID VANN Writing books that are not for a mother’s eyes
‘I didn’t plan to write this book. It would’ve been better if I hadn’t written it, in fact.’ You can see David Vann’s point, but only because of his latest novel’s content, not its quality. Dirt is about a troubled young man in an incestuous and abusive family, and the author openly claims that elements are based on experiences from his own life. It was never going to go down well with the family at Christmas-time. His mother will be upset, he admits.
While the book, like Vann’s own life, has its luminous moments of horror and violence, it’s determinedly not autobiographical. Rather than needling against the darkest moments in Vann’s history, as was the case in his 2008 fictional debut, Legend of a Suicide, this novel explores the dangerous routes that an extreme personal philosophy can take through a damaged individual, and its impact on an already bruised family.
Really, this madness and its effects are what takes the novel past being just another violent drama.
It’s not just sad and horrific; it’s funny and provocative. More importantly, according to Vann, it’s a tragedy. ‘It’s the funniest book I’ll ever write, and also the most brutal,’ he laughs.
When I press this point about brutality and sex and, frankly, whether that’s what keeps readers turning the pages, he disagrees with my categorisation of the book. ‘There’s been a rise of torture porn, and of horror movies like the Saw series, but this is completely different from horror. In tragedy, we’re emotionally and physically connected to what happens to the characters.’
And for a writer of tragedy coming to the Edinburgh Book Festival this year, it helps that, he says,
‘in Europe there’s more willingness to read tragedy’. So he’s looking forward to appearing at the festival? ‘I would come back every year until the end of time.’ (Charlotte Runcie) ■ 19 Aug (with Kyung-Sook Shin), 7pm, £7 (£5).
MELANIE CHALLENGER Reconnecting with the natural world
Highlands-based writer and poet Melanie Challenger acknowledges that last year’s On Extinction, a weighty book that muses on humanity’s often fraught relationship with the environment, isn’t a work based in specialist knowledge. ‘It’s a personal effort,’ she says. ‘In fact, it’s a book based on grow- ing up as part of a generation which is much less intimate with the natural world, and the kind of grief and nostalgia that people feel for that knowledge. It’s a cultural history of how we’ve reached this stage of environmental crisis.’
In chronicling both this and what she calls the
‘bio-cultural crisis’ (the dissolving of diverse human cultures and ways of life), the book took her on a journey through the debris of human progress, from the tin mines of Cornwall to the whaling stations of Antarctica and old Inuit camps, all lost and aban- doned now.
‘The mines are a symbol, if you like, of the pro- cesses of industrialisation and increased technical knowledge which are primary drivers of the degra- dation we’re experiencing now. But they’re also a romantic image on the landscape, a tourist attrac- tion where people find beauty. Why are ruined old buildings points of a strange, almost indescribable poignancy? And why does their potential loss ignite our imagination?’ (David Pollock) ■ 19 Aug (with TC Smout), 4pm, £10 (£8).
CHIBUNDU ONUZO Looking to a future beyond books
Chibundu Onuzo’s tale is a heartening one for young writers. The Nigerian-born author began her first novel when she was just 17 and secured a two- book deal with Faber at 19, before being published at 21. Her debut, The Spider King’s Daughter, fol- lows the love affair between two teenagers in Lagos. But it slowly turns from a love story to a gripping
tale of exploitation and revenge. The ending is bleak and Onuzo is cautious about the economic future for young people in Nigeria. ‘I don’t know that things are happening fast enough for people who are young and in their 20s,’ she says. ‘Jobs are being created sparingly, development is coming but it’s at an uneven pace.’
Onuzo has just finished her degree at King’s College and will appear in Edinburgh alongside Argentinean writer Matías Néspolo. ‘I signed a con- tract for two books so I’ll finish writing that. One day, I want to go into politics in Nigeria.’ (Yasmin Sulaiman) ■ 16 Aug, 5.30pm, free; 17 Aug (with Matías Néspolo), 3.30pm, £7 (£5).
28 THE LIST 16–23 Aug 2012
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