KEY POINTS:
He's won the Booker Prize, the Somerset Maugham and the Whitbread, he's one of the most acclaimed writers of our age, with his novels routinely filmed, not least 2001's million-seller Atonement.
But what really makes you doff your cap to Ian McEwan is the aplomb - quoting Mark Twain,
no less - with which he announced to his host, fellow panellists and audience of hundreds at the Gala Opening of Writers and Readers Week in Wellington that he needed to go to the gents, and the self-possession with which he proceeded to do so after his reading, winding his way calmy from the stage and through the front half of the auditorium, and then back to take his seat again.
There's class.
Given his pressing need, McEwan's reading was all the more remarkable. It was already remarkable for two reasons: 1) being a new piece of non-fiction, rather than the usual run-through of previously published glories; and 2) being very, very funny - comedy not being something one readily associates with McEwan.
"Masterly" is a word thrown about with abandon, not least in connection with McEwan, but here he was precisely that - precision being one of his greatest attributes.
Highlighting climate change - or global warming, "climate change" being a euphemism promoted by the Bush administration, according to the author - McEwan weaved a fable of astonishing intelligence, elegance and humour about the vexation of lost equipment in a boot room during the recent fact-finding trip he'd taken to near the North Pole. "The fate of our largest boot room still hangs in the balance," he concluded at the end of this tale about the competition for dwindling resources.
"I bet we'll be seeing that in The Guardian," one audience member noted dryly later.
I bet we will. I certainly hope we do.
And so, finished with the boot room, McEwan was off to the men's room.
It seemed unlikely the evening - which had already included readings and conversation from Cuban/Puerto Rican novelist Maya Montero and Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon - could top McEwan.
But that was reckoning without Christian Bok.
Sitting there quietly, besuited with a pale pink shirt and tie, and close-cropped hair, he exuded the same wholesome respectability as Bill English - belying his reputation as an avant garde Canadian poet, but not in a way that suggested what was to follow.
Those who had seen only written interviews with sound poet Bok ahead of his visit might have been bracing themselves to nod politely at recitations of arid artistic experimentation ? Bok's books (and, by the way, Bok is pronounced book and in fact used to be Book before he changed his name to Bok) include, most famously, Eunoia, a lipogram that uses only one vowel in each of its five sections, while among his other work is a book made of Lego in which the words can be taken apart and reassembled, and a collaboration with a conceptual artist in which two canvases of their words appear side by side - the second, by Bok, a rewrite utilising all the words in the statement of the first.
This is the self-imposed discipline of poetry stretched to the limit.
An interesting intellectual exercise, but anything more?
Oh yes.
From the crazed crescendo of his reply to chair Lynn Freeman's question about his next experiment (basically, he's looking for a form that will outlast mankind, the world, the universe - though there was nothing basic about his description of this quest), it was soon apparent that Bok was no Bill English.
Any last doubt about this was dispelled when he took to the podium to read, and embarked on a manic barrage of language that poured every last remnant of his soul (and voice box) into every last syllable of text.
Oh yes, and, for all the constraints in which they were written, his poems are witty and erudite, verbal marvels. You can see why he's been such a success in his homeland.
Pity poor Sia Figiel, who followed Bok as the final author. "It's very difficult to go after Christian," she said. "I am terrified - he should have gone last."
As the evening ended, the woman in the seat next to me asked in a quiet voice, stunned and curious: "Have you read any Christian Bok?"
Next day, another woman said: "What about the mad Canadian poet?"
She was, needless to say, immediately off to buy a ticket to his solo session on Friday.
If there are any left.
(This posting was written to the following soundtrack: The Bossa Nova: Exciting Jazz Samba Rhythms - Volumes 3 and 4. Check out the fabulous covers. That's not why I'm listening to them, though - they are preparation for tonight's Clube de Balanco concert at the International Arts Festival.
