Picture this: a literary festival. Three or four hundred, let's just say "hundreds", of people packed into The Swedish American Hall on Market Street in the Castro. They are paying $15 a head to see four writers read for 8-10 minutes each. That's it. Just imagine that. Oh sure, Opium Magazine have gussied up the basic idea, turned it into a Literary Death Match, but basically that's what's happening. That the hall should be sold out, with a large line of people turned away: outrageous. It's a tribute to Elizabeth and Todd of Opium. And Litquake.
How did they gussy? Four writers read against each other in pairs. This produces two finalists who then compete in an extra-literary competition. There are three judges who evaluate on three criteria - literary merit, presentation and intangibles - and last night, they were an equal part of the show. Anyway, I was one of the four competitors, along with Evany Thomas, Daniel Handler and Gary Kumiya.
In the first round, I was pitted against Evany. A coin was tossed to see who would go first, but she had already asked me to let her go first, so this much, at least, was fixed. And she read an astonishingly funny piece, with which I couldn't compete, about scattering her grandmother's ashes. In fact, she didn't even read it, she recited it. I was worried, because the crowd was large, and wanted a laugh, and I, with the first chapter of my novel, was clearly going to offer them the least laughs of the evening. But I had a secret weapon: George. And when I was up, I placed him front and central, told the audience to "look at him, but listen to me", and read the first chapter as dramatically as I could. It was going well. Then:
In the middle of the reading - and this was jaw-droppingly unexpected - a woman stood up from her chair and started to heckle me. In particular she was annoyed that I was "reading, not TELLING!" - a point she made freely and forcefully over and over (until she was wrestled to the ground and eliminated.) It turned out that she was a) startlingly drunk on the free gin with which all were plied and b) under the mistaken impression that the Literary Death Match was an extension of monday night's "Storytelling Without A Script" event. Initially, people may have thought she was part of the routine, and I even thought she might be a plant, perhaps the stooge of an overly competitive writer out to throw me off by any means possible. (Daniel??) The weird thing is: when I am singing, I have no problem with heckles, or requests, or conversations - it's all part of the show. But I had lost myself in my reading, entered a kind of Dickensian other-consciousness, and when this racket began: I was surprised. All kinds of things went through my head: I thought I'd pretend that it was me throwing my voice; I think I said "Mum! Please be quiet!" or something along those lines; I feared that a beer was about to be thrown - this had famously happened the year before when one of the judges harshly described a writer's work as having "no literary merit" - a dick-ish thing to say at a good-humoured event - for which he received a free drink (facially). All these thoughts rattled through my mind, and probably out of my mouth, and then I went back to my text. Unbelievably, the next line was: "Nothing ever distracted him from his work." Which brought my house down. Godot moves in mysterious and welcome ways. I believe the offender was ejected.
Anyway, my rival Evany's performance was superb, as was that of the judges: Oscar Villalon of The Chronicle had become a father five days previously, and he expressed himself only via American football speak. The only thing I can now remember is that he said of Daniel Handler's gay-themed piece: "What I love about this guy, is he loves his team mates, on the field, in the locker room. He's a real team player." Villalon gave four brilliant monologues, all in the name of judging "intangibles". I can only think (he says modestly) that I triumphed because of a sympathy vote due to the heckler, but it could also have been that I bribed the judges. I can't remember which. Anyway: I was through to the final.
Daniel Handler v Gary Kumiya was a tough call, but Daniel just swung it - the judges were going to flip for it, but were discouraged, and finally chose Handler because either a) the whole thing was fixed (and more of this later) or b) Gary's superb piece of his memories of North Beach ran about half again too long. And thus the final brought me head, or arse to arse (for that is how we stood), with Daniel Handler, of the Lemony Snickett and Magnetic Fields parish.
But were we to make up limericks, or write to the literary death? No, such luck: we were to play basketball against each other - one small squashy ball, and one high small hoop each. The first to five: I lost, very enjoyably. I took a quick lead. But at some point (apparently) we were told to move nearer the hoop, since the oche - look it up, americans! - was set too far back. But this news didn't reach me, and I earnestly kept throwing from my original position, a fact of which everyone was later pleased to inform me. I have this mental image of me standing six feet from my hoop and Handler reaching up and, without breaking sweat, dropping the ball into his, an insanely evil grin on his face. But that's probably not what happened. Anxiety dreams only happen when you're asleep.
I tried to make off with his crown at the end, but he chased me round the hall - and he was a worthy winner: most importantly, his story ("Briefly" from "Adverbs") was about as good as it gets: very sad, very funny, very very funny. Not to mention the fact that he had never previously won an award for anything athletic - and so I, who have a cabinet full of bronze medals, can not begrudge him. That aside, I come to bury Daniel Handler not to praise him: he cheated. That's the real headline here.
My trip to San Francisco was fleeting, so I don't know about the rest of Litquake, but the Literary Death Match was the most fun I've had at a reading in a long while, and probably George's sole best event. And if the rest of Litquake was that good, then I salute it and long to take part next year. San Franciscans are very lucky.

In news of my life, my family is still evacuated to Rhode Island, during the redecoration of our house, and so I am on a plane, somewhere over Colorado, returning to the pocket sized T.F.Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island, eanrestly trying not to watch or hear, or even catch sight of, any of the Robin Williams vehicle "Licensed To Wed". My next trip - and when you shall hear from me (unless something pops in the next couple of weeks) - is to Memphis, after which an insane piece of routing follows: the next day, New Haven for a gig, and then the next day in Austin for the Texas Book Festival, and (this newly in) a gig at The Cactus Cafe - I'll be onstage at 10.30pm on saturday November 3rd. And check out the interesting PEN event with Sufjan Stevens and Rick Moody later on in November, at Southpaw in Brooklyn, just seconds from my front door.

It's not often I get to take part in a competition, let alone such a good-humoured one.
Viva Literary Death! Viva Opium!