Tuesday 12 April 2011

James Frey at Lutyens & Rubinstein

My scribbled notes from James Frey's first event promoting The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, at Lutyens and Rubenstein in Notting Hill.

1) The tiny downstairs of L&R converts into an event space when they part the bookcases and reveal their office space, complete with framed jacket artwork. Genius!

2) Someone brought a miniscule sausage dog which, distractingly, snored exactly like an old man, throughout.

3) James was influenced by Joseph Campbells's Hero With a Thousand Faces, which apparently shows the phases common to all messiah myths.

4) Quotes of the evening:

"Is it at all autobiographical?" - Felicity Rubinstein, tongue firmly in cheek.

"I would love it not to be read as a work of antagonism" - James Frey

"I thought, I want to do to somebody what that book (Tropic of Cancer) did to me" - James Frey on his influences

"I also wrote a book called The Wind Howls Ha!" - James Frey