David Simon Star rating: *****
Hilary Mantel & Adam Thorpe Star rating: ***
Fiona Millar Star rating: **
Margaret Atwood Star rating: **
David Simon arrived at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in the week shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling compared parts of Manchester with the mean streets of Baltimore as depicted on The Wire, Simon's uber-gritty TV show. The comparison was spurious but one that speaks to the show's ever-growing profile in the UK. In the flesh, Simon looks a little like Herc, the only point of resemblance between him and The Wire's dumbo cop character.
In 1989, Simon spent a year in Baltimore's homicide department. He wrote up his experiences in Homicide, one of the great pieces of reportage of the past quarter-century. He told his rapt audience on Saturday night about visiting his first murder scene, a drug dealer shot through the eye. He recalled the victim's "bloody wink", which is the sort of tough, powerfully visual image that made Homicide, then The Wire, so special.
As a 12-year-old, we learned, Simon read two newspapers daily. "In my house, to be taken seriously, you had to be able to sustain an abstract political argument during Friday evening's meal." A one-time crime reporter, Simon lamented the way in which Wall Street had ruined newspapers once the suits realised in the 1990s that they could make more money out of worse newspapers. And for those who think bloggers can replace professional journalists, he called that "naive, an infantile thought".
Although better known as a programme-maker, Simon's appearance at the Book Festival was appropriate as The Wire's five seasons are more novelistic than many of the actual novels peddled during the EIBF.
It's been some time since I encountered a character as joyfully and successfully rendered as Omar Little, the gay stick-up artist who robs from the gangstas to give to the poor. A latter-day Robin Hood, Omar's role-model, we learned from Adam Thorpe yesterday, was, in fact, little more than a medieval gangster. Thorpe shared the stage at 10am with Hilary Mantel in one of the smaller Book Fest venues. Mantel is among the country's best living novelists and critics, while her latest novel, Wolf Hall, which takes Thomas Cromwell as its protagonist, is the favourite to win this year's Booker Prize. Why wasn't she in the main theatre later in the day? Poor scheduling.
Mantel and Thorpe's session comprised a lucid discussion of how both writers came to write historical novels. Cromwell was born a blacksmith's son and died the Earl of Essex. Mantel's epic novel explained how he did it. He was, she said, "probably the only boy who ran away from home to become a merchant banker". Henry VIII's ruthless enforcer, Mantel called him "Alastair Campbell with an axe".
Campbell was in the press earlier this week, criticising Grayling for his bogus Wire reference. Turns out Campbell's only seen half of one episode, giving up because - don't choke! - there was too much swearing. His wife, Fiona Millar, attended the EIBF yesterday to plug her book, which explores the dilemmas of working mums.
Her big idea is that the government should back a programme of affordable childcare to get mums back to work. She thinks it's a vote-winner and can't see why political parties won't adopt it, while admitting it's expensive. Millar's intentions are good, but even more than usual at the EIBF, this felt like little more than a talking shop.
"I'm a pessimist," David Simon said before signing off. "I'm watching my country flail around and lie to itself about healthcare. Imagine how badly we're going to go about something international and overarching like global warming."
Another pessimist, going by the number of futuristic dystopias she's created, is Margaret Atwood.
Atwood's latest The Year of the Flood takes place after disease and catastrophe have reduced humanity to a handful divided between God's Gardeners, religio-ecologists, and the Corporations' gene-splicing authoritarian despoilers. To mark the launch, an event was held in St John's Church, a playlet based on the book read out by Atwood and a number of others, including Richard Holloway, the EIBF's "guest" director.
Proceedings had more than a whiff of amateur dramatics to it. Atwood's faux-hymns broke up the readings, sounding more happy-clappy than ecclesiastical. During the up-tempo numbers, Atwood bopped at the side of the stage. And yet, perhaps because of the solemn surroundings, the event never sparked into life. It was wearyingly dull. One almost wished one was in Baltimore, where matters are many things, but never boring.
