CITY Issue 52

Book Club In a dodgy part of London, literary types who scoff at bestselling shlock flock to Book Slam, where authors, musicians, and cocktails all take center stage. Emily Rotberg takes a listen. THERE’S A STRANGE ALCHEMY TONIGHT IN THIS red-walled club beneath the highway. Groups cluster around low tables or create space by leaning back between their friend’s knees against sofas. Knots of people with wine twitter and look forth expectantly, waiting for someone to take the stage—and for the reading to begin. The room quiets as a man approaches the microphone. This is Patrick Neate. People know him, he’s the reason everyone here ventured down a few more dodgy alleyways than they would have on a typical Thursday evening. “Feeling relaxed?” he asks, and people nod, thinking he’s asking them directly. “Feeling Thursday.… Feeling Ladbroke Grove. Nice crack addict outside, threatened to kill me.” The crowd laughs. “No joke there.” He continues, promising “bite-sized chunks of literature and music for you to listen to … and if you get a bit twitchy you can know it will be over in 15 minutes, and you can go to the bathroom and read Heat and watch Big Brother.” Brother Of course, that’s exactly what Neate hopes that none of the people who come to Book Slam, his monthly literary nightclub event, will ever, ever do. (By the way, by Heat, Heat he means the British weekly gossip magazine, not Bill Buford’s acclaimed foodie bestseller.) If they were interested in that kind of thing, they wouldn’t have trekked out to West London for this bookish carnival, where novelists, poets, and musicians take their 15 minutes on the stage and give the crowd time to refill their drinks in between. At tonight’s event, Hari Kunzru reads from his new novel, set in a part of London about 10 minutes east of the Book Slam venue. Irish poet Aoife Mannix hobbles to the microphone on an injured ankle and performs a piece about her childhood and earlier, before her mother and father were engaged, when “she agreed to be his idea of perfect.” Energized, Kunzru returns, and instead of reading again from his new release he chooses “The Interns,” a short story composed the week before. This isn’t your average book reading—knitting women in cat sweatshirts and slick-palmed autograph seekers are nowhere to be seen. Nor is it devastatingly hip. Well, not entirely. It’s the kind of evening that, at every break, sees friends turning to each other to say, “Isn’t this great … and unusual?” It wasn’t always this easy. When Neate and co-founder Ben Watt started Book Slam four years ago, they struggled to convince people that books were a viable basis for a club night. But then the big names got interested. A string of high-profile novelists agreed to perform—London writers Zadie Smith (“she read brilliantly,” Neate says), This page: Author Jonathan Safran Foer reads to Book Slam audience members. Opposite: Book Slam brings Londoners together for an evening of words, music, and cocktails. B O O K S L A M P H OTO S : N I C K C U N A R D , W W W. N I C K C U N A R D . C O . U K PHOTO GRAP H Y B Y NI CK CU NA RD CITY 53 http://www.NICKCUNARD.CO.UK

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CITY Issue 52

CITY Issue 52 Contents Letter from CITY Our Friends Action Wanted City Moment In Rogue Fit The Amused Bouche Fast Food Must Haves Hot Wheels Idol Handlers Design Public Affairs Pluck of the Draw Novel Ideas Monster's Belle Not Guilty The Understudies The Hunger Elastique Where to Buy It Socials Icon

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