Last night at the Writer’s Festival final event: an evening with Michael Ondaatje, in conversation with Noah Richler. Promoting his new book The Conversations (a browse of which proves to me that, once you’ve made it, you don’t need to try as hard). I remember when I’d snap up any new book by Ondaatje as soon as I saw it on a bookstore’s shelf. With this one, though (5 extended conversations with film editor Walter Murch) my eagerness has greatly diminished.

The event was quite low-key, like watching a radio interview take place. Or paint dry. But also: a chance to see “the Main Man of Canadian Lit” in the flesh, I suppose, albeit from afar; an opportunity (for a few) to ask a question from the floor; and a golden opportunity to join a long line snaking out the door of the Stanley Theatre onto Granville, everyone gamely clutching their copy of The Conversations ($34.95 in trade paperback: yikes!) in hopes of a brief audience and a whip-scrawled signature.

For the record: “Anil” is pronounced more like “panel” than “anneal” (i.e. with a stress on the first syllable); a light ripple through the audience as scores realize that they’ve been commiting literary faux pas these many months…