IT WAS THE NIGHT of Yom Kippur, exactly one week before it was announced that Michael Ondaatje had shared this year's Booker Prize. My father-in-law was off to a temple of prayer; I was off to a temple of commerce, better known as Holt Renfrew on Bloor Street West in Toronto. I wanted to observe Ondaatje inaction, maybe get close enough for a quick interview.
A friendly doorman invited me inside. As the escalator neared the second floor, a well-dressed crowd came into view, some of them sipping glasses of hot cider dispensed from silver samovars. About 200 people were gathered inside the Emanuel Ungaro salon. They were listening to Janice Kulyk Keefer, looking elegant in a Giorgio Armani suit. "I need to write a few best sellers so I can dress in Armani for the rest of my life," she quipped.
At the behest of Greg Gatenby, the writers were promoting the International Festival of Authors, the literary carnival that he directs every October in Toronto. As an enticement, the authors chose their own suits from the Holt Renfrew fall line and got to take them home afterwards.
The Ungaro, salon, with its black pillars, recessed lighting, and scalloped ceiling edges, reminded me of the Vatican museums. It's a place the moneyed come to worship clothes. During Keefer's talk, I reached over to check out an Italian- made woman's dress jacket. The price tag: $2950. 1 was a long way from the world of construction workers celebrated in Ondaatje's novel In the Skin of a Lion. Describing the Bloor Street viaduct -- only a kilometre or two from today's Holt Renfrew -- Ondaatje writes:
The bridge goes up in a dream .... It
will carry trains that have not even
been invented yet.
Night and day. Fall light. Snow
light. They are always working -
horses and wagons and men arriving
for work on the Danforth side at the
far end of the valley.
At last my quarry took the stage. Ondaatje looked distinguished in a charcoal grey suit and blue-grey tie. Given his known penchant for jeans and sandals, the image was shocking, too -- even for his dog. "The dog leapt from the sofa when I went downstairs in this suit," he remarked. Ondaatje chatted about writing his Booker winner, The English Patient, and was funny in a dry, offhand kind of way.
Greg Gatenby, in white cotton jeans and a blue-jean shirt -- he wasn't dressed by Holt Renfrew -- delivered a closing pitch for the festival. We were then invited to worship -- oops, mingle -- with the authors on the third floor, where the chef Jean-Pierre Sanchez was busy creating edible things out of spun sugar. The crowd, including a man with a small dog in his arms, descended on Jean-Pierre's chocolate petits fours. Small groups of people chatted with the writers; the majority gorged on chocolate. I approached Ondaatje and got out my tape recorder. He groaned when I told him I would be writing about the reception at Holt Renfrew. Ondaatje then asked me not to use the tape recorder, and we haggled. He agreed to answer a few questions on tape.
BiC: How are you handling Booker anxiety?
Ondaatje: Pretty well. For me, just to he short-listed was great. I think someone else will get it, maybe Barry Unsworth. I'm very happy, I'm not going to go there and be depressed about it. I'll probably behave badly whatever happens.
BiC:Would it change your life much if you won?
Ondaatje: I might take a few more taxis. Pay my parking hills.
BiC: You're the odds-on favourite to win.
Ondaatje: The bookies make LIP the odds and they haven't even read the books. So who are we listening to here? I don't think it has any effect on the jury. What's great about the short list is that it'll sell hooks.
BiC:If you win, you might sell a lot of books.
Ondaatje: We've sold enough right now, let's stop right here (laughs).
BiC:What's the scam on this event tonight?
Ondaatje: No scam. Greg asked me here to advertise the Harbour-front reading series. I sort of like the barter-system idea where someone reads and then you get a suit. Avoid the GST.
On my way out, I was given a Holt's bag complete with festival poster and -- ooh la la -- a sample of Chloe Narcisse perfume.
I FIRST TOOK (somewhat belated) notice of Michael Ondaatje when the Canadian Forum published "The Passions of Lalla" in 1982 -- a chapter from Running in the Family. At the Harbour-front International Festival of Authors in 1984, 1 found myself sitting beside him for a reading by Raymond Carver. Carver read "Cathedral," a story I had thought was typically grim and beautiful. Delivered orally, however, the story became a black comedy that had the audience laughing with gusto. Afterwards, Ondaatje turned and said: "Did you laugh when you first read that story?" None of us had.
During the later 1980s, I often observed Ondaatje at the Tuesday night Harbour-front readings. He usually dressed very casually -- once in flip-flop sandals, I recall -and frequently turned up to cheer his fellow writers on. Often he was at the bar by several women. During a reading by E. L. Doctorow, Ondaatje -- sitting a few rows away from me -- was visibly tense, fidgety, impatient. During one other reading, I noticed Ondaatje abruptly leave and then return once the writer was finished.
After reading In the Skin of a Lion in 1988, 1 became addicted to Ondaatje's prose. When The Brick Reader came out last year, I jumped at the chance to review it for Books in Canada. I was really after an interview with Ondaatje, one of Brick's editors. The publicist for Coach House Press, however, said Brick was really the baby of Linda Spalding, the other editor and also Ondaatje's companion. Spalding told me a story about Ondaatje's habit of sticking Brick into the hands of "locals" in taking pictures for the magazine. One issue, for example, had a "native" standing on the Great Wall of China holding a copy of Brick. The cutline read: "Brick Reader Since 1976."
Spalding said it happened again in Turkey. "We went to a mud bath ... chocka-block full of Germans in skimpy bathing suits ... and sure enough, the damned Brick came out of his duffel bag. Michael handed it to a guy who was covered with sticky, smelly mud. Practically naked. And all these Germans crowded around, laughing and hooting it up. It was the most wonderful thing that had happened to them in days."
FROM MY perspective -- middle distance, slightly skewed by raw idolatry -- Ondaatje appears to be one of the good guys. He supports fellow writers, lends his name to organizations such as the Canadian chapter of PEN, and always shares the glory. In the acknowledgements to Running in the Family, he said of his sisters' and brother's help: "This is their book as much as mine." When he accepted the Booker Prize in London, Ondaatje was quick to thank the Canadian publishing community. His humility seems to run deep, balanced by a subversive sense of burnout and an impatience with fools or perhaps lousy writers.
Lest we turn him into a saint too quickly, we can't forget that curious matter of his drug-like effect on women. Over the past few years, three female booksellers have acknowledged to me a certain biochemical response to Ondaatje's voice, piercing eyes, and so on; and Toronto Life magazine has called him one of Toronto's sexiest men.
Of course, it's unlikely Ondaatje would respond with anything more than a laugh at this line of questioning. He has a reputation for guarding his private life zealously. That's one job that may become even more difficult after winning the Booker and subsequently gracing page one of the Globe and Mail.
For me, though, the sight of Michael Ondaatje splashed across four columns of the Globe, wearing what might be a Holt Renfrew suit, was one to be relished; in this case, it's the man who is the style.
