Last week I went to a reading in San Francisco by Steven Hall, author of the much-blogged-about, already-destined-for-the-movie-screen, absolutely original novel “The Raw Shark Texts.” In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess at the outset of my post (as I have already confessed to Mrs. Cayenne) that I have a ridiculous schoolgirl crush on Mr. Hall. So there. Keep that in mind as you read on.

Having never been to a reading before – much less blogged about one – I’m not sure where to start or what to say. Hall read from three chapters in the book, which, when heard together, tell their own short story of sorts. He started with the opening to Chapter 4, which finds Eric sitting on the beach waving/saluting to Clio, who is out in the ocean snorkeling, topless (or, more accurately, “continentally tits out”). Here’s an amusing part of Chapter 4 that he read:

Actually, here’s something important about Clio; when she says ‘tits’ she sounds smart and sexy and 21st-century – ‘There’s no point fucking around with these things, Eric’ – the way some women, and I suppose some guys effortlessly can. When I say ‘tits,’ though, I sound like a sleazy tabloid journalist.

“Tits out” may be my new favorite phrase. The other parts he read were from a later section of the same chapter, when Eric and Clio talk about how “It’s tiring not knowing people, isn’t it?”; Chapter 1, when he first comes out of unconsciousness, and then when he meets Dr. Randle for the first time and she tells him that he had a girlfriend named Clio and that she’s dead; and Chapter 13, when he gets a mysterious call on his cell phone, and after listening to static for a few moments, blurts out, “Clio?”

After the reading, Hall took a few questions (the crowd was light, and not all that talkative). I asked what I explained was probably a “very American, not particularly intellectual” question – “What’s so funny/odd about the cat being named Ian?” Hall laughed, and said that he gets that question a lot in the States. Apparently “Ian” is a very plain, geeky name in the UK, and there is in fact a soap opera character by that name who he says is very “un-catlike.” The crowd collectively decided that the equivalent cat name in the US would be something like “Bob” or “Fred.”

In response to another of my questions (really, everyone else was being lame), Hall told us that one of his favorite things about the book is the “character” of Ian. He has no role at all in developing the plot, but he has such a presence, and he really becomes as much a character as any other. Hall wowed the very artsy Haight-Ashbury crowd (and the very un-artsy me) with the diversity of his talents – he’s sculpted, painted, photographed, made short films, written and produced plays, and he’s at work on his next novel. Which he’s basically writing in his head. Which is the way he wrote TRST (as he stared out the window on his hour-long-each-way train commute to his last day job.) (“What do I have to show for my daily train commute,” I began to wonder.) Only this time, Hall admits he’s making a few more notes – which are mostly doodles on a large sketchpad. Wow. (You’re getting a crush on him now, too, aren’t you? Admit it.)

At the book signing table, I revealed my identity as the West Coast BGB correspondent. Hall was very gracious about the “quite nice things” the BGB’ers have said about him and the book. He laughed about the kitten-blood edition and half a dozen other versions of the book that have landed on the Cayenne family doorstep. When he saw that my copy of the book didn’t have its dust jacket on (because the jacket would get all mangled on my train commute, what with the constant in-and-out of the tote bag), he decided that it needed some cover art to relieve the stark whiteness. So now it looks like this:

personalized raw shark

Hall also gave me a supply of these to leave around in un-space:

There is a special severed-kitten-tail version on the back of the calling card just for DJ Cayenne:

I’m going to wait for someone else to post on the book itself. But I will say that I found it to be one of the most original, gripping, masterfully constructed, beautifully written books I’ve read in quite a long time. Hall has a gift for understanding and translating into words what it feels like to think and remember and dream and love and imagine. Here’s an example:

What a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours. Staring into space myself, I found the light floaty scrap of tune rising up out of the back of my mind as I chewed. It made me think about how, in the dark places of yourself, thinking machines you never get near enough to see are constantly building things and running their own secretive programmes all of their own. Maybe you get a snippet of what’s going on back there, like this fragment of a song drifting its way into the light, or a phrase, or an image, or maybe just a mood, a wash of content or a bleak draining of colour that floods your chest and your stomach more than it ever finds its way into the bright halogen chrome of your mind.

If you don’t already have a copy of TRST, let DJC know – he may have some free copies left!