"I think that some writers are drawn to the opposite of their experiences. But there was nothing dazzlingly - or opaquely - theoretical about this theory of his when it came. In fact, it had the stamp of something engagingly home-spun about it. "What was his explanation for this?" asked a member of the audience."Well, I do have a theory about that," Swift replied. The only thing that makes him at all different from the rest of us is the fact that he has a quite extraordinary gift as a storyteller.His background, as he explained to the audience this week, was quite disappointingly unexceptional - born in south London to lower middle-class parents (his father was a civil servant, for God's sake) His childhood was lacking in dramatic ructions He was too young to be bombed and too decent to be beaten.
It was, by and large, all boring contentment."Yes, I'm afraid," he said, looking a little embarrassed, "there was nothing especially painful in my background of the kind that is supposed to generate the future writer." But his characters, for all that, are quite un-Swiftian - they suffer a lot of pain and inward torment. Take Graham Swift and Kazuo Ishiguro, for example, two of this week's most persuasive and engaging speakers. Neither of these men is in the least concerned to appear bookish - their remarks are not peppered with studiedly casual references to Freud, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, for example. Nor, when they speak, do they try to suggest, by an inclination of the head or the quick gift of an unusually engaging smile, that they regard themselves as truly exceptional human beings whom we are fortunate to have in our midst for the duration.Swift is the most palpably ordinary person that anyone might wish to meet.
Why are the good people of Leeds being treated to this bizarre entertainment instead of being allowed to sip their drinks in peace? For sound dramatic reasons, as it happens. Le Medecin volant, one of Moliere's earliest plays, shows how a fake doctor and a feigned illness dupe an old man into providing his daughter with the conditions in which she can meet up with the lover he opposes. Could you please tell me exactly what kind of pepper that is to which you are referring? Not green, I assume..." "No, red," replies Okri with unusual authority "The very hot kind. It is believed to have punitive possibilities - against malaria, impotence, et cetera..."The degree of respect that a writer shows for an audience can be a way of measuring his or her common humanity. "Could you please explain something to me?" asks the elderly lady, somewhat falteringly.
Okri, fresh out of his pyjamas, indicates with a sleepy nod that he'll try. "Throughout your novels there are repeated references to pepper soup. Adults on their own, however, may feel short-changed.n 'The Hypochondriac', West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds (0113-244 2111) to 22 June; 'The Comedy of Errors', Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park, London, NW1 (0171-486 1933) in rep to 7 Sept. Three hundred people are sitting fairly uncomfortably in a wind- buffeted marquee listening to Ben Okri wrestling with the most difficultquestion that has ever been tossed a novelist's way at 10.30 on a drizzly morning in Hay-on-Wye. My eight-year-old daughter, it's only fair to say, enjoyed the whole thing and, as a painless way of introducing children to Shakespeare, the show has its virtues. Only Paula Wilcox, who arches her brows to great effect as the jealous, vampish Adriana, emerges with credit intact.