Rowdy Nobels

Shortly after moving here, Andrew and I decided to do something cultural: V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel Prize winning novelist, was speaking at the Bozar and we went to check him out.

Naipaul is the second Nobel-winner I’d heard speak, the first being Nelson Mandela in Montreal shortly after he’d been freed from prison. I was 15 at the time, and I remember nothing about the speech, except that the guys in front us were smoking a joint and the scent finally explained the mysterious odour that clung to certain areas of my high school.

Anyway. We trotted off to see the event, which was a reading, followed by an interview with Naipaul, followed by a “conversation” between the big guy and the audience. I got my first inkling that this was going to be different from a similar type of event back home when the woman doing the introductions spoke only in English. This would not have happened in ultra-politically correct Canada. There is no way that there’d be a similar event at, say the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and no one would bust out a phrase or two in both official languages, not to mention the First Nations’ smoke smudging ceremony and Inuit throat-singing they’d throw in for good measure. Being inclusive and avoiding offence was not high on anyone’s priority list in Belgium, as became all too clear as the night progressed.

Naipaul spoke, and since the man is a hundred and ten, it was not the most dynamic reading I’d ever heard, but it was perfectly fine if a bit rambling.

Things got strange when it was time to take questions from the audience. The hall was quite large, and the organizers hadn’t made any provisions for microphones, so people initially shouted their questions across vast distances. This angered the slobs in the back, who began yelling that they couldn’t hear. They interrupted Naipaul as he tried to answer questions in his thin, elderly voice, demanding that he speak up. The man’s a Nobel Prize winner, but the Belgians felt no compunction in screaming at him to raise his voice.

Finally, someone found a portable microphone. In theory the moderator would point to someone who had their hand raised, and that person would get the microphone and ask their question. This made perfect sense to rule-abiding me. Only, the Belgians didn’t like that theory. Instead, as the microphone was being passed through the crowd to the designated speaker, someone who thought their question was more relevant would “hijack” it.
The hijacker would start to ask something. The moderator would say, “No, no, I want this person to speak,” pointing to the person they’d designated. But the hijacker would ignore her, and continue with their question. This happened two or three times, until the moderator got very agitated. The audience, obviously feeding off her anger, also became quite belligerent. It’s at this point that I should point out that the crowd consisted of tweedy academics, nerdy, weedy passive looking types who all looked like they had been bullied in grade school (except Andrew and I, ahem). Looks were deceiving, because within the audience’s seeming geekiness, lurked a startling aggression.

Once a hijacker, when challenged by the master of ceremonies said “I don’t care what you want, I’ve got the microphone, so I’ve got the power.” This statement was greeted by wild cheers from the rest of the audience, as if the speaker was reflecting all of their pent-up rage and frustration.

I was completely bewildered by the whole thing. The event, which I thought was about listening politely to vaguely doddery Naipaul, turned into this antagonistic free-for-all with the audience devolving into an anarchic crowd of mic stealers who revelled in sticking it to the “man.” What was most startling was that the “man” was the revered and elderly Naipaul, who everyone had PAID to hear speak.

In Canada we would have listened respectfully, asked a few soft-spoken questions and called it a night. Here the audience got involved and battled with each other, the moderator and Naipaul himself.

While it wasn’t at all what I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed the night. I left invigorated by the debate… Who knows, if we stay here long enough, I might get the courage to hijack the mic.