Sydney Writers' Festival

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Being late and linking to more exciting things

Today I got into the writing thing a bit more. So much more in fact that I missed my tram to meet my friend for lunch and ended up being fifteen minutes late, which would have been surprising for said friend, who does not know me as intimately as most of my friends do, especially Standing There Producer Rita Walsh, who I have noticed has started leaving the house at about the time our meetings are due to start. This is, I assure myself, on account of my reliability. I am reliably around fifteen minutes late, counter-balanced by another, rather more useful characteristic, which is the number of pens I tend to carry on or about my person, in a range of colours and with a range of nibs. Everyone needs pens, people. Eventually, all of you smug bastards who arrive to things on time... Eventually you'll need to borrow one of my pens. Then let's see who wishes they'd stayed home maintaining their pen supply for that extra five minutes before they looked for their house keys for another ten minutes and then left the house, huh! Who's laughing NOW.

Rita, I realise this is a complete misrepresentation quite possibly besmirching your good name but you are more likely to forgive me than anyone else is, and I am taking advantage of that fact. On the internet. Oh yes I am.

So on the topic of me being a rewarding friend, my friend Michael sent me some excellent things in an email. Now, if I ever send excellent things to people in emails, I expect equally witty and well-considered replies, more or less immediately. Michael, on the other hand, received nothing.

Which was no surprise to Michael, who has known me for a much longer time than my lunch-time friend has. However, contrary to my declaration yesterday that everyone was fired, I have now re-hired Michael, who I credit now with thanks for providing the following excellent links:

For those of you who would like the inside story (as they say in the trash mags) on the Sydney Writers' Festival (which does not get enough coverage in the trash mags in my view)... then go here, and scroll down to the Writers' Festival posts, because Arnon Grunberg (who I've mentioned in posts on the Writers' Festival before) has certainly got a way with writing snipey things about people who make money writing books about time travel. And about people who think they're funny. And just about people generally.

And Oh. My. Lordy! For all you West Wing fans, go here. Michael, I know I just hired you, but you're re-hired. Absolutely cannot wait to see a full episode of this.

Also, and nobody sent this to me, I read it unaided in The New Yorker ... Check out this review of The Da Vinci Code, which I haven't seen but Anthony Lane is my favourite film reviewer and this is one of the rare reviews of his which is entirely, whole-heartedly, grumpy. Excellent.

HOMECOMING - my novel

Hi again everyone.

So, I went to the Sydney Writers' Festival this weekend thanks to the ridiculous generosity of my friend and Standing There Captain of Industry Melanie Howlett (about whom I have been spreading rumours relating to cake consumption that I would like to unreservedly retract here in order to reverse any slanderous effect these words may have had, particularly given that Mel ran in a half marathon the weekend before last and "cake addiction" may have been a little harsh, although hopefully she is not being shunned by the uber-fit brethren of which she has become a part).

Erhem. Anyway. So I'm unsure where to start. Maybe I'll do a Rita and go with the dot point option:

1. Want to check out the festival? Go here to see a whole lot of the sessions as filmed on the day, including...

2. My favourite speaker, although needless to say I haven't read her work, was definitely Dr Maya Angelou, whose interview via satellite is able to be watched here and which was an enormously powerful thing to see live. If you look at anything, look at this. She's also a great advertisement for something I got out of this weekend: have a sense of humour and you can get away with a lot more than you can if you take yourself too seriously.

3. I also saw the following: Edmund White in conversation with David Marr (Australian writer best known for enormous biography of enormous writer Patrick White). Discussion with White of gay writing, honest writing, name-dropping, and the most interesting point I thought was a discussion about writing about your friends (White agrees it's a breach of the contract between friends to suddenly get all forensic and unforgiving and judgemental and objective when writing about friends, because that's the opposite of what you have to do in a relationship with another person, which is kind of be forgiving and take them on their own terms, subjectively).

4. Went to a thing called "The Big Reading" where Lynn Freed read two stories about a woman and her parents (can't remember if it was autobiographical or not). One was about the woman's father dying and her mother, suffering from dementia, not really understanding that her husband is not her father. It was beautifully written and beautifully read. We heard her speak later in the festival and I kind of wished we hadn't. I've given her book to my Dad because it reminds me of the writers he enjoys, but I'm going to bully him into reading it quickly so that I can read it myself. Check out her website here.

Also at The Big Reading was Hari Kunzru, who read gorgeously and I really liked what he wrote actually, but because Mel bought his book, I didn't. Given we live in different States, that seems an odd decision in retrospect. He was a deadset spunk, too, which did not go unnoticed among the very literary conversations we all had afterwards. His website is here.

Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal, who would probably have to be described as the "bad boy" of the Festival, then read a sex scene of considerable intensity to a pretty full house of (mostly grey) heads, nodded calmly and left the stage. He was a very good reader, although kind of hard to tell what his writing was like because it was pretty much erotica. He's written an article here that gives a bit of an indication of one or two little opinions he might have. And here is an article that explains why Hari Kunzru and Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal aren't exactly sharing a panel on mixed race writing.

John Banville, with that beautiful voice, read a gorgeous segment from his book The Beach, which I foolishly didn't buy.

Arnon Grunberg, who I have left until last, read some of his apparently brilliant book and he read it very well and I thought it was great, but found his accent hard to decipher, not because of how he spoke English, but because of how he intonated. This is another one I should have bought but didn't. He's great, according to all the cool kids.

5. Went to a session called Pack Your Bags, which Hari Kunzru spoke at with Susan Orlean (of Orchid Thief and Adaptation fame) and Victoria Finlay. Kunzru and Finlay were funny and interesting and Susan Orlean was definitely the travelling princess of the three of them. Demanding first class flights and five star hotels almost everywhere she travelled, made me wonder why she's a travel writer in the first place! Victoria Finlay told a great story about being bashed up by a prostitute and saved by two mormons. Definitely worth it just for that.

6. Did I mention you have to watch Dr Maya Angelou? Seriously. How someone who was raped at five, went mute for years and now recites Shakespeare and does impressions of her Grandma in church can manage to be quite so hilarious is beyond me.

7. Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal was being interviewed by a sincere twelve-year-old in a suit and it was standing room only. Dhaliwal was so completely outrageous (about women, war, other writers) that I went out and bought his book because I want to be able to have an opinion about the book as opposed to the guy.

8. Saw David Malouf. He was interesting, actually. I like thinking about writers. That was one of the good things for me actually, that it wasn't just a book festival, it was about writers too, and what makes a good writer.

9. We saw Naomi Wolf talking about the Clinton campaign she worked on, the Gore campaign she worked on, the Dove soap commercials she worked on, the issue of sexual harrassment in universities, and of course about her book. Mel bought her book, The Treehouse, which is about her father among other things.

10. Went to a session on satire, which I found less convincing than the rest of the audience seemed to, mostly because "satire" tended to be interpreted as "funny jokes that mention politics", which always annoys me a bit. Andy Borowitz from the New Yorker did essentially an hour of stand-up with Karen Finlay and Paul Krassner piping in every now and then. Mel and I asked Karen a question and she ran away from us, which was somewhat of a turn-off so we didn't buy her book (buyer's revenge). Noticed in this session that, at each festival event there are questions, and at most festival events ALL the questions are asked by women. In this one, almost all of them were asked by men. Satire and humour and so on being the comfortable domain of the bloke. Which is why we thought we'd talk to the runaway writer, Karen Finlay. See, Karen? You let down the sisterhood, not just two girls from Melbourne.

11. Good Lord, we did see a lot of stuff! (Click on writers' names below for links). The last event was an afternoon tea (with cake, see, but I'll steer clear of that topic) and Elizabeth Kostova read from her kind of mystical-sounding novel, Tegan Bennett-Daylight read a birth scene and a bullfighting scene from her book, Salley Vickers read from a book about psychiatry, Alex Miller read a really lovely little thing about a man reading a story to his little girl and making the choice about whether work comes first or family, and Aleksander Hemon read (very amusingly) from his book, Nowhere Man, which I have been reading ever since and I've nearly finished and it's great. He can also be seen on the first site I mentioned, talking about The New Yorker.

So, pretty big week, really. Add to that a house party, a bunch of Mel's truly excellent friends, an educational evening learning about Australian Wheat, vegetarianism and the economy (thanks Ingrid and Matt), a new CD by Iron and Wine thanks to Mel's friend Sean, a beef pizza, a couple of trips to some galleries (including Sam Taylor Wood's exhibition of famous men crying and David Beckham sleeping), a drink with my friend Chris, a yoga class, several hours worth of book shopping, a small fire in the middle of the table at the afternoon tea, a woman shouting "SLUTS!" and sticking her finger up at us outside the very posh hotel we were going to an event at, having coffee in the sun with our friend Michael who makes us giggle, and countless other adventures.

Plus last night I went to the opening of the St Kilda Film Festival.

I hate to be reductive, but to use a literary analogy of enormous significance: like sand through the hour glass, these were the days of our lives.

By the way, I was having a conversation about news with Mel's mates on Sunday night, and I completely forgot the urls to the sites I was mentioning. So, check these out:

The newsmap site, that graphs the way Google reports news, is here.

The other site, the one that shows the sources of news, rather than the way it's reported, is here.

And I know I've mentioned this one before, but for interesting news and great articles, go here.

THE CARNIVAL IS OVER

The Sydney Writers' Festival is over. I am trying in my own way to cope, but I won't pretend it's easy.

I've been walking around all day in my new shoes, blistering up for the plane ride home. Art galleries are interesting, but paintings don't have question and answer sessions, and they aren't cantankerous and opinionated and hilarious and they don't sign themselves for you in the foyer afterwards.

Coming home tomorrow with a whole lot of scribbled notes on the backs of envelopes. Hopefully I'll have something sensible to say by then.

OMIGOD

Sydney Writers' Festival has changed my life!

Melanie Howlett is some kind of modern day saint with a little teensy cake addiction, and I am as happy as Larry, whoever he might be. I have purchased an unnecessary number of books and I plan to begin the first chapter of at least two of them.

SYDNEY TODAY

So I'm feeling a lot better, flu wise, and guess what?

Still haven't packed.

Sometimes there's something comforting about being reliably hopeless.

I'll be back in Melbourne on Tuesday, so talk amongst yourselves while I'm gone - feel free to go and check out the Sydney Writers' Festival website so you can imagine me swanning about being well-informed and three degrees warmer than I would be in Melbourne.

Or not. Depends on how incredibly out of my depth I really am. Tune in for updates.

SICK IN SYDNEY

Why is that your body always knows what your plans are?

Yesterday, during a Law Week event in which two people dressed as chefs attended a mediation meeting referreed by a woman dressed in a full boxing uniform with gloves, I suddenly started feeling off colour. By the time I got to the Law Week Oration by Lex Lasry QC about defending unpopular causes in a climate of fear, I was positively struggling.

So, my body has held out through the comedy festival, the film screening, and even most of Law Week. But now, the day before I board a plane to HOLIDAY CITY CENTRAL, my body decides to pack the flu alongside my toothrush and my new shoes.

The worst part is, Rita and I are both in this together. I swear, if either of us ever got pregnant, the other one would suddenly shack up with someone just so that we could schedule in a convenient double-birth (preferably in the same hospital so that we could still have production meetings).

So, I missed my first diary entry in a while yesterday, and I might miss a few more if the illness and the literary glory of the Writers' Festival all gets too much. Hopefully I'll be able to report back, like the Official Media Representative from the Standing There Productions Fact Finding Team, with many cutting edge and salient points from the front.

Even if I do mostly just end up complaining about the flu.

SYDNEY

Three more sleeps until the Sydney Writers' Festival!

I haven't read nearly enough. That is to say, I've read stuff that has nothing whatsoever to do with the writers who are speaking at the Festival, which means that I'll be completely lost at question time unless someone discusses Richard Feynman, Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard or either of the Bridget Jones Diaries (and if anyone is losing respect for me right now, I have a pre-prepared and mutlilayered thesis on this topic which I DEFY anyone to contradict with authority).

So yeah, all I have to do is pack, which, given I cleaned my bedroom in the same way geologists meticulously carbondate layers of rock on the weekend, is hopefully going to be easier than it would have been.

Before then, I'm going to a whole lot of cool Law Week stuff, getting a haircut, getting my pants taken up, doing my dry cleaning, finishing some Standing There Productions stuff, reading up on the Writers' Festival, getting a flu injection, claiming back my eye doctor money on medicare, getting health insurance, taking up yoga, and starting my own charity.

Either that or I'll do nothing and then pack on Friday morning.