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.