Finding a New Direction for Criticism

Yesterday’s ALR in the Australian, ran an article on the state of Australian criticism by Geordie Williamson calling for a return to old-style reviewing and scholarship.

Williamson has a hit list of what to keep from critical theory (“Greater circumspection in making broad or universalist claims” and “A healthy suspicion of fixed literary canons”) as well aspects to throw out notably “a disregard for literature’s special status, lumping it with every other form of writing, from bus tickets to bumper stickers”. It’s a bold piece of writing in which Williamson lays a blueprint for the future of criticism.

While he acknowledges the importance of the internet as “ridiculously cheap, blisteringly fast and the online community it engenders is one that thrives on argument and constant to-and-fro”, he doesn’t see it as the democratic saviour of criticism. While he sees the potential of the web as a tool, he hasn’t seen this potential met, decrying that “For every brilliant new blogger that has emerged, 100 pallid yes-men (and women) have sprung up.”

It’s a view supported by ALR editor, Stephen Romei, in his last blog post as editor (he moves on to become the Australian’s literary editor). Romei defends the piece because “the internet age means we need old-fashioned literary critics, humanist thinkers such as Geordie, more than ever”.

End of the Edinburgh Book Fest

After eighteen literary days, the Edinburgh International Book Fest has drawn to a close. I can barely even describe how immense the program was – think 750 authors, 220,000 visitors, thousands of books sold (and signed), and hundreds of events… huge.

The final weekend went off with a bang. A public holiday Monday, the events on across the three days from Saturday were fantastic. While big name writers like Anthony Bourdain, Will Self and Joyce Carol Oates entertained crowds in the main tent, unpublished writers were also included in the Writers of the Future stream. On the final night were some conflicting and equally appealing events – unable to decide, I did both.

During the Festival, one of Scotland’s most-loved poets, Edwin Morgan, died. The festival worked hard to put together a tribute to him on the final evening of the festival. The tribute included sixteen of Scotland’s respected poets reading a Morgan poem each, and was a lively, poignant and fascinating event.

More lighthearted was the closing night of Unbound, with readings and song from local authors and songwriters. I have really enjoyed Ryan van Winkle, Alan Bissett and Doug Johstone at the Book Fest, and it was great to hear them again on the final night. Scottish indie rocker King Creosote played the final set to an audience who was intent on drinking the night away.

The end of the Festival for the public is not quite the last day though… on Tuesday, Charlotte Square was overrun with thousands of kids on the schools gala day. The festival hosts a whole day of kids-only programming, packing out not just the children’s area but all the tents at the festival, to connect young readers with writers.

The pace of the festival never faltered, with the incredible staff staying energetic and on top of things to the end. Now that the festival is over, the literary city at Charlotte Square will be packed down – and the organisers can enjoy a well-deserved rest.

I have been blown away by the quality (and quantity!) of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. After two-plus weeks of inspiring sessions, panels, parties and conversations, I am buzzing with ideas and thoughts about what makes a great writers' festival. Although very sad to be leaving beautiful Edinburgh, I’ll be keeping an eye on literary Edinburgh, both through reading the Scottish lit blogs I discovered and through the Edinburgh City of Literature website.

Wordy Mofo Begins

Last night a new magazine crept onto Australian screens in the form of Sydney-based Wordy Mofo. Over 85 easily browsable pages the magazine features stories on e-rotica, a new Bill Hicks documentary and adult Lego (with a tagline explaining “that doesn’t mean sexytime action with little plastic guys. Though it can.”)

The beauty of the online magazine is that it can be glossy and design-heavy as it likes without worrying about print costs. Wordy Mofo’s first edition certainly is attractive but can it sustain content over several issues?

Lisa Gorton, Our First Poet in Residence

In partnership with RMIT, the Australian Poetry Centre is bringing a poet in residence to the Wheeler Centre.

The program will mean that poets have the opportunity to write but also be available for workshops and weekly Meet the Poet sessions, which allow aspiring poets to talk about their writing with the poet in residence.

Lisa Gorton is the first poet in residence and brings with her an impressive writing CV. Her first collection, Press Release, won the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Melbourne Best Writing Prize. She’s gone on to complete a Doctorate at Oxford University on John Donne’s poetry and prose, and won the John Donne Society Award for Distinguished Publication in Donne Studies.

While at the Wheeler Centre, Gorton will be working on a collection of poems set in the future and she’ll post portions of her work here for you to discuss and explore. But if you want to talk directly in person Gorton will be available on 16th of September in her first Meet the Poet session.

Heart of Black and White

A US edition of Conrad’s best-known work

Is there anything that can’t be made into a graphic novel? Joseph Conrad’s classic Heart of Darkness is being re-imagined as a black and white comic book , the Guardian reports.

Illustrator Catherine Anyango told the paper she had her reservations about taking on such a significant book. “I wasn’t sure initially if it was a good subject for a graphic novel as the writing is so dense and the style of it is partly what attracts me to the book.”

The book’s density didn’t stop Francis Ford Coppola from appropriating it for his Vietnam movie, Apocalypse Now. Anyango tried to steer clear of other adaptations of Conrad’s novel, “Partly because I didn’t want to end up with any similar visuals and also I had been warned that something nasty happens to a cow … [but] Apocalypse Now is huge and well, apocalyptic, but Heart of Darkness is a much quieter story.”

As a Swedish-Kenyan artist, Ayango brings a perspective that straddles both coloniser and colonised. But she told the Guardian that her story looks beyond those defintions. “I wasn’t trying to tell the history of colonialism either, but to situate this particular narrative in a way that people might ask: what on earth was the attitude of that time that these things could happen?” The horror, not as a colonial antique, but as a universal artifact.

Superpoets land on MWF

The last few days of the festival have focussed on the schools programme which has meant writers adopting super-human alter egos. For Michelle Dabrowski and Sean M Whelan (both pictured) they’ve become the Superpoets, with a show in Fed Square’s Atrium culminating in the Out Loud Big Bang Grand Finale. The finale brings together six schools to battle it out for supremacy and possibly a few evil super villains.

Yesterday saw the great debate, Fading Twillight, which asked if Stephanie Myers' books were “harmless, escapist fantasy that is inspiring more teens to read than ever before or mind-numbing, badly plotted tripe?”

On Twitter, Anniene Stockton thought author “@vanbadham gave the winning debate! Van you rock!!” But it was Badham’s team who were defeated by the affirmative including Chris Flynn who talked persuasively about “frozen vampire penises” and convinced that Twillight’s vampires will no longer drain our bookshelves.

A Moral Duty to Act by Kon Karapanagiotidis

I often think everyone should ask themselves the basic question that I pose to myself each day: What would I do if I was fleeing for my life and trying to save my family? I know I would do whatever it took. I would get on a boat – no matter how dangerous – and would pay every last cent I had if it meant my family could live another day. Wouldn’t you do the same?

In the nine years since I started the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, I have sat face to face with thousands of asylum seekers, trying to provide them with support and legal advice. There is a lot I notice in those moments: the look of fear, despair and uncertainty on people’s faces; the weariness of a life lived on the run from persecution; and the slump of bodies overwhelmed with experiences of loss and grief.

The memories sit deep within me. I don’t want to forget a single one. I’ve held a man in my arms as he wept uncontrollably, having just tried to take his own life. I’ve rushed to the hospital at 3am to be at the bedside of a 10-year-old little girl after she tried to hang herself with a bedsheet while in detention. I’ve struggled to find a way to conjure up some hope – many thousands of times over – as the words “I don’t want to be here”, “I’m scared that my government will kill me if I go home” and “I am losing all hope” have all been uttered to me.

In these moments I feel, and waver between, so many emotions: from compassion and deep sadness at how much people suffer and sacrifice to be free, to amazement at the courage and resilience of people who have risked their lives to keep their families safe from harm, and a deep sense of anger at how our government treats people seeking asylum.

Never in those moments do I look at the person as someone to fear, or someone whose plight should be politicised. I look and think how easily that could be me, my mum or my sister. I remind myself that life is a human lottery; that I could have been born anywhere and it could so easily be me fleeing for my life on a leaky boat, begging for Australia to show me some compassion and care about my human rights.

Image courtesy of The Big Issue

I also think how, apart from Indigenous Australians, most people’s forebears came on a boat to Australia as migrants. The only difference is that they were welcomed and wanted. Today, everywhere I look, the message is the same. It’s Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott vowing to be ‘tough’ on asylum seekers and stop the boats. Or our mainstream media telling me that we are being swamped by refugees. I wonder how a moral and humanitarian issue has become a political one. I question why, in a country as multicultural, peaceful and prosperous as ours, we fear people arriving by boat.

In the past, I have naively thought the facts would bring an end to the fearmongering – by explaining to people that we receive just a few thousand asylum seekers each year, and that they pose no threat to our way of life or sustainability. I want to explain that 99.99% of people who entered Australia last year did so by plane; that Australia takes just 0.03% of the world’s refugees and displaced people; and that there are 76 countries that take more refugees than we do, based on wealth.

These days, I talk about a much simpler truth: the moral responsibilities that come with living in a free and democratic country, and what it means to be an Australian. This means we have a moral duty to act and show compassion to vulnerable, innocent people who are fleeing for their lives.

Being Australian should count for something greater than pandering to baseless fears. We should stand up for what is moral and just. The idea of turning back the boats or being tough on people who are fleeing war and torture represents the worst in us as human beings.

I know that, deep down, we are far better than this.

Kon Karapanagiotidis is the founder of Melbourne’s Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. For more information, visit asrc.org.au. Article first appeared in The Big Issue, Ed#361, 17–30 August, 2010.

Unhappy Ending for The Mousetrap

The Independent reports that Agatha Christie’s heirs are dragging Wikipedia to court for the online encyclopedia’s spoilers that give away the plot twists and ending of the 1952 mystery play.

Wikipedia’s entry for the play features a section called Identity of the Murderer which explains that “audiences are asked not to reveal the identity of the killer to anyone outside the theatre, to ensure that the end of the play isn’t spoiled for future audiences” and then goes on to baldly state the identity of the murderer.

Christie’s grandson, Matthew Prichard, told the paper, “I think it is a pity if a publication, if I can call it that, potentially spoils the enjoyment for those people who go to see the play. It’s not a question of money or anything like that.” Pritchard was given the rights to the play on his 9th birthday by Christie.

Wikipedia defends its position as a reference work that supplies all information about a variety of literary works, but fans of the 20th century’s most famous crime writer claim that it ruins the play’s impact. Wikipedia removed its spoiler warnings in 2007 which would have offered Christie devotees fair warning that the play’s ending will be given away.

Opening NZ Policy Making to the Web

If Julia Gillard was looking around for ideas on the climate change assembly, they could take a leaf out of the New Zealand left’s book as they’ve created Open Labour.

Based on a simple wiki model, anyone can jump in and make policy suggestions for the Labour Party from their own version of the national broadband network to editing opposition leader, Phil Gough’s speech.

Whether it represents a political publicity stunt or a genuine appeal for an open government that listens as well as delivers slogans remains to be seen. There’s a great suggestion for Stephen Conroy on the internet filter though “Make a filter opt-in. Let the default internet be uncensored but make it easy for people to choose to be censored if they wish. Make the policies around what is censored be developed in a transparent way.”

New Yorker unafraid of gay marriage

The New Yorker is speaking up about gay marriage after the back and forth appeals in California about Proposition 8, the state’s referendum on same-sex marriage.

In the small window between the decision to allow gay marriage on 4th of August and a federal judge Vaugh Walker’s ruling that it was unconstitutional, several same-sex couples tied the knot. Others are looking to civil unions, which the article calls “marriage-lite, lacking the constricting, exalting, maddening qualities of the real thing”.

But the “m-word” still has a lot of value. The article concludes “Judge Walker found that, rather than seeking a novel right, the plaintiffs are asking California ‘to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages.’”

Andrew Wylie Retreats on E-books

The great digital rights siege of 2010 seems to be over as uber-agent Andrew Wylie has brokered a peace with Random House and is “in discussion” with Penguin Books.

After breaking ranks with traditional publishing because of disputes over paying his authors for electronic rights, Wylie founded his own online publishing company. But if you want to buy from Odyssey Editions for your Kindle, you’d better be quick because the list has shrunk from the original 20 titles to 7. Of the remaining books, 2 are Penguin titles (Saul Bellow’s Adventures of Augie March and William Burroughs' Junky) so the list may be reduced even further.

And the price paid for getting Wylie’s authors back inside Random House? According to Publisher’s Weekly’s source at Random House, royalties on digital editions are “built around a sliding schedule that can approach 40%”. Wylie hasn’t made any comment on dismantling Odyssey Editions, as it could still prove a useful weapon in Wylie’s war.

Snowy Mountain Scheme for the 21st Century by Leigh Ewbank

Recently Australia celebrated the 60th anniversary of the momentous Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Power Act – the first step in a 25-year journey to modernise our nation. Unrivalled in its ambition, the Snowy Mountains Scheme would meet the dual objectives of providing reliable electricity for our cities and towns, and water supplies to sustain food production along the Murray River.

Australia’s largest-ever engineering project would spur social and economic development and benefit the cities and rural communities of Australia’s southeast for generations. Without fanfare or media attention, Australia forgot to acknowledge a significant moment in our nation’s history.

Today Australia faces new challenges: our climate is changing. And we must quickly transition to a clean energy economy to avoid the worst-case scenarios predicted by climate scientists. Alongside this comes the continued global economic change that is putting increased pressure on established industries. Our parliament must act to encourage the expansion of new industries and secure jobs for the future.

A new nation-building project on the scale of the Snowy Mountains Scheme is needed.

The backbone of a scheme for the 21st century will rewire the nation, laying the foundations for a clean energy revolution. Australia needs new transmission lines to connect population centres to our abundant renewable energy resources. Currently, our windy southern coast; our vast deserts; and our rich geothermal resources, are untapped. A renewable electricity grid can open up new regions to development, unleash private investment in renewable energy production, and allow for these new energy markets to flourish. It’s needless to say that this comes with new jobs, prosperity, and the important benefit of mitigating climate change.

Importantly, such a scheme will overcome the deficiencies of the Rudd Government’s so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Emissions trading will not build new electricity grids, particularly to remote places rich with renewable resources. High capital costs and the lack of short-term profitability of building this type of infrastructure is beyond the capacity of the private sector. Furthermore, building new grid infrastructure does not directly reduce emissions and will therefore not benefit from emissions offset markets. Our government must step in to provide the public investment and long-term vision required to carry out such a scheme.

While carbon reductions targets and “market-based” policies might captivate bureaucrats and policy wonks, they have failed to win the hearts and minds of Australian citizens. These policy tools say nothing about Australia’s collective aspirations and abilities, and miss the opportunity to generate the public support necessary to build a clean energy economy. Because emissions trading is not directly linked to specific projects it is unable to capture the public’s imagination the way that monumental, government-backed projects have in the past. The best examples of which include the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Snowy Mountains Scheme.

I’m not the first Australian to call for a massive nation-building project. In 2006, Professor Tim Flannery attempted to capture public imagination by evoking the spirit of the Snowy Scheme. He proposed the construction of a sustainable city in the heart of Australia called “Geothermia”. The city would harness geothermal and solar energy to process mineral resources. New rail lines would connect key mines to the mineral-processing hub, and then to the port of Darwin for export. This was a big vision.

So why didn’t Flannery’s initiative gain traction? And would a similar proposal work now? Well, apart from Flannery’s poor choice of name, I think there are two good reasons that explain the lack of interest, and the context has changed enough for a visionary project to succeed. First, the neo-liberal consensus was still strong in 2006. John Howard was the PM and the prevailing economic orthodoxy prohibited large-scale public investment. The financial crisis of 2008-9 has since undermined the neo-liberal consensus and governments around the world are now implementing massive public investment programs.

Second, climate change and environmental advocates did not support the plan. For too long climate change advocates have focused on technocratic and uninspiring policy proposals – a 20 per cent carbon reduction target by 2020 and the implementation of carbon trading. With several environmental groups now opposing the Rudd Government’s CPRS and proposing a “Plan B”, there is now a window of opportunity for these advocates to adopt a new campaign that focuses on building the enabling infrastructure of a clean energy economy.

I suspect environmental advocates are reluctant to employ a powerful myth because of the Snowy Scheme’s environmental impacts. It’s true that the scheme harmed the Snowy River, but this should not disqualify the use of Australia’s myths and nation-building projects for responses to climate change. Environmental advocates must also overcome the false perception that “strong” reduction targets guarantee emissions reductions. On the contrary, because an effective response to climate change requires building the infrastructure for a clean energy economy, the Snowy Scheme is a better model than one that emphasises targets and trading.

Is Australia ready for a massive nation-building project to deal with the twin challenges of climate and global economic change? Yes it is. As the Parliament demonstrated 60 years ago, our political leaders must act in Australia’s long-term interest to ensure that such a project becomes a reality.

Cross posted from the Real Ewbank, the blog of Leigh Ewbank.

Megalogenis on Green’s Day

Before the election, George Megalogenis was already seeing a swing to the Greens. Back in July Megalogenis called the rise of the Greens as a “decade-long trend… [with] half the new Greens bandwagon probably comes from the Democrats”.

And in the seat of Melbourne, Megalogenis predicted the rise of Adam Bandt at the start of August. Megalogenis called it as “Labor has more to fear from the Greens than the Coalition… The nation’s youngest electorate is Melbourne and is ripe for the Greens now that Lindsay Tanner is leaving politics.” He saw the election as a “five horse race” and perhaps with Bob Katter riding into town he may have underestimated only slightly.

Cory Doctrow on Curated Computing

(Image courtesy of Joi Ito)

Meanland guest Cory Doctrow believes that ‘the personal and the handmade’ are the future of content, according to his latest Guardian column.

He argues that while pulling together information in curated websites or iPhone apps is the future there are still two things that defy curation: the personal and the tailored. The personal is obvious (Doctrow reckons it is “pictures of my family, videos of my daughter, notes from my wife, stories I wrote in my adolescence”), but tailoring content is where things get difficult.

According to Doctrow when content is tailored for readers, it becomes possible to create monopolies deciding what is available to readers. He calls it “coercive curation”. And Doctrow, who believes information deserves to be free, has no time for that. He closes the piece “The only real reason to adopt coercive curation is to attain a monopoly over a platform – to be able to shut out competitors, extract high rents on publishers whose materials are sold in your store, and sell a pipe dream of safety and beauty that you can’t deliver, at the cost of homely, handmade, personal media that define us and fill us with delight

Rudd Tops the Charts

It seems like readers haven’t quite forgotten Rudd – Jessica Rudd at least. Fancy Goods reports Jessica Rudd’s book Campaign Ruby was the most mentioned book in the media last week for the second week in a row.

Much has been made of Rudd’s novel as eerily predicting her father’s future as she writes of a prime minister rolled by his own deputy. Nine News even suggested that Rudd moved her book launch “to capitalise on the election hype” and that Labor’s campaign launch was overshadowed by the book.

The hype surrounding the book was partly due to the massive shift to political news as Fancy Goods notes that Chaser comedian Dominic Knight’s yarn about student politics, Comrades, and Mary Delahunty’s political memoir Public Life, Private Grief, were also getting a run in the media.

Waiting for Godin to Publish

Bestselling author Seth Godin dropped a bombshell on publishing when he told Galleycat that he was no longer going to publish books in a traditional way. After publishing a dozen print books, Godin slammed traditional publishing “12 for 12 and I’m done. I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread…”

Unsurprisingly not everyone cheered Godin’s declaration of independence for physical books. Novelist Colson Whitehead tweeted back “Is he going to publish his books….WITH HIS MIND????”

Godin gave only a little more detail on his blog where he said “As the methods for spreading ideas and engaging with people keep changing, I can’t think of a good reason to be on the defensive.” Godin’s move is one of several authors who are reviewing their relationship with publishing houses.

Inside the Bookcase Conference by Lisa Demptser

Will climate change lead to the next major global war? How can book festivals around the world work together to create and deliver dynamic programs? Is swearing on stage a bad thing? These were just a few of the questions that delegates were pondering at the British Council Bookcase Conference, a four-day event that brought fifty literary professionals from around the world together in Edinburgh on the weekend.

The Conference involved attending many events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, to meet and discover new and established British writers. It was a joy to be able to see literary giants like AS Byatt, Ian Rankin and DBC Pierre, and they were as intelligent and entertaining as you would imagine. But it was the writers who I had not previously known that really captivated me, particularly Janice Galloway, Denise Mina, Russell Celyn Jones, Doug Johnson and Gwynn Dyer – great writers, do check them out!

The topics covered in panel sessions were as diverse as British extremism, global literature, wealth and misery, and new Scottish voices in literature – to name just a few. In addition to the debates and discussions we attended the James Tait Black Memorial Prize ceremony. Evenings were more informal, spent at Unbound, where the entertainment ranged from a Canongate books party to a McSweeney’s shindig. Moving from the serious to the light-hearted, it was a very thought-provoking, entertaining and inspiring weekend of events.

Luckily for the delegates, there were also plenty of networking and socialising opportunities. Each day we visited a different literary venue in Edinburgh for lunch and to chat with festival guests and local writers. Through these visits we were able to explore the National Library of Scotland and the exceptional Scottish Poetry Library http://www.spl.org.uk/, and to meet many of Edinburgh’s writers and literary professionals, including Scotland’s Storytelling Centre, the Scottish Book Trust and City of Literature Trust. For a city of half a million people, Edinburgh has an incredibly diverse and vibrant literary scene, with plenty of events and lots of people engaged with books and reading.

We also enjoyed a breakfast with Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and heard him speak about the machinations of programming the fest. And of course, no conference would be complete without a party, which was a lively event enjoyed by delegates and other bookish movers and shakers on Saturday night.

The Bookcase delegates were truly international, with representatives from all over the world. All delegates run festivals or cultural institutions in their own countries, and there was a lot of chatter between us about what we do and how we might be able to work together in the future. It was inspiring to spend time with so many talented and dedicated literary leaders, including fellow Aussies Susan Hayes (Australia Council), Katherine Dorrington (Perth Writers’ Festival) and Chip Rolley (Sydney Writers’ Festival).

The four-day conference was jam-packed with thoughtful discussion, creative conversation and learning. Less tangible but equally important were the small moments: enjoying a late night acoustic set by a local songwriter and drinking beer together afterwards; chatting to a Welsh novellist about his surfing youth; and swapping web addresses with Scottish and Ukranian lit bloggers. Without Bookcase, these connections would not have been possible, and it was these personal interactions that made the conference enjoyable as well as enriching.

The British Council Bookcase initiative is truly inspiring, and I was very honoured to take part. There is no doubt in my mind that I will still be thinking about the issues raised, and talking to the people I met, for many years to come. I can’t wait to get home and put what I have learned into action at the Emerging Writers’ Festival!

Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Emerging Writers' Festival. She’s in Edinburgh attending the British Council’s Book Case Conference and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Analyse the Election Over Lunch with Megalogenis

So who won the election? While most of us are still scratching our heads over the federal election, political commentator George Megalogenis is sifting through the tea leaves and looking at how effective a new government can be in a hung parliament. This week he brings his political insight onto a special crisis-edition of Lunchbox/Soapbox to tell us what Saturday’s results mean.

His first take on the polls over at his Meganomics blog looks at how the country was carved up. He suggests “The path to minority government for the Coalition is through the bush, with the backing of the two independents in NSW and a third from Queensland.” And for Labor the path is more difficult, “three bush independents would need to find common purpose with an inner-city Green from Melbourne and a left-leaning Tasmanian independent”.

By Thursday’s Lunchbox/Soapbox the landscape will have shifted again and Megalogenis could be interpreting a new parliament.

Feeding the Hand that Bites by Gideon Haigh

Author Gideon Haigh

Everybody wants to go to heaven, as they say, but nobody wants to die. So it is in the world of book reviewing. Everyone is in favour of frank and fearless criticism, up to the point where a work of theirs might come off the worse for it.

It was, arguably, ever thus. But the books pages of Australian newspapers and magazines have become such a wasteland that traditional timidities no longer suffice as a satisfactory explanation. Sections that should contain some of a publication’s sharpest, shrewdest, most inci­sive and irreverent writing have become hodgepodges of conventional wisdom and middlebrow advertorial.

Newspapers bear some blame for this. Although you’d imagine that anything contributing to an informed and discriminating print culture would be advantageous to them, newspapers publish books pages with a grudging air, regarding them as a financial burden because they attract little advertising support.

Reviewers, by extension, are the lowliest of contributors. Some newspapers and magazines in Australia have ceased paying for reviews at all, believing that the thrill of a free book alone will summon the definitive notice. Others are winnowing costs away by on-selling reviews to sister publications, buying reviews from overseas (usually of books three people in the country might read) or using staff journalists (generally, whether out of incompetence or envy, the dopiest reviewers of all).

Then there is the popular institution of the capsule review, one hundred words or less, executed for beer money, and there to convey the illusion of comprehensiveness by breaking up the page, one superficial but reverberating assertion at a time.

In his classic essay ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’, a touchstone for every ‘down-trodden, nerve-wracked creature’ who has toiled in the craft, George Orwell opined that one thousand words was the ‘bare minimum’ for a review of consequence, and that the ‘standard middle-length review of about 600 words’ was ‘bound to be worthless’. Yet in newspapers today, six hundred words constitutes a veritable meander.

It’s no wonder, then, that there’s little incentive for sticking one’s neck out, for actually taking a position, for arguing that a book is bad, or sloppy, or stupid, or two or three iterations short of finished – an affliction staggeringly common among Australian books. Who needs the aggravation?

Far easier to summarise the contents, recapitulate the blurb, describe the author’s reputation, or examine the author’s politics in a thinly veiled op-ed – is he or she ‘one of us’? After all, the author might be reviewing us one day, or perhaps already has. In which case, it may, of course, be payback time.

Yet there’s much less of this last phenomenon – both the time-tested revenge fanging and the newfangled pre-emptive fanging of the sort recently perpetrated in The Monthly – than is commonly imagined. The besetting sin of Australian book reviewing, curious in an age in which newspapers are chock-full of try-hard humourists and blow-hard opinionistas, is its sheer dullness and inexpertise.

A successful review has two qualities. First, it is a lively and engaging piece of writing. It informs and invigorates. It detains and delights. Yet how often in Australia do you read a book review that is a sparky, spunky, memorable bit of prose? And how many reviewers can you name whose work you would cheerfully read regardless of the book being discussed?

Second, a competent book review should be a form of inquiry into what makes good books good – an inquiry with, as unfashionable as it sounds, the courage of its elitism. Without a benchmark of what constitutes excellent writing, scrupulous research and intelligent discussion, a reviewer is locked into a world in which ‘liking’ and ‘not liking’ are the only options – the Beavis and Butthead world, as the American literary critic Curtis White has put it, in which ‘this sucks, that rocks, this is awesome, and everything is just finally a lot stupid’.

As well as setting standards, a competent review gives context, deepens understanding and clarifies debate. This requires some discern­ment, some rigour, even some dedication. If you’re reviewing a work of fiction, it might be expedient to have read, or if not, to read, the author’s earlier publications; if you’re critiquing a work of non-fiction, it will require an acquaintance with the subject in question, even if it is a general one. Whatever the case, reviewing is a discipline, a form of argument demanding logic and evidence as well as ‘taste’ and ‘opinion’. And it is a discipline in barely acknowledged decline.

What is perhaps just as troubling as the lacklustre infomerciality of so much Australian reviewing – gushing over the latest vogue, avoiding anything that cannot readily be pigeonholed – is that the situation suits so many vested interests in Australia’s small, snobbish, fashion-conscious, self-celebrating literary scene. It veils the publishing industry’s lazy, parsimonious, hidebound practices. It reinforces the everyone-has-won-and-all-must-have-prizes racket of festivals, fellowships and grants. It makes our culture a cosy, matey, happy, heavenly place, while reminding us of Mark Twain’s dictum: ‘You go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company.’

This essay was originally published in Kill Your Darlings.

E-mags Go Indie

Publishers Weekly reported that small press magazines have found a new champion with an online publication, Shelf Unbound.

Launching in September, Shelf Unbound aims to be a journal for small presses and is available exclusively online for computer, iPhone or iPad using the Zinio platform (which also offers Publishers Weekly as an e-edition). Electronic editions make sense for small presses who don’t want to gamble their limited funds on a high printrun.

Shelf Unbound publisher Margaret Brown told Publishers Weekly that it’s about showcasing hard to find writing to a global audience. She says her motivation for founding the magazine is “an awareness of the breadth and depth and quality of books that do not make it onto the shelf of the big chain stores, and the delightful discovery of how mind-blowingly beautiful and exciting magazines are on the iPad.”

The first issue features US-based content with stories on California’s skateboarding scene and Detroit’s attempts to renew itself, which points to a move to get a North American readership before looking at an international audience.

Palin’s Lessons from Shakespeare

Politicians say the dumbest things. Over at Slate they’ve compiled their favourite Palinisms, tweets, Facebook updates and other wit from former Vice Presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin.

And she’s got plenty to say. Even in a tweet of 140 characters she manages to reflect on feminism: “Who hijacked term:‘feminist’?A cackle of rads who want 2 crucify other women w/whom they disagree on a singular issue; it’s ironic (& passé).” And who says Americans don’t appreciate irony?

But Palin is also a defender of the creative use of language. Witness this tweet after mispronouncing ‘repudiate in an interview: “'Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!” We’re hoping for a book, if not of Palinisms, but of her insights into great writers – for a title perhaps Wee Wee Upping Literature: Not-so-great Writers Misunderestimated by History.

Talking Back to the BEE

When we put up our video of Bret Easton Ellis, we thought people would be interested but we didn’t expect the deluge of comments responding to the author’s talk.

First up was Gary Chau calling BEE “a douche” which inspired several of his fans to come to his defence. Emma wrote glowingly that Easton Ellis was “pretentious, opinionated, mildly subversive…and he was honest about his mood at the time” while Josie thought he “bridged the gap between generation x and y and baby-boomer” and was going to give his book to her 38-year-old son.

There was a lot of interest in the questions and the questioners. A character calling themselves Paul Bogan was against the whole idea: “As much as it’s democratic and breaks down the barrier between the artist and audience, the Q&A at the end was really embarassing, it’s no wonder Ellis was more interested in kvetching with his i-phone than anything else.”

Interviewer Alan Brough copped some flack from Mr Bogan, who compared his charisma to that of “hessian sack of unscrubbed potatoes”. We thought this was a little harsh and so did other commenters including Trev who outlined a golden rule “Don’t go the Brough”. Others agreed including Fran who “thought he [Brough] did an incredible job with someone who wasn’t that easy to interview” and Alex “walked away from the evening a little less a fan [of] Ellis but a new fan of Brough”.

Does Google Want to Control Your Mind?

According to his recent Atlantic article, Nicholas Carr thinks search engine juggernaut Google is trying to read your mind.

You’ve probably already seen the Google Suggest, the Google feature that predicts the text you’re typing into the search box, but Carr says it makes the search engine “like a nosy mother, intent on knowing everything her children are doing and thinking”.

As well as pointing to privacy concerns about gathering information about your every search, Carr is concerned about the impact of what he calls Googlethink. The problem is that Google is “scripting the intimate processes of intellectual inquiry and even social attachment”. He sees creativity and curiosity shoehorned into crowdsourced generalisations which he believes will make us lazier thinkers. The real problem with Google Suggest, Facebook friend finders or any number of predictive text generators is that their “choices are convenient, but they’re not our own”.

Christos Slapping the Brits

Australian Booker nominee Christos Tsiolkas is cutting a swathe through Brit lit on his current visit to the UK with appearances at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Not only is The Slap a favourite to win the Booker this year it’s also the bestselling title according to The Bookseller with “sales [that] totalled 5,001 copies during the seven days to 7th August 2010”. Last year’s winner, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, has gone on to sell 485,000 copies to date, so a Tsiolkas win would mean mega-sales.

But it’s not all plain sailing. The Guardian called Tsiolkas' work “the most divisive book to have been chosen for the Man Booker longlist in years”. In the same article, Tsiolkas' defended a bolder approach to fiction: “In the English-language novel there is a fear of writing about the real world. I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction that’s true to the world. I read to have my assumptions challenged, to be scared, to cry. That novel isn’t being written at the moment.”

The residency in Scotland has mostly been a chance for Tsiolkas to write and the environment has had an impact. The Guardian reports Tsiolkas taking inspiration from Glaswegians swimming in a freezing loch. Tsiolkas said: “My next novel will begin at Luss with an Aussie dipping his toe into the water of the loch and thinking, ‘Man, these people are crazy.’”

A Shiny New Player in Publishing

Publisher Kabita Dhara

Last week a new imprint appeared on Melbourne’s busy publishing scene, Brass Monkey Books, aiming to build closer ties between Australia and India.

Publisher Kabita Dhara has published two fiction titles by Indian author Anjum Hasan. She told the Wheeler Centre: “My aim is to introduce Australians to writing from India, in the hope that having this direct connection of words will foster a better cultural understanding… I’m hoping that, in the future, I can also take Australian writing to India.”

During the recent reports of violence against Indian students in Melbourne, Dhara was in India answering difficult questions about her hometown. “As an Australian of Indian heritage, this divide saddens me, and I think that trying to forge a better relationship through words and stories (directly, and not through a third country like the UK or the US) is my way of fighting what I see as a current weakening in the Australia-India relationship.”

Dhara has brought her author Hasan out as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival and Brisbane Writers Festival, and plans to release non-fiction books in the future.

Opening Edinburgh International Book Festival by Lisa Dempster

The opening weekend of the Edinburgh International Book Festival was big. Located in the elegant Charlotte Square Gardens, the bookfest pops up as an elegant tent city, and on Saturday the festival came to life.

During the weekend there was a full program of debates, discussions and readings – enough to make your head spin with choice! There are two streams of festival events every day, the adult’s and the children’s program. Interestingly, both programs and the festival as a whole were launched by Australians: Christos Tsiolkas talking about The Slap, which is getting a huge reception in the UK, and Garth Nix talking all things The Keys to the Kingdom. Both events were sold out.

Charlotte Square Gardens in summer swing

The sun was shining all weekend, and all day on Saturday and Sunday Charlotte Square was packed with people sitting in the sun enjoying a glass of wine, reading books and talking about the panels and discussions they have been enjoying. It is a heartening sight and the festival organisers were gleeful that it didn’t rain on the first day – for the first time since 2004! Another landmark is that this year is the 21st Edinburgh International Book Festival, a statistic that made me excited about the potential future possibilities for the Emerging Writers’ Festival.

Saturday night saw the Spiegeltent crowded and the whiskey flowing for the opening night party, which after formal speeches was a good shin-dig and a chance to meet writers and festival staff.

At the long-running Book Festival Fringe, hosted by Word Power Books, there was a fantastic event with Australia’s Craig Silvey and Christos Tsiolkas. They were in discussion about Silvey’s novel Jasper Jones, and it was a thought-provoking and wide-ranging conversation that kept the crowded shop enthralled for a good hour.

As well as the novel, one of the topics covered was are modern writers making a new Australian voice? Craig replied that he thinks there is less pressure to use ‘British language’ and Christos spoke passionately about how he wants Australian writers to think about what our language is and where it comes from. It was a fantastic event with two talented and intelligent Aussie writers. (And of course, given that it was sunny, we all adjourned to the pub afterwards.) I look forward to seeing many more Fringe events, which are all free and unticketed.

A night of McSex at the Unbound event

The weekend ended with the first of the Unbound events – a free festival-within-a-festival where writers are encouraged to try new ways of talking about their work. On Sunday evening the event was hosted by Glasgow-based indie lit journal Gutter, and was called A Night in the Gutter: McSex. It looked at the Scottish tradition of erotic writing and featured a handful of established and emerging writers reading sex scenes from Scottish writers across the ages, from Robert Burns to Irvine Welsh. It was a corker and the packed Spiegeltent went off with laughs and a few uncomfortable moments too.

The full Unbound program is eclectic and exciting, and if last night’s McSex success was any indication, the events will be ones not to miss!

There is still another full two weeks of bookfest to go; it’s an incredibly large and exciting program. The Edinburgh International Book Festival are maintaining a great social media presence so check out @EdBookFest and #edbookfest to keep up with all the action live from the festival.

Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Emerging Writers' Festival. She’s in Edinburgh to attend the British Council’s Book Case Conference and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Less Than Hero? by Kathy Charles

They say you should never meet your heroes.

I did.

I met Bret Easton Ellis when he was in town last week. A friend remarked to me that it must be something to meet your idol as a peer. “What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely baffled. “You know, as a fellow writer,” he replied. Suddenly I was filled with anxiety about the meeting. Was I meant to play it cool? Was I expected to approach my favorite author with an air of benign indifference? I was paralysed with the idea that when meeting him I would behave in a way that was unfitting. Would he sense my fandom and find it off-putting?

If he did, he didn’t show it. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Ellis also wears his fandom on his sleeve. His conversation is peppered with references to his favorite bands, movies and TV shows (don’t even get him started on The Hills!). At the sold-out Athenaeum event Ellis said that the pinnacle of his career was when he received a phone call from Joan Didion, whose seminal LA novel Play It As It Lays was the inspiration for Less Than Zero. Didion was phoning to say she was dedicating her new collection of essays to Ellis, at which point the author says he saw “white light” and dramatically sank to the floor. I’m pretty sure the enthused crowd at the Athenaeum were experiencing their own “white light” moment just being in BEE’s presence. Ellis is the rarest of celebrities: a pop culture icon who attained this status without dying young and tragic. Love him or hate him, Ellis gets people talking, and in a world where the novel is supposedly dying, polarising and controversial authors are needed now more than ever. If the literary world had more rock stars like Ellis, one can’t help but think the industry would be in a much healthier state than it is now. Fervent adoration sure breeds sales.

So I wear my fandom proudly, if we are going to call it that. It seems a very reductive term for my appreciation of the worlds Ellis and my other favorite authors have given me, worlds that inspired me to write myself in the hope I could come close to creating these experiences for other people. Now all that’s left is to meet my other two literary heroes, a couple of guys I affectionately refer to as the two Steve’s: Steve Martin and Stephen King. Can anyone hook me up?

Kathy Charles is the author of Hollywood Ending from Text Publishing, which will be released in North America as John Belushi is Dead by MTV Books.

Unsucking Election Jargon

If you’ve felt like you need a translator during this election, you’re not alone. We tried unsuck it which told us that “moving forwards” just means “in the future” which is the same translation for another piece of gobbledygook “On a Go-Forward Basis”. Imagine how this campaign might have played out if Julia had only told us that she wanted to “Proceed on a Go-Forward Basis”.

While we couldn’t find any translation for “Stand up for real Action” we did find “ideate” (meaning think) and “Drink the Kool-Aid” (meaning follow blindly). While most Australians aren’t drinking the Kool Aid this week and can ideate for themselves, we’d like it if politicians could “get down in the weeds” (explore the details) in this last week of the campaign rather than leaving us to “blue sky think” (use your imagination) about what they really mean.

Something Fishy in Guardian’s Best Cookbooks

The Observer announced its top ten cook books on Sunday creating a stir in culinary circles.

Many of the big names missed out. Our Stephanie Alexander came in at 31 with her cooking bible, The Cook’s Companion, and relative newcomers like Jamie Oliver only got a single mention at 15 for Jamie’s Italy. Even Nigella barely scraped in at 42.

So who did make the top ten? Aussie chef David Thompson got a guernsey at 7 for his Thai Food and at number 1 was The French Menu Cookbook. Both great books but we couldn’t help but notice that Thompson himself is listed as a judge for the list.

The sauce thickens even more when you look at the judges who also have their books in the list: Sichuan Cookery by Fuchsia Dunlop at 9 and Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson at 5. Of course on a team of more than 15 judges there’s bound to be some overlap, but we wonder if Fuschia Dunlop is the best person to comment on her fellow judge David Thompson’s book as “one that opened the door to a new appreciation of Thai cookery among readers of the English language”. It seems a comment that lacks objectivity.

Jo Case interviews Leanne Hall

Photo Lucian Chaffey

Leanne Hall arrives at the State Library engulfed in a coat and scarf, a lavender beanie over her pixie haircut. Her attention to detail when it comes to costumes – literally following my suggestion that she bring a coat and beanie so we can brave the cold on the pavement tables outside Mr Tulk’s – makes me laugh. It’s just what one of the two narrators of her debut novel, This is Shyness, would do. But image-conscious Wildgirl (who pauses to fashion a turban out of a tee shirt while underground tunnelling) would probably be wearing fake fur and glitter, rather than Leanne’s more practical get-up.

A children’s specialist at Readings Carlton, Leanne has long been a bookseller by day, writer by night (and days off). She’s been slowly but surely building a publication record and a reputation as a writer to watch, with short stories appearing in The Sleepers Almanac, Best Australian Stories and Meanjin. Then last year, she won the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing – and a book contract with one of Australia’s most respected publishers.

This is Shyness is dark, funny, joyful and engrossing – the story of two teenagers from literally different worlds who spend one long, crazy night together in the suburb of Shyness, where the sun stopped rising three years earlier. Once indistinguishable from the neighbouring suburb of Panwood, Shyness has descended into a bleak chaos.

Adults have fled, leaving teenage children to fend for themselves in grotty sharehouses. Tribes of children – Kidds – live together in a compound, and roam the streets with sinister monkeys known as tarsiers, mugging people for sweets and getting hopped up on sugar. A sprinkling of darkened bars with pale-skinned staff attract ‘tourists’ from nearby suburbs. When Wildgirl, running from intrinsically teenage-girl problems, is smitten by the mysterious Wolfboy after a chance meeting at The Diabetic Hotel, she dares him to stay up all night with her, to prove to her that the sun never rises. Of course, Wolfboy has major problems of his own, in the form of a fractured family – and together they find a temporary release and the chance to be new people with each other.

Like Leanne’s short stories,This Is Shyness treads a fine line between realism and fantasy. The psychology and dynamics of the characters are palpably true, and the writing is crisp and stark – it makes you utterly believe in the place being described, seduces you into it. Like Haruki Murakami, who Leanne is a big fan of, her stories begin with a portrait of life as we know it, and then silkily veer into the eerie, the fantastical. ‘If I try to write straight stories, those other elements just creep in and I almost don’t identify them as being unusual or magical or slightly odd elements,’ Leanne says. ‘Honestly, when I do write my stories, I feel like it’s just reality that I’m representing – which of course it isn’t. I don’t know what that says about my brain or what my everyday life is like.’

The book began with the names of Wildgirl and Wolfboy, the two narrators, and thinking about what kind of place they would inhabit led to the ‘suburb of darkness idea’. From there, the central theme of the one long night emerged. ‘I wanted to write about one of those really, really crazy magical nights – probably one of the first really crazy magical nights you ever have as a teenager – and how you never forget that kind of situation.’

The teenagers in the book are vividly drawn – not just their youthful bravado and conscious hipster cool, or the delicious, volatile fizz of attraction at that time of life, but their transitional state. They’re no longer children, but not yet adults – and while they’re both on an irreversible path away from childhood, they’re young enough to relish a brief return to some of its forgotten pleasures, even (perhaps especially) as their problems – and their feelings for each other – are anything but childish. Wolfboy and Wildgirl ride their bikes and explore underground tunnels on their quest to recover a precious item of stolen property from the sugar-crazed Kidds. ‘I thought it was pretty funny to set a couple of urban streetwise teenagers on a quite old-fashioned quest for an object,’ laughs Leanne. ‘To me that was the biggest joke, to send these really cool teenagers on a quest for an object, which is such a sort of dorky childhood thing.’

Leanne drew on her own memories of being a teenager to create her characters. She personally identifies more with the ‘quieter and more contained’ Wolfboy. But the girl-bullying problems Wildgirl is escaping will strike a chord with any teenager. ‘Everyone’s had that incident at high school … there’s always something where everyone turns against you some day, or you have your dress tucked into your undies and you have to go up on stage at assembly and receive a prize or something. And you really have that feeling of, That’s it for me, I’m not going back. I can’t face those people ever, I just don’t want to exist, and I’m going to move to a different city and have a different name and no one will know who I am.’ Wildgirl gets to live out that fantasy – but her adventures also put her troubles in perspective and allow her to move forward. It’s a fantasy that teenage readers will vicariously enjoy.

They’ll also enjoy the chemistry between the leads. ‘They desperately want to connect but at the same time can’t let go of their mistrust and insecurity, so they’re kind of coming together and pulling apart,’ says Leanne. ‘I like the fact that they lust from a distance. I think it’s important to know that even if that hot boy at school is not jumping on you – he’s still thinking about it.

This is a cross-post of Jo Case’s interview with Leanne Hall which originally appeared on the Readings site.

Franzen on Time

Time magazine has made Jonathan Franzen their coverboy using the line “Great American Novelist”. It’s a big deal because, as the Los Angeles Times reports, the last living novelist Time had on the cover was Stephen King back almost ten years ago.

The Time piece seems gently reverential right down to the “crow’s-feet behind his thick-framed nerd glasses” and his forthcoming fourth novel, Freedom, is called “the story of an American family, told with extraordinary power and richness”. As part of the Franzen fiesta there’s also five novels that inspired him, plus there’s his recent pick of The Man Who Loved Children for his favourite summer read.

We’d probably add to it his New Yorker essay on his love of the Peanuts comic strip, but the real question is whether Oprah will be picking up his new book after he snubbed her book club with The Corrections.

BEE Mania in Melbourne

Charles and Meyer before meeting Easton Ellis

Few authors attain rock star status, but Bret Easton Ellis' Australian tour has had it’s fair share of pyrotechnics and brought out some odd fans. Like who? According to Elmo Keep, Easton Ellis was asked to help Delta Goodrem out with Stateside work. He told Keep, “I’m getting phone calls from Brian McFadden’s manager asking if I can get Delta a job in LA. And I’m like, ‘I don’t really know what she wants to do.’”

But now he’s hit Melbourne, the requests are much simpler. Author Kathy Charles and blogger Angela Meyer met him yesterday. Both were excited at the prospect, Charles bringing along a galley proof of Easton Ellis' Lunar Park that she bought on eBay for US$120 for the cult author to sign. And what was she expecting from the man? “I think he’s going to be really nice, because that’s what everyone says he’s like,” Charles said.

Easton Ellis himself was getting psyched for tonight’s appearance with Alan Brough. When asked what he’s expecting tonight, Easton Ellis said “It’s going to be different than most events I did on this tour of the US, the UK and now Australia, because it’s a very big event.” We’re expecting nothing short of Glamorama.

Confessions of a Book Reviewer by George Orwell

British writer George Orwell worked as a book reviewer but was always uncomfortable with the job. In this 1946 essay he argues that a book critic must “sell… honour for a glass of inferior sherry” but is still better off in their career choice than film reviewers.

In a cold but stuffy bed-sitting room littered with cigarette ends and half-empty cups of tea, a man in a moth-eaten dressing-gown sits at a rickety table, trying to find room for his typewriter among the piles of dusty papers that surround it. He cannot throw the papers away because the wastepaper basket is already overflowing, and besides, somewhere among the unanswered letters and unpaid bills it is possible that there is a cheque for two guineas which he is nearly certain he forgot to pay into the bank. There are also letters with addresses which ought to be entered in his address book. He has lost his address book, and the thought of looking for it, or indeed of looking for anything, afflicts him with acute suicidal impulses.

He is a man of 35, but looks 50. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half-past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up and down the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red.

Needless to say this person is a writer. He might be a poet, a novelist, or a writer of film scripts or radio features, for all literary people are very much alike, but let us say that he is a book reviewer. Half hidden among the pile of papers is a bulky parcel containing five volumes which his editor has sent with a note suggesting that they “ought to go well together”. They arrived four days ago, but for 48 hours the reviewer was prevented by moral paralysis from opening the parcel. Yesterday in a resolute moment he ripped the string off it and found the five volumes to be Palestine at the Cross Roads, Scientific Dairy Farming, A Short History of European Democracy (this one is 680 pages and weighs four pounds), Tribal Customs in Portuguese East Africa, and a novel, It’s Nicer Lying Down, probably included by mistake. His review–800 words, say–has got to be “in” by midday tomorrow.

Three of these books deal with subjects of which he is so ignorant that he will have to read at least 50 pages if he is to avoid making some howler which will betray him not merely to the author (who of course knows all about the habits of book reviewers), but even to the general reader. By four in the afternoon he will have taken the books out of their wrapping paper but will still be suffering from a nervous inability to open them. The prospect of having to read them, and even the smell of the paper, affects him like the prospect of eating cold ground-rice pudding flavoured with castor oil. And yet curiously enough his copy will get to the office in time. Somehow it always does get there in time. At about nine p.m. his mind will grow relatively clear, and until the small hours he will sit in a room which grows colder and colder, while the cigarette smoke grows thicker and thicker, skipping expertly through one book after another and laying each down with the final comment, “God, what tripe!” In the morning, blear-eyed, surly and unshaven, he will gaze for an hour or two at a blank sheet of paper until the menacing finger of the clock frightens him into action. Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases–"a book that no one should miss", “something memorable on every page”, “of special value are the chapters dealing with, etc etc"–will jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet, and the review will end up at exactly the right length and with just about three minutes to go. Meanwhile another wad of ill-assorted, unappetising books will have arrived by post. So it goes on. And yet with what high hopes this down-trodden, nerve-racked creature started his career, only a few years ago.

Do I seem to exaggerate? I ask any regular reviewer–anyone who reviews, say, a minimum of 100 books a year–whether he can deny in honesty that his habits and character are such as I have described. Every writer, in any case, is rather that kind of person, but the prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash–though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment–but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever. The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally interested in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets hold of two or three. The rest of his work, however conscientious he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug. He is pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time.

The great majority of reviews give an inadequate or misleading account of the book that is dealt with. Since the war publishers have been less able than before to twist the tails of literary editors and evoke a paean of praise for every book that they produce, but on the other hand the standard of reviewing has gone down owing to lack of space and other inconveniences. Seeing the results, people sometimes suggest that the solution lies in getting book reviewing out of the hands of hacks. Books on specialised subjects ought to be dealt with by experts, and on the other hand a good deal of reviewing, especially of novels, might well be done by amateurs. Nearly every book is capable of arousing passionate feeling, if it is only a passionate dislike, in some or other reader, whose ideas about it would surely be worth more than those of a bored professional. But, unfortunately, as every editor knows, that kind of thing is very difficult to organise. In practice the editor always finds himself reverting to his team of hacks–his “regulars”, as he calls them.

None of this is remediable so long as it is taken for granted that every book deserves to be reviewed. It is almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly overpraising the great majority of them. Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be “This book is worthless”, while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be “This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.” But the public will not pay to read that kind of thing. Why should they? They want some kind of guide to the books they are asked to read, and they want some kind of evaluation. But as soon as values are mentioned, standards collapse. For if one says–and nearly every reviewer says this kind of thing at least once a week–that King Lear is a good play and The Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word “good”?

The best practice, it has always seemed to me, would be simply to ignore the great majority of books and to give very long reviews–1,000 words is a bare minimum–to the few that seem to matter. Short notes of a line or two on forthcoming books can be useful, but the usual middle-length review of about 600 words is bound to be worthless even if the reviewer genuinely wants to write it. Normally he doesn’t want to write it, and the week-in, week-out production of snippets soon reduces him to the crushed figure in a dressing-gown whom I described at the beginning of this article. However, everyone in this world has someone else whom he can look down on, and I must say, from experience of both trades, that the book reviewer is better off than the film critic, who cannot even do his work at home, but has to attend trade shows at eleven in the morning and, with one or two notable exceptions, is expected to sell his honour for a glass of inferior sherry.

Best Online Fiction Writers

Over at eBooknewser they’re giving online writers the respect they deserve by establishing their Digital Writer Spotlight.

The spotlight looks at authors who publish their own work online, but also combs existing writing communities for new writers. So far in their top 13 (because top 10s would be so old media) they’ve featured Danae Ayusso, who joined the online writing group Wattpad in January 2009 and has since written over a million words.

But it’s not all about the size of your word count. Meg Pokrass has been writing short fiction for Fictionaut and has found her flash fiction collected into a book Damn Sure Right to be published in 2011. Like many online writers, she’s hoping the print publication will help her find a newer though more traditional audience.

London for Writers by Lisa Dempster

Lisa Dempster, EWF Director is touring the UK

Although beautiful, London is not the most glamorous city, and definitely not the most buzzing, but it has a rich and diverse writing and publishing culture which fascinates me.

Of course, London has a long and rich literary history, and there is plenty here in that vein to keep visiting writers busy. There are hallowed places like the reading room at the British Library to seek out, literary walking tours on topics as diverse as the Bloomsbury Group and Harry Potter, and of course bookshops galore.

History aside, there is a vibrant events scene for writers of all descriptions. In the short time I have been here I’ve been blown away by the diversity of events that happen right across the city. It is a vast contrast to Melbourne, which although has a robust and busy literary scene, feels very contained compared to the vast scale of what is happening here in London.

There are large and exciting literary events, like the London Book Festival, Faber Academy and the School of Life. And there are smaller, more independent events that nevertheless have a big following, like Book Slam, Literary Death Match, poetry and jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, lecture series, and local writers' festivals. Then we get down to smaller, more local events, like readings nights, salons, writers' groups, workshopping groups, library talks and performance opportunities. There are events that are fun, networking-focused, craft-focused, ideas-focused and drinking-focused… and there are hundreds of them happening all the time. It’s overwhelming and incredibly exciting.

The Book Club bar

Some of the events I have discovered here are similar to things we have in Australia, and some are totally different. My favourite find so far is The Book Club bar, which is an amazing literary hangout in trendy Shoreditch. Without pushing its theme too far, The Book Club hosts a busy calendar of ‘thinking and drinking’ events from literary speed dating and life drawing to party nights, which recognises that bookish types are probably interested in a broad range of artistic topics away from the page as well as on it. Add to that a beautiful bar with a great menu and excellent drinks, an events room, free wifi, long opening hours and a smart vibe and it pretty much ticks every ‘ideal literary salon’ checkbox one could hope for. With it’s newly appointed title of City of Literature, I think Melbourne is in great need of just such an establishment.

So far, I have found that everyone is interested in the concept of the Emerging Writers’ Festival, and it appears that there is little that is comparable here. It has piqued my interest in return about how emerging writers manage in Britain – there seems to be less super independent publishing than we have in Australia, and the traditional publishers seem harder to attract. As the scene is not centralised or necessarily accessible like ours (it does feel like in Melbourne everyone knows everyone, or at least of each other), knowing how to move from writing something to getting it published seems more of a challenge on this side of the pond. So although London is vastly exciting, I also think that Australian emerging writers are very lucky to have such a flourishing yet friendly literary scene.

Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Emerging Writers' Festival. She is now heading to Edinburgh to attend the British Council’s Book Case Conference and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Freeplay Games Festival Awards

This weekend the Freeplay independent games festival kicks off with programmers, gamers and artists converging on the State Library.

As well as talks and workshops from local and international games developers, this year’s festival includes awards for games creation including one devoted specifically to games writing. Festival co-director Paul Callaghan sees it as a recognition of writing in games. “Writing is one of the often overlooked aspects of games development though we see it as a discipline on the same level as programming, art and design,” says Callaghan.

The award has attracted some interesting nominees. Alex Bruce wrote the curious Hazard, which works in the first person perspective popular in shoot-em-ups but, according to the games' trailer, “it’s an exploration of knowledge not of space”. For Jarrad Woods, better known by the handle Farbs, games are all about comedy as seen in his nominated game Captain Forever and the ROM Check Fail Factory. Rounding out the nominees is Steve Bull from Perth-based PVI Collective, who were commissioned by Sydney Biennale to create transumer, a game that uses mobile phones to make real-life players “consume the city as a ‘constantly moving happiness machine’”. Definitely not for couch potatoes.

Freeplay concludes with an announcement of all their awards on Sunday 15th of August.

In Defence of YA fiction

New York Times columnist Pamela Paul is tired of the snubbing that young adult (YA) fiction gets. She’s one of a number of Americans anticipating the release of Mockingjay, the final part of a dystopian trilogy aimed at teenagers despite Paul herself being “well into my 30s”.

Whether it’s Harry Potter, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or Catcher in the Rye, YA books are everyone’s not-so-secret read. Paul claims that “nearly one in five 35- to 44-year-olds say they most frequently buy YA books” and there are ‘Kidlit book clubs" formed by adults both in the physical world and in Facebook including the Young Adult Literature Page.

And the appeal? According to Jesse Sheidlower, an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary and member of the Kidlit book club, YA books offer a newness missing in jaded adult fiction. She told Paul, “When you read these books as an adult, it tends to bring back the sense of newness and discovery that I tend not to get from adult fiction.”

Ways of Meaning by Alison Croggon

Alison Croggon (Image courtesy Jacqueline Mitelman)

“As an artist, my relationships are experiential rather than theoretical. I certainly share with scientists and philosophers a desire to make sense of my existence. It is just that my approach is poles apart. It is a fragile, highly intuitive process, in which sensory acuity and memory are subtly intertwined.”

~ Jonathan Mills, State of the Arts lecture 2010

I had an English teacher in high school who one day strode into class, looked around belligerently at his students, and demanded to know if any of us read poetry. I did. I had read the dusty anthologies we had at home from end to end, and supplemented them with random buys from school jumble sales. I was a passionate and indiscriminate reader, devouring Alfred Noyes and TS Eliot with equal enthusiasm.

But this teacher so clearly thought that no one – and especially no one in this class of scruffy 13 year olds – could possibly read poetry for pleasure, that I didn’t dare to raise my hand. I sensed that he himself didn’t like poetry much, and that the price of outing myself would have been his unexpressed contempt. Certainly, he was a bad teacher of poetry.

I guess it wasn’t all his fault: the pedagogical approach to poetry was discouraging. I don’t know if schools still do this, but back then a staple of English comprehension lessons was the question: “What is the poet trying to say?”

This question enraged me. I didn’t think the poet was trying to say anything: the poet said it. The poem was what it said: it wasn’t there to be nailed down to an unambiguous message, but instead, like life itself, shimmered in its sensual ambiguity.

The meanings of a poem exist as much in its sounds and rhythms as in its semantic sense: but it was precisely those material aspects of language that were dismissed in the insistence on a particular kind of comprehension. After all, the suspension of certainty that is at the heart of any work of art is not easily translatable into exam questions.

Later, when I read Baudelaire’s insistence that “a poem must be a debacle of the intellect”, I knew exactly what he meant. Poetry is the place where the legislating impulse of language, even to its very grammar, is exploded from within, where our desire for order and control meets the anarchy of existence.

This subversion of the human wish to control reality is where art finds its power. It isn’t always a comfortable power, but it is always liberating, opening the consciousness to new perceptions of the world we live in. As Jonathan Mills claims in his lecture, art is one place where the many possible ways of perceiving and understanding can be articulated.

It resists paraphrase, claiming for itself a primacy of experience that is parallel to, if not the same as, life. And like life, its liberations are too often chained by the insistence it conform to a very limited idea of what “meaning” is.

In her famous 1964 essay Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag called for an erotics of art. “What is important now is to recover our senses,” she said. “We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.”

All anyone needs to understand art is to look, to listen, to feel: all else follows. They are, not uncoincidentally, exactly the same skills we need to love. Yet our education system leads us to believe that this is not enough. I’m sure that this is the primary reason for the hostility so many people, including my English teacher, feel towards art. Having been taught that they ought to look for meaning in the wrong places, art makes them feel stupid, as if they are found wanting.

That’s not the fault of artists nor of those who reject their work. But it does express a terrible failing in our culture, a constriction of our thought, that has far wider implications. And as Mills suggests, if we are to face the challenges of our future world, it’s a failing we need to address.

Alison Croggon is a theatre critic, blogger, poet and novelist. Her blog Theatre Notes is one of Australia’s most respected reviews, criticism and play news.

Max Barry: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Author Max Barry

I’ve written more bad fiction than you’ve read. I’m serious. I’ve done a hundred or so drafts of nine or ten manuscripts, and let’s not even start on the shorter stuff. Read one of my books? Think it could have been better? Well that’s what they published. That was polished.

After a decade of wrangling paragraphs for a living, I have decided: it’s always the book’s fault. When your scene won’t quite come together, your novel idea won’t stay interesting, your main character refuses to fill out: it’s not because you lack talent. It’s because your idea is stupid. You’re trying to push shit uphill. And you may be a good shit-pusher, with a range of clever and effective shit-pushing techniques, but still: it’s going to be hard, frustrating, and ultimately you’ll discover you still don’t have your shit together.

I used to believe that an author needed an iron will. Discipline, to forge through the bitter dark and emerge clutching a tattered, tear-stained first draft. Now I think that’s a good way to lose nine months on a bad idea. Because if you have any skill as a word-slinger, you can make a bad idea sound okay. Not brilliant. But mildly interesting, at least for a while. Keep pushing that shit, though, and depression sets in. That’s when you think: I’m not good enough. Or: If I were more disciplined I’d finish this. Or: I can’t write.

Sure you can. You just can’t write this and stay interested, because it’s a stupid idea. It’s predictable. It’s been done. It had one intriguing aspect and you tapped that out within the first three pages. You don’t want to write this because your body is bone-bored of it.

A good idea excites you. It makes each day of writing a little joy. A good idea, when you peel it, has more good ideas inside. It makes you feel clever. It doesn’t need to be articulated. It might sound silly when you try to explain it. (Don’t try to explain it.) But you know there’s something there. It pulls you to the keyboard. It spills words from your fingertips. Some days, you lose your grip; you wander from the path and lose sight of where you were. But a good idea calls out to you.

A while ago I had The Block. The way I got out of it was to write a page of something new every day. The first week, I flushed out a lot of ideas that had been humming around the back of my brain, promising me they were brilliant. They weren’t. I captured them one page at a time and set them aside. The second week I wrote two things that were kind of interesting. Not very interesting. But not abominations, either. It was possible to imagine that in some alternate universe of very low standards, they could become novels. Not popular novels. But still.

The third week, I wrote something interesting. And I discovered I could write. That the reason I’d been stuck wasn’t because I’d forgotten where the keys were. It was because the story I was trying to make work sucked.

So that’s my advice to anyone mired in a story. Don’t blame yourself. You’re great. It’s just that stupid idea.

This is a cross post from Max Barry’s blog, where he’s written his online novel, Machine Man.

A Peek into Our Open Day

If you missed our Open Day then here’s a few snaps to see what you missed. Our resident organisations were on hand to chat with aspiring authors, readers and people who just wanted to see what the building looked like.

Aden Rolfe, editor of Emerging Writer’s Festival’s The Reader, chats with colleagues at the EWF stand

Melbourne Writers Festival program manager Jenny Niven chats to interested festival goers

Express Media and Australian Poetry Centre stands

Bret Easton Ellis Joins the Babysitter’s Club

Bret Easton Ellis has made a foray into young adult fiction if you’re to believe this post on Crushable. The author known for American Psycho, has written his own take on the Baby-sitter’s Club franchise with a sample first chapter posted on the site.

It’s a characteristically Easton Ellis take on the genre. One of his cheesy characters reflects “Like, sorry that you have diabetes Stacey, but do we have to spend half the afternoon discussing it? And yeah, it really bums me out to watch Claudia just snort up half those Pixie Stixs when she is so blatantly trying to get attention to her sugar problem.”

The piece closes with “I was totally dizzy from relief and relished the idea of drifting into a semi-conscious state of Ritalin withdrawal so Mary-Anne could bitch about her boyfriend.” Only Bret Easton Ellis could bring drugs and hipster slang to the wholesome YA genre.

Religion at the Ballot Box

Image courtesy of Roman Gomez

Almost two out of three Australians identified themselves as Christians at the last census, which seems to create a large voting block and a problem for an avowedly atheist prime ministerial candidate.

Yesterday ABC’s Radio National Breakfast featured an interview with Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), who cited 19% of the population attending church once a month as having “a lot more commonalities than difference” when it comes to their religious values.

Earlier in the week Wallace appeared on ABC’s Lateline with some clear statements on the conditions for their support. Wallace said “We remain concerned that the traditional definition of marriage be maintained. And while both parties have given their commitment to that, we need to know that in the case of Labor that that will continue to stand beyond the national Labor conference, or the next national Labor conference.”

Wallace also voiced concerns about the Greens as a party “supporting euthanasia, supporting abortion, against prayers in parliament, against ISP filtering”. The Greens ‘balance of power’ status in the Senate is the envy of all minor parties, so Christian groups eye their position enviously particularly rising powers like Family First.

ACL launched a website, Australia Votes, yesterday as a handy reference for faith-based voters. The site posed questions to all the parties including Family First and the Australian Sex Party.

Along with some “no change to the existing laws” fudging by major parties, there are insights into opening Parliament with the Lord’s Prayer (“The Coalition remains firmly committed to the opening of Parliament exclusively each day with the Lord’s Prayer”) , abortion (“The Australian Labor Party supports conscience votes on issues before the federal parliament which relate to abortion”) and even cloning (Australian Sex Party: “Supports stem cell research, including embryonic stem cell research, and maintains it is a vital medical issue, not a religious issue.”)

While Wallace admits in both interviews that voting on religion in contemporary Australia is limited, the lobby group claims to represent many voters based on census stats. Another group who fared well in the 2001 census were those identifying their religion as Jedi with more than 70,000 Australians claiming they followed a faith based in Star Wars. And yet no political parties currently courting the “lightsabre vote”.

Electioneering: Does Australian Federal Politics Need a Circuit Breaker? by Fraser Allison

Do you feel like your voice is being represented by someone in Parliament? Does one of the Big Two parties seem to hold the same beliefs and opinions you hold?

No? Well, that’s not surprising, we’re all unique individuals after all. But thinking more generally, is there one party that seems to hold more or less consistent values to you, so that it generally supports any legislation you would support, and generally opposes any legislation you would oppose?

Even a basic sense of partisan commitment seems to be breaking down at this election. Sure, voters are still lefties, righties, libertarians, authoritarians and common or garden fruit bats, but it’s increasingly difficult to find one who’s satisfied with their most preferred party, rather than simply resigned to it as better than the alternatives.

Adam Bandt, the Greens candidate for the House of Representatives seat of Melbourne, puts the blame for this state of affairs squarely on two-party politics and its obsession with “a world saturated by markets”. In a talk at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne last week, Bandt described a culture in which the space of political debate has shrunk due to the merging ideologies of the Big Two:

“For the last 30 years-odd, both of the major parties, Labor and Liberal, have converged around a core of pretty common ideas about society, the economy, individual freedoms and the role of government. And the current political debate is being played out within some pretty narrow confines.”

Bandt argues for smaller parties to act as a political “circuit breaker” to shift political debate to address the challenges of the 21st Century.

Some obvious rebuttals come to mind:

1. He would say that. He’s from a minor party. This is just another self-interested plea for votes.

2. The Greens are confused and compromised in their political messages just like any other party. For example, they oppose the internet filter, but last year they ran Clive Hamilton, arch-defender of the filter, as the Greens candidate in the by-election for the seat of Higgins.

On the other hand, he’s right. Nobody seems to feel comfortable with the political debate we’re getting at the moment. Progressive voters are particularly disenchanted with the Labor Party’s modern incarnation as “the place where progressive voices go to be silenced” (most famously in the case of Peter Garrett), but even millionaire entrepreneurs who think the country should be run like a private company with a profit motive are confused about who to vote for. And the focus of public debate has shifted from substance to strategising: where we used to get policy debates sprinkled with political speculation, we now get political debates sprinkled with the odd bit of policy.

What little policy debate exists is almost exclusively discussed in economic terms. Economics is vitally important, but it shouldn’t be all we hear about. As Bandt put it, “I just wish the parties would extend to the planet the same courtesy they extend to the merchant bank.”

I asked him why he thought the Greens polled so strongly in Melbourne, more than any other seat in Australia. He described the area as a mix of two of the Greens’ typical support bases: people who have traditionally been progressive voters (presumably, although he didn’t say so, young and highly educated urbanites) and people “doing it tough”. He pointed out that Melbourne was the district with close to the highest proportion of housing commission flats in the country, many of which were occupied by refugees.

You can watch the speech online. It’s worth your 16 minutes, whether or not you support the Greens, if only because it breaks out of the banality of the major political parties’ campaign debates. Bandt covers a few other topics in addition to what I’ve mentioned here, including the question of how else our economy could be constructed if not around constant economic growth, and a useful simile for describing global shifts in temperature in terms of a bodily illness.

This cross-post is from Express Media’s Electioneering blog, a regular look at what young people are thinking about the election campaign.

Full Fan Fictional Philosopher

If you caught our Erotic Fan Fiction video then you’ll know that most of it was too lewd to re-broadcast. We cut out just at the point where Justin Heazlewood was about to talk about the love that dare not speak its name between a man and his talking car. His piece looked at what would happen if the unspoken sexual tension between Michael Knight and KITT ever saw the light of day.

Over at Scrivener’s Fancy they’ve put the text of the whole story up so you can see exactly what happened when Michael removes his pants.

Keating’s Privacy Protection

Paul Keating never left anyone wondering about the real Prime Minister and he shared his opinions on privacy laws at a Melbourne University last night.

Lateline reported that Keating’s serve on the media’s invasion of privacy. The former PM lambasted the media saying “Whole industries now revolve around so-called celebrity, fame, rumour and gossip, often more correctly straight fiction, which is published these days often by media organisations. These organisations proclaim the importance of free speech in the dissemination of news, but clearly are more at home in the entertainment business.”

Keating called it “naive in the extreme” to allow the media to self-regulate the extent to which journalists can report on the private lives of public figures based what they “determine… public interest is”. Keating wanted stronger laws enforcing privacy laws and better training for journalists.

But former Age editor Michael Gawenda thinks his proposal is unworkable. He told Lateline “Judges and lawyers and politicians don’t necessarily have the same interests in terms of the public’s right to know things that we journalists have traditionally thought was a right, and that’s my major concern.”

Judging By a Cover Then and Now

Over at Flavorwire they’re comparing first edition book covers to their latest version.

Call us old-fashioned but some of the daggy charm of the originals still appeals. As these books have become classics, cover designers have taken their subjects earnestly and given us covers that smother the more challenging aspects of the books. Or perhaps the more challenging aspects have become so mainstream.

With e-books removing the costs of colour printing we hope publishers sell cover galleries so readers can choose their favourites. Though no-one will be able to see the scandalous cover of 1984 when you’re using a Kindle on the train.

Cordite Gets Creative and Common

Cordite editor David Prater

Why do Creative Commons? Why now?

Well, we were initially inspired by the Remix My Lit project which was carried out by Creative Commons Australia last year. They invited people to remix prose stories; we thought we could do the same for poetry. And thus Cordite 33: Creative Commons was born.

Can you explain the download and remix idea behind this issue?

Just as a remix of a song takes elements of the song and rearranges them, so too with this issue we’re asking people to play with the lines of poems. You can download a document from our website containing all of the poems in the issue, and then all you have to do is start playing with the poems, cutting and pasting, shifting, rearranging – heck, even run them through a machine translator a few times, just to see how it turns out. We’re also asking people to send us their remixes, and we’ll publish a selection of these on the Cordite site later this year.

Remixing is an idea borrowed from music – how do you see music differing from text?

Well unlike music, words need to be activated in some way. You can’t put a book “on” in the corner of a room to set the mood for a romantic evening. Unless it’s a talking book but that’s cheating.

Cordite has long been at the vanguard of writing online – is it a contradiction to long be at the vanguard?

The truth is, we’ve been guarding the van for so long that we’ve given up hope that the original owner will ever come back and claim it. In that sense there’s no contradiction in your statement. Thank you for making it.

What does it mean to be an online journal? How is it better than print?

I don’t think it’s either/or in terms of online versus print. Website owners can point the finger at print publishers and criticise them for chopping down trees to print books; but on the other hand, print publishers can throw the example of the US military at Internet-glorifying website owners any time they like. After all, the Internet was initially designed with a military purpose in mind, and the amounts of waste generated by the communications and computing industries are indeed vast. It’s easier for a poetry magazine like Cordite to reach a worldwide audience, that’s for sure – but that audience is still incredibly small. The one good thing about editing an online magazine is that when you make a mistake, or a typo, you can fix it immediately. You can afford to be more relaxed, in that sense. Then again, I seem to be fixing typos and coding problems every minute of the day. But enough about me. I’m just glad to have an opportunity to show off Australian poets to the world. Code is poetry.

No Sex Please We’re Novelists

As the Booker Prize longlist was announced last week, judge Andrew Motion concluded that “no one was writing much about sex any more” according to the Guardian.

Former poet laureate Motion has a theory “It’s as if they were paranoid about being nominated for the Bad Sex Award.” While it could be argued that the British novel has come to look at broader social concerns, Motion noted that “there were a lot of people writing about taking drugs, as if that was a substitute for sex.”

The comments coincide with the 50th anniversary of the obscenity trial that saw Lady Chatterley’s Lover banned then almost instantly become an underground bestseller. The article reminds aspiring Brit lit writers of the advice of DH Lawrence: “Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you have got to say and say it hot.”

Age Book of the Year Shortlist Announced

The weekend paper saw the announcement of the Age Book of the Year shortlist.

In the fiction category, Cate Kennedy’s debut novel The World Beneath got the nod as it “cleverly plays with the challenges of being a parent as well as a citizen” while recent visitor Peter Carey’s re-imagining of de Tocqueville Parrot and Olivier in America also caught the judges' eye. The newcomer on the list is GL Osborne (aka Glenys Osborne) for her debut novel Come Inside though she’s no stranger to Age readers as she was runner-up in the Age Short Story Competition in both 2007 and 2008.

In non fiction, Ann Summers' The Lost Mother was shortlisted for as it was a “plangent and powerful book” re-discovering Melbourne artist Constance Stokes. Maria Tumarkind journeys back to the Russia she remembers in Otherland, while Ros Moriaty in Listening to Country looks closer to home examining her marriage to John Moriaty and her acceptance into the Yanyuwa clan in a book which judges felt “laid bare the ugly wreckage of the contemporary Aboriginal reality.”

In poetry Les Murray’s Taller When Prone got a guernsey, as did the prolific Ken Bolton who was shortlisted for A Whistled Bit of Bop though he was also in contention for his verse novel The Circus.

Winners will read from their work at a special event at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Anne Rice Leaves Catholicism

Novelist Anne Rice posted a message on her Facebook page last week saying “I quit being a Christian.”

Best known for her Vampire Chronicles series, Rice’s reasons for leaving the church are not so much spiritual as secular. She used her Facebook status to directly tell her fans, “I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of …Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

Rice returned to Catholicism in 1998 after leaving the church when she was 18 years old. While there has been criticism from the religious press, Michael Rowe at the Huffington Post believes she has never been more of a Christian. He writes, “The undeniable fact is that the decision of this sensitive, passionate, and devout woman to leave Christianity is one that Christ himself would likely understand, even applaud.”

Inside the New Yorker’s Editorial

For many editors working at the New Yorker is the dream job. Over at Ask the Agent, Andy Ross has interviewed 31-year veteran of the magazine, Mary Norris.

And the central tenet of their editing? “The main thing here is to respect the writer. The writers don’t have to do everything we want them to—we make suggestions.”

We’re keen to hear more about the “OK'er” who has the last look over an article, not to mention their fiendish use of the diaeresis in words like “coöperate” and “reëlect”.

Six questions for Jon Bauer

Meanjin’s blog, Spike sat down with Debut Monday author, Jon Bauer across the digital divide to find out about boxing, street opera and writing notes to self.

What’s a typical day spent writing like for you? Can you describe your routine?

Routine only becomes important to me during the harder sections of a novel. The rest of the time I write when I want to, which luckily is often.

People ask me how come I’m so disciplined and I always say I’m not disciplined, I’m passionate (and they try not to throw up in their mouth).

When I was working on Rocks in the Belly I often had a routine though to keep me grounded and moderately comfortable, because writing a novel is so insidiously destabilising.

Usually I’ll be at the task by ten. Mostly in one café or another. Ideally one where I can sit in the window, plug in my music and write. That way I can see the world even if I’m hermetically sealed from it by writing and music and my back to the room.

By two o’clock I stop if I haven’t already. I’ll need exercise to get me back down to earth, but that might not happen until five when I can go to boxing. I love going in there. I’m not very good at it. It’s a tough gym with a focus on technique – there’s Commonwealth contenders in training, but I just like to hit things. Not so much for aggressive reasons, but the simple fact that it’s as far from mind-based activity as I can get. We use our heads too much these days.

Describe your writing tools – what do you prefer? Parchment or pen, Olivetti or iPad?

My writing toolkit consists of: Coffee, although I’m trying to give it up for something that doesn’t make the voices in my head talk so fast; Music, ideally something melancholically moody. A Macbook Pro, I won’t do that awful rhyme that recent Apple converts do, but I do like this laptop; a café window and some street opera to watch. Streets are highly entertaining – full of dogs and babies and lunch meetings and girlfriend catch-ups and all the emotions and interactions that those elicit from all involved. Seeing life outside the window helps stimulate me in the window. Writing is an insular profession, and just seeing life is enough.

Do you keep a writer’s notebook (or equivalent)? If so, can we take a peek – what’s something you jotted down recently?

I think the good ideas don’t need writing down, but in those anxious moments where the fear of losing one might be keeping me preoccupied or awake, I’ll make a note in my phone in the form of a reminder.

Then days later I might be having a coffee with someone, or wake up in the morning to something like: Man steals dogs for glory of reuniting them; Cancer cry for speech; Two with Jung; Fists thing; Love over lover.

I put reminders in my phone too, for errands I have to run. Often reminders that have begging messages attached to them where I’ve tried to coerce the future-me. ‘Book dentist. Go on. You know you should!’

But there’s always the snooze option, so my mobile is like this little snow plough of jobs to do and stories to write that I repeatedly snooze. ‘Pay gas bill. Do! Go on! You know you should!’ Snooze.

Do you write full time or do you have a ‘day job’? How does this help/hinder your writing?

I’ve been a full time writer for a while now but I used to have this soul-sapping career that didn’t stop me writing anyway. I’d write in my lunchtimes or at work or in the evenings. You can’t write creatively for more than a smattering of hours at a time anyway.

Of course I often feel bad about all the space I have compared to most other artists. I know it’s a great help to me. It means I have more energy for my work.

But having that space is also often typecast by others. Not everyone who had this space would entirely love it. An absence of outside structure can be quite steeply existential. Plus a lot of people are just as unproductive no matter how much time they have. For some, their busy lifetimes are their excuse not their reason.

Writers’ block – does it happen and how do you get over it?

Writer’s block is a sign of personal cruelty. There’s no need for blockages if you’re being gentle with yourself. If every word has to be good. If every story or chapter has to be publishable. If you let your audience or editor or latest crush read over your mental shoulder, you might start to get a bit of writerly constipation.

Creativity is play. And play is never wrong. Writers block means you aren’t doing the first job of an artist, which is ignoring your internal voices. Especially the ones that sound uncannily like you at your cruelest.

Finally, what’s the last book that you loved, and why?

Brenda Walker’s book, Reading By Moonlight – an oblique account of her experience of breast cancer, told through an examination of the books she read to get her through.

Walker would have been forgiven for wanting to shovel her whole deluging experience of cancer onto the page – to bury you as a reader. But instead she’s managed to forge the most subtle, rich and nourishing path through her particular humanity, with all its coal-face drudgery, as well as the most arresting motifs of personal meaning and solace. So many talismans of living flutter from the page, beautifully crafted.

It’s a real achievement to write so honestly about such a confronting topic, but carry the reader through it so gently. I hope I get the chance to meet her.

The Book-suer of Kabul

The Guardian reports that author Åsne Seierstad has been found guilty of defamation and “negligent journalistic practices” for her book The Bookseller of Kabul.

An Oslo district court found that Seierstad had depicted Suraia Rais in “a humiliating, untruthful way” and ordered to pay UK£26,000 in punitive damages. Readers of the book will know Rais as the second wife of bookseller Shah Muhammad Rais, who hosted Seierstad while researching her book.

The decision has created a precedent about how people from developing countries are depicted by visiting journalists and writers. The bookseller Shah Muhammad Rais along with his first wife and their family have already begun legal proceedings against Seierstad, which could amount to UK£250,000. Despite Seierstad claiming that she’d been told stories by the family and that her approach was novelistic, 31 members of the Rais family and their neighbours say the Norwegian author misrepresented them.

Electioneering: Whose “say” is it anyway? by Zach Kitsche

A Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change – Is it power to the people or an attempt by the Government to look like it’s doing something whilst not doing much at all?

When the Government announced it’s renewed position on Climate Change last week, the Opposition derided the idea of a 150-person citizens' assembly as “a carbon copout”. The Greens also thought so, calling it “very fuzzy”.

Although it seems there has been mainly negative things said about Gillard’s “movement forward” on climate change, a new party is looking to platform itself on just this kind of engagement.

Berge Der Sarkissan is the founder of Senator Online; a political party that aims to take democracy one step further by nominating senate candidates, who, if elected would put each senate vote to the public through an online polling website. They would also use focus groups, citizen parliaments and other engagement techniques to develop new policy proposals.

Senator Online did run candidates at the 2007 election however secured just 8000 votes across News South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland. Der Sarkissan says that they have since developed a greater profile and are hoping for a larger share of the votes this time around. The party plans to run two candidates per state, with the addition of candidates in Tasmania this year.

The question that needs to be asked is whether or not their proposed policy process is likely to be any more representative than that of the current political parties. Aren’t politicians already answerable to their electorates, and thus in Canberra to represent the views of the people? Der Sarkissan says that Senator Online would be different, as his mechanism would take the party politics out of the equation. “Politicans aren’t doing their jobs,” he says, “Are they taking the position of the public or the position of their party?”

It’s questionable how such a process would actually work; presumably we’d see the same politicking by the left and right around issues such as asylum seekers, the climate and industrial relations. We would likely see each side rallying supporters who would just inundate the site with votes for a particular point of view. Would Gillard’s “average Australians” have their say or would it just become another battleground between those at the ends of the political spectrum? Whilst the intent of true democracy is admirable, Der Sarkissan’s vision of success might not follow.

He criticises the way the climate debate has been handled, pointing to a lack of information as being the real issue; “I think people need information that’s as non-biased and as accurate as possible. As we’ve said on the website, we’d be trying to encourage productive discussion on those issues.” He’s also critical of the fact Gillard’s proposed assembly on climate policy will be made up of “ordinary Australians” with “no expertise in the field of Climate Science”. You have to ask how that coalesces with his community engagement platform, but at least it is refreshing to see something a bit different in this campaign.

This cross-post is from Express Media’s Electioneering blog, a regular look at what young people are thinking about the election campaign.

Man Booker Longlist Salutes Carey and Tsiolkas

The Man Booker longlist has been announced with Christos Tsiolkas and Peter Carey both scoring spots.

If Parrot & Olivier is successful Carey would be the only author to have won the prize three times – previously winning for True History of the Kelly Gang and Oscar and Lucinda. But even this nomination makes him part of the select group of authors who have been nominated five times – including Margaret Atwood, Beryl Bainbridge and Ian McEwan.

Based on recent form (which has looked for newer authors like DBC Pierre or Aravind Adiga), Tsiolkas must also stand a good chance. There’s stiff competion in the 13 novels listed, including previously nominated David Mitchell for his The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

While the shortlist isn’t announced until the 7th of September and the winner held over until 12th of October, the longlist usually means a sales spike for all the authors included.

Gillard’s politics getting personal

The election campaign took a turn for the personal yesterday as Julia Gillard fielded questions on whether she’d get married if she moved into the Lodge .

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Gillard responded to questions as clearly as possible. Gillard said “Number one, decisions about me getting married are not just made by me – if I could make that point,” she said. Number two, decisions in my personal life I’ll make for personal reasons."

Greens leader Bob Brown was one the of the first politicians to come to her defence “I’m frankly disgusted by it. She’s got her own partner and her relationship with that partner and that’s a great strength to any member of parliament, as my own partner is.” Even Tony Abbott remarked that he was disappointed that Ms Gillard’s private life was being questioned. Abbott commented “"Family status shouldn’t be at stake – gender shouldn’t be at stake. It’s simply the policies and the competence which are the issues in this campaign.”

But Gillard’s private life will be put under the microscope even further in an 8-page spread to appear in the Australian Women’s Weekly today. Also appearing in the magazine, according to news.com.au, will be Liberal frontbencher Joe Hockey with the “debut appearance” of his son Ignatius.

Storm Around Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been making news for her controversial stance on Islam and feminism since she first wrote Infidel in 2007. As she tours Australia she is sparking more controversy around her new book, Nomad.

In a review in the Age, former publisher Hilary McPhee called her latest memoir “a depressing absence of hope or empathy” and Hirsi Ali herself “a one-woman band against her own culture, a hero to herself as well to the men who worship her.”

There was considerable backlash. Andrew McIntyre struck back at McPhee for “ringing the lepers bell” faulting “her analysis of the role Islamic cultural values play in creating poverty, illiteracy and rural conservatism.”

Hirsi Ali is used to dividing debate. The New York Times review of Nomad called the book “engaging and insightful in many places, [it] exemplifies precisely the kind of rhetoric that is overheated and overstated.”

Hirsi Ali herself appeared on ABC’s Life Matters, talking about immigration, human rights and her own struggle to understand her family and her culture. She says “I feel like most Western feminists have actually sided with the tyrants.”

FitzSimons on his new book

Peter FitzSimons is known for his books tackling the big issues, such as Kokoda or his biographies of Steve Waugh and Kim Beazley, but focusing on his own life was a challenge.

His latest book, A Simpler Time reflects on how his upbringing has shaped his values. Australian Bookseller & Publisher was among the first reviews for the title, saying “FitzSimons knows the value of a yarn, and this book contains some great ones. Good for nostalgia and a laugh.”

In an interview on ABC’s Life Matters he talks about when using his parents' letters and diaries covering their courtship and his own birth. FitzSimons talks about his father first introduced him to literature while packing tomatoes on their farm. He remembers: “To keep our minds active Dad would tell us stories and… teach us poetry. Every night you would learn a new stanza.” The literary education served him well and it was Rudyard Kipling’s If that FitzSimons' recited to himself before making his test debut as a Wallaby.

It’s Dublin!

There’s plenty of reasons for raising a glass along the Liffey as Dublin joins Edinburgh, Iowa City and Melbourne as a UNESCO City of Literature.

Wheeler Centre Director Chrissy Sharp said of the decision “With the deep roots between Melbourne and Ireland we welcome Dublin as a sister city in literature and we look forward to bringing Irish writers to Melbourne.”

The Irish Times quotes Minister for Culture and Tourism Mary Hanafin who said the city earned the title for the “rich historical literary past of the city, the vibrant contemporary literature, the variety of festivals and attractions available and because it is the birthplace, and home of literary greats.”

The city of Joyce and Wilde is the fourth city to be named and is a result of lobbying by the Dublin City Library on Pearse Street, which is also home to the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Tweet Writer

Everybody on Twitter has at least one book in them. With this little toy you can turn your Twitter account into a book complete with blurb publicising your literary achievements. You can even re-publish your soon-to-be-bestseller on your Twitter account.

Wylie Burns Down the Publishing House

Just week’s ago Andrew ‘The Jackal’ Wylie was calling for a better deal for his authors on e-books or he’d skip publishers entirely. Now the Guardian reports he’s taking his author stable straight to Amazon.

Under the e-imprint Odyssey Editions, Wylie’s most popular authors will re-release some of their most popular titles including Lolita and Midnight’s Children. It presents a big threat as the Guardian says “Slice off the biggest names, the most valuable backlist items from any publisher’s list and the business model is up in flames.

Publisher Random House has already written to Amazon “disputing their rights to legally sell these titles” because Odyssey is a “direct competitor”. Throwing down the gauntlet to the Jackal, Random House have announced they won’t be “entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved”.

E-March of the Penguins

Guardian columnist Claire Armitstead has a few thoughts for publishing’s favourite bird.

Reflecting on Amazon’s dubious assertion that e-books are now outselling hardcovers Armitstead thinks that Penguin should jump online. She invokes the names of great past publishers Allen Lane (who was behind the Penguin paperback imprint) and Kaye Webb (responsible for the Puffin children’s range) who she believes would be embracing the e-book as they did previous innovations in publishing. Armitstead says “Both Webb and Lane would no doubt be pleased to see the new Artemis Fowl novel published simultaneously this week in hardback and ebook.”

But Armitstead quibbles with Penguins back catalogue arriving on e-book. “As a fan of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, I am delighted to have received a new Penguin edition, I searched in vain for the ebook to upload on to my new iPad and take on holiday with me.” While Penguin has more than 3,000 ebooks in their range, it’s not nearly enough for Armitstead because “most are novels and serious non-fiction – ‘text-heavy’ titles. So you won’t find an e-version of Jamie Oliver either yet.” Perhaps she could browse the science selection mentioned in an earlier Daily to see how limited e-books are.

Steve Grimwade’s Festival Favourites

Putting together a festival is a massive undertaking and new director Steve Grimwade has put together one of the biggest programs in the event’s history. But what events is the festival director looking forward to?

He’ll begin with the Opening Night: Eight Writers: Eight Ways to Be Human. “This is the perfect way to open the festival: it speaks of the breadth of what the festival has to offer and what’s at the heart of all great writing: our shared humanity.”

Some of the best events this year have come from collaboration and Meant to Be Spoken: A celebration of playwrighting is just one of many Grimwade is eagerly anticipating. “This is one of our partnered events – this time with the wonderful Tashmadada – and it promises to be one of the most exciting explorations of playwriting in some time. We have a stellar cast of local, national and overseas guests and they’ll all be reading from their own work and then having a free-for-all discussion.”

But Grimwade’s also not afraid to put on his flares with Living in the 70s, an event featuring Francis Wheen and Australian literary landmark, Frank Moorhouse. But Grimwade believes “Francis Wheen will be the ‘surprise’ package of the festival for many people. I’ve already had numerous people I respect express great joy that he’s part of this year’s festival and yet he remains lesser known to the majority. Wheen’s most recent book is Strange Days Indeed an exploration of the paranoia behind the 70s.”

Himself an editor and publisher, Grimwade brings his enthusiasm for new journals. “I’m very excited about the Launch of Asia Literary Review, a very beautiful magazine, an important magazine and a sister-publication of Granta in many respects… Given Melbourne’s pre-eminence in Australia in the realm of lit-mag publishing I hope to launch a special issue of an international magazine at each festival.”

And rounding out his top five is one of the festival’s quirkier events: Bittersweet. Grimwade explains its fusion of food and poetry: “We’ve engaged 10 different poets from across the festival program (and, indeed, from across Australia), and they are all providing us with small excerpts of poems that will be printed on to small scrolls — scrolls which resemble those little sugar sachets you get when you buy a takeaway coffee. So, with each coffee or tea you buy from Fed Square cafes and restaurants during the festival you’ll get a free poetry scroll. Poetry and coffee? What better way to celebrate writing in Melbourne?”

Celeb Books Are Back

Six Million Dollar Woman Tina Fey

Celebrity books have always been colossal since the 1990s when Jerry Seinfeld’s cult pushed Seinlanguage into the New York Times bestseller list. But the Daily Beast reports that the celeb book is making a come back.

The recent success of Tori Spelling (her puntastic title: sTORI Telling) and Chelsea Handler has seen several new star titles signed – for big bucks. Tina Fey was paid US$6 million for her title almost back to the 1990s heyday that saw Jerry banking US$7 million for his book.

But the current favourite celeb title is that of controversial cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, according to the Guardian. Ten copies of the Tendulkar Opus will include the cricketers’s blood mixed in with the paper pulp. Other embellishments include unpublished family photographs and pages edged in gold leaf. And you can get one of the pricey ten copies for a mere US$75,000.

If your love of the Indian cricketer doesn’t break the four-figure mark then there will be a thousand hardcover copies costing US$2,000-3,000 which are signed and include his DNA profile. This should come in handy if you’re thinking of cloning the cricketing great.

Martin on Politician Lookalikes

Over at his regularly hilarious and randomly thoughtful Scrivener’s Fancy, Tony Martin had some thoughts on the Hawke telemovie and the nature of impersonating the greats.

Martin “found it impossible to concentrate on the film’s narrative… as I was spending all my time evaluating whether the actors looked enough like who they were supposed to be.”

Himself a TV actor and director on The Librarians, Martin recounts a recent run-in with actor Patrick Brammall, who played Kim Beazley. “‘But surely you wouldn’t be fat enough?’ I blurted, immediately feeling like an arsehole as his face informed me that I was probably the one-thousandth person to have said this to him.”

He also reckons the only person for the lead in the Julia Gillard telemovie would be Kath and Kim’s Jane Turner and though the costume could do the acting for the leader of the opposition as “Tony Abbott… would he be sporting the lollybags and bathing cap in every single scene, including those depicting fierce debates in the Lower House”.

Finding the Right Price in Amazon

If you’re thinking of making millions with your upcoming e-book, over at eBooknewsr they’ve got a preferred pricetag of US$1.99.

In their survey of new authors, eBooknewsr found that many found new audiences by pricing their books low. That was the plan for Boyd Morrison, who told eBooknewsr: “I chose the $1.99 price point because it seemed like it was cheap enough to get a reader to take a chance on an unknown author like me.”

Other authors started out with higher prices but became more realistic to get more buyers. Jeff Rivera, author of Forever My Lady, said “I asked them to lower the price because $1.99 is a non-intrusive way to introduce eBook readers to new books. They’re willing to take a risk on $1.99 whereas $9.99 is a major investment.”

Most new books in Amazon’s store cluster around the US$9.99 mark though many public domain books including The Scarlet Letter and Frankenstein are free.

At the other end of the scale, Amazon is pricey for specialised niche publications like Selected Nuclear Materials and Engineering Systems for a hefty US$6,433.20 (including wireless delivery). It’s a bargain in contrast to the hardcover edition which retails for US$8,038.99. Perhaps authors should switch to penning scientific manuals.

Young adults and children in PM’s Prize

Writer/illustrator Sally Rippin

Along with fiction (J. M. Coetzee, David Malouf and Alex Miller all made the grade) and non-fiction, this year also sees the inclusion of children’s fiction and young adult fiction for the first time. One favourite on the children’s list is Harry and Hopper which has already earned illustrator Freya Blackwood the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.

Another nominee for the children’s prize is writer/illustrator Sally Rippin who illustrated Mannie and the Long Brave Day by Martine Murray. Rippin told us “The most exciting thing about the list is that it shows the diversity of children’s literature. It encompasses junior fiction as well as illustrated books which is good because it recognises kids of all different ages are interested in a wide range of books.”

Judge of the children’s and young adult categories Mike Shuttleworth saw the inclusion of books for children as “a recognition of the contribution that children’s and young adult writing makes to Australian literary culture”. Although this is a new category, the list has great range. “We did include both picture books and novels because we wanted to pay regard to the range of books being produced for young people,” Shuttleworth says.

Shuttleworth is convinced that both images and text are equally important in the picture book category. “It’s a bit like judging a music prize – do you give prominence to music or lyrics? A picture book exists because it is the best medium for telling that story. There has to be a dynamism between text and image – they have to talk to each other.”

With interruptions for the election, the announcement of winners has been postponed until after 21st August.

Father Bob Goes the Extra Mile

Our upcoming lunchbox/Soapboxer Father Bob Maguire had a busy weekend completing the Run Melbourne 5km walk in just over an hour, but at the cost of his mobile, the Age reports.

During the course of the run, Father Bob misplaced his mobile phone during the charity run, but was quick to reassure friends that their numbers were safe. The celebrity priest tweeted to Triple J co-host John Safran “No numbers listed.You’re safe.New number emailed.”

The run marked the end of several weeks of training for the 75-year-old. In the lead up to the event he posted a training update on the Run Melbourne website proving he’s still very active “I stepped up visiting hospitals. The long corridors and stairs instead of lifts keep me fit. I’ve thought of grabbing patients in wheelchairs and insisting on pushing them around.”

Father Bob has another milestone later this week as Melbourne’s best-loved priest celebrates 50 years since his ordination with a Sunday Mass.

Debut Novel Comes Gradually

I received my first physical copy of In-human as a book and I couldn’t imagine the excitement it would bring.

It’s been such a long and hard slog to get it published that there was no joy left in it for me anymore. I didn’t think so anyway. And then I got to hold this beautiful book and I fell in love again. I went home immediately and read it from start to finish in one day. I read it like it was the first time, which sounds crazy after years of re-drafting but I could not put it down. I had to keep turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next. I didn’t expect this to happen because I’m more than familiar with all the events. But reading a bound book is, I found out, a very different experience from reading that stack of loose pages.

For me In-human is like a fairy tale – I have been able to read it countless times without ever losing the joy of it but by the last edit I was over the whole thing. And this made me sad because we’ve had such a long relationship. I started writing this novel twelve years ago. And the story continues. The novel I’m writing now, How much the human body contains, is Coralee’s take on events. She’s the antagonist in In-human and for me the hardest character to get to know, so I had to start writing this novel to find out about her.

At first (for six years) I struggled not just because In-human wasn’t finished yet, which was significant, but also because Coralee is a very dark and complicated character. Often it’s been extremely hard for me to sit with her story but in the last few weeks I had this amazing insight into what drives her and so now it’s gotten easier for me to let her speak. She’s remarkable and I hope she keeps talking. I’ve put excerpts of the first draft of the new book up on my blog so this time the first draft feels a little more public but also less lonely.

This is an edited cross post from Anna Dusk’s blog.

Melbourne Writers Festival Tickets on Sale

Got your copy of the Melbourne Writers Festival Program yet?

The hottest ticket is bound to be Joss Whedon’s keynote address as he talks about everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to his latest project, the Avengers movie. By the time you’ve read this it probably will have sold out – that’s how hot these tickets are.

But that’s the second keynote. The first keynote earlier in the evening of the 27th of August has eight writers talking about “Eight Ways of Being Human” including Cate Kennedy and Alex Miller.

The Schools program has been released for a while, but the Big Ideas for Schools section has great range as it raises political careers, media representation and the environment with Tim Flannery kicking proceedings off.

But it’s also a program with great skills on offer. The regular session The Whole Shebang is a full-day look behind the scenes of publishing including publishers like Michael Heyward and Bob Session as well as writers like Toni Jordan. There’s plenty of other chances to get involved though with a creative non-fiction workshop with Simon Winchester or poetry with August Kleinzahler, plus masterclasses in biography with Francis Wheen or fiction with Barbara Trapido. It’s looking like the biggest year yet.

Fiction Hits the Streets

On Monday the special fiction edition of the Big Issue officially hits the streets.

Vendors will be selling a magazine that includes new pieces from Michel Faber,Toni Jordan and Christos Tsiolkas. Deputy editor Melissa Cranenburgh reckons it’s one of the Australia’s most widely read magazines still publishing short stories. “With a readership of more than 154,000 the Big Issue’s fiction edition is one of the most widely read fiction magazines in Australia,” Cranenburgh says.

Last year the fiction edition sold out and this year they’ve crammed in another 8 pages to accommodate all the new stories. But as with every edition of the Big Issue, Cranenburgh is keen to point out that the five bucks cover price is a “chance to support the vendor standing in front of you.”

Submit and Buy Says Publisher

One publisher is standing behind booksellers by opening up submissions to all, so long as you can bring in a receipt from your local bookstore.

Tin House will accept submissions provided they come with a receipt. But you can still be creative with your receipt: “Writers are invited to videotape, film, paint, photograph, animate, twitter, or memorialize in any way (that is logical and/or decipherable) the process of stepping into a bookstore and buying a book to send along for our possible amusement and/or use on our web site.” We want to do interpretative dance.

ABA Conference Tweets

Wondering what’s on your local bookseller’s mind? The 86th annual Australian Booksellers Association Conference has just finished in Brisbane this week and much of the talk was online.

Angela Myer found herself on a panel about social media looking at how bookshops can use these tools. Myer thought it answered crucial questions around Twitter, Facebook and blogging including “"who in the store might do it (or even a customer); why shouldn’t people use these tools and what shouldn’t you do if you do use them”.

Kate Eltham, CEO of Queensland Writers Centre, was one of several who used the hashtag #ABAConf10 and concluded “Those booksellers sure know how to put on a shindig. Tip of the hat to you!”

Great coverage of individual events came from Bookseller + Publisher’s tweets – including quotes from Richard Nash’s session including “Reading is solitary but talking about books is social” and “The word ‘book’ appears on Twitter 3 times a second”.

The next event will be held in Melbourne on the 24th-26th July.

Editor Shows Birthmark

Last week twenty-one year old Johannes Jacob launched “Birthmark”, his first issue as editor of Voiceworks.

He’s no stranger to the publication having served on the magazine’s editorial committee for the last two years, but he’s ambitious about keeping the youth magazine on course. “For me, it’s about pushing those things we’ve put into place further and further, until I guess ultimately everyone in Australia is weak at the knees, overcome with how amazing young writers are,” Jacob said.

And what does the new issue hold? Jacob’s first issue balances playful with thoughtful including an essay “Where the Wild Things Are” that maps Australia’s cultural place in the Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. There’s an interview with Tom Cho, author of Look Who’s Morphing and former Voiceworks contributor.

Jacob’s own editorial “Strike While the Irony is Hot” reflects on his German heritage and relationship with language. He concludes that while being bi-lingual can be confusing and it’s also liberating “Maybe… [it] will give you the freedom to start using words with even more precision and even more creativity than you have been, because now you’re exercising some ownership over them, they are becoming your words, not anyone else’s.”

Un-Cooler Future for E-book

News from The Bookseller in the UK is that the Dutch company Interead, who made the Cool-er e-reader, has gone bankrupt.

Founded in 2009, Interead’s Cool-er had good market presence with sales passing seven figures [in UK pounds] and the company’s owner boasted just over a year ago “I’m pretty confident we’ll be number two in America by this time next year in terms of sales, and number one in the UK.”

But with the appearance of the iPad, e-readers are suddenly looking prehistoric. Even the biggest selling device, Amazon’s Kindle, has been slashing prices as Apple’s new device has sold more than 3 million units.

Harvey Pekar dies

Comic writer Harvey Pekar was found dead in his home in Cleveland on Monday, the AV Club reports.

Pekar is best known for his autobiographical comic book American Splendor, which became a film of the same name. His work was known for its cynical and personal take including his struggle with lymphoma in 1994’s Our Cancer Year. He rose to fame through his irregular appearances on the David Letterman Show and last year launched his web comic The Pekar Project. He died at aged 70 after enduring prostate cancer, asthma, high blood pressure and depression in his later years.

Literary speed daters speak

Over the weekend we hosted two literary speed dating events on Friday and Saturday night. Both nights were busy with flirts and folios flying. Where else would you be able to hear a newly met couple saying “Do you really like Tim Winton?”

One male participant who works in a book shop told us on the way out that he “had a blast. I’d never done anything like it before and I went in with some trepidation, but everyone was very open and it was lots of fun.” While he sat down opposite a dozen women with very different books, he found that while he may not have read all the books he was able to talk about most of them. “I’m lucky in a bookstore that no-one brought a book that I hadn’t heard of so even when I hadn’t read it I could ask some questions about it.” And he left optimistic about hearing from some of his dates. He said “I hope to. I have no idea if they’ve chosen me so I’ll just wait for an email or not.”

Veteran dater and Emerging Writers Festival director Lisa Dempster blogged about her dates. When faced with the end of the night scorecard, she “had a bit of a meltdown”. The scorecard asked whether you wanted to see each date again either romantically, platonically or not at all. Dempster writes “I was ridiculously weirded out by putting romantic options down but after a stern talking-to from Michael Williams (‘take a chance on romance’, ‘be bold!’, ‘if you feel a little spark then put your heart on the line’)… I ticked a few boxes!”

As head of programming at the Wheeler Centre, Williams is already looking forward to the next event. “We will be offering a same-sex dating night. This weekend reinforced the idea that the best events allow for the most participation. We’re thrilled by the success of Literary Speed Dating and look forward to more in the future.”

Popping Publishing

If you’re wondering what publishers need to keep business booming, Nick Thomas recommends popcorn not paywalls over at Paid Content.

Thomas' argument is that publishing needs a shift in their business like that of cinemas who rather than making money from box office tickets “now make their profit from popcorn (which has an operating margin in excess of 90%)”. He’s fairly damning on paywalls which he sees as a short-term idea and thinks publishing will need to think more laterally. He recommends “Smart non-media companies see content not as a revenue center but as an engagement and audience-building play.”

Erotic Fan Fiction on Twitter

The heat at last night’s erotic fan fiction bubbled over onto Twitter as people who saw it needed to let off steam.

@katiemelb came away with a new opinion of a children’s classic after it was re-imagined. She tweeted “Charlotte’s Web will never be the same after @mariekehardy’s Wilbur/Charlotte fanfiction at @wheelercentre tonight. Some pig, indeed. ;)”

MissTruex managed to beat the TV to come along to the event: “Sad I missed Marion being booted #masterchef -but super glad I saw erotic fan fiction being read at @wheelercentre, twas wrong and so funny”.

And blogger @bookworm_megs has been coming along all week but on last night she sums up the evening best with “they’d all taken characters and/or celebrities and wrote them in erotic fiction. Some were funny, some were cringe-worthy and all were entertaining!”

Marieke Hardy’s piece about the love that dare not speak its name between a pig and the eponymous spider got the most mentions though. One reply to her by @fivewalls “I was kind of hoping for a special on Watership Down, now I’m thinking all kinds of permutations on ‘Some Pig’”.

For her part Hardy wasn’t sure how the evening went, tweeting “A nice girl came up to me after my erotic fan fiction reading last night and said it was ‘revolting’. Still not sure if it was a compliment.”

Kathy Charles on Less Than Zero

Photo by Evan Butson

I was nine years old. Every Saturday night Richard Wilkins introduced the hottest clips from the States while my sister got ready for the Bluelight Disco. It was the summer of The Bangles, and ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ was our anthem. The music video was filled with scenes from a movie I was too young to see, but from the outfits and sunglasses and wild parties I knew it was cool. Damn cool.

Fast forward to thirteen, and I am reading everything my teachers disapprove of. I take a break from Stephen King paperbacks to devour Less Than Zero. I am expecting parties, drugs and narcissism. I am given so much more. Scenes of apocalyptic terror that haunt my dreams. Ghost Indians. Dead cats in the mouths of coyotes. Billboards with ominous, prophetic pronouncements. It’s no coincidence that the hot Betamax bootleg among Ellis’ protagonists is Temple of Doom. LA is a ghost town; the very landscape exudes death and destruction, and its inhabitants are cursed. Less Than Zero is less melodrama, more horror show. I stare out my bedroom window at an Australian landscape and dream of the madness crouched in the Palm Springs desert.

Years later, I arrive in Los Angeles. By some bizarre coincidence I find myself in Sherman Oaks, the quintessential valley suburb where Ellis grew up and set much of Less Than Zero. For the next fifteen years this will be my home turf in LA. I fall hopelessly in love with the city, with the canyons of Hollywood and all their secrets. The ghosts of dead movie stars haunt me. I begin my own LA novel in earnest, and it’s dead on arrival: an obvious imitation of Ellis. I now know better. There is no imitating Ellis. His prose may appear deceptively simple, but it writhes with the same metaphysical undercurrents that haunt his characters. I set about finding my own vision of Los Angeles, and I largely achieve it, but always there is the specter of Less Than Zero in every word I write. LA once belonged to Fante, then Bukowski. LA now belongs to Ellis. The rest of us are merely interlopers.

Kathy Charles is the author of Hollywood Ending, published by Text.

Bret Easton Ellis making more movies

Bret Easton Ellis' script The Golden Suicides has Gus Van Sant attached to it according to Oregon Live.

The script features characters that could have been pulled from Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero – based on the life of artist Jeremy Blake and his girlfriend video game creator Theresa Duncan, who both killed themselves in 2007.

The only problem is locking in Van Sant who has a busy filming schedule. Easton Ellis said “I ask him to direct it every day. He says ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to. I’ll produce the movie, but I don’t want to direct it.’ He wanted to do ‘Twilight.’ He wanted a ”Twilight gig. It’s a lot of money. I get it."

Rodney Croome on Gillard and gay marriage

Gay Rights activist and today’s Lunchbox/Soapboxer, Rodney Croome has taken aim at our new Prime Minister Julia Gillard on her views on same-sex marriage in post for ABC Unleashed.

At issue is an amendment to the Marriage Act in 2004 which banned the recognition of same-sex marriages including those made in countries where gay marriage is legal. While civil unions exist and there is some recognition of same-sex couples, Croome says they are “an unsatisfactory substitute for marriage”.

For Croome the disappointment with Gillard is greater, because while other PMs have been in marriages themselves, Gillard is not. “As a partner in a de facto relationship, Gillard understands the profound importance of couples having the choice to marry and the equally profound indignity that comes from that choice being circumscribed by prejudice or law.”

The piece points to inter-racial marriages as being viewed with more tolerance than same-sex unions and how the choice to marriage is a decision about controlling your life as well as having important legal value and moral value. Croome concludes with an appeal to Gillard: “I can only hope our new Prime Minister comes to realise what a terrible injury she is inflicting, not least on the principles upon which she has founded her own personal life.”

Bret in Brooklyn

If you’re wondering what Bret Easton Ellis' appearance will be like, literary agent Erin Hosier gives a wry wrap of her attendance at his book reading over at the Nervous Breakdown.

The first thing she spots at the reading is the icon-like status the crowd affords Easton Ellis. “Someone has crossed out the word “Ellis” from the poster on the podium so that it now reads ‘Elvis.’” It’s a younger crowd who Hosier decides are “mostly 20-somethings. Only a smattering of suited, plastic surgery failures litter the front.”

Easton Ellis launched into a brief reading from Imperial Bedrooms and he seemed nervous. Hosier describes it: “He puts his hand on the back of his neck as he reads, like a jock giving a book report. His voice is so sexy, I wish he would slow down.”

Then follow some questions – including some starstruck queries about his favourite rapper (Easton Ellis replies “Look, guys, I’m old, okay? I listen to The National.”) and writer’s block. Hosier finds it a tedious obstacle before the autographing. “Bret is exasperated. He is disappointed in the crowd and frankly so am I.”

And when the signing comes it’s all too fleeting. Hosier has pre-publication copy of the book about which Easton Ellis joked “‘I’ll just sign it where it will be worth the most money,’ he says, and does, too quickly. And then it’s over.”

Literary Speed Reader

The early results are in on our booked-out literary speed dating and we’re offering a sneak peek of what speed daters are bringing.

Unsurprisingly, Tim Winton fared well with 8 people bringing along one of his titles – Cloudstreet was the most popular though the more obscure short story collection, Minimum of Two also got a mention. The most popular single title though was To Kill A Mockingbird, which this year celebrates its 50th year and proved a favourite with more than 10 daters opting for their copy of the Harper Lee classic. Jane Austen also proved popular though one wag is bringing along the mash-up, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, to ensure brainy conversation with potential partners.

But with only one book to pick, some speed daters went for the unusual. One is bringing along William S Burroughs' The Ticket That Exploded, the beat grandfather’s drug-soaked, paranoia-infused, almost sci-fi text that has only recently been re-released. A few graphic novels – Watchmen and Buddha – made an appearance. But in the time-poor impress-quick world of speed dating, who could go past Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter?

Steve Martin leaks his own rider

Comedian, novelist, playwright and all-round wild and crazy guy, Steve Martin has prefaced his upcoming tour by leaking his rider onto his own website. Who says Americans don’t do irony?

Among Martin’s many claims of venues who host him are “waterproof guyliner” and the request that every ten minutes before the show a new trophy will be delivered to Steve. While the trophies could say “Best Show of the Year” and “Most Beloved”, the document warns “Creativity encouraged (Steve starting to get bored with these.”

Security is paramount to Martin so he asks that his instruments be guarded by “a hostile biggish-looking guard who tells repellently boring stories.” Martin also asks for sweeps with security dogs twice before the show with the second being only “to ensure Steve has dogs to pet if Steve’s dog, Wally, is busy.”

John Birmingham makes new web friends

John Birmingham missed his own appearance on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report last night talking about social media because his TV was on the blink. Instead he followed the whole thing on Twitter, but was edited down to some sound bytes.

Birmingham decided to continue the debate on his blog for the Brisbane Times. His main beef is that “nearly twenty minutes of raving about the inherent awesomeness of new media forms also hit the cutting floor”.

And the most awesome aspect of the web? Breaking social isolation. Birmingham reckons “most of my new friends, and they are real friends for the most part, have come from the unreal world of the web, from the supposedly isolating, distancing digital realms.”

Birmingham was also pleased he “did manage to get some pimpage for [new book] After America into the background vision.” Reviews for the book are coming in including one from the Australian Book Review reflecting “This is Birmingham as the professional writer: the perpetual freelancer who has turned his diverse interests and considerable talents to the production of narrative in its most currently remunerative market.”

Lunch in Mayfair: Being Wooed by Mills & Boon

‘What distinguishes Mills & Boon from our competitors,’ boomed the senior editor, peering at me in a disconcertingly cross-eyed way over the starched linen tablecloth, ‘is that they are purveyors of one-handed books. We sell two-handed books.’ Around us, diners pricked up their ears. The junior editor, younger and with an English degree from Leicester University, topped up my glass with Krug. ‘Your story was written with great sincerity,’ she said. ‘We can always tell.’ My companion, an English professor, kicked me under the table, as the vision of a lucrative future as a successful romance writer floated before my eyes. And if champagne luncheons in Mayfair were standard treatment for Mills & Boon authors, bring it on, I thought.

Six months earlier I had won the national Woman’s Day/Mills & Boon ‘write-a-romance’ competition. Out of some 4000 entries, my short story won first prize: a trip to London for two (I took my eleven-year-old daughter) to meet senior editorial staff of Mills & Boon; a week’s accommodation at the five-star Athenaeum Hotel in Piccadilly; a computer/printer package and about a litre of Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion. I had written the story, ‘Hear the Music’, at the last minute. When I learnt I’d won, I was so bashful about both its literary merit and the stigma attached to the genre that I barely told a soul. According to various sources, romance titles account for a staggering thirty-five to forty per cent of all mass-market paperback sales. Over 800 titles are published annually in Australia by Harlequin Mills & Boon, and 130 million titles are published internationally: that’s about four books every second. A top romance writer can churn out four novels a year and rack up sales totalling more than seventy million. As the Americans say, you do the math.

That’s exactly what I was doing in June, 1993. With scandalised pleasure I cast my eye over the luncheon menu of one of London’s top restaurants, Stephen Bull of Mayfair. A bottle of Australian wine, which cost a few dollars at home, was the equivalent of $60; few main courses were under $50. ‘Order whatever you want,’ encouraged the senior editor, beckoning to the supercilious waiter with a rather flaky French accent. ‘This is our treat.’ The English professor, who had been eking out a sabbatical in grotty quarters in Finsbury Park when I called and asked if he’d like to have a free lunch in Mayfair, needed no encouragement. Nor did I: my last meal of any distinction had been served by Singapore Airlines. Double-baked cheese souffle, fried sweetbreads, fillets of red mullet and sardines, lobster risotto, summer vegetable salad, green grapes in caramel sauce, a stupendous creation of chocolate, whipped cream, chestnut puree and meringue… The total bill must have been eye-popping. Not that anyone cared. It was a cheerful meal and we all got steadily drunk. Insider information passed across the table, along with the condiments and the wine.

Can men write Mills & Boon romances, the English professor wanted to know, convinced it had to be more rewarding than writing academic tracts about George Gissing. Very few, it turned out, and all under female pseudonyms. And almost all were Anglo-Saxon. One man, however, was one of their most successful authors, regularly producing four books a year. At eighty, he lived on the Isle of Man (for tax reasons), and wore hairgrips – perhaps indicating that he had at least some feminine sensibilities coursing through his aged veins.

Was it true, we asked, that Mills & Boon received 5000 unsolicited manuscripts every year? Quite true – and it was up to the two editors to read most of them. Far from having a vast editorial department at the London headquarters, the two women across the table, along with a couple of secretaries, were it. The company assured aspiring authors that every submission was read, so how on earth did they work their way through such a slush pile? ‘Read, yes, but rarely to the end,’ the editors admitted cheerfully. ‘A couple of paragraphs are usually enough. We sometimes don’t get past the cover letter.’ Onto the reject pile go the totally illiterate (editors will persevere with the mildly illiterate as long as the story blows their socks off); Nazi spy thrillers; submissions from the wives of retired vicars, who last read a romance in 1946; and non-fiction, manuscripts about golfing, fishing or gardening. A lot of hopefuls, it seemed, employed the scatter-gun approach when it came to sending out their work. Out of this huge slush pile, perhaps three or four were published each year. Was I going to be one of them?

The author Ruth Starke has a PhD in English and teaches creative writing at Flinders University.

This is an excerpt from Kill Your Darlings 2, released this month.

Fiction “Culturally Irrelevant”

News of a new literary scuffle in the States as critic Lee Siegel has pronounced fiction “culturally irrelevant” because “no one goes to a current novel or story for the ineffable private and public clarity fiction once provided” in his New York Observer column.

He goes onto to call fiction “a museum piece genre most of whose practitioners are more like cripplingly self-conscious curators or theoreticians than writers”. He takes a swipe at the New Yorker’s “Twenty Under Forty” (which he calls a “self-promoting, vulgar list”) and fellow critic James Woods.

The Los Angeles Times responded to Siegel’s assertion that fiction has bitten the dust with a weary “Here we go again”, pointing out that many have made the same argument in the past. Their article returns fire with “It’s hard to figure out which is more problematic: how poorly Siegel’s argument is made, or how many things he gets wrong in the process.”

Future of A-books

With all the hype around iPad apps for books and publishers racing to simultaneously release their e- and p-books (the latter being short for print books), are we forgetting the a-book?

Earlier this year The Telegraph said audiobook sales were skyrocketing thanks to the iPod and this week Salon praised the ability of audiobooks to make heavyweight classics like War and Peace or Moby Dick more approachable.

A-books' accessibility often finds younger audiences for classics. As school holidays approach rather than using an in-car DVD parents could also reach for their iPhone to quieten littlies. Bolinda books and Vision Australia are two of Australia’s biggest a-book publishers with Audiobooks Australia acting as a portal for other publishing houses. They make for easy bedtime reading and are much better than another round of I-spy.

Huff Post on Social networking books

The Huffington Post asked this week if Twitter sells books and got several emphatic yeses.

Michael Taeckens, Publicity Director of Algonquin Books, offers three simple rules for interacting on Twitter ranging from “engage in conversations” and the old chestnut “display your sense of personality”. For publishers still wondering if they should tweet, Taeckens sees it as an essential branding tool as it offers “the opportunity to convey your personal, unique sense of identity in real time.”

While the the article is slightly skewed because it talks to two publishers already doing well on Twitter including Algonquin Books profiled in their previous article about the top publishers on Twitter, it follows its own advice by allowing you to interact through a poll on the best social network for book promotion.

For aspiring authors on Twitter, a good post was recently written on 40 Twitter Hashtags for Writers, including popular tags such as #amwriting, which some writers use to tell the world how many words they wrote today. Personally we prefer the ever popular #writersblock, a hashtag that’s part therapy session but more procrastination.

Deryn Hinch Comes Out Swinging on Homosexual Marriage

Yesterday on 3AW radio broadcaster Derryn Hinch likened the struggle by same sex couples to legally marry to the African American protests for equal rights in the 1960s, despite his previous anti-marriage equality views.

Hinch opened by confessing that in the past he had “followed the ignorant, blinkered, almost homophobic, line without thinking it through” but has since come around to thinking of gay marriage as a question of human rights. After pointing out a number of nations where same-sex marriage was legal including Iceland’s recent prime ministerial wedding Hinch almost chanelled Martin Luther King saying “Equality will prevail. One day.”

Hinch went on to refer to recent Tweets by lesbian TV host Ruby Rose including her comment “its discrimination and I beleive we are above that its [sic] 2010”. Hinch also interviewed our Lunchbox/Soapboxer Rodney Croome.