LiteraryMinded

This cumulative kind of effect when you stop: an interview with Emily Maguire on Smoke in the Room, part two

November 5, 2009 – 7:53 am, by LiteraryMinded

DSC03869Part One of this interview can be found here.

Pictured: Emily Maguire and I before the Sleepers Salon in October.

I ask Maguire about the setting. Is it pertinent for this story to be set in Sydney? She says it probably could have been a few cities, but ‘western Sydney is – the cliché is ‘melting pot’, but it’s not very melty actually, it’s more like lots of different kinds of people clashing with each other.

‘Part of it is, Adam is an outsider, his expectations of Sydney are Bondi and beaches, sea water, all that side of it, and it’s not that, y’no?. But there are two universities near there so there are students, there are a lot of international students, there are a lot of immigrants, but it’s also partly, newly gentrified so you have wealth cropping up and – it’s a clash.

‘There were a few other places in the world, there are probably parts of Melbourne, there are certain American cities that have that too. But as an Australian writing, and as someone from Sydney, I think that particular area is the kind of place where you do get these odd mixes of people who have smashed into each other and are a bit stuck where they are and so you get these weird kind of friendships.

smoke-676x1024‘There are a lot of street characters there too, they’re known as that although I’m sure they don’t think of themselves as characters – they’re living their lives – but, people who’ve lived there a long time can tell you the stories about these street people. “The man with a stick” is kinda based on a real guy.’

I was really struck by how calm the character Katie is after she acts out, such as after she harms herself. Her calmness is what’s really confronting to Adam and the other characters. There’s a scene where she’s bald, barefoot and scarred, and she’s wearing a red dress ‘of a style Graeme recognised from his youth’, and a navy and white polka-dot apron. She is making Graeme dinner. It’s a very beautiful, sad and tense scene. I asked Maguire if she thought some readers might be confronted by the book, the way the other characters are sometimes confronted by Katie.

‘Yeah. It’s really interesting to me how different people relate to the characters when they read it – I feel like I learn a lot about them. Some people have said “she’s so irritating, she’s so self-indulgent”, which I think is partly true, but others have said “I love her, she’s great” – and I feel somewhere in between the two. I hope both things are true – that even though she is irritating and kind of self-indulgent, that’s the flip-side of what I think is lovely about her, which is the deep empathy and the way she doesn’t “mature things away”. She takes everything seriously, whether it’s a celebrity’s crisis, or cooking dinner – she really throws herself into everything – which can be trying, if you’re actually with someone like that’.

There’s a part in the book, in one of Katie’s chapters, about distraction being ‘the stuff of life’ and being what allowed Katie to ‘get on with the stuff of life’. I did sort of see it as the symbolic part – of contemporary existence in general. But Maguire said that’s only one part of it: ‘I don’t mean to highlight it in just a cynical, critical way because I think distraction is a big part of actual survival. The characters don’t really have a religion or an afterlife to look forward to and you do kinda get to that point of “what’s the point?” And part of that is just connecting with other people and finding beauty in the world and things to care about. So that’s the other side of that. So it can become a really negative thing if you never stop to reflect – if you’re always concentrating on the next thing so you never have to stop and you never have to think about your life, but to an extent it’s quite a healthy coping mechanism, too.’

Because I always love to know what authors read, particularly if I admire them and their writing, I ask Maguire about some of her favourite books. She goes back often to Graham Greene. ‘He’s a Catholic writer, in that his Catholicism comes into his work, but he’s very cold and hard. His writing is old-fashioned in a way but it’s sort of the way I write too, and what I love, that old-fashioned psychological realism. Characters that really start delving into their soul, and books that examine how they make choices in their life. One of his books in particular, The Heart of the Matter, was hugely influential for Smoke in the Room.’

Jane Eyre is Maguire’s ‘touchstone book’, but more for her as a person, than a writer. ‘It’s just a really important book to me … I just love it’. She also cites Nadine Gordimer – the South African novelist, ‘who is my idol in the way she can write about politics or political situations, but her novels are still really character-driven. You never feel like you’re reading a political novel, but it’s there. It’s South Africa and it’s the context of the lives of her characters. She’s wonderful’.

After our talk, I watch Maguire in Q&A with Steven Amsterdam at the Sleepers Salon, and learn that at an early stage of writing this book, she suffered a stroke. What happened, was that she came back to the draft and found it somewhat ‘cold’. The book you read now has come about through a life-changing experience. And the characters have their own revelations – through circumstance, through inevitability, and through conscious decision. It’s sometimes up to the reader to think about just which of these things has affected an outcome (choice or inevitability?). And I’m sure Maguire would be able to see deep inside you, depending what you chose.

You can find more details about Emily Maguire and her books on her website.

Smoke in the Room is published by Picador.

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This cumulative kind of effect when you stop: an interview with Emily Maguire on Smoke in the Room, part one

November 3, 2009 – 12:23 pm, by LiteraryMinded

emilyIn Smoke in the Room, three characters end up in a share house in Sydney. Katie works on instinct and is weighted by an overwhelming empathy. Adam, an American, is grieving and needs to save money to get home. Graeme, an aid worker, has rid himself of possessions and simplified his existence. In this novel, what each character will notice about the others tells as much to the reader about them as does their individual actions.

I caught up with Emily Maguire one afternoon in Melbourne to ask her about the book. We sat in the corner of a pub and listened to the kitchen staff belting out 60s rock & roll. I’ve always thought Maguire looks a bit like Christina Ricci – her eyes are large and warm, very deep, and she has the same sort of edge. She is someone whose writing and talks (I have seen her at a few writers’ festivals) indicate that she is one of those people possessed by an honest knowledge about both the sadness and the beauty of the world, and I expect this has been the case since she was very young. She is also often touted, quite truthfully, as a ‘voice of her generation’, writing in both fiction and nonfiction about young people, particularly women, in contemporary Australia.

smokeSmoke in the Room began with the character of Graeme, Maguire says. She had coincidentally been reading a lot of biographies with a similar theme. ‘One of them was of the Aboriginal activist Rob Riley, who committed suicide in ’96. And then I read a long article about Iris Chang, an American writer who wrote a historical account of the rape of Nanking. She was only 36, I think, and she committed suicide, after that book. The book is devastating.

‘So, I was thinking about the toll, that being really engaged in social justice or foreign correspondence, can take. And then I also happened to read a biography of Graham Greene, who’s my favourite twentieth-century writer, and he liked to tell this story – and I wonder if it’s a little bit of an exaggeration – about how when he was a teenager he’d feel depression coming on and he would play Russian Roulette. He suffered from depression his whole life, but he said that he found the best cure – rather than psychotherapy or anything – was to travel to really dangerous places. And so you can track the worst places in the world in the twentieth-century by looking at where Graham Greene went. He went to the most terrible places. And he said that’s when he felt best.’

The character of Graeme in Smoke in the Room is named, then, after Greene, and he too, has travelled to dangerous places all throughout his life. It’s only the young character Katie who has insight into this behaviour, in the book. Maguire wondered whether ‘someone like him is drawn to that kind of work as a way to stave off depression or apathy’. And if not, ‘is this something that will have this cumulative kind of effect when you stop?’

The other part of Graeme came about through people-watching. ‘I would see just around the area these men in their 50s or 60s who look very neat and put-together, not homeless or anything, but just look so lonely and isolated’.

Katie’s philosophical outlook on life – living honestly, emotionally, for-the-moment, no matter how hard-hitting the truth of the moment is – contrasts her new friend and lover Adam’s outlook. Adam prefers to distance himself or step back, or divest his energy in something else – pick up the pieces, despite the weight of his grief. Katie is more inclined to let it in and go with it. Maguire says: ‘Part of it is this kind of context of who you are in relation to society, because Adam is someone who has always been really privileged, and lucky, and his worst complaint is that his mum never felt sorry for him. So when this terrible thing happens to him – to lose someone – he’s almost offended by it happening, and he doesn’t really have any kind of inner resources to cope with something like that happening to him. Whereas Katie’s someone who’s – whether it’s in her nature or related to her experiences in life – a lot more accepting of the fact that shit happens. And that’s all part of life, and she doesn’t take it personally in the same way, so she’s able to kind of roll with it’.

Katie really reminds me of that line in the movie Adaptation: ‘You are what you love, not what loves you.’ She’ll go on loving, believing, feeling, expressing – whether or not it is reciprocated.

Part Two of this interview can be found here.

You can find more details about Emily Maguire and her books on her website.

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Moving house, check out Readings Monthly and diminishing attention spans

October 31, 2009 – 8:29 am, by LiteraryMinded

Lots of books are getting moved from one place to another this weekend (and categorised and alphabetised) so forgive me for being a bit quiet.

It’s not online yet, but my feature interview with Alex Miller, on his new novel Lovesong, has just come out in the November issue of Readings Monthly. Pick up a copy if you’re near a Readings store. I’ll post a link when it’s up online. I actually spoke with Miller about his other wonderful books, and other general things, so there will be more to come on the blog…

Also, this is a link of a link of a link, but we can add to this discussion. I was surprised by Mark Sarvas’ admission that his own attention span for reading seems to have shortened. I didn’t expect this from him. But he does provide some suggestions at the end, if this horrible affliction has sprung upon you. I have no problem reading long books – I don’t get weary or distracted (unless, of course, they suck), and I know many people of my generation read some mammoth works. Maybe we’re (Gen Y) more adaptable to different kinds of reading, where for those just a bit older, the giddy, rapid, screen-swapping, talk-back nature of the internet is harder to shake off when they sit down with a book. But Sarvas isn’t too much older, and he has got a new bub in the house (a lovely distraction). For some, maybe it’s a phase of panic – ‘oh no, the internet is melting my brain’ – which paralyses them. For others, maybe they’re really just not enjoying what they’re reading so much, maybe their reading tastes have changed and it’s difficult to admit it to themselves. Over to you…

(And I do apologise if I take a little while to moderate/reply to comments – the moving thing).

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Buying time: Liz Sinclair on asking for money to write her book

October 29, 2009 – 8:50 am, by LiteraryMinded

I was very curious when I heard about Liz Sinclair’s project ‘Help Me Write My Book’. Like many writers, Liz has to work to support herself, and of course, work takes time away from what she’s really wanting to do – write that book. My first reaction, honestly, was something along the lines of ‘why does she think she has the right to ask for cash from other people?’ But through email contact, I found that this is something Liz has obviously thought through. I thought some others may have had the same initial reaction as me, so with Liz’s permission, I’m reprinting an edited version of her emails. Do drop me a line in the comments and tell us what you think.

LizLiz says:

One of the reasons I took a year off from work/Melbourne life to come and volunteer in Bali in the first place was to have more time in my life for my writing. Bali is much cheaper to live in, and that was a factor in my decision to come here. My risk seems, in the end, to have been successful as I’m now much-more published and have gained a much higher profile for my writing. I think writers owe it to their talents to think creatively about how to find more time to write.

I don’t mind you asking about how I can ask people for their money. Trust me, the same question has crossed my mind many times. Who am I, etc.? But isn’t this just extension of even being a writer? Who are we to put our words out there? And yes, I did just go out there and ask for it, and most people won’t ask for what they want. I find most writers and artists dreadful at believing in and promoting themselves and asking for what they need or want. I have felt very guilty, at times, when I read stories about kids needing surgery or people losing their homes, but dreams are vital and important too, and I work actively in my other life to help poor families in Indonesia.

I had been asking people for money for two years as a grant writer, so it seemed a short step to asking for myself. There are precious few grants that let you take time off to write your opus, and still pay the rent; they’re highly competitive and often go to established writers. It’s just as crucial for society to support the arts as to alleviate poverty.

Also, I help other writers every chance I get - refer to a publisher, network, talk about their book, etc. I firmly believe that a ‘rising tide lifts all boats.’ A number of newly-established and as-yet unpublished writers have given me money for November. I will help them out, in turn. I am in an unusual situation. Through my networking, and by helping other writers, I have direct access to editors at Random House, Harper Collins and Anvil Press (PI), as well as Insight Publications in Melbourne. So networking, and supporting other writers, works to help ourselves.

I’ve had a number of people tell me that I’m sort of living their dream, and inspiring them. Most of the contributions have come from friends and family, and more than half of the contributions have been over the $10 I asked for, with several at $50, $70 or $100. It will be interesting to see if any of my donors get motivated in their own life and follow through on their own projects. Already, I’ve had one friend decide to make more time to write by sending her eldest to school early. I love inspiring others!

As for fund raising, I’ve raised about $1200, and there’s still promised payments to come in. I’ve got enough to take off November, and part of December. I asked for more than I needed, expecting to be short of my goal.

Since I started my fund raising, I’ve noticed a number of other writers out there also asking for money to support them during November to write a book, but none seemed to have used social networks, or gotten ‘ballsy’ about asking, like I did. But I have to say, I worked in business and retail for many years, so some of these skills have rubbed off on my writing. I think every writer should take a marketing course or read marketing books, ie Guerilla Marketing for Writers.

A friend told me about several bands (Radiohead, Meridian, Porcupine Tree) that raise money from their fans for a new album. The bands then give donors a special edition, signed CD. He suggested I give people something back in exchange for their money, hence the offer to give people who donate a copy of my book once it’s published.

I got the attention of the book editor at The Huffington Post, who’s asked me if I want to blog about raising money to take time off to write my book, then blog the actual writing of it. If this comes about it will hopefully help to get publishers interested.

But now I’m finding an interesting thing: now that I have to write the book draft, I’m getting incredibly nervous. Part of the reason I set it up this way was to force myself to sit down and do it. I can’t back out now, or I’ll lose face and disappoint people. I wonder if one reason we don’t ‘make the time’ or ‘find the time’ in busy lives to write our great works is because of fear, not a lack of time. Theodore Sturgeon wrote his short stories in 15 minutes every morning when he was starting out and working as a steelworker all day.

You can follow Liz on Twitter, to see how it all pans out.

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Chairing panels at writers’ festivals: a few things I’ve learnt

October 27, 2009 – 7:58 am, by LiteraryMinded

ubud

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2009 ‘Blogging, Dissent & Solidarity’ session. Kadek Adidharma, Dian Hartati, yours truly, Ng Yi-Sheng & Antony Loewenstein. Pic from official festival Facebook page.

I’ve attended several writers’ festivals over the last three years, and in the past year have begun to chair or sit on panels at some of these. I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learnt about moderating, through observation and experience.

Prior to the festival:

  • Source you panelists’ latest books as soon as possible. Read them! And don’t just read them – take notes, gather biographical info, and gather a few facts about where they’re from (country, city, culture etc.) It helps to contextualise the talk, and helps you to understand them and their work. If you have time, read their back-list titles also.
  • Establish contact with the panelists via email a few weeks before the session. Ask an open question or two relating to the panel. Ask them also if they would like to contribute any ideas. Do make sure you find out what is the thing they most want to talk about in front of an audience and include it in your questioning. After you’ve established these few important things, closethe email conversation before it gets too thick. If you discuss too much beforehand, the session will lack freshness and spontaneity. Be careful with overbearing personalities – you must call the shots and make the decisions in the end on how the conversation will be steered, so there’s balance. Some writers do like to know how the session will run (so they can prepare a few notes) – give them your outline in brief, but don’t give them specific questions, or else on the day it will feel rehearsed, and they’ll end up stressed out if they haven’t talked about everything they were prepared to talk about.
  • When you’re communicating, also ask what they’re sick of talking about (and then decide whether it’s still worth asking for the audience’s sake). Also ask what they never get asked, and would like to.
  • Don’t meet all together until just before the session, again to preserve freshness, interest, curiosity towards each other, and spontaneity. Put your panelists at ease before the session. Ask again what their hot topics are, so they know you’ll be covering them.
  • My preference is for writing down open questions relating to the topic, as well as more specific ones relating to the works of each author (and the links between each of their works). Many people use mind-maps instead. How you prepare what you’re going to ask is up to you. They may change during the session (see below). 
  • This is more one for directors and programmers, and a hard one to get right, but in my experience, large panels (of more than four or so) only work if all the guests bring different points of interest/disparate backgrounds and experiences to the panel, or come at the discussion from different angles. Otherwise, when moderating and trying to give everyone a say, the session can end up being very repetitive. If panelists are too similar, they’ll just nod and repeat what the last person said, which isn’t great for the audience, nor does it make the authors look original or interesting.

chair

Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2009 ’Global Nomads’ session. Pic - Ruby Murray.

During the session:

  • Panelists will most of the time come to the stage with something burning to get off their chest, in relation to their work/themselves and/or the topic at hand. Even though your carefully planned questions, or the direction of your conversation will lead you to this gem (something you’ve either acknowledged or sparked in the email contact), they are often so keen to say it, and not forget to say it, that they’ll give the game away early (even if it has nothing to do with the direct question you’ve asked). There are a couple of ways to try and counter this. Perhaps a quick word to the panelists beforehand, letting them know they can trust that you will get to this *important thing*. Or during the session, if they go into it too early, attempt to ease them out slightly, by saying something like ‘I’d really like to talk about that a bit more in a minute, but other guest, what do you think of the question I was originally asking?’
  • It’s fine for a moderator to have their own opinion on the topic but the panel is not about them. If you have something of related interest to share with the audience, frame some of your questions anecdotally ie. ‘I know at Bookseller+Publisherwe get bla bla bla, have you all found this is the case in your bla?’ Then prompt elaboration on the answers.
  • During the session feel free to scratch out questions and write new ones. Pay attention to your panelists and bounce off any juicy points of interest. Keep in mind the topics that are most important to them, and those of interest to the audience.
  • Some moderators use too many quotes and they just end up looking like smart-arses: ‘I’m more intelligent than the audience members and maybe even this author because I remember all these quotes’. I love a session with one or two really well-placed quotes, but any more than that is kinda pretentious.
  • 15-20 minutes of audience question time is good, but keep an eye on the audience, particularly if it’s a hot topic (you may want to let them at the panel earlier). Also, have plenty more questions ready if there are no hands raised at first (they can be shy) then go back to them. Also, if one hot-stuff author is getting asked all the audience questions, play off it to ask the other authors a similar thing (so it’s nice and even). eg. Audience member ‘So, famous author, would you ever consider going out with me?’ The author answers ‘probably not’. Then you say to the other panelists: ’What about you not-so-famous author and other not-so-famous author, have you ever dated a fan?’ etc.
  • A very obvious one, but one I personally battle (and know how bad it sounds from sessions I’ve attended) – avoid ‘ah’ and ‘um’ as much as you can.
  • Pay attention, stay interested and focused on your panelists and the audience. Take a risk – ask them something that’s hard for you to ask. Chances are, the audience members are also wondering about this too. Have fun – seriously, you’re having a conversation with talented and (hopefully) fascinating people. Show them you’re enthusiastic to be there. If you’re engaged, the audience is much more likely to be engaged.

Thanks to Adelaide’s Format Festival, Melbourne’s Emerging Writers’ Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival, Newcastle’s National Young Writers Festival and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival for inviting me to participate this year.

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Avatar: a mash-up

October 25, 2009 – 10:53 am, by LiteraryMinded

This piece is a mash-up of an undergrad essay from a couple of years ago, plus present thoughts, imaginings and speculation on the narrative of self in a virtual environment.

codeStorytelling is as old as humanity. The human has always actively projected him/herself into realms of fantasy (through song, art, drama, writing). Modernity advanced the visual aspect of imaginative adventure with diorama and panorama displays, museums, and the invention of photography.

From here on, global culture = visually excessive.

Current experience = deterritorialisation through photography, cinema, advertising, television and the internet. It has become necessary to visually immerse ourselves in narratives.

In a complex, rhizomatic pastiche of ‘real life’, one may construct an ‘avatar’ (a digital version of themself) and physically control this avatar in their explorations of the new world. It is both a phantasmagorical escape, a facade for the reality of alienated individuals, recreating themselves (in a new environment as a modernist ‘I’). But it is also a site of appropriation, subversions, contradictions and of course, commercialism.

There is no centre. One’s avatar may have the option of flying, to cover large distances.

In a heterotopic sense, the mind is engaged within the spatial explorations of the avatar – within three-dimensional virtuality (while the body is on firm ground). Physical room + virtual head = modernist ‘montage’.

This space inside the computer screen, an interaction with computer screens the world over, is hyperreal. Because while the objects and mobilities are often symbols (representatives of real life things) they are in fact ‘created’ from nothing but strands of numbers. Their workable reality effectively ‘replaces’ the things they are representing. They are simulacra, and this is emphasised by the fact that someone will actively create an avatar to ‘be amongst’ this new reality, in effect making even themself into a simulacrum.

There is not much need for a system of order, as De Certeau discusses with the city, because there is no sickness, no waste, no excrement, no death, and no bodily necessities. Shelter, food, sleep, are not necessary. It is Donald’s ‘un espace propre’.

Foucault describes a type of utopia –

…something like [a] counter-site… a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.

A utopia is still grounded in real life modernist principles, the advancement of oneself within technology – by property and finances (perhaps ’social credit’ here).

Foucault’s heterotopias and the internet:

A crisis heterotopia exists for those who are in a crisis in ‘normal’ society, thus, they retreat to the formation of their own self and narratives.

A heterotopia of deviation could be related to the sexual aspects of the internet – people engaging in acts that they are unable to in real life.

A juxtapositional heterotopia ties in with the post-modern aspect of appropriation. Several sites that are incompatible in real life may be joined.

It is a heterochrony as it has its own time structure.

It is also a heterotopia with varying points of access.

The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains… Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned… Or else… their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.

Which do you think it is?

The individual is in a mode of excorporation – utilising a product (computer) to subvert the dominant system (not participating in real life and civic space).

Archetypal cyberpunk sardonically sends up the society of the frenetic information age, but the cyber-environment itself is a given, almost an object of desire… Cyberpunk characters are in a transcendent state when they’re in cyberspace. To be deprived of cyber-reality by burn-out or misfortune is almost an exile from Eden. (Watson, 2003, p. 156)

The internet also gives residents who may be reclusive or marginalised figures in real life the chance to be part of an imagined community.

[T]he internet is… essentially liberatory: if it is not under some centralised control, it can only be the provenance of free individuals and small groups, in an egalitarian world where the individual is unhindered by boundaries of nation, class, gender or property (Thwaites, Davis & Mules).

There is the argument that too much interaction online and an overstimulation of the visual could result in a loss of tangibility. The ‘schizophrenic exchanging of identities’ could also result in ‘dehumanisation’, the exact thing the science-fiction film often warns against. This could also be referred to as a contradiction between the site’s promises, and its denials. The cyberpunk novel, in a more post-modern fashion, embraces the consequences of this – the possible inevitability of it in the face of capitalist commodification. It could be argued that as a transgressive space, the internet is actually an escape from the dehumanising sphere of real life capitalism. It is a place to communicate unboundaried.

While one can be transported to places they cannot physically visit without considerable expense, the internet also reinstates other imagined communities and places of belonging.

The internet can be subversive by naturalising images that are ‘unnatural’ in real life. Cartoon avatars, abbreviated language (or created/altered languages i.e. ‘I can haz…’). Online, these are ‘natural’ and thus, these symbolisations are transgressive to real life ‘natural’ order. They are, in a post-modern sense fragmentary, indeterminate (can be changed at will) and distrusting of ‘totalising’ discourses (Harvey).

The internet goes further than film, television, literature and video games by allowing an individual to not just create a character, a modern self, but create a narrative. What is striking is that this is the path of real life. We are creating ourselves and we are constructing our path. (Is a duality of self/multi-projections of self our condition anyway? But online, the less normative self finds more spaces for expression/collection/acceptance?) On the internet there are less obstacles in the way of our constructed narrative, and there is variety. And on the internet, there is an off button.

References 

Baudrillard, J 1988, ‘Simulacra and simulations’ in M Poster (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: selected writings, Polity, Cambridge.
De Certeau, M 1985, ‘Practices of space’ in M Blonsky (ed.), On signs, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Donald, J 1995, ‘The city, the cinema: modern spaces’, in C Jenks (ed.), Visual culture, Routledge, London.
Fiske, J 1989, ‘The jeaning of America’ in his Understanding popular culture, Unwin & Hyman, Boston.
Foucault, M 2006, ‘Of other spaces’, in N Mirzoeff (ed.), The visual culture reader (2nd edn), Routledge, London.
Harvey, D 1991, The condition of postmodernity, Blackwell, Cambridge.
Olalquiaga, C 1992, ‘Lost in space’ in her Megalopolis: contemporary cultural sensibilities, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Thwaites, T et al. 2002, Introducing cultural and media studies: a semiotic approach, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmills.

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Guest review: Lorelei Vashti on Linda Neil’s Learning How to Breathe

October 22, 2009 – 7:55 am, by LiteraryMinded

learning-how-to-breathe9780702237348
UQP
September 2009 (Australia)
Review by Lorelei Vashti

When I was first offered this book to review I thought: Well, Ms Meyer, it seems that not only are you literary-minded but you’re also literally minded, because what you have given me here is a book about a Brisbane girl returning home to her family. Which, Angela—as you very well know—is the very same situation I was in when you flung this book at me. However, when I started reading I realised that maybe not everything in this world is about me after all, and once I got over the shock of that I was able to appreciate that Linda Neil’s story is very much her own, and a beautifully rendered one at that.

Learning How to Breathe is a memoir, the debut of musician-radio producer, Neil. It traces her relationship with her ailing mother, whom she is suddenly called home to take care of after years of being away. Using interviews with family members, stories from other relatives and friends, and of course, her own memories, Neil recounts what happens over the next decade as she witnesses her mother’s deteriorating health and records their experiences in various caring facilities. A shared love of music is the bond that helps mother and daughter reconnect during this difficult time, and Neil’s examination of their changing relationship is thoughtful and tender.

The childhood home is described with detailed affection. Neil’s mother, Joan, was a singing teacher and taught students out of her house in St Lucia, Brisbane, so the five children grew up surrounded by music. One of the nice touches about the book is Joan’s singing advice (which was published in various industry newsletters over the years) scattered throughout the story, helping us hear her voice in harmony with the voice of her daughter.

Neil plumbs her family history to understand where she has come from. Her self-characterisation as a bohemian-wild-child, who spent her youth playing electric violin on the streets of Sydney and living in the hills of Byron Bay before coming home as the prodigal daughter, seemed to me a little heavy-handed to begin with. But as the story and her relationship with her mum grows stronger, Neil seems to become clearer about her own development, and the writing grows too. By the end, I was overawed by the magnificent moments that fill the final half of the book—moments illustrating a family’s love.

What came across most beautifully for me in Neil’s writing is the way that she and her four siblings seemed to share and balance the role of caring for their mother over the many years of her illness. She skillfully depicts the ways each child is able to contribute their very different strengths. I adored these moments. The final few chapters are completely breathtaking, and as a reader you feel much rewarded at that point.

This book is about love, and the multifarious ways it can be expressed. It’s a book for anyone who has had to decide between Lorelei_photocaring for a loved one or institutionalising them. It’s a book for those who enjoy truthful stories, stories about discovering the light within the darkness, stories about music, and stories about Brisbane girls returning home to their family.

Lorelei Vashti is a writer and book editor with no fixed address, but that doesn’t mean she’s homeless. She swans around here in her dressing gown and here in her more professional attire. God knows what she wears here but it can’t be pretty.

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And the winner is…

October 21, 2009 – 10:13 pm, by LiteraryMinded

Twitter user @whymicesing (Michelle Farran) is the winner of the double pass to the Speakeasy Cinema screening of Obscene: A Portrait of Barnet Rosset and Grove Press, along with a burgers and bevvies. Michelle’s answer was My Secret Life and Tropic of Cancer. Cheers for your entries! Come along anyway if you like - ticket details are in the previous blog post.

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Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press – Melbourne screening (win tickets!)

October 20, 2009 – 7:45 am, by LiteraryMinded

The preview:

Obscene is a film biography of Barney Rosset, the influential publisher of Grove Press and the provocative Evergreen Review.  He was the first American publisher of Samuel Beckett, Kenzaburo Oe, Tom Stoppard, Che Guevara, and Malcolm X. He also battled the government to overrule the obscenity ban on groundbreaking works such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer and Naked Lunch. And apparently, like many brilliant people, the energetic publisher was also self-destructive.

Obscene_poster_smlThe film features Barney Rosset himself, Amiri Baraka, Jim Carroll, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Al Goldstein, Erica Jong, Ray Manzarek, John Rechy, Peter Rosset, John Sayles, Gore Vidal, John Waters, Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller and Malcolm X. With music by Bob Dylan, The Doors, Warren Zevon and Patti Smith. More info here.
 
‘No wonder Rosset was behind some of the central court struggles against censorious US standards for both literature and movies. He consorted with yippies and Black Panthers, produced close friend Samuel Beckett’s only film (1965’s Film), and was called a “tragic hero” by his own analyst (one of many). He is an interesting enough guy that one wishes co-directors Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor’s admiring portrait was longer…’
~The San Francisco Bay Chronicle

If you’re in Melbourne, Speakeasy Cinema is screening Obscene as part of the Anode festival at 8pm, Monday 2 November (1000 £ Bend, 361 Lt Lonsdale St). Tickets are available from Moshtix and include the film, plus a burger and beverage (you can also choose film-only). The DVD is also available from Madman, for those not in Melbourne.

LiteraryMinded also has a double pass (including the burgers and beer) to give away to this screening! To enter the draw, you must name two of the books Barney Rosset published. Titles only are fine. No need to put authors. Leave your answer as a comment on this blog, or tweet your answer to me (@LiteraryMinded). You must enter by 5pm AEDST Wednesday the 21 October 2009. One answer per person please. I will allocate each correct answer a number and use a random number generator to determine the winner. Good luck!

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10 things about Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2009

October 18, 2009 – 1:39 pm, by LiteraryMinded

After Ruby J Murray’s On Writing in the World: Ten Things About Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2009.

DSC037341. Flying over the top end – veiny, crater-filled land, mercury lakes and billabongs. The corny sea creature carpet at Darwin airport where there’s a smoking area and men in matching shirts drinking VB. Realising in the past year-and-a-half I have only ever travelled alone.

2. Roosters crowing at night as I’m tucked-up in a King size bed under a canopy, wishing I had an extra week or more to absorb this place and to write. There’s a pool and and heat and a week of conversations about Kenyan forts and Indonesian princesses and the whole globe as a home. The room is where Richard Flanagan stayed for a month to write. I can feel its potential.

3. Street cracks and smell of sewers and incense and the contrast of the street to this party in a mansion where there’s a boulder in the pool. Pulling mystery meat off a bone at a long dining table I’m sharing with one. Later – writers of every age and nationality dance barefoot – cocktail-fueled – to 60s/70s tunes and one ‘Billie Jean’, the most popular and strangely universal song.

DSC037464. In conversation with Tom Cho, the Global Nomads and Blogging, Dissent and Solidarity panels – my official connections, the hours of preparation at home and they go by quickly though satisfactorily. Engaged faces in the audience seen at the bookshop later. The realisation that it was three years (a short time, a life time) since I was audience only. Ubud Writers and Readers Festival was actually the first festival I attended. I remember thinking ‘I’d love to do that one day’.

5. Suka Duka is the theme of the 2009 festival – compassion and solidarity. With sadness comes light, with male comes female, solar/lunar and so on. The ‘locals’ (ex-pats who have lived in Bali for a number of years) are worried about the American influx. The theme of colonialism is raised in many panels and discussions – not just colonialism in the past sense, but in the sense of commercialisation, consumerism, Americanisation. One taxi driver says I have beautiful skin. White with ‘no wrinkles’.

DSC038116. Lloyd Jones says on the short story – ‘I think you have to be prepared to fail, to write something interesting’.

7. I am asked at the bookshop. ‘Are you related to Stephenie Meyer? She’s a writer too.’

8. Something I learn: sodomy and oral sex are illegal in Malaysia. Middle class Malaysians are somewhat protected by class. Transgender people are more vulnerable. In Bali, apparantly, there was no problem – and the gay clubs and organisations only arised when more foreigners entered the island. Something was segregated which wasn’t before. Some expressions used instead of ‘coming out’ in other languages have the English translation of ‘the hole is broken’ and ‘the seed has blossomed’.

9. On a panel called Meet the Australians Tom Cho and Arnold Zable thoughtfully debate short vs long form, art vs writing and so forth. At the party later I see them talking at length by the pool, a young and an established Australian writer no doubt continuing their discussion.

10. Coming home with a few keepsakes – books, of course, and too much washing and work to catch up on. A note in my journal: ‘I need to contribute something of worth.‘ And every time I have a conversation, read a book, meet someone new, and travel some place – I know a little bit more about what it is I can do.

(pictured: the top end; Hindu offerings on the street in Ubud; some books bought on my trip)

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