into

brew

2700 words of fiction.

chew

http://thefastertimes.com/fiction/2009/11/14/nabokov-in-audio/ (via Meanjin)

kangaroo

Best Australian Fiction of the 21st Century #3, #2, #1.

blue

‘When I have acted like a human being for a few hours, as I did today with Max and later at Baum’s, I am already full of conceit before I go to sleep.’ – Franz Kafka’s entry in his journal, 28 December, 1911.

Bruce

+

overdue

misconstrue

walking shoe

supposed to

too true

you?

Storytelling 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.

I will be writing more on NYWF/TiNA when I hit Bali (hopefully – depending on internet situation), or later today if I can. I have actually been keeping a low profile for most of the festival. For starters, I wasn’t feeling the best. Secondly, I had quite a few NSW natives to catch up with while I was here. I met up with Tahnee from Exisle Publishing; one of Australia’s best short story writers Ryan O’Neill, who has been an email buddy for a while now; and my folks, along with their good friends. Ryan also introduced me to Michael Sala – a really nice guy who is getting published in some big name journals as well as Best Australian Stories 2009 (out soon!). I look forward to reading some of his work.

The reports from my sessions have been positive, though one panel was a real learning curve – large, repetitive, unwieldy… I hope the audio turned out so I can upload it when I get home. I plan on writing a post down the track on things I’ve learnt about facilitating panels. Here’s one thing: the guests will come with one or two really important things they don’t want to forget to say. No matter what questions you ask at the start (trying to slowly lead into these things), they will give the game away early. They always make sure they say what they need to. There must be some way to let them know to trust you – that you will build a story together, leading to this revealing, interesting gem of information/experience.

Here are some reports on NYWF sessions by others:

Thuy Linh Nguyen wrote on day 1, day 2 and day 3, including some of my panels.

Estelle Tang has been doing an awesome job catching the atmosphere with interviews: here and here.

And Lisa Dempster has written on some of the local vegan fare in Newcastle.

I’ll also have to post more soon about some of the publications I’m currently floating around in! A small review in the latest Australian Book Review; I am interviewed in the latest Voiceworks; and am upcoming in the Emerging Writers Festival Reader and The Lifted Brow: Atlas. Details to come.

And now, a blog birthday present to myself.

‘All the nobody people, all the somebody people.
I never thought I’d meet
so many people’.

Last Christmas I gave my parents a gorgeous hardcover called Wisdom, which features photographs by Andrew Zuckerman of prominent over-65s, alongside their ‘wise’ thoughts. This year in November, Hachette are bringing out Wisdom ‘minis‘. I have the Life one on my desk at work and every now and then I just pick it up and absorb something. Here’s a little taste:

Or you could choose to receive Steven Seagal’s wisdom. Up to you.

Or you could seek advice from someone whose path was to get rich or die tryin’, in 50 Cent’s new motivational book (with Robert Green) – The 50th Law. I’m not shitting you. From the blurb: ‘Drawing on the lore of gangsters, hustlers, and hip-hop artists, as well as 50 Cent’s business and artistic dealings, The 50th Law offers indispensable advice on how to win in business – and in life.’

Is winnin’ really livin’ Fiddy? I prefer Judi Dench’s creed: silliness.

*

Where do you look, during a poetry reading?

And the children grow up with deep eyes

I study the face, and hands. There is often a wobble, even in the chin of the experienced. I look at how old they are, the gap between their legs, the way their hair falls back into the same place or the glasses slip down and they unconsciously push them back, back. I often imagine them naked.

who know of nothing, grow up and die,

I walk up and down Swanston Street wanting an item of food, something sweet, and a corner where I can open my book before the event. The book is scary and it can’t be read in a jumpy place. I am frustrated by my own indecision on the food. Yoghurt? Cake (but only banana)? Chocolate? No. A fight. I am eating too much. I need vegetables. Just get a coffee. No. I have real hunger. And I’m craving something sweet. Probably my iron is low again.

and all people go their ways.

The walking is nice but the people are justgetoutofmyfuckingway. And my sister in a foreign city with the same frustrations.

And the bitter fruits become sweet

Settle on chocolate-coated fruit and nuts. There is some guilt. I should have gotten fruit. But fruit wouldn’t last as long. These can be savoured. I get a coffee. I eat my book for a little while.

and fall down at night like dead birds
and lie a few days and spoil.

Christos Tsiolkas reads a poem called ‘Greed’ by Nina Cassian and I know her hunger and his relation to her fearless hunger but I am still growing the fearless part. My eyes become full of Anne Michaels’ hair and Andrea Goldsmith’s bright outfit, she exceeds the blocky theatre, and her hands shiver as she reads Dorothy Porter’s The Ninth Hour. And all the bodies in the audience know.

And always the wind blows, and again and again

Sometimes you breathe in and the poem comes with you. Other times, your mind is caught on some other ghost of a word which flies and perches behind a block on the roof and refuses to come back down and you realise you have lost the gist (Emily Ballou reads Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the Thing With Feathers’). You always feel bad for not absorbing it all. Often it is not the speaker or the poem but the lack of a jigsaw piece that seems to slot (at least roughly) into your own.

You make eye contact with Nathan Curnow later at the Wordplay poetry reading and you have to look away because he has all kinds of jigsaws you think you can see the pictures of. But it’s embarrassing to be presumptuous.

At work on Tuesday a severe storm warning and your heart races to the tune of doom and the apocalypse and missed relatives on far flung corners of the globe. And thinking about the people they are severing ties with. And the extreme change from black sky to blue for the faraway folk while you just grasp at a thousand twigs hanging on larger trees, holding on to all of them at once and suddenly your feet have left the ground and you’re swaying around in the wind and so dizzy.

we hear and speak many words

She comes to my work and we have the same lunch and she tries to get me to talk about my inadequacies. But the truth is in fiction.

and feel [the] pleasure and weariness of our limbs.

And she gives me the warmest hug goodbye and I am surprised because I always thought she didn’t like hugs but I think they’re the best and I would stretch my arms right around the globe. I am too startled by the hug to hug properly back and I think I even blush because I admire her and I make a note to myself to hug better goodbye next time.

And streets run through the grass, and places

The enraptured crowd at the poetry reading and my teeth close on the nut and it’s too loud, I am too loud, once the sweet surface has melted off.

are here and there, full of torches, trees, ponds,
and menacing ones and death-like withered ones…
Why are these raised up? and resemble
each other never? and are countlessly many?

Buildings and trees and writers. Countlessly many. The way Bernhard Schlink says here with a whoosh behind it. His words are sharp at the top and deep underneath, like triangles.

Why do laughing, crying, and turning pale alternate?

I do them all at once. A cocktail of affect. Something with tequila and salt.

Of what use is all this to us and all these games
who are (after all) great and eternally lonely
and, wandering, never seek any goals?

It is of no use at all, says my badge of the face of Albert Camus.

Of what use is it to have seen so many such things?

To try and not try so hard to absorb them all. To try and lose something and find knowledge in relaxation. To forget the seen things, even. To maybe have literate children forget them too. Or just continue to wrap your arms around them, arms around the earth and jigsaw fits and naked poets. To have split seconds of skin joy, or hugs, or eye contact. Always the smell of pages.

And nevertheless he says much who says “evening”,
a word from which deep meaning and sadness run
like heavy honey from the hollow comb.

Evening.

On the table is a tome – a collected literary history and culture. She opens it and notes names so disparate as Gwen Harwood, Ern Malley, Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Gow, Sonya Hartnett and Nick Cave. There are some of the names she knows. There are many she does not. There are Greek and Vietnamese and Aboriginal names. She is excited by the invitation of this book – to learn, to enjoy, to grow; and of this room – to become.

When she looks up again she catches the eye of Ivor Indyk, the publisher of Giramondo, and editor of HEAT. She re-introduces herself, having heard he enjoys her blog. He compliments her for the Tom Cho interview, and they discuss the exciting potentials of the medium, and the literary culture in Melbourne. Indyk is intelligent and warm, and when two men come over, he introduces her as a ‘wonderful reviewer’. She does not catch the rest. She is still overheated and the room has become crowded and loud. But she does catch their names and repeats them as she leans in to shake their hands – Thomas Shapcott and Rodney Hall.

Hall is short with an open face, young for his years. Shapcott guzzles champagne as he talks, mustachioed and leaning on his walking stick. His speech is difficult. Indyk enquires after his health. Conversations float around the four, including one about Shapcott’s 102 year-old mother-in-law (or aunt) who is sharp and completely switched-on. The young woman thinks about that being more than four of her lifetimes, and how much she could live and write if given that herself.

She asks Shapcott if he has a piece in the book. ‘Doubt it’, he says. She finds later that he does.

Whilst conversing with Indyk, another man joins Hall and Shapcott. Indyk says ‘that’s Alex Miller’ and the young woman’s heart jumps out of her chest. Alex Miller, author of one of her favourite books of all time, Prochownik’s Dream. What a fortunate surprise. She sweats worse now, and burns up as she tries to catch his eye. Library staff bring around plates of exotic nibblies: fishy, crunchy and a little too large to be bite-size, inhibiting conversation. Hall and Miller are actually making Miles Franklin jokes – she hears them say something about ‘four between them’. She is finally introduced and tells him immediately ‘I really love your work’. Miller says ‘you’re blushing’, and his manner is spritely and confident. She says ‘no, it’s the heat’ and waves her hand at her face, then regrets the silly gesture. She says (ever honest) ‘maybe I am blushing a little’, and he smiles. She tells him Prochownik’s Dream is her favourite of his works. ‘Ah! I love that you were brave to say it like that’ he says, ‘Prochownik, Prochownik – it’s like the Americans say, how hard is it?’ She laughs uneasily – she’s never said it out loud before, is he for real or is he having a poke? Indyk says ‘I’ve always said Pro-chov-nik, how did you know?’ Did she know? She accepted a top-up of her drink.

Miller, Shapcott and the young woman continue to talk. Miller says some Parisians are adapting Prochownik’s Dream for the screen. ‘The Parisians understand it’, he smiles (a conspiratorial smirk?). They discuss how many film options never get up. The three discuss Vladimir Nabokov, starting with Lolita. The two men give the young woman suggestions for further reading. Shapcott says he read some of Nabokov’s stories that the New Yorker published, and they were among the best he’d ever read. Shapcott corrects the other two on their pronunciation: ‘Nabokov’. Miller plays around saying ‘Lolita, Lolita’ in an American accent, sticking his neck out. He likes to do voices. Somewhere during the conversation Shapcott leans to Miller and whispers something about ‘youth’. She pretends not to hear. They segue to Joyce and others, but then the proceedings begin, and the guests turn to the front.

She cannot concentrate during the introductions, still hot and flushed, already beginning to go over the should-have-saids, such as ‘why didn’t I tell them I was a writer?’ instead of an employee of the Aus book trade magazine, and a blogger. Do writers in their 70s bother reading blogs? They really didn’t seem that old to her though. Besides feeling small and inadequate, she could have soaked up their conversation for hours.

Amongst the speakers are Chris Wallace-Crabbe (whose poetry she adores); Alexis Wright (who she has seen read many times now but hasn’t yet read Carpentaria- it is on her long to-read list); Chi Vu; publisher Elizabeth Weiss; and the general editor of the anthology Nicholas Jose. Crabbe emphasises the need to bring our national literature back to the classroom (school and university). She remembers her own experiences and agrees that she found Australian literature on her own, through self-devised units in her honours year and so on. It seems strange and ridiculous that it isn’t taught more. Weiss also mentions the Productivity Commission’s suggestions to remove parallel import restrictions on books – a huge danger to our literary culture, for both writers and publishers. Heads in the room nod.

So the young woman feels impassioned, with this book in her hand. She also feels empowered (and young and silly and idealistic), thinking about bridges to build between communities, and education, and getting people reading, and reading broadly. She thinks of connecting stories and worlds and opening up an eye or a heart or a mind or two, somewhere, sometime. She thinks about the young guy who checked off her name on the way in, and how he said he’d read her blog a few times. He was outside the room, these authors were inside, and she was somewhere in the middle.

She thinks of being inspired, of stories and truths and ’secret lives’, as Alex Miller might say, forging connections and pushing boundaries and remaining passionate… She is a sponge, and it’s still a little messy when she’s squeezed, but with some work and patience, a nourishing drop will form.

She talks with more people – the poet, the painter, the exhibition curator – after the presentation, but her head is full and she needs to go home and write something out. She will lie awake for hours (this is not new). She will regret being too shy to find Alex Miller again to say goodbye. She hopes they will meet again.

I ate banana pancakes this morning. I saw an old man on a bike in matching denims and a stackhat. I looked into somebody’s eyes. There are nine paper tasks on the floor.

They will give me new parts like Frankenstein’s monster.

A producer this week told me about Roger Corman bringing his lunch in the same paper bag each day.

I saw publishers pitch their books to filmmakers. Some of them compacting story, theme and character into 90 seconds. Some of them getting it wrong. Books@MIFF: I am reporting on it for work. I will tell you more about it later.

I’m developing three poems. Images: churning and swishing in my head. I try to be open but then a touch is like a burn and I retract.

This is what the poems will be for. I’m intimidated by the company. But then… this is the best. This creative cocktail of colours unexpected in my head. Are you with me, here?

I had so many dreams this week: the man with no face in the tree, torturing me with a drill. I wouldn’t tell him where my sister was. The green interior of a haunted house with large bookshelves. Nick Cave and I finding a semi-secretive spot at a party. This one was not a nightmare…

Link-a-thon Sunday: Frank McCourt, sadly, passed away. Entries for the 2009 Davitt Awards (crime) are now open. Griffith Review is accepting submissions for a special summer fiction edition ‘Stories for Today’.

Today.

Today. Begun. Begot. Flipped upside-down. (Soon) gone.

I won’t go into the session too much, but my story was one of the ones looked at today. It’s an existential and bleak story about an alcoholic children’s book sales rep, who loses everything. His job is usurped by technology, his wife can’t take it anymore, etc. The feedback was very valuable – especially when the majority agreed on the same things. In my case, the beginning section needs reworking to make the protagonist more apparent. I also need to work on a few abstract phrases, and moments of ‘telling’ (rather than showing). Rjurik was also great at giving examples of where more drama and tension could be brought into the work. Too much just happens toRichie, my character, and I don’t give him a chance to make a clear decision (and make it even more bleak and tragic…). In general though, the feedback was positive and encouraging. I was pleased to have affected the other writers in ways I intended (feelings of bleakness and hopelessness through a challenging and flawed character). It’s brilliant to know with a few more drafts, it should be a publishable work, expressing themes I’m intersted in and passionate about – obsolescence, predominantly; consumerist society, technology, gender (masculinity and expectations of it); and self-destruction, alienation and hopelessness brought on by these environmental factors. Everyone seemed to like the title: Obliviated.

I got a lot out of the short time with Tony Birch: think about your ethics in writing, don’t be afraid to re-iterate a theme or issue in your body of work, be tuned-in during your creative observation, and more. He also spoke about literary heroes, and this is something I really relate to. This is why I dog-ear books – so I can go over those passages that grab me, surprise me, challenge me, awaken me. To learn from them, even if not to write like that author. And I think your literary heroes need not be just other writers – sometimes musicians, filmmakers, and other artists stimulate you in the same creative vein.

Here are just a few of mine:

David Bowie

I discovered the thin white duke in Year 12, around the time I was working on my first lengthy writing project – a screenplay. My interest in him and his music is more than just a relaxed disassociation, but an intellectual engagement. Lyrically, he astounds me. And he pulls off oddness, and pushes boundaries – two things I would like to do in my writing. Sometimes I ‘jam’ with Bowie. On those rare nights at home when I’ve completed all my work, I might pour a glass of wine and put on his DVD. I’ll pull up a blank page in my notebook or on the screen and I’ll explore the mood of the music, plus be stimulated by the colourful, daring visuals. His film clips are very inventive too – some are noir, some cartoonish, many dark. The musical runners-up in the literary hero field are Pink Floyd, Cream and Supertramp.

Gail Jones

Someone I have called my ‘favourite Australian writer’ for a few years now. Sometimes when I read something else and I question this, I think back to Dreams of Speaking. This is pretty much a perfect novel to me. It’s slim, rich and intellectual. Every page engages with complex ideas about modernity, romanticism, violence – and all done in a vivid, stylistic, yet effortless-to-read manner. The characters are memorable – Alice and Mr Sakamoto. There are locations both familiar and strange. The writing is (to use a Jones-esque term) luminous. I could read it again and again.

Franz Kafka

I have read all of Kafka’s works. I am fascinated by his life and his belief that he was ‘literature, and nothing else’. I relate to that sometimes, feeling like some kind of creative vessel with a purpose, and I relate to the sadness and aloneness of that too. The short story ‘In the Penal Colony’ is devastating to me. I’m going to be terribly abstract here, but Kafka feels correct to me. Injustice, black telephones, miscommunications, fleeting moments of awkward intimacy, bla bla I could go on forever. And I shared this piece before about visiting the Kafka Museum in Prague. If you care to read it again, it captures what I feel. And, to be really honest with you, one of my biggest fears in life is to be Max Brod, as opposed to Kafka…

Janet Frame

Tony Birch got me thinking about her because he gave us a copy of his favourite opening. I think my favourite opening is the first page of Janet Frame’s Faces in the Water. It was a seminal moment, reading that, realising I did not need to punctuate a sentence formally. To realise I could create movement and rhythm with sentences and in that way create impact, and emote, stylistically – rather than just through word choice. Runners-up in this vein are Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and also for her prolificness (with consistent quality) Joyce Carol Oates. Woolf and Oates are heroes too for the strength and creativity of their nonfiction and critical work.

Vladimir Nabokov

For Lolita. I will get to his others, eventually. I just think Lolita is the perfect book – challenging, lyrical, moving, funny, sad – unputdownable. My copy is severely dog-eared.

My Oma

My Oma wrote. Short stories and memoir. She also had eight children, emigrated from Holland to Australia, sang operatically and was a stage actress. She also travelled to Africa in her 80s, and had a boyfriend several years her junior. She told me romantic stories about my Opa, who passed away when I was two. When I was about ten years old, she read my story about an Antarctic researcher/explorer who was saved by a kiler whale (obviously influenced by Free Willy). She told me I had a ‘gift’, and that I should pursue it. She bought me my first diary, and I have kept one ever since (I have about 16). Without her, my Year Three teacher Mrs Grant, and my Dad, I’m not sure how I would have found my path.

There are many more (oh Christos Tsiolkas, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, the Simpsons writers, Edvard Munch. Must. Stop.). This is merely a little taster. Do tell, who are yours?