Tag Archives: literature

The books of life: By the Book by Ramona Koval

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By the Book Ramona KovalThis feature interview was first published in The Big Issue no. 421.


Text Publishing
9781922079060
November 2012 (buy hardcover, ebook)

Ramona Koval’s enthusiastic explorations of literature would be familiar not only to those who enjoyed her long-running ABC Radio National program, The Book Show, but also to audiences at writers’ festivals around the world. As an interviewer, she is informed, curious and bold, coaxing a multitude of insights from her subjects. In By the Book, Koval swings the spotlight on herself and asks how a life of books has informed her as a person.

Central to Koval’s development, growing up in St Kilda and North Balwyn in Melbourne, was her mother, a Polish Jew with an amazing story of her own. Koval opens By the Book with an image of her mother, stretched out on the divan, lost in a book. Koval’s mother read in multiple languages and had a fondness for banned books. She would regularly take her young daughter to a mobile library, which ‘introduced her to a different world’. This was important, Koval writes, because as a child she ‘didn’t exactly have wide horizons to survey’. Books provided those.

Ramona Koval

Ramona Koval

Koval describes the books we keep close as presenting an ‘archaeology of interests’, and says those she selected for discussion in her own book were ‘the ones that were crucial milestones for me in some kind of way’. From the works of French novelist Colette to books on polar exploration, European and absurd literature, language books, feminist books, and the poetry of science, Koval’s reading interests have been broad. In her reflections on reading, she wonders about whether there is a ‘right time’ to encounter a certain work while arguing that books can, undeniably, shape you. Koval felt this acutely while gripped by Elizabeth Harrower’s The Watchtower just this year, and believes if she’d read the novel at a young age, it might have changed the course of her life. ‘I saw several episodes in my own life mirrored in its pages,’ she writes.

On the other hand, Koval admits that worth classics she’s interested in reading—such as the Sagas of Iceland—have sometimes failed to draw her in. ‘You’ve got limited time,’ she says. ‘I always think that if you give a book a while and then you don’t fall into it, you just have to put it away and come to it another time, or not come to it at all.’

Along with genuine insights on reading itself, Koval’s book is personal. We learn about the author’s young life, her passion for science, and her adventures (and disappointments) in love. We also get to travel with her, through her own experiences and through associated literature. One such adventure is going dog-sledding in the Algonquin State Park, three hours north of Toronto. Koval also shares some of her encounters with authors, such as Grace Paley and Oliver Sacks.

She acknowledges the privileges her career as a broadcaster has afforded her. ‘It has been fantastic; my own Open University,’ she says. ‘You can learn a lot of things by reading books, but for some books I think you do need to have a tutor—some fantastic person who can say to you “look at this” or “this means that”’.

Koval herself has opened up worlds for others in her years as a broadcaster. She admits that her reading choices have mainly been governed by whatever happened to interest her personally, ‘whether it was a book about sand or some short stories from Romania’.

It’s a formula that seems to have worked. ‘It turned out that other people loved [these works] too,’ Koval says. ‘Many people sidled up to me and said, you know, “your program was my education. I never would have read those books if I hadn’t heard about them”’. Koval always enjoyed this aspect of her work. ‘It’s not like you’re powerful; it’s more like you’ve got something to share that’s valuable. People are enriched by it.’

Koval is now working on, and planning, multiple projects that will make the most of her enthusiasm and talents. And she continues to be a great reader, keeping up on reviews in various publications. ‘Reviews are so hard, aren’t they?’ she says. ‘Because you have to trust the reviewer, and even then you’ve got to know a little bit of backstory about why they feel that way about that book, or whether they’ve got an axe to grind in some way.’

There are still many books on Koval’s shelves and in her ereader that she’d love to get to. ‘Sometimes you feel like: I’m actually gorging on books and I’m going to be sick if I don’t stop it,’ she laughs. ‘You know, you can have too much ice cream.’ But reading, for Koval, is a unique pleasure; something she describes in By the Book as ‘private and reverential’. It’s an activity that can transport us ‘from our prosaic lives to anywhere we care to imagine’. She writes: ‘While our world looks small on the outside, it’s huge on the inside, in the magical spaces between the page and our absorption.’

20 classics #15: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

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Charles_Dickens-A_Christmas_Carol-Title_page-First_edition_1843I’m reading 20 classic, modern-classic or cult books. Read more about this project here. See the other classics here.

Why did I want to read it?

Because I already know and love the story so well (mainly via Scrooged and A Muppet Christmas Carol) and I’ve been meaning to read the original around Christmas-time for years!

When was it published?

First published in December 1843. I read Gerard’s Great Writers Library edition (1987), which is a facsimile of the 1910 Chapman and Hall edition. The book also features other novellas by Dickens: The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth.

What’s it about?

Nasty old Ebenezer ‘Bah! Humbug!’ Scrooge is visited by his dead colleague Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future.

Tell us more about the author.

So, what did I think? Does it deserve to be a classic?

scroogescaredA resounding yes. A Christmas Carol obviously has one of the most memorable plots (and characters) in history. And the book has probably done more than anyone can imagine to contribute to the warm-hearted message as to what Christmas is really ‘about’. No matter what religion or nationality you are, or even whether you celebrate Christmas, the message is that kindness is absolutely vital.

While reading, I thought about how the anti-greed message was something instilled in me in childhood (perhaps in part through encountering this story and discussing it with my parents). This led to a lot of confusion as I got older and realised that the capitalist system was feeding me contradictory messages: that I should desire and have everything (and a new version, too); that I deserved to treat myself. Self-help culture also encourages us to be selfish. Of course, our system is morally dubious in more ways than one (I’m thinking of vast environmental degradation here). So, Scrooge today can also symbolise the one percent (as a whole), sitting there counting piles of money and having little regard for anyone or anything else. The descriptions of Scrooge toward the beginning are delightfully funny. I particularly like the line: ‘Foul weather didn’t know where to have him’.

The book leaves with you a series of dark images, like Marley’s face as the door knocker, the chilling spirit that does not speak, and the child spirits of Ignorance and Want—‘Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy [Ignorance], for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased’. The prospect of seeing your own name on a gravestone is also confronting and eerie.

muppet christmas carolMarley’s ghost and the three Christmas spirits are inventive and exciting. As I read I recalled how frightening I found them in different adaptations as a child. I had forgotten about how Scrooge attributes the vision of Marley to indigestion: ‘You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’

tiny timAnd poor little Tiny Tim. The story may be earnest, but the humour and the cleverness of the plot mean that it’s effectively able to move you. And maybe it moves me, too, because of the despair I sometimes feel about issues mentioned above. But then again, like Scrooge at the end I often feel that ‘I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby’.

bill-murray-scrooged-560

Get Scrooged.

What’s next?

I’m still reading Gogol’s Dead Souls, and then I was thinking either more Nabokov or Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori.

Trauma, kindness & starting with a bang: Jessie Cole on Darkness on the Edge of Town

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Jessie Cole

Fourth Estate, 2012
9780732293192
(buy paperback, ebook)

A woman crashes her car outside Vincent’s house. Vincent attempts to help the woman, and the baby in her arms, which may not have survived the crash. Rachel is her name and her arrival will have repercussions for Vincent and his daughter Gemma, and will draw attention (and judgment) in town. Darkness on the Edge of Town is Jessie Cole’s gripping and emotionally intelligent debut novel. Jessie and I have been getting to know each other for a little while now, sending missives from my urban jungle to her forest and back again, about animals, books, children, place, and more. I finally sent through a few questions to Jessie in order to introduce her, and Darkness, to you:

Darkness on the Edge of Town has ‘thrilling’ aspects, it moves along, it’s compelling, but I’d say it’s a character-driven novel. Could you tell us a bit about setting up the situation, and then letting it unfold? About pacing the story? How much of the whole story did you have when you began writing?

Good question! Firstly, the MS I’d written before Darkness was a very personal ‘family saga’ kind-of-story, set across several generations, and I decided after I finished writing it that I really enjoyed reading books that were more just a snippet of time. Stories that simply picked up in a certain part of someone’s life and stayed with them for a bit. I liked the immediacy of those stories, and the way they almost felt like they were told in real-time. And I suppose, I liked the smallness of them. And that was about as far as I’d gotten in terms of thinking consciously about what I wanted to write next. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was ‘a writer.’ Only that sometimes I wrote.

darkness on the edge of townThen, the whole of Darkness came to me in a one big blast late at night. Beginning to end. Hit me like a whack across the back of the head. I have no real explanation for why or how that happened, but it was a very powerful moment and I knew from the outset that it was something special, something whole. It’s difficult to explain how a fully-formed story could come all-at-once, how it could even fit inside a mind in one instant, but it did. I didn’t think at all about setting up the situation, I just sat down and let Vincent talk. I imagined myself as a stranger in a pub who struck up a conversation with him. Him telling me his story— among all the noise and cacophony—and the story being just so hard and so strong he had to get it off his chest. The intimacy of it thrilled me. I wrote the first 20,000 words in a week.

In my mind Vincent and Gemma and Rachel were all compelling characters in traumatic but oddly intimate circumstances, and I was enthralled by them. Part way through the book I realised that I was writing something with some elements of a thriller. This was not purposeful, it was just how it came out. I’m not much of a deliberate writer. I don’t like to plan or over-think things. I do know that when I write I am looking to be thrilled—to feel a kind of wave or nervous tremor of emotion or sensation—and I do use this as a guide to know I’m on the right track. I didn’t think about pacing, the story had its own momentum. I trusted it. At some stage I saw Sonya Hartnett speak at the Byron Bay Writers’ Fest, and she said something along the lines of: ‘I like to start with a bang and end with a bang and have lots of bangs in between’. And I realised that this was what I was doing with Darkness.

Although Sonya Hartnett does plot out her novels, with different coloured sticky notes for different characters or something like that, I’ve been told! That’s what works for her. It fascinates me how each writer approaches a book or a story so differently (and it can be different for each book, too).

Yes, everyone works very differently. Sonya Hartnett has written so many novels, she must have it absolutely down-pat! I guess I just meant that last comment about the bangs in terms of pacing. When I heard Sonya say that, I realised that’s what I was aiming for in the pacing of Darkness, even though I hadn’t really known it. And yes, I think each book is different. I like what Jonathon Franzen says about how you have to become the person who can write the book you want to write, and how with each book you probably have to become a new person.

The connection that forms between the two young women in Darkness, Rach and Gemma, adds a layer to the story. They each come alive a little bit, and maybe grow and make some sense of what is happening to them (separately and together) through their conversations. Could you comment on this aspect of the novel?

I’m very interested in the power inherent in the kindness of strangers. I think in some ways Gemma’s generosity towards Rachel is a bit of a surprise. Teens are notoriously self-centred and maybe—in the circumstances—it would be natural for Gemma to be quite hostile and territorial. But she isn’t. I think that’s because she’s got this wonderful mix of knowingness and openness; she’s also hungry for adult wisdom and it’s in short supply. People who’ve been deprived can start to bloom with the smallest smatterings of attention, and I think Rachel and Gemma give this to each other in as much as they are able. To be truly heard is a powerful thing, and a lot of the time we don’t give each other that gift. I suppose I wanted to show how a kind of openness to connection can build something worthwhile and healing between people, even in the least likely of situations. I’m also interested in the idea of family. In Darkness none of the three main characters are related by blood, but the bonds that they form are, in many ways, familial. In our culture ideas about family can be so narrow. So nuclear. I guess I wanted to question that a little. What makes a family? How do they form?

I want to ask about the small town Australian setting. It’s really as rich as a setting can be, with its history and tensions, and its rituals (thinking about Gem drinking Jim Beam and Coke from a bottle, fumbling in her friend’s bedroom). How is the setting integral to the story?

This small-town-question always leaves me a little stumped. I know that sounds ridiculous because Darkness is so completely a small town story, but it’s really hard for me to have a lot of perspective on that. I’ve lived in the same small town almost all of my life. It’s funny, when people come to visit who haven’t been to my place before, they always say something along the lines of: ‘Wow, you really live in the middle of nowhere!’ And I always reply: ‘What do you mean? This is the centre of the universe!’ Which is, of course, a joke. But in a sense it’s also true, in that it is the centre of my universe. It’s the only way of living that I really understand with any depth.

In terms of how the setting of Darkness is integral to the story, I suppose for the characters of Vincent and Gemma it is that ambivalent mixture of security and claustrophobia. That sense that they are ‘known’ by the people around them, which is in some ways affirming, but that they are also judged or pigeonholed by who they once were, or how their lives have played out thus far. In a small town the past is not a foreign country. It’s a tangible presence that everyone remembers. And on top of that is the way that the private can be translated in small communities. I mean, once you drive up your driveway in the country no-one knows what goes on inside your house. You have no close neighbours to listen to the rhythms of the household, so I think people make up stories about each other based on whatever facts are at hand, but often these stories lack subtlety, or even truth. Maybe the difference in the city is that people don’t assume they know anything much about the people around them, whereas in a small town more assumptions are made. In Darkness, Vincent struggled to communicate what was happening between him and Rachel. He knew that he’d never be able to explain, but that all sorts of judgments would be made. The friction between what is really happening in the private sphere and what the town at large assumes—and how these assumptions play out—creates a lot of tension in the story.

Just as an aside, I think our culture favours the ‘escape’ narrative. The story where we escape our past and start our lives anew. Makeover. Transformation. Alteration. Just look at how many films turn on that fantasy. Especially now, when moving is so accessible. In some ways it is seen as a type of failure not to leave your past behind. And it is almost a given that anyone with any prospects should leave a small town and make something better of their lives. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. And I’m interested in stories about people who decide to stay. I’m not sure how apparent it is in Darkness, but I feel there is a different kind of bravery required to live with your past, and it isn’t something that is celebrated all that much.

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Check out Jessie Cole’s website.

The alpha brother: Annabel Smith on Whisky Charlie Foxtrot

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Fremantle Press, November 2012
9781922089144
(buy paperback, ebook)

Whisky and Charlie are identical twins, but they couldn’t be more different. Whisky is in a coma after a serious accident, and Charlie has to face up to the kind of brother—and person—he’s become. Whisky Charlie Foxtrot moves between the brothers’ earlier lives and their difficult present. It’s a great read; warm, multi-layered, moving, and satisfying. I asked the author, Annabel Smith, a few questions about the novel…

I’d like to ask first about the brothers. Very slowly throughout the narrative you reveal that, while Whisky is certainly no angel, Charlie may have also been pretty hard on him. Could you tell us a bit about developing the relationship between the brothers?

In my first draft of WCF I believed I was writing a book about a decent guy and his wanky, unscrupled ‘evil’ twin. I got to around Chapter seven (Golf) and Whisky was getting pasted. Then, my friend and mentor, Richard Rossiter, guided me to introduce a crisis into the story, to add drama in the relationship, and thus, Whisky’s coma was born. After that it became challenging to hold onto my idea of Whisky because it feels wrong to tell nasty stories about someone who is in a coma! As my perspective on Whisky shifted, so too did my perspective on Charlie. Charlie’s realisation—that Whisky might not be all bad and that he himself might have played a part in the demise of their relationship—was really my own realisation about the truth of their relationship.

It’s great that you’ve maintained that process of realisation for the reader. So when you decided to make a coma the crisis, how did you go about it? It seems like you’ve done research not just into the coma state but into the ways that people deal it.

You’re right, I had to understand coma both in a medical sense and also in terms of its impact on family and friends. For a long time, I wasn’t sure whether Whisky would recover from the coma or not. So I needed to know for how long someone could plausibly remain in a coma; what kind of therapy they would receive and other health threats they might face while in a coma state. In case Whisky woke up, I researched recovery, rehabilitation and the physical and mental implications of long-term coma states. In the event that he would not recover, I explored right-to-life issues and the euthanasia process. The last thing I wanted was for readers to pick holes in the science. So I gathered statistics, diagrams of the brain, explanations of testing procedures and diagnostic tools etc. I don’t really have a science brain so it was pretty heavy-duty reading for me!

I used both medical and anecdotal sources and came across some amazing recovery stories and also many heartbreaking accounts without happy endings. There are lots of forums on the internet for the loved ones of comatose patients and they were an excellent source of material. People contribute advice about things they’ve learned along the way, tips on what helps them get through; some just need an outlet to share their stories with others who understand what they’re going through.

As well as information that had dramatic possibilities, I gathered details that would help to make the story feel real, especially to readers who might have some knowledge of coma, all of which were collated into a giant tome which I printed out and carried round with me for months on end. I was so happy to retire that wad of papers, I can tell you.

I’d like to ask about using the phonetic alphabet to build the structure of the book, and to introduce characters and themes. I think it works so well. Did you have that in place from the beginning? Were there ever any issues adhering to it?

The alphabet was in place right from the start. It was a great springboard for giving me ideas about episodes in the twins’ lives. But it also posed some challenges. Any of the chapters with names (Charlie, Juliet, Oscar) were simple—they became character names. But ‘Yankee’ kept me awake at night. For a long time I had no idea how I was going to work that in. Others posed problems in terms of chronology. X-ray, for instance, was an easy idea to work in, given that Whisky was hospitalised, but I really wanted that information to appear earlier in the novel. I had to do some tricky manoeuvring, like using flashbacks, to make some of the chapters work.

You said you received some valuable advice from Richard Rossiter while writing the book. At what point do you show your work to others? Is it something you’d encourage all writers to do?

I was part of a writing trio (with Amanda Curtin and Robyn Mundy) while writing Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, so I started showing drafts to them almost from the start. I found it really helpful to have feedback at an early stage, when I was still uncertain about the voice, the style and whether the story was appealing or compelling to readers. Once I got on a roll with it, I had more confidence and felt less in need of ongoing feedback. After finishing the first draft, I sought more feedback, and from a wider circle. I think it’s critical to have perceptive readers whose feedback you trust to look at your work. If you can find the right person/people, they can support you when you lose faith in yourself, brainstorm a way through issues in the text, and notice things you can no longer see because you’re too immersed in the work. I have no doubt that the feedback I received made my book stronger and more satisfying to read.

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This post will be added to my tally in the Australian Women Writers Reading + Reviewing Challenge.

The Age Book of the Year Awards

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This is cross-posted from the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012 blog.

The Age Book of the Year awards were announced last night at the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012 opening event, prior to Simon Callow’s enthusiastic, informative Keynote speech on Charles Dickens.

The awards, now in their 38th year and highly regarded, were presented by Age literary editor Jason Steger. They went to…

Fiction

Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears (Allen & Unwin)

Poetry

The Brokenness Sonnets I-III and Other Poems by Mal McKimmie (Five Islands Press)

Nonfiction

1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia by James Boyce (Black Inc.)

Overall winner / Age Book of the Year

1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia by James Boyce (Black Inc.)

Boyce was very humble about his win, he commended the Age for continuing to support literature and authors, and he very gratefully acknowledged author and historian Inga Clendinnen, who has been a supporter of his work.

This afternoon the winning authors will be reading from their work in The Age Book of the Year Reading. It’s a free event at 2:30pm at BMW Edge. Do come along.

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Just in case I/we don’t get a chance to write about Simon Callow’s Keynote, his Lateline interview with Tony Jones is online, and of course, you can check out his writing. I can personally recommend (though not on the subject of Dickens) his essay in the latest Sight and Sound (UK) magazine on Orson Welles (another figure he’s passionate about, he’s currently working on the third volume of his biography). See also my Q&A with Callow on writing and playing Dickens.

Freak out in a moonage daydream: Sean M Whelan on Liner Notes

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This is cross-posted from the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012 blog.

The Liner Notes spoken word event (run by Babble) is always a festival highlight for me, and this year a bunch of writers, poets et al are set to rock our worlds with an interpretation of David Bowie’s album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. *Excitement!* Previous Liner Notes have included Michael Jackson’s Thriller, INXS’ Kick and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Liner Notes has actually been running a lot longer than it has been part of MWF, and I got in touch with Babble/Liner Notes founder and regular performer Sean M Whelan to ask him some questions about the event:

Sean, can you tell us how Babble and Liner Notes came to be? What was the first album that was ‘interpreted’?

Liner Notes literally came to me in a dream. I was half asleep one night and the concept of it all just kind of materialised in my head. I remember shooting up in bed and searching for a pen and paper to write it down because I’ve had those experiences before where I’ve had a great idea in the middle of the night then gone back to sleep and in the morning I’ve remembered I HAD a good idea but can’t for the life of me remember what it actually was! This time I secured it safely in writing before going back to sleep. I’ve always been a big fan of music and poetry so this seemed the perfect way to combine those two great loves. I loved the idea of it being vaguely built around the model of a tribute night, but unlike other tribute shows all this original material comes out of it.

The first album we interpreted was actually David Bowie’s Hunky Dory! With coming to Bowie again after ten years it feels like we’ve come full circle. Also Liner Notes has developed a lot since our first show at Bar Open in Fitzroy. We were still figuring things out back then. For example, we didn’t have a full band for the first show, Michael Nolan performed with just a solo guitarist. Since then we have had a full band play at every Liner Notes event and for the last three years we’ve performed sold out shows in conjunction with the Melbourne Writers Festival. This year we’re also very proud to be taking the show interstate for the first time. We’ll be appearing at the Brisbane Writers Festival at the Powerhouse on Sept 8. I’ve always thought the show was perfect for touring as it’s very easy to source the performers at whichever location you take it to. Taking it internationally is just a matter of time, we already have two copycat events in North America, we might as well take it over and show them the real thing!

Why Ziggy Stardust? (So many of his albums are classics, after all.)

Well, you’re right, there are SO many great David Bowie albums to choose from. Which is one reason why we wanted to revisit Bowie. There is also the fact that this year marks the 40th anniversary of Ziggy Stardust, so that seemed like a good enough reason to choose Ziggy above the rest. There’s so much glamour and showmanship around that album too, which is naturally appealing to the tiny little rock stars living in all our hearts.

Michael Nolan has been doing an excellent job as MC for Liner Notes over the years, researching the band, the album and each track before the night (not to mention being able to sing). Can you ever imagine doing it without him?

Michael Nolan pretty much IS Liner Notes. I came up with the original concept for the show but right from the start it’s been a joint effort between myself and co-producers Emilie Zoey Baker and Michael Nolan. But Nolan is such a crucial part of the show, from liaising with the Melbourne Writers Festival to source the performers, to the amazing amount of research he does on every album, to singing with the band on the night; he really is indispensable. Now that the model has been built I can easily imagine Liner Notes going on without me but it would be a very different show and much poorer for it without the mighty Michael Nolan at the helm.

The performers at Liner Notes are usually a mix of poets, authors, comedians and musical types—faces both familiar and new. How do you go about selecting the artists for the show?

When Liner Notes first started it was strictly poets who made up the performers for the night, as one of the reasons it was started was as a way to bring wider audiences to poetry events. Ten years later we have expanded it to nearly anybody that we think will have something interesting to offer. For example this year we have Tim Flannery, environmentalist and First Dog on the Moon, cartoonist, both who don’t fit into any of the categories above.

The only brief for our guests is that we hope they will bring something engaging to the stage. Some people think they need to be a fan of whatever album is being highlighted to contribute but that’s not the case at all. The songs, that each guest are asked to provide a response to, are only meant to act as kicking off points for inspiration. Right from the start we have never intended Liner Notes to be a serious literary dissection of popular music, which some fans might expect. Some of our guests are hearing the albums we present to them for the first time. Irreverence is really the name of the game, but so is to expect the unexpected. Part of the thrill of Liner Notes as producers is that we don’t vet any of the work beforehand, so, along with the audience, we see everything for the first time on the night.

Can you tell us what track you’re interpreting from Ziggy, and maybe even give us a small preview?

My challenge this year is to provide a response to Track 3. Side A. Moonage Daydream. Definitely one of my favourite tracks from the album. I wish I could give you a small preview but I seem to be on track for doing what I do every year, and that is to leave it to the last minute and have a total panic attack about it in the few days remaining before the show. The only preview I could possibly provide at this stage is that in the spirit of the song I will most likely ‘Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah!’

Liner Notes: Ziggy Stardust is on Saturday 25 August at 8pm. View the full list of performers and ticket details here.

Football & figuring out: Paul D Carter on Eleven Seasons

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This is cross-posted from the Melbourne Writers Festival 2012 blog.

Paul D Carter’s debut novel Eleven Seasons was the Australian/Vogel Literary Award winner for 2012. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the ’80s/’90s about Jason Dalton—Hawks supporter and burgeoning player—struggling to find room to breathe and grow and be himself. I asked Carter some questions about the novel:

Jason Dalton is a great character. His searching, his anger, his passion—all very believable. How did the character form in relation to the novel’s focus on both AFL and personal history/identity?

Jason appeared in earlier drafts of the book, at which stage the narrative focused on his entire family unit, including his mother and father (he was also following Footscray, and the novel began in 1980, not 1985). After writing some 40,000 words of this draft, I felt that the characters were being welded to the themes I wanted to explore, as opposed to the narrative emerging organically from the fears and desires of the characters themselves.

In my second draft, I focused on Jason, and moved the narrative forward so that it encompassed the era dominated by the Hawthorn Football Club. I wrote the opening chapter in a week, and felt I was onto something much better—I cared more for Jason, and I could see more clearly the correlation between his football ‘dreaming’ and his life outside the game as a socially invisible boy.

I like how the novel interrogates different cultures around the game—good and bad—through Jason’s encounters. Was it important to you to shine a light on both the positive and negative aspects?

My greatest aim with this novel was to write a book that dealt with football but which non-followers of the game could appreciate. I wanted to get the reader to think of football as a sphere in his life that was interdependent with the other spheres in his life: his relationship with his mother, his relationships with his friends, his relationships with girls. Football is something he uses for a sense of selfhood and direction, in the same way that other people might embrace music or dance to provide themselves with these things.

This said, I felt it was important to look at the way the way football culture might inhibit him as much as it provides him with solace. I think it can be easy to escape the hard work of growing up and figuring yourself out if you are part of a club or institution that does this figuring out for you. I think this issue extends to cultural pursuits outside of football as well, but in football it is quite explicit.

You were writing a PhD at the same time as writing the novel, well done! Did any of your research feed into the novel, or was it unrelated?

Much of my PhD research informed the novel as I ended up writing a review of creative writing about football and the ways this writing has reflected Australia’s recent social history. This said, I wrote the novel mostly from the gut.

The best things about completing the novel as a PhD were that it created a window of time in my life that I could devote exclusively to writing, and it also gave me a timeline. Without this structure, I’m not sure I would have found the self-discipline to see the project through.

Eleven Seasons won the Vogel this year, and was subsequently published by Allen & Unwin. What was that road to publication like? Has your writing life changed much since then?

I had a very intense summer of 2011-12 rewriting the novel in line with the suggestions of the editors. They read the novel very closely, and very critically. I’m still unsure that I was able to deliver a revised manuscript that answered all of their criticisms. This said, the pressure to push myself above and beyond what I’d already done proved a terrific learning experience. It seems to me that one of the best ways to learn is to have someone believe in you and take you to task at the same time. As an English teacher, it’s a lesson I’m trying to take on board when working with my students.

On the subject of teaching—I’m in my second year as an English teacher, and most of my mental space is still occupied by it. It’s one of the most complex and taxing jobs there is, and my writing has taken a back seat for the time being. But I’m taking notes on a book that will deal with teaching and teenagers. This time around, I’d like to write more about women. I feel like I’m done writing about guys for now.

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Carter will discuss what it’s like to be a first-time novelist with Chris Flynn, Eowyn Ivey, and Ruby J Murray on Saturday 1 September at 1pm, and he’ll be reading from his work at The Morning Read session on Sunday 2 September at 10am. Both sessions are free.

Month of reading

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I was stoked this month to be asked to contribute the ‘month of reading’ column to The Victorian Writer, the magazine of Writers Victoria. Below is a version of my column.

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I was recently held up at Melbourne airport for seven hours. I tried to see it as a blessing: pure, uninterrupted reading time. I read The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson (Text Classics) until my wrists ached (it’s almost 1000 pages). It’s mainly set in 19th Century Victoria and Mahony is one of the most complex characters I’ve encountered. He changes and grows and becomes set (as we do), then he surprises you. Then he stops surprising you (and his long-suffering wife, Polly/Mary), and then he surprises you again. He’s so like a real person. I’m only just half-way through, and what a delight that is.

At the Picador party at the Sydney Writers’ Festival I was given a copy of Emily Maguire’s new novel. I decided before reading Fishing for Tigers I’d go back to Maguire’s earliest works. Taming the Beast is about a consentive but abusive relationship that stretches over years. Some of my favourite books have a real edge of cruelty to them, as this does. It’s an addictive read, written in a kind of urgent style, and it asks the reader to consider certain issues around sex and power, violence, consent, freedom and influence.

I indulged a current obsession by reading Ronald Bergan’s biography of queer actor Anthony Perkins (of Psycho fame). I fell hard for Tony after seeing Orson Welles version of Kafka’s The Trial. The bio is well written, not too sensational or speculative (but with some very sweet, intimate details, like the fact he apparently had very soft skin). It contains neat little criticisms of Perkins’ films, plays and TV appearances, and ties him closely with his most famous works.

I adored Eliot Weinberger’s poetic essays around different creatures in Wildlife (in Giramondo’s Shorts series). Weinberger leaves much space for the reader in these short pieces on naked mole-rats, rhinoceroses, fish, lizards, birds; about people turned to birds, dreams created by sea cucumbers, and a girl marrying a frog.

As this is the ereading issue I should mention something I recently enjoyed reading on my iPhone: Dallas Angguish’s short story Bridge of Sighs, about androgyny, eccentricity, friendship and desire in Venice.

Let's read writing by women

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A new committee is being set up to pursue equal rights for women writers in Australia. Besides research, lobbying and setting up mentorships, the committee is looking at establishing a literary prize for Australian women writers, along the lines of the UK’s Orange Prize. The steering committee (including novelist and publisher Sophie Cunningham, critic and former Miles Franklin judge Kerryn Goldsworthy and novelist Kirsten Tranter) feel the move is unfortunately, necessary, due to the unequal recognition of books by women in major literary award shortlists and in the book pages of the major newspapers in this country. Cunningham told the Guardian: ’we would prefer it if this award didn’t have to exist – if writing by women was rewarded and valued on its own terms, with equal merit to the way that work written by men is.’ She said: ‘Women continue to be marginalised in our culture. Their words are deemed less interesting, less knowledgeable, less well formed, less worldly, and less worthy.’

Tranter brought my attention to the issue of women being underrepresented in the literary pages in an article for the Wheeler Centre blog in March.

The committee and prize are in their nascent stages, and I will be talking to members of the committee in coming months, once their plans have solidified. Cunningham is currently working on an article on the issue for the June edition of literary journal Kill Your Darlings, so keep an eye out for that. She has also answered some questions over at the Meanjin blog, Spike. I hope they don’t mind me quoting at length, because I think these points get to the kernel of the issue:

Zora Sanders: Is part of the problem perhaps that the type of fiction we consider ‘serious’ or ‘literary’ often revolves around men and men’s stories? Is there a bias against genre at work as well?

Sophie Cunningham:I think that’s EXACTLY the problem. Couldn’t have put it better. Also, when men write novels drawn from life, it is still seen as literary, and serious, but these qualities in a work are used to dismiss books by women. And, when Alex Miller writes a deeply romantic novel, like Conditions of Faith, for example, it’s seen as literary, and when a women writes a similar novel (priests, longing, sex, France etc) it’s seen as a ‘romance’.

ZS: It seems to me that much of the problem is the internalised, almost unconscious bias against women’s writing that both men and women seem to be affected by. How do we start to address the impulse that automatically discounts a book as ‘serious’ when we see a woman’s name on the cover?

SC:You’ve put your finger on the problem. It is nebulous. It’s not easily solved. And I certainly agree that women share this bias with men, as well as being the victim of it. I think that making an effort to include more books my women on educational syllabi would help. as Louise Swinn pointed out in a panel we did together a couple of months ago that touched on this subject, there are a series of seminars, running over the next few months, on VCE English texts. Of 15 set texts discussed, only two of these were by women. “These are kids going through school and this is what they’re reading,” she said. “And then we tell the girls that their voices are just as worthwhile.”

And, I suppose, as this prize makes obvious, I think we all need to be proactive. Publishers have to stop insisting on twee covers for women’s books (have you read the Lionel Schriver article on this subject? ). Literary editors need to review more books by women and publish more reviews written by women. We all need to find ways to continue to advocate for women’s voices, in the face of ongoing marginalisation. And, to get back to your original question, to ignore the inevitable suggestion that to advocate in this way is tokenism.

There’s a fundamental issue here, of perception, which is then perpetuated on many levels (one of them inescapably being sales and marketing). A lot of men (and many women) might feel they are not ‘interested’ in the kinds of things women write about. But what they’re reporting on here, sometimes, is an ingrained cultural bias that says the day-to-day life, the worldview and concerns of women are 1. something that is homogenous and can be boxed, and 2. is not as fascinating as the worldview and concerns of men. And I’m not saying I’m free of this, either. We often read to recognise ourselves, but hopefully also out of curiosity for the lives of others. I think men (and again, many women) may not realise they will be able to do this in books by women – both recognise aspects of themselves, and become curious about another’s viewpoint, whether that be rendered through domestic, romantic, historical, futuristic or other modes. We can all try harder to fight this bias through reading and writing about books by women.

I remember when talking to Alex Miller about Conditions of Faith, which Cunningham rightly calls ‘deeply romantic’, he said that people often assumed it was written by a woman. Some people would ask him ‘how do you do it?’, amazed that a man can inhabit the voice of a woman so well. It’s because Miller has honed that curiosity and empathy, and is not afraid of delving into the life of a woman, in a fictional sense. In the same way, we can hone this curiosity and empathy. And, of course, women write some wonderful male characters. I’ve just finished The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, about aged actor Charles Arrowby. More on that soon (it’s one of my 20 classics for 2011).

I guess, at least, the book industry is slightly better off than the film industry. There are many books written and published by women – it’s just their perception for which we have to fight, their cultural relevancy and legitimacy. In the film industry, women fight for equality at all levels. Director Lynne Ramsay told the Guardian: ‘Let’s be clear – men don’t like having a woman on their back, and someone who is younger than them… they feel unmanned, manipulated, judged. Whereas if it is a man at the helm, they feel simply that they are being directed.’ Four films directed by women are up for the Palme d’Or this year (out of 20), and that’s a record.

To end this on something positive, I want to ask you: what are your favourite books by women? Have you read anything great lately? What about books by Australian female authors? Do you have any favourite female critics? Share the love. I’ll join in the comments or maybe do a whole post on some of my favourites if I get a chance. I’m also thinking next year’s reading project will be to read 20 books by women.

Other links:

Study finds huge gender imbalance in children’s literature

Links to articles on children’s books with strong, resourceful female characters

The Bechdel test (applicable to books and films)

Women writers in the 20th Century

100 best works by women writers[would love to see an Aus list like this]

Professions for women by Virginia Woolf

10 funniest women writers on the internet

Update

Do read Benjamin Law’s wonderful article ‘A prize of one’s own: the case for an Aussie Orange’, which talks about gender bias in other areas of the arts too, ie. theatre and music.

The LiteraryMinded Couch, Episode One: Uhh, Fail Vlog

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I’ve been meaning to add video content to LiteraryMinded for yonks!

I’ve interviewed authors on stage, I’ve read my own work aloud, I can write about books - but speaking alone into a camera is an entirely different kettle of fish…