AWRF 2010 - Ben Naparstek - In conversation

"In conversation: encounters with great writers" is the title of Ben Naparstek's first book, published last year. Tim from Readers Services went to hear Ben in conversation (with Guy Somerset of the NZ Listener) about "In conversation" at AWRF 2010. I had to wait a bit for his comments (not a reprimand, I haven't gotten all mine up either, that's how it is at busy Central Library - did everyone see us written up in Canvas yesterday?) but it was super worth it. Here is Tim on Ben N. (and his anagram Mr P.) for all to enjoy:  

Overheard after the talk:

"So...that was Ben Pasternak..." ( joking, old fellow's voice -- joking, I thought, but couldn't see his face to verify.)

"Yep" said his friend (tall).

Old Fellow:  "His diction wasn't so good..."

Tall Man- "No...no..."

O.F.-"He mumbled so I couldn't hear and...it was a little rambling..."

He didn't mumble, to my ears at least, but Ben Naparstek did lack the seasoned delivery of a literary talk circuit veteran. He didn't command the stage or have the practiced sound bites ready at hand. My first impression was of an unassuming fellow -- quiet and maybe a little shy. Was he in the right place? His tie was a little askew, his hair a little messed up, he slouched to the side a little, and it is true what they say about him being very young -- The "Doogie Howser" of journalism he has been called.

Certainly, young and fresh-faced for someone in his position (age 24, but already editor of the Australian magazine of politics, society and  culture The Monthly, with close to a decade of top level journalism under his belt, interviewed such luminaries as Noam Chomsky, Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami at a tender age... ).
Occasionally he stumbled over his words- like when he read from his piece on Chomsky- and that's when he reminded me of a high school student reciting homework aloud. But one couldn't be shy or stumbling when interviewing such a towering figure, surely. His answer to the question if he got intimidated interviewing these people was "Well...no". He seemed a little nonplussed at the idea. The purpose of the interview is get material, not to impress his subjects, he said.

There would be no room for shyness running a magazine either, whatever your age. He told of how he first heard, aged eighteen, that The Monthly was in the works and needed an editor. He said that at first he didn't think of it as a magazine he might edit (aged eighteen!). At first. But he applied anyway.

He was asked at the beginning of the session how he likes to open an interview and he replied that it can be good to wrong-foot the subject a little, and by the end of the hour I felt as if I had been a little wrong-footed by my first impression of him. It became apparent that this fellow was smart and unflappable. He didn't display a gift of the gab, but he was articulate and thoughtful. I wondered if he used his boyishness as part of his journalistic tool kit -- to wrong-foot people, disarm them so as to get the genuine reaction, the telling quote...

Over the course of the talk he touched on his early academic leanings (idealised academic rigour only to be disillusioned by academic insularity, gave up the ivory tower in favour of writing for the wider public), the craft of the interview (he always makes full transcriptions of interviews so as to find the hidden telling phrase not so immediately apparent), and the job of managing a magazine.

Not much in the way of gossip about famous people though.
As they wandered away the Tall Man said to his friend that he would have approached the Norm Chomsky interview differently, asked him about his philosophy, politics, serious stuff, you know... Norm Chomsky? Maybe  Ben Pasternak would have done a better job.

AWRF 2010 - Emily Perkins and Damien Wilkins

Simon tells us about his next appointment at AWRF 2010 -- but neglects to say if he sampled the wares of the coffee cart first.

Coming to this event after the more harrowing morning topic of "forgotten victims in a post 9/11 world" made it feel like light relief. It was also heavy on interesting discussion, with two New Zealand authors discussing their vocation with passionate candour. 

Chair Fergus Barrowman began by comparing the similar career arcs of Emily Perkins and Damien Wilkins. Both had studied at Victoria University, and both authors had enjoyed early critical success; Perkins with her shorts collection Not her Real Name (1996) and Wilkins withThe Miserables (1993).  Both were now teachers, and both had recently put out what were being hailed as career highs; Perkins' Novel About my Wife and Wilkins' Somebody Loves Us All. 

Barrowman then posed that elusive question: when did you KNOW ....?

Perkins said she had first become cognizant of what she felt (despite technical imperfections) was her own artistic "voice" whilst doing Bill Manhire's undergraduate Creative Writing Course. Wilkins was a little more self-effacing. He spoke of the shame he harboured for his early attempts at at writing, thus not daring to enrol in a writing course that would encourage exposing works in progress to one's classmates. However, he was struck by a comment a teacher had written on one of his essays, complimenting the "rhythms" of his prose. This was the small kernel of positivity Wilkins needed to suspect that perhaps he too HAD something. 

Both authors spoke positively of the role teaching English plays in their own work. Perkins found it rejuvenating, and Wilkins said he felt excited to be hearing new voices in an embryonic state, the originality of ideas often shining through technical flaws. 

An even more elusive question: What is literature FOR....? 

Perkins said her reasons for writing were always evolving, but that presently she was more interested in writing something that produced sensation as it was being read in the moment, rather than writing something that was "significant."As a reader, she was not bothered by weak endings if taken on a journey throughout. In fact, she contended, sometimes the misshapenness of a novel could be a strength. Wilkins felt that while it could not be argued that writing improved the author's life, (thus debunking the notion of writing as effective catharsis for author) what it did produce was a piece of work that was FOR someone - FOR a reader.

As for the process of writing, whatever the previous novel's strengths, "there wasn't a guild," maintained Perkins. One wanted to do something different once one's strengths had become habitual. A new novel was always a chance to "repudiate" the previous one she joked. Wilkins contended that the distance between a well established writer and a beginner was in fact very small. 

Both authors then read segments of their work to an attentive audience, and Barrowman wound up by noting an increase in "garrulous speech" in current New Zealand fiction, (as demonstraed by the dialogue-heavy passages in Wilkins's latest novel), and a moving on from the archetypal lonely misunderstood NZ narrator to something more social.

AWRF 2010 - Poetry Live

Thanks to Jade for this post on the Poetry Live event at AWRF 2010, chaired by Christine O'Brien from AUP. I love the idea of a poem about hanging out washing as I too have had some vivid experiences relating to putting out laundry. One was when I hung a set of sheets to dry in the back yard of a house in Wichita, Kansas and came out an hour later to find them already dry. I had just arrived a few days before and it marked the moment that I realized just what "Great Plains" -- such a fixture of American mythology -- really meant.

Introduced as a “feast of poets”, the audience was treated to a veritable banquet of poetry from seven New Zealand poets and one Australian poet, Alicia Sometimes.

Alison Wong was first up reciting one of her new poems, a witty comparison between hanging out washing in Geelong and Wellington. This poem was obviously memorable as on Sunday, I found myself hanging out sheets in such a way as to avoid tui droppings whereas if I had been in Geelong it would have been parakeet droppings I wanted to avoid.

Ian Wedde, Bernadette Hall, Sam Sampson, Jessica le Bas, Ben Brown, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman and Alicia Sometimes each read eight minutes worth of compelling verse.  However, the most moving poetry for me was extracts from Jessica le Bas's Walking to Africa. Introduced by the poet as a mother’s story about caring and families, this poem related the experience of adolescent mental illness in a very compassionate way.

AWRF 2010 - An evening with William Dalrymple

That friendly librarian helping you with the travel and history books at Central Library might be Jade, whose career includes an exciting 14 months as a VSA volunteer at the National Library of Cambodia. Ask her if she attended “An evening with William Dalrymple” at AWRF 2010 and then you’ll know, especially if she describes it to you like this: 

The audience waited with anticipation for the evening with William Dalrymple to begin, and after being formally introduced, he was quickly on stage, telling us he was going to read from four of his travel books, not from the latest one only, as I had expected.

 He began with his first travel book In Xanadu written when he was 22, which he called a “student romp” as he retraced, during his summer break, Marco Polo’s journey from Jerusalem to Shangdu (Xanadu). He read an excerpt from his humorous account of going to the cinema in China where he and the locals watched James Bond in Dr. No.

The City of Djinns was his second travel book and explored his fascination with Delhi, its history and wonderful array of eclectic inhabitants. Dalrymple recounted for us his adventure with taxi driver Ravinder Singh in the hazardous Delhi traffic where “might is right” and the “driver of the loudest vehicle” wins.

His third book, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium, written in a more serious tone, examined the Christian minorities in the Middle East and the complexity of the relationship between Christianity and Islam which historically have co-existed closely, sharing holy places and religious practices.

Dalrymple’s final readings were from Nine Lives: In Search of the Modern in Sacred India, published in 2009. Not written in the style of more traditional travel writing, Nine Lives is what Dalrymple called “nine nonfiction short stories”, told by the nine people whose stories impressed him most as he travelled throughout India. Each of the individuals embraces a different religious or sacred tradition, and includes a Tibetan monk, a Sufi, Tantric sadhu, a sacred prostitute, and a Theyyam dancer. Dalrymple wanted to show how a variety of traditional faiths is surviving in contemporary, globalised modern India. He read a couple of excerpts from the first story about a Jain nun who became grief-stricken when her fellow nun and travelling companion of twenty years died through taking her own life according to the Jain tradition of Santhara, or fasting until death.

During question time, we learnt that Dalrymple, himself a Roman Catholic, believes that there are many paths up the mountain of religious faith. When asked what his Indian readers think about Nine Lives, he told us that while he had aimed it at a Western audience, it had touched the Indian readers more and that they were now his biggest reading audience. He reflected how his previous works were written more from an outsider’s point of view and I think his latest work shows a new maturity in travel writing that enables the people to speak for themselves.

AWRF 2010 - John Freeman: Shrinking the World

Pam from Mt. Roskill Community Library tells us how she found Shrinking the World and AWRF 2010 quite mind-expanding. 

This was my first Writers and Readers Festival and everything I saw was new and exciting. By the time I got to John Freeman’s talk I was well versed on the festival format - dimmed lights, slide show, sponsors voice over…until the highlight, a relaxed conversation between chair and guest.

Freeman’s talk reaffirmed what I have been thinking for quite some time, that our lives are far too busy.  He’s not anti e-mail, but believes the amount  we receive on a daily basis is a contributing factor in our sped up lifestyles, and that we need to slow down and think about the necessity of our words before hitting the send button.  Communicating today is about quick and instant; to the point where in some circles it is acceptable to text and email in the middle of a dinner conversation.

It was amusing to be reminded of how we used to wait for a daily mail delivery, and that we did and survived! 

When asked if he thought we were being ‘dumbed down’ by technology, Freeman laughed, ‘’We’re being blown to smithereens!’

I’ve yet to read his book Shrinking the world : the 4000-year story of how email came to rule our lives, but it is reassuring to know that towards the back are suggestions for managing information overload.

The Writers and Readers Festival has got me hooked and I will definitely be back next year.

AWRF 2010 - Forgotten Victims in a Post 9/11 World

Simon from Readers Services must have been scribbling notes on his takeaway coffee cup, presumably after he'd drained it, to have gotten so much into his write-up. Here it is (you may want to make a coffee first):

Now this was a heavy topic for 10am in the morning - particularly if you'd had a late night, overslept, missed your bus, and found yourself hoofing it from Grey Lynn to the Aotea Centre sans breakfast, walking so fast that coffee was spilling out through the sipper hole in your takeaway cup. But I digress. Thankfully the talk turned out to be so compelling that I soon forgot the less than ideal circumstances under which the morning began. 

The speakers were Michael Otterman, an American journalist and human rights consultant, and Antony Loewenstein, a Jewish-Australian freelance journalist, author and blogger.

Chair Kris Gledhill began by talking of the history of human rights awareness since World War 2. The horrors of the Holocaust were a catalyst for the formation of the U.N and an increasing public awareness of the need for human rights law. The problem, it was contended, was that it was western world human rights that were most protected, and western world human rights abuse that was most reported on by the media. Otterman and Loewenstein, in their capacity as journalists, contended that since 1945 up to the present day many human rights abuses sanctioned by the U.S govenrment were slipping under the mainstream media radar. Victims were being forgotten, and this problem had surged in a post 9/11 world, with many forgotten victims in the Middle East.

The pros and cons of torture as a method of seeking information from suspected terrorists was discussed. Neither Otterman or Lowenstein saw any pros. Lowenstein said there was much evidence that both the victim and the torturer suffered longterm post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. It also led to a lot of false intelligence, as many victims will say whatever they think is being sought from them in order for the torture to end. A further argument against torture was the spreading resentment against the U.S in the Middle East. Al Qaeda numbers had reportedly risen since the release of the Abu Ghraib torture photos in 2004. 

Both men pointed out the failure of the mainstream press to expose the full (and continuing) extent to which torture is being used by the U.S military, and the misleading nature of "Orwellian euphemisms" used such as "enhanced interrogation techniques", and the ultimately sourceless context of any content that begins with "Administration officials say...". These misleading tones were entrenched in compromised media outlets such as Fox News which operated as commercial businesses. 

The lack of coverage was also down to the covert nature of the U.S Government's military legislation, authorising torture techniques like sense deprivation and sleep deprivation in places outside of the U.S such as Guantanamo Bay, some methods of which were still authorised under the Obama regime; not to mention the increasingly common phenomenon of "embedded jourrnalists" whose reporting would inevitably be heavily partisan.  Egypt's torture chambers were discussed, and the disenchanting irony of Obama's speech in Cairo about a new Muslim beginning when there were U.S tax dollar funded torture chambers nearby. 

Aside from the inspiring legacy of independant journalists such as Robert Fisk and Patrick Coburn, both men agreed the internet was a vital tool for the voices of forgotten victims to be heard. Groundbreaking footage and coverage from the "blogsphere," (eg.CNN running twitter feeds during the Iranian uprising, Saudi Arabian youtube clips of women driving in a country where it is illegal for women to drive) was seen as far more vital than so-called "fair balanced journalism," and the most important revelations came from human rights groups rather than journalists. Lowenstein was reluctant to be optimistic about the chances of resolution in the Palestine/Israel situation. Both men hoped that the freedom of the internet could enable a new investigative journalism from inside and outside the Middle East, making true democracy possible.

AWRF 2010: Voices from the crowd

"What was your favourite moment at AWRF 2010?"

On occasion, finding myself in a semi-captive crowd -- coffee cart queues, Opening Night Party huddles and similar -- I would take out  my stenographic pad, and thus disguised as a roving reporter shamelessly assault my fellow attendees, asking them to recall what the stand-out moment of the Festival was for them.

Phil, cutler and grandfather:
“When they asked Thomas Keneally ‘Why do you write?’ and he said 'Because it makes me drunk with joy.'"

Carole Beu of The Women’s Bookshop:
“The best moment for me was the Elizabeth Smither event (blogger’s note: which Carole chaired) – her wit and wisdom and her knowingness of human behaviour.”

Christine O’Brien from Auckland University Press, Chair of the Poetry Live event:
“As a publisher, my favourite moment was when 40 people were turned away from Karl Stead's event (blogger’s note: CK Stead's new book South-West of Eden: A Memoir, 1932-1956 is published by AUP); but as a poetry lover my favourite moment was at the poetry session, when Ben Brown started off by saying ‘I’m about to do two things you should never do in New Zealand unless you’re very sure of yourself: that’s reference J.K. Baxter and wear sunglasses onstage.’”

Greg, man about town and husband of a librarian:
“John Reynolds wearing the big white Mickey Mouse hands.” (blogger’s note: Reynolds's line was “Let me put on my curator’s gloves here.”)

English teacher at Kati Kati College:
“When they were talking about Whale Rider at the Script to Screen event and Witi Ihimaera said Keisha Castle-Hughes became Moby Chick who rode the whale all the way to Hollywood.”

Friend of English teacher at Kati Kati College:
“When Rachael King said that Winston Churchill’s mother had a 'tramp stamp', when she was talking about the research she had done for her book.” (blogger’s note: Yes I asked. It was a snake around her wrist)

Veronica, woman-at-large:
“When Colm Tóibín said ‘It’s a sin to be boring.’"

Mattie, arts lover and Festival volunteer:
“When Chris Finlayson made that speech at the Opening Night with all those jokes about the Labour Party, as he was leaving the stage someone yelled “Boo!” – well, the word here is that it came from the direction of Bob Kerridge!”

Paul Reynolds, internet guru:
“The panel I chaired expressed a group disquiet at the changes at the University of Canterbury Library and were very concerned at the downgrade of the library services for students. My favourite moment was when Mike Dickison, the Learning Advisor, said that in the digital arena, librarians are the most relentlessly forward-thinking profession that he knows of.”

Couldn’t hear name over roar of Opening Night Party (just kidding, actually I don't think he owned up to it), from ArtStation:
“Seeing how tastelessly dressed Simon Bridges's wife is.”

Callum who will be starting at Ponsonby Intermediate next year:
“Charlie Higson reading out loud from The Enemy.”

Pete Bossley, architect:
“Lionel Shriver ending all her comments with this emphatic nod of the head as if she were saying 'Take that!'”

Librarian from Rodney Libraries:
“When Charlie Higson said he was going to have angry zombie librarians coming down the street to eat the children in his next book.”

Friend of Librarian from Rodney Libraries:
“At the Colm Tóibín event when after 15 minutes of talking about  Tóibín being gay, Damien Wilkins said well let’s talk about your writing, and the audience hoorayed.”

AWRF 2010: An hour with Yiyun Li

When I first heard of Yiyun Li, it was as a young Chinese woman living in Oakland, California, writing stories unpublishable in China, described with words like horrifying and brilliant. I imagined her looking a bit like Lucy Liu in "Kill Bill", with a zap of electrifying politics of the kind Oakland is famous for (cf Huey P Newton).

So it was a real surprise when my copy of The vagrants arrived from Harper Collins and the author photo revealed her to be round-cheeked and womanly, someone who would bake. The round-cheeked and womanly were still there when I got to see her in person, but there was something more, a quizzical turn of mind which made her seem both more worldly than that, but also more impractical. I decided she probably isn’t a baker.
It turns out that she was not a firebrand a la Beijing Coma, exiled to America in the wake of Tiananmen. The year of Tiananmen Square, she was only 16. Her father was a nuclear physicist, her mother a school teacher; she studied at Peking University and went to America to study immunology. But the school she chose happened to be the University of Iowa, home of the famed Iowa Writer's Workshop frequented by greats like Raymond Carver and John Cheever, and also some who were usually sober, like Michael Cunningham and T. Coraghessan Boyle. And one day she thought, I might...

At the Festival she was interviewed by John Freeman, the young and shiny editor of Granta. Last arrived as always, I ducked into a seat in the third row and discovered next to me the excellent librarian, now retired, Jennifer Wiseman, who inspired me no end when I was just starting out by talking both Vincent O’Sullivan and an All-Black with an Irish bloodline (Sean Fitzpatrick?) into coming into the library and reading out loud from Ulysses for our Bloomsday Centenary celebration in 2004. It was she who whispered to me that the somewhat ghostly figure on my other side was James Wallace.

John Freeman’s sprightly questioning (“essentialise” ? I looked it up, yes, it does exist, a perfectly good word I have never heard anyone use) opened a window on Li's formative years in Beijing.

“Fiction was the most dangerous thing in the world. Where I grew up, having anything to do with art was dangerous.”

“The public library was not open to the public, just to a select few.”

“But in the early ‘80s the newspapers printed stories by Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev…”

“And then in my middle school library, we had Hemingway, DH Lawrence, Jack London, An American Tragedy (the most terrible book I’ve ever read, so long and boring) and Sister Carrie…”

This intrigues me. Check for Hemingway, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser, anti-fascists the first two and social realist the third, but how did DH Lawrence sneak in? Are we talking Sons and Lovers and the horrible dark dirty coalmining Midlands (thousands of Chinese dying every year in coal mine explosions) or Women in Love, Western decadence, smart women, Gudrun and Ursula in coloured stockings? Or was it simply the whim of some high-up Party official with a secret stash of Glenfiddich and an obsession with DH Lawrence?

“My first pieces of fiction were falsified school notes I wrote to skip school…”

“Chinese families don’t talk about people who aren’t there – only about real things. I made up a story about my grandmother, whom I had never met. That was my first story.”

“The writer Elizabeth Bowen said ninety percent of writers don’t move beyond writing to be felt. I started writing not to be felt but to feel other people…”

“I say I am not a political writer. I don’t have an agenda. I don’t know what’s good or bad. I think the different shades of gray between the black and white is where fiction lives.”

“I grew up in a culture where goodness is more important than happiness. Best of all is to be a martyr. I could ask is this Chinese or Communist Chinese culture? It’s very difficult for Westerners to understand.”
"I am a sad person in the closet."

The final question was "Are you a Chinese writer? An American writer?"

The firm answer: “I like to think I’m an international writer.”

Coming up, some good reasons you should read Yiyun Li's The vagrants, from Claire at Central 3.

The vagrants by Yiyun Li

Claire Ryan contributed this review of The vagrants, whose author, Yiyun Li, appeared at the AWRF 2010. It's set in provincial China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.

It's not often that you read a novel that feels polished, truly finished. One definition of art is a creation which holds a mirror to reality, and this book does it so beautifully that the mirror-looking is effective, yet almost painless.

The characters in The vagrants come to life so vividly it's as if they're on film, rather than sketched out in words on the page. It's astounding how one book can capture so much -- about China, her history and people, spirit, fate, hopelessness, mistrust, courage and love in all forms. It leaves you wondering about your own strength. When you ask people who have lived under communist rule: "What was it like under communism?", and they cannot or will not say, this book provides the answers.

Whether you're looking for a political or historical snapshot, a tale of humanity or piece of art, The vagrants will leave you contemplative, sombre but peaceful. Yiyun Li's writing is sublime, delicate and capable of portraying the most powerful, observant images. The vagrants is gentle as a lullaby, yet Li's firm voice streams through.

AWRF 2010: An hour with Rick Gekoski

“What demographic group steals most books from Blackwell’s? Clerics!”

-- Rick Gekoski

First of all, go to the Creative Review blog to see some wonderful photos of rare book dealers in their habitats from an exhibition called The London Book Trade by portrait photographer Mike Tsang. There are many things to enjoy in the photos but the best thing is how the subjects all match their surroundings, just like that crazy “disappearing” artist who paints himself to look like a background and has his photo taken in front of it.

The London book trade is Rick Gekoski’s world, and, in fact, his is one of the portraits. In the AWRF programme Rick Gekoski is referred to as “Bill Bryson on books”, a catch phrase coined by The Tatler which blurb writers everywhere seem to have latched onto. Having now seen Rick Gekoski at AWRF 2010, and having seen Bill Bryson a few years ago at a North Shore Libraries event, I think it's a very superficial description (now why doesn’t this surprise me?)

Yes, they are both Americans living in England, and they both have beards, are funny, and write books. But there’s a major difference. At heart, Bill Bryson is always that “barefoot boy with cheek of tan” from Iowa. He’s funny about the BBC and Scandinavians with big hair, but with important people what comes through is -- leavened by a gentle quip or two -- boyish respect.

The main thing about Rick Gekoski, on the other hand, is that he has no sacred cows. He is deliciously wry about everyone, including himself. He’s a raconteur whom I picture holding forth to Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith, tankard in hand at whatever Inn it was where their literary circle, The Club, used to meet. In fact, both he and John Carey, my favourite personality at the Festival and the Chair for Gekoski’s event, would be perfect for The Club, whose membership requirement was to be the type of man that if two of  them were to meet they would be able to entertain each other without needing anyone else. It’s exactly what they did.

A biographer by trade, John Carey started off with a query about Graham Greene (Gekoski having had some dealings with Greene which he wrote about in an amusing piece in his memoir Tolkien’s gown) and his relationship with his authorised biography and with Norman Sherry, the man he allowed to write it, but only after making him promise he would visit every spot Greene had ever visited, read every letter, and so on. The finished work asphyxiates you with detail and I have yet to meet someone who has actually finished it.

“Norman Sherry is a pretty devastated chap.” John Carey proferred.

Gekoski was happy -- as indeed he proved to be on any topic-- to gave us his take, and it was a good one.  “I think Greene would have said 'He will scurry around; he will leave my inner self alone; and he will do it so assiduously that no one will ever do it again.' So Sherry produces this lunatic, pathological biography, which ends up at 3000 pages.”

Gekoski’s background is in philosophy, which he discovered when still at high school. “I told my father ‘Existentialism means you choose who you are’ and he said ‘Tell that to the Jews who died in the concentration camps.’”

Undeterred, he went on to get his PhD at Oxford. It was the time of the war in Vietnam and England was a good place to be. “I’d have been 1-A if I went to Harvard.”  He became a lecturer at the University of Warwick. It was the time of Derrida and Academe was not a good place to be. “Derrida ruined the lives and careers of a generation of academics.” Gekoski gives it the cognoscente pronunciation : Der-ri-dah' but manages to make it sound stupid. He chose book dealing instead.

“Learning through intimacy”
John Carey muses “Is there a way of studying literature?”
RG: "I think there’s a way of reading literature – with your finger on the page. Learning through intimacy.”

Great question, John; Great answer, Rick
JC: “Who is the most unpleasant author ever?”
RG: “I think Paul Theroux might take a little bit of beating.”

Horton, Holden and Huckleberry
JC: “Who are your role models?”
RG: “The first one was Horton from Horton hatches an egg. And then, Holden Caulfield. That was the first real voice in fiction that I could internalize. It was the first teenage voice in fiction.”

What about Huckleberry Finn, I thought. Should I ask? Is he going to think I'm trying to catch him out and be cutting? Too late. The Club adjourned. We put down our tankards, um, I mean put away our pens, picked up our umbrellas and headed for the door. As we filed out I asked Mark Fryer of the NZ Herald, who had been sitting next to me, and whom I know would never be cutting, “But what about Huckleberry Finn? Wasn’t he a teenager?” “That’s what I was thinking too, " he said. "What about Huckleberry Finn?”

And this from a man born on the Mississippi River! Dear Mr Gekoski, this will be the first question for the next meeting of The Club.

Rick Gekoski's books at the library:

• Tolkien's gown and other stories of great authors and rare books 
• Outside of a dog: a bibliomemoir

AWRF10 - "Somebody stole my game" with Chris Laidlaw

Barry O'Callaghan from Otahuhu Community Library feels he wuz robbed!  Read what he has to say about his event of choice at AWRF 2010.

I hate writers festivals. Hardly a soul under 30 present, let alone an under 30 male.  Writers festivals are strictly mature female territory, which is a shame. 

I used to like rugby, but not so much these days.  That's why I thought "Somebody Stole My Game", a discussion about the state of the national game with two of the country's most experienced commentators, would be a invigorating exchange of ideas about rugger.  But I was wrong.  You can't expect invigorating when you have Chris Laidlaw talking.  Surely one of the most boring men around.  His Scottish counterpart Gregor Paul was a bit more interesting but never really got that much time to speak.  Instead it was the very nice Lloyd Jones taking up all the time pitching his questions to the panellists.  But they all missed the point. 

Where was the in-depth thrust and volley of disagreement, instead of an insipid Chris waffling on about nothing we don't know already? What about rugby in the provinces, what about the thrill of Southland lifting the Ranfurly Shield for the first time in 50 years?  What about the lack of daytime rugby, the overbearance of Northern Hemisphere politics? 

For a while it got interesting. Chris mentioned how the rules are killing the game.  The man could see into the future.  I can see into the future as well and see that his forthcoming book, "Somebody Stole My Game" will incite much navel gazing about the game at present.  Me, I'd rather listen to Martin Devlin on the wireless.  At least he can work an audience, ask and answer the questions and be entertaining

AWRF10 - An hour with Marti Friedlander

I'm really sorry I couldn't make it to this event as I am a huge fan of Marti Friedlander -- her talent and her personality both. Luckily my colleague Juliana went and contributed this report for Books in the City.

Leonard Bell, art historian and author of the book “Marti Friedlander”, began this session by talking about photography as the art of “drawing with light”. And then he introduced the woman who was to keep a packed audience entranced for the next hour. 

For fifty years Marti Friedlander has been documenting New Zealand and New Zealanders. Early on she made a conscious decision to try and capture the faces of emerging artists. As portrait after glorious portrait of artists and writers appeared on the screen, Marti talked about the photographs and the subjects. She explained how she uses only available light, her own “bossiness”, the vulnerability and strength of her subjects when the photograph was taken and what was happening in her own life at that time. There was a lovely moment of interaction with the photographer Gil Hanly, who was in the front row taking photographs and on the screen circa 1968 with husband Pat Hanly.

Marti talked about her love of faces and how hard she was finding not being able to see us, her audience. It was,she said, like “talking to shadows”.

The hour flew by we followed the “Clap, clap, clap” message on the screen with enthusiasm and warmth. We could have listened and looked for a lot, lot longer.