The Future of the Novel according to AWRF

I went to hear Jeffrey Eugenides and Emily Perkins in "a wide-ranging conversation on the great novels and the future of the form".
 
As it turned out, we didn’t really hear about The Future of the Novel, or not in any capital letter way. It was a much lighter sort of occasion, a French macaron, it occurred to me, the two clever novelists-cum-creative writing profs as the two perfectly done hemispheres, just nutty enough, not too puffed up or too dry, and Jolisa Gracewood’s smooth, assured and berry-liscious questioning as the ganache in the middle.

“In The Marriage Plot, the old, reactionary professor thinks that now that religious and other taboos against ending marriage have fallen, and the “marriage plot" is therefore dead and gone, the novel is dead. Is that why you set the novel in the past?”

“I don’t consider the 1980s the past. I remember it as quite a vibrant time” Jeffrey Eugenides, born in 1960, deadpanned, setting the tone he seemed to find most matter-of-course.

Emily thoughtfully pointed out that people can still break the social contract and novels can explore that, citing The Slap and We need to talk about Kevin.

With or without marriage, Jeffrey rejoined, “Every story I write has desire at its centre.”

Emily seconded this, quoting fellow-festival guest Geoff Dyer, from his contribution to The Guardian’s “10 rules of writing” series: “Have regrets because on the page they flare into desire”. (She also said “And of course most authors put as their last point ‘Ignore everything I’ve just said’”. I couldn’t believe Geoff Dyer would have been one of these, and I actually went and looked it up just now, and can report that his last point was “Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else".)

Both novelists agreed that “a certain amount of comicity in your book allows you to stare better at the tragedy”, as Eugenides put it.

Possibly unintentionally (she is very clever, but perhaps too lovely a person to be so diabolical), Emily Perkins then provided the set up for that certain comic moment of the evening, one it would have been fun to see described by Mark Twain or maybe, in more contemporary times, Tom Wolfe.

She quoted a character in her new book who says, “You do see women going about their lives without a book, but how do they do it?”

Somewhere in the rows behind me an eager literateur could not repress an approving “Yeah!”

Yeah! Say it loud, Writers Festival core customer base!

The novel is not dead, despite critics (could someone tell me what a "dry-fi" is, which apparently James Wood of The New Yorker performed on Jeffrey Eugenides?), e-books (we heard opinions on whether it is important while you are reading a book to know how close to the end you are) and competition from "the ultimate post-colonial form"(possibly), the short story.

And finally, the future of the novel is …

Jeffrey Eugenides: “In my day, because of semiotics we knew that the novel was dying and we had to revive it. Now with my students it’s just about getting them to use punctuation. In my view the future of the novel seems to be unpunctuated.”

_{Jeffrey Eugenides shows off The Ring and the Book}

AWRF 2012: Emily Perkins on The Forrests

Sue from the Readers Services team at Central City Library was wonderfully impressed by The Forrests and its author. She reports:
 
Emily Perkins completely engaged her audience as she shared an immediate rapport with her interviewer, her fellow writer and contemporary Paula Morris, at this year’s Writers & Readers festival. Kudos have to go to Paula Morris who had evidently put a lot of planning into her questions, which were pertinent and helped immerse the audience in Emily’s creative processes and the literary scaffolding of her new novel The Forrests.

 Listening to Emily talk about The Forrests, named after the family it represents, one is struck by how unassuming and down to earth Emily is. Emily’s writing is so beautifully evocative, the strands of longing and nostalgia so palpable they seem to float around the reader as they travel through the pages. The excerpts Emily chose to read aloud were received by a spellbound and silent audience who waited respectfully after she finished before relaxing into quiet whispers of appreciation.

An hour passed regretfully quickly, and as I filed out of the auditorium, I was not surprised to note the number of people queuing to purchase The Forrests and travel further into their imagined world.

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.