Teju Cole, Roxane Gay & Ashleigh Young on "The Art of the Essay" at AWF17

Amber from Parnell Library shares her experience of hearing Teju Cole, Roxane Gay and Ashleigh Young talk about the art of the essay.

 I attended "The Art of The Essay" with the highest of hopes and the shiniest of eyes. I love Roxane Gay and I love Ashleigh Young. Having only recently been introduced to Teju Cole by way of his presence at the Auckland Writer’s Festival this year, I was thrilled to see him - because I believe that anyone that mentions Italo Calvino as a source of inspiration is immediately worthy of my time. And most importantly: I love to read essays. More than fiction, more than poetry, about as much as I love reading short stories. I had expectations.

Teju Cole

The panel members did not disappoint me! And the turnout was very impressive – apparently the queue was huge even at 10am, in anticipation of a 10:30am start (confession: I say apparently because I was late – in fact the very last person admitted, thank god).

The first question of the hour was ‘Where to start?’. Teju Cole began by affirming the importance of having the time and privilege to actually sit down and write an essay (and yes, this does always need to be mentioned!) and when the adage “starting with the end” was raised, Ashleigh Young admitted that actually, for her it’s more like looking for an answer, or attempting to write her way “out of bewilderment”. Roxane Gay says that for her, striving to be “dazzling without being ostentatious” is the primary goal, rather than having an end in sight.

 On matters of truth, there’s a fairly unanimous agreement that there’s not really any such thing. All three panels members are seemingly more comfortable writing around truths, and for multiple viewpoints and realities. For Teju Cole, who admits he doesn’t write “super personally” (and is mostly pretty serious), this is where the art of “productive discomfort” is utilized - which I take as meaning: not telling a reader what to think or how to think, but rather demonstrating for them the potential flaws in their beliefs. For Ashleigh Young, the approach is achieved through not quite being “present” in her stories; instead observing, describing, watching and filtering (something she says she is not quite sure how to feel about, but which I personally love about her work).

I think the very large crowd at this point can agree when the narrative power of the nominative plural “we” is exalted. Roxane Gay is asked whether or not she considers herself to be a “truth teller” to which she replies “No. I see myself as a writer.”

Roxane Gay (photo Jay Grabiec)

Roxane Gay speaks a lot of truth – a lot of unapologetic, uncomfortable, and alarming truth. But while she eschews the notion that everyone needs to be understood and listened to (“Trump fans: it’s just racism”) she maintains that she does take care to think outside of herself, and to consider how best to speak to those who do not share her views, or even are directly opposed to them. This is what I personally love about her - necessarily harsh, but charitably accessible.

Then, the host (Simon Wilson of The Spinoff ) asks - well, he asks Ashleigh and Roxane - about writing about “being fucked up”. There’s a bit of an awkward silence – I mean, *I* am feeling awkward and annoyed at least. Does occasionally touching on eating disorders, suicide, or depression -- among many, many other things – make Ashleigh Young “fucked up”? Is Roxane Gay “fucked up” because she lets us know what a constant struggle it is to be an outspoken woman, let alone an outspoken black woman, let alone – the audacity! – an outspoken black woman who doesn’t care if you think she’s fat?

 I roll my eyes so hard I give myself a migraine, instantly.

 Roxane retorts perfectly, “Isn’t that always the project?” (yes, yes it is – always!) and she and Ashleigh agree that actually it’s about discussing vulnerability, exploring empathy, just trying to be honest – “admitting to humanity” as Roxane puts it.

 The question “What have blogs done to the essay?” is swiftly answered with a fairly unanimous “Um…not much?” The dual forces of a) democratization and b) depreciation are touched on, with all agreeing that blogging and essay writing are very different things. For Roxane Gay, they’re more like a letter. Someone says that they consider form to be merely “a conduit for presence” which I totally agree with and love – so much that I really cannot remember who said it, though my bets are on Teju Cole. All panel members use and appreciate Twitter – not for writing purposes per se, but as a sounding board, a network, a little community.

 And then the host annoys me again – this time saying to Roxane something like “You get a lot of trolls on the internet, eh?” to which she concedes, “Uh yeah, yeah I do”. This is annoying to me because if you know Roxane Gay, you know she really does suffer “trolls” on the internet but it’s more like quite disruptive and horrifying harassment. Thankfully, Teju Cole steps in and does a much better job of being host here – reminding us that while it probably seems funny, it’s a huge part of Roxane’s life and beyond what the average Twitter user can imagine.

 Overall, I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity to sit and listen to these three very talented people. I left feeling like I  understood their writing a little more having seen them irl, in the flesh. All three authors chose excerpts to read aloud that were perfect: from Teju Cole, the essay ‘What It Is’, a musing on invasive metadata in the form of an incredibly strange and offensive CNN chyron, in which something is described as ‘Literally the “Some of my best friends are black” of #NotAllMen’ – a line I will never forget. From Roxane Gay, an essay from Bad Feminist, “Typical First Year Professor” (“I don’t save lives – but I try not to ruin them” is a brilliant understatement in my opinion). I’ve read more of Ashleigh Young than either Cole or Gay, and yet cannot summon a stand-out line from her piece “Witches” (probably something to do with her aforementioned tendency to not quite be *in* her pieces) but it’s a beautiful, bittersweet reflection on adolescence, innocence, and the corporeal form. 

Ashleigh Young (Photo Russell Kleyn)

However, I cannot say Simon Wilson endeared himself to me. I internally cringed at his treatment of Ashleigh Young and even more so of Roxane Gay. I’m not sure if it stemmed from a lack of familiarity with Gay’s work (in which case: poor planning) or the rather more loathsome “tall poppy syndrome”. Regardless, it nearly ruined it for me and left me feeling very apologetic on behalf of Auckland.

And last of all: shout out to the man in the floral shirt who thought it was acceptable to walk up to the microphone HALF-WAY through Roxane’s essay, to stand around and fidget in preparation for his very tedious question. Seriously, thanks – it gave me something to bitch to her about at the book signing and I’d probably have been too shy to say anything otherwise. And if you were wondering – yes, you did annoy her! And yes – she did read more than she’d intended just to “fuck you off”. Which, for me, was the perfect ending.

Teju Cole in 'Known and Strange Things' at AWF17

Karel from Central Library contributed this post on Teju Cole's first session at the Auckland Writers Festival, "Known and Strange Things", from the title of his 2016 essay collection. 

I'm only a recent convert to the work of Teju Cole. I'd seen his name in various publications, usually rapturous critical plaudits from people I admire - just recently Ockham book award winner Ashleigh Young referred to Cole as a 'strobing light of intelligence and a deep comfort' - and friends would berate me, often quite ferociously, for not having read his books. Yet it wasn't until I stumbled across Cole's tribute to the late John Berger, one of my literary heroes, that I felt compelled to delve into his growing canon. This connection with Berger now seems entirely appropriate. It could even be said that Cole is ostensibly picking up where the great art critic left off. He shares Berger's ability to explore well-worn topics with unique & challenging perspectives & they both have an unwavering curiosity in other human beings, especially the migrant experience.

Thus it was with a giddy kind of fervor that I went along to see Teju Cole at the Auckland Writers Festival. There was a palpable sense of expectation inside the ASB Theatre when Cole came on stage. He was wearing a pale blue suit jacket with a scarf neatly tucked into the pocket & wouldn’t have looked out of place in a high street menswear catalogue. He started by reading a passage from 'Black Body', his essay on James Baldwin that examines ideas about race, identity and the nature of historical burden. It points to Martin Luther King Jr, John Coltrane, Bessie Smith; 'people just on the cusp of escaping the contemporary, and slipping into the historical - people who could still be with us but who feel, at times, very far away, as though they lived centuries ago' before later referencing Drake, Beyonce & Meek Mill. It feels like a microcosm of Cole's oeuvre, presenting the human experience as both singular and intertwined, exploring this dichotomy with distinct moral clarity and eloquence.

He also spoke about how he came to writing, having originally pursued a doctorate in Art History but finding himself driven by an insatiable need to pursue an outlet for ideas that had built up over a lifetime. His first book, Every Day is for the Thief, began life as an online blog before being published in a more traditional format. Sometimes youth can present confusion in its capacity for endless possibility but as the book slowly morphed from something autobiographical into more fictional terrain it also became more authentic to the creative voice that Cole sought. 'Art is a lie that brings us nearer to the truth', as Picasso once said.

He mentioned some of his influences, writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez & Berger but also Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski (Three Colors Trilogy), Edward Said & even passing mention of Jacques Derrida. Photography is a vital ingredient in Cole’s creative mix & he talked about how it compliments and enhances his prose. A side note, his Instagram page, where he posts a lot of his photos, is a work of art unto itself & well worth checking out. In fact the online world looms large for Cole, especially in his public persona, and he discussed the difficulty in having a social media presence in the knowledge that the medium can be both an incredible opportunity for direct communication & a void for absurd myopia.

At one stage there was a strikingly confronting moment where he read to the audience from an online piece in which he took the opening lines from a myriad of famous novels, Moby Dick & Mrs Dalloway amongst others, and followed each of them with a reference to death by drone bomb. It was horrifying and comical all at once and highlighted the political edge that runs through all of his books.

There was a short amount of time for questions. If I’d felt bold enough I might have asked Cole to elaborate on his decision to boycott PEN America’s freedom of expression award given to Charlie Hebdo a couple of years ago, perhaps the only point of contention where his ethical compass has left me a little disappointed, but it seemed that maybe the best place to find that answer would be within his work itself. 

The afternoon finished with Cole speaking of his love for New Zealand, marveling at how the natural world’s majesty is only a short drive from anywhere & everywhere, giving everyone a chance to view themselves with some sense of cosmic perspective. It was a charming & endearing note to end on.

As I walked out of the ASB Theatre I sensed electricity permeating through the Aotea Centre, as though the audience had been given an opportunity to free themselves from self-imposed shackles and begin lively, animated discussions about Cole or indeed about all kinds of questions that had been gestating inside of them for the past hour. John Berger once referred to his readers as 'co-conspirators', joining him in breaking down established ways of thinking & sabotaging the oppressive conceits of societal hierarchies. Cole engages his readers in that same way, illuminating those more elusive parts of life that seem mysterious and unquantifiable and taking Berger's conspiratorial dialogue to new & exciting places. I strongly recommend you delve into the work of one of contemporary literature's greatest new voices.