Classic Australian reads

I've been reading a lot of Australian authors this year, past and present, discovering some true treasures in our own backyard (I won't mention the trash). 
If I were to suggest a classic homegrown summer read for the holidays - one that is engaging irrespective of gender, beautifully written, captures the imagination, an easy yet intelligent read, slim enough to read from cover to cover over a long weekend and has achieved international literary success - it would be Jessica Anderson's 1978 Miles Franklin Award winning novel, Tirra Lirra by the River. 
After Anderson passed away in July this year aged 93, the book was re-published and copies virtually walked out the door.
I love the title - I'd tell you what it means but it's more fun for you to find out for yourself when you read it.
For some more quality Australian reads, check out this selection from Susan Wyndham in the SMH. Incidentally, Ruth Park, whose The Harp in the South is a well deserved inclusion, and who many a high-schooler in the 1980s would remember for Playing Beatie Bow, passed away this month, also aged 93.
It's not the definitive list in my opinion but there are some sterling authors among them...all of which I recommend bar one (regular readers can you guess who that might be?...;)

So bad it's a winner

The winner of the annual Bad Sex in Literature Award has been named......and it stays in the UK this year. London-born writer Rowan Somerville has taken the honours for his very bad sex in The Shape Of Her. The judges cited Somerville saying they hoped to 'shame' him, particularly for a single sentence: 
'Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too-blunt pin he...her.'
Enough said.
'There is nothing more English than bad sex, so on behalf of the entire nation I would like to thank you.' Somerville told the media.You can read a review here.
Others on the shortlist vying for the dubious honour were:
A Life Apart, Neel Mukherjee
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen 
The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon
Heartbreak, Craig Raine
Maya, Alastair Campbell
Mr Peanut, Adam Ross 
The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas  
'Nobody wants to win that Award', said Margaret Atwood in 2009. Nobody that is, except Alastair Campbell, who must be feeling rather deflated... 
In the Guardian he said: 'Given that sex is an important part of a relationship and that most people are involved in some sort of a relationship at some time, it seems a pity not to write about it just because we are a bit squeamish.'
It's not sex that makes people squeamish Mr Campbell it's what you do to it with your pen...!

More from The Paris Review...

Another gem from The Paris Review, this time from No 116, Fall 1990: an interview with Mario Vargas Llosa shortly after he bowed out of the Peruvian election race that same year. You can read a transcript online here. In 2010 he was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
So who does a Nobel Prize winner read?
He reads William Faulkner: 
'Faulkner was the first novelist I read with pen and paper in hand, because his technique stunned me. He was the first novelist whose work I consciously tried to reconstruct by attempting to trace, for example, the organization of time, the intersection of time and place, the breaks in the narrative, and that ability he has of telling a story from different points of view in order to create a certain ambiguity, to give it added depth.'
Jorge Luis Borges:
'Borges, because the world he creates seems to me to be absolutely original. Aside from his enormous originality, he is also endowed with a tremendous imagination and culture that are expressly his own. And then of course there is the language of Borges, which in a sense broke with our tradition and opened a new one.... He is the only writer in the Spanish language who has almost as many ideas as he has words. He’s one of the great writers of our time.'
Pablo Neruda:
'Pablo Neruda is an extraordinary poet. ...Neruda adored life. He was wild about everything—painting, art in general, books, rare editions, food, drink. Eating and drinking were almost a mystical experience for him. A wonderfully likable man, full of vitality — if you forget his poems in praise of Stalin, of course. 
'Neruda comes out of the Jorge Amado and Rafael Alberti tradition that says literature is generated by a sensual experience of life.'
And Octavio Paz: 
'Not only a great poet, but a great essayist, a man who is articulate about politics, art, and literature. His curiosity is universal.'
Llosa goes on to talk at length about his inspiration, process and technique, his language, his politics and his success...
'I think my greatest quality is my perseverance: I’m capable of working extremely hard and getting more out of myself than I thought was possible. My greatest fault, I think, is my lack of confidence, which torments me enormously. It takes me three or four years to write a novel — and I spend a good part of that time doubting myself. It doesn’t get any better with time; on the contrary, I think I’m getting more self-critical and less confident.' 
The interview was recorded 20 years ago, one hopes the Nobel has settled his self-doubt once and for all...
Check out the manuscript page from Llosa's 1988 novel In Praise of the Stepmother (above, click on image to enlarge).

Hope...!

For all frustrated writers out there....a breath of hope from author Roger McDonald: 'Roger McDonald started the book he has just published more than 30 years ago.' - SMH, 13-14 November.

When Colts Ran started out as a long story and over the years he developed it into a novel. McDonald won the 2006 Miles Franklin Award for The Ballad of Desmond Kale. 

I haven't read any of his books but I like him already. Keep writing keep writing keep writing!

Go the Quiet Achievers...

I like the sound of this accolade. David Foster has won the 2010 Patrick White Literary Award, an annual prize currently valued at $18,000, set up by White using his Nobel winnings to honour writers who have made a significant, but inadequately recognised, contribution to Australian literature.
Over the past 30 years Foster has published 15 novels along with poetry, essays, non-fiction, scientific papers and radio plays. Now 66, he has 17 grandchildren, a doctorate in inorganic chemistry, is a drummer, motorbiker and a blackbelt in tae-kwondo. Until he earned a $60,000 grant from the Australian Council for the Arts Literature Board this year, he was delivering post in the Southern Highlands to support his current writing projects.
The SMH on Saturday said: 'Foster, who can be almost as grouchy as his late patron....said White intended it "as a kind of literary loser's compo"'.
No doubt White would have been pleased at Foster's win. In 1973 he wrote a line for the cover of Foster's debut work of fiction, North South West, and remarked of it 'One reason why I like Foster's novels is that he isn't afraid of sour milk and what's repulsive in life.'
Previous winners are John Romeril in 2008 and Gerald Murnane in 1999. Neither rings a bell? Exactly.

Tasting plate

Howard Jacobson is all over the internet thanks to his surprise win in the 2010 Man Booker Prize with The Finkler Question, sold out now at a bookstore near you.
So is Nobel Prize in Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa. He sounds like an interesting dude (among others he wrote The Bad Girl, based on Madame Bovary, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter). Bookforum.com has compiled a swag of interviews and info about him from NPR, LRB, Paris Review and The Guardian.
America is abuzz with the announcement of finalists in the National Book Award and the name causing most of the commotion is Jonathan Franzen, whose mega-selling Freedom didn't make the list. Peter Carey did - go figure.
Berkelouw has a flash new website.
And, it's Friday! Which means tomorrow is Saturday - when my favourite writing chair will arrive fresh from being restored after an unfortunate * ahem * reclining incident...
Happy weekend :)

Telling tales...

Saw this article about DBC Pierre at the Melbourne Writers Festival on lit blog The Outlet. In it they call him a wonderful lunatic. He of the 2003 Booker Prize winning Vernon God Little, which I haven't read, is pounding the pavement with his new novel called Lights Out In Wonderland which I'm thinking I might. Partly because he seems so nuts - in a crazy irreverent creative kind of way.
On Enough Rope in 2006 Andrew Denton described him as 'living proof that truth is stranger than fiction'. The Sydney Morning Herald interviewed him via telephone when he was in Scotland recently and said he sounded 'so sober he could only be very drunk'. In his defence, it was 3am by his clock. What else would one be doing up at that hour, in a bar, in Edinburgh?
DBC Pierre (aka Peter Finlay from South Australia - via Mexico, Spain, England, the West Indies and now Ireland) was born in a winery, raised in a mansion in Mexico City, had a ten-year-long house party to cope with his father's death, did loads of drugs, lived the life of the jet-set, fraudulently sold a friend's apartment and lived as a recluse for a time listening to Russian and German orchestral music. Among other things. 
And he's written four novels. If Hank from TV's Californication was a real living person I reckon they'd hang out. 
Can anyone out there recommend any of his books?

Booker long list

So the Longlist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize has been announced. We discussed various literary prize winners in my writing class a while ago, questioning our teacher (who's been on a few judging panels) on how judgement is arrived at and what criteria is involved.
From what I can gather, it ultimately comes down to some vague and intangible sense of 'which one everyone liked most'. Hmm. The last few 'prize winning' books I've read - primarily out of curiosity over what makes an award winning story - were, with the exception of Wolf Hall, fairly underwhelming.
Always fun to look through the list though. Here it is.
PS. Just a note - if The Slap wins the Booker Prize I will throw up.

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue, Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
Helen Dunmore, The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)
Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy, The Long Song (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy, C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
Lisa Moore, February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Paul Murray, Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
Rose Tremain, Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
Alan Warner, The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

Back in blog-land

Literary meanderings through my mind during my last few weeks' hiatus from blogging:
On forgetting to pack my book when travelling: Sydney Domestic Airport's Watermark bookshop is always a treat. The initial disappointment of realising I'd left my book at home (Catch 22) immediately gave way to the delight of having to buy a new one. Picked up Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall, having read screeds about how wonderful it is. I'm not disappointed - 217 pages in and I can't put it down. 
On the Sydney Writer's Festival: came and went in a flash with some great events that were not dampened by Elizabeth Gilbert's last minute no-show. Comment overheard from a gaggle of Goths on a pavement in Glebe at 10pm on the Friday night. "I reckon Erotic Fan Fiction would have been better if Damo hadn't been chucked out for trying it on the dude dressed up as Wonder Woman. He had good legs though, even in blue tights, so you can't say it was Damo's fault."
On finishing my writing course: Saturdays have become a treasured weekly sojourn into the world of books and writing. The eight week workshop has come to a close but the ink is flowing faster and the will remains strong. Nice to know there's 14 fellow souls out there feeling the frustrations and the fever of writing. Write, fingers write, let us find out what we know!
On dark horses: Turns out, one among us in my writing workshop happened to be launching a  book all along... Annette Stewart's biography of the writer and artist Barbara Hanrahan was published in May and sounds fascinating. (Gleebooks' Gleaner magazine has it advertised at $3995...hopefully it's a typo Annette, not sure I can afford it at that price!)  Barbara Hanrahan: A Biography is published by Wakefield Press. 
On blogging: Now that my temporary state of life-overload has passed, blogging will resume as normal :)

A short list is a good list. Discuss.

I was reading extracts from some of the letters of Miles Franklin the other day, published in a curious collection called Creative Lives: Personal Papers of Australian Writers and Artists.
More on her later. For now, I'm interested in the Shortlist for this year's Miles Franklin Award. Here it is:
Lovesong, Alex Miller
The Bath Fugues, Brian Castro
The Book of Emmett, Deborah Forster
Butterfly, Sonya Hartnett
Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey
Truth, Peter Temple
I've only read Jasper Jones so I need to read some of the others to have an opinion. Have you read any of the contenders? What do you think?

Silvey goes for gold

Is writing the new black? Are brains the new brawn? And the almighty question on everybody's lips...: [Insert drumroll here] Who will beat the muscle-bound competition to a pulp and win the puissant title of Cleo Bachelor of the Year 2010?
This is newsworthy only because for the first time ever (I think, this is new territory for me) there is a true man of words among the pumped, preened, hair gelled, waxed and buffed parade of boofheads routinely nominated for the award. 
Vote #1 Craig Silvey. The 27-year-old from West Australia and author of 2009 Indie Book of the Year, Jasper Jones.
Apparently sports are out this year and smarts are in. Who'd have thought? For that alone Mr Silvey deserves to take the title.
And once the froth and bubble of the bachelor business blows over he can turn his thoughts to that other mighty and potent prize... the Miles Franklin Award, Australia's major literary gong for which he's made the Long List. The Short List will be announced this month. 
I've just started on Jasper Jones. Have you read it? Do you think it (...or its author) will be victorious?


*Photo by Marco Del Grande in the SMH

Hmm...I reckon someone deserves a slap...

Have you read The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas? 
It was published in 2008 and is still on the SMH's Top 10 (Independent booksellers) list, has picked up the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Overall Best Book, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and was the ABIA's Book of the Year.
I read it based on its success both commercially and critically, and because I thought it may have some contextual similarities to my own unfolding story. But I was disappointed. 
Publisher Allen and Unwin's  blurb reads: At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event...The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires.
I wanted it to be a fantastic read. I wanted to be inspired by its contemporary portrayal of Australian middle class life, multiculturalism and our collective moral compass. 
But I wasn't. 
While I found the first half fairly engaging and the dialogue well written, I laboured, rather than raced through the second half. 
I didn't particularly like, nor empathise with any of the characters. They came across as  weary, unimaginative, generally apathetic and some of them were plain painful.
The titular 'slap' wasn't enough of an event to hold the plot as it meandered and backtracked and veered off on tangents for no other reason than to make sure each of the eight central characters had time to voice their perspective.
I was glad these people weren't my circle of friends.
The Slap is nothing like my story. So even though I wouldn't recommend it, I'm very glad I read it because I'm now more certain than ever of what I want my story to be.
Listening to Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures) speak last year in Sydney, she imparted some valid advice. 
'Write the kind of story that you want to read, but can't find out there in the bookstores.'
Far from the gloom and resignation of The Slap, I want to read something about us, as Australians, that is hopeful and optimistic. And that's what I'm writing.
What did you think of The Slap?