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?
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)
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 :)
, sold out now at a bookstore near you.
, 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.
didn't make the list. Peter Carey did - go figure.
