What's coming up...

Will get back to you re info regarding a new project I'm working on. I'm putting together a list of interviews with local and overseas authors and hope to start this new series in the next couple of weeks. Also have some reviews coming up - some new books and a few oldies.

Reason # 155 for avoiding my thesis...

...too many books to read, for a start.

Anyone else feel overwhelmed the moment they walk into a bookshop - liquidation and bankruptcy issues aside? The sheer volume of books there are to read has the double whammy of 1) reminding me that the world doesn't need another author (me, for example), and 2) making it impossible to choose one out of the million possibilities on offer.

There are whole genres I barely consider, let alone buy, and whole departments (self-help, I'm looking at you) in which I've never deigned to set foot. (I don't think I have. I actually don't know where that section is. So if you see me hovering near one, understand I am almost certainly lost.)

And then there are the books I already have - the ones that scream for my attention in a way that Cute American Husband has no hope of managing. Some of them are reputed to pertain to my research, but they're so tired and dusty looking that I struggle to read their titles, let alone their contents. Most of them, however, come in the form of distraction - from my children, my work, and most of all, my thesis. (From here on in to be known as The Beast.)

Most intimidating of all is the Dreaded Bedside Pile. The tower of knowledge and words that grows almost daily, never shrinking, despite the efforts of Father Gravity, the laws of logic, and my relentless desire to "get on top of things". (No chuckling in the back row, thank you.)

Still, you can't question my commitment to this pile, comprised of a mix of borrowed books, newly bought books, library books and old favourites awaiting a second (third, fourth, twentieth) read. (See this for specifics.) There are books I've begun but can't finish, nor can I give up on them confidently enough to re-shelve for another time. There are books I feel like I should read but don't want to, have read but can't remember, and won't read but have promised I will. You see, in my unique style of reasoning, as long as the book remains by my bed, there is some hope I'll get to it as promised, some day, eventually, and so it isn't a lie so much as a not-yet-fulfilled promise. (Yes, there's a difference.)

Quite apart from the Dreaded Bedside Pile are the various manuscripts of unpublished novels cowering on my hard-drive, weighed down by a promise of feedback, encouragement, support and/or editing - all shouting at me to be read the moment I fire up my computer.

So you can see why I'm behind on The Beast: all those books, with no time to read them. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that this reading business is fun. Sometimes it feels like hard work, and then I stumble upon a story that pulls me in so completely that I wish I didn't have to waste time eating, sleeping and washing. And I remember suddenly why I love reading.

Right now I'm halfway through the latest novel by Jon Clinch, author of the beautiful but harrowing Finn, whose new book, Kings of the Earth, has been listed among the outside shots at a Pulitzer.

It's always a cool thing when you knew the author before they were published, seeing the years of rejection end with a bang the way Jon's career did. It's even better when their second book lives up to the promise of their remarkable debut. I intend to post my review next week, so won't impart further details here, but if it continues at anything like the quality it's begun, be prepared for the kinds of superlatives I've saved for my favourites. Already it's the kind of novel you want to devour, and then re-read, slowly, carefully, to savour the language. The characters are distinct, believable, and eloquent, their voices as clear as a bellbird's song. So I'm taking my time with this one, almost despite myself, knowing that the towering pile will not allow me a second bite at this cherry for some time to come.

In the meantime, for those Australian readers who are tempted to give Kings of the Earth a shot, I'm afraid it's been deemed "too American" by local publishers, and so you can only buy it online or overseas.

I can only assume that local publishers haven't actually read it yet, because the novel I'm reading is as universal as the idea of storytelling itself. And, from the perspective of an aspiring author, as intimidating and as towering as the Dreaded Bedside Pile and my beastly thesis combined.

John Irving and Me

I want a divorce.

There. I said it.

Before my mother panics, or my in-laws investigate cross-continent custody laws, please be assured, it’s not that kind of divorce. Not one from my actual RL husband, but a divorce from my literary husband. The man I fell in love with at the tender age of 16, when his story about an oddball frustrated writer with initials for a first name and a species of fish for a surname (albeit a fictional hybrid) made me laugh and feel smart and sophisticated while bolstering my budding feminist self — all in a single insightful sentence: “Jenny felt that her education was merely a polite way to bide time, as if she were really a cow, being prepared only for the insertion of the device for artificial insemination.”

The author was John Irving and the book was The World According to Garp. (I made the hybrid bit up, but what else would you call a gar-fish crossed with a carp?) Mr Irving (we were not yet on a first-name basis) had described how I cynically viewed the cohort of students’ ambitions at my Catholic girls’ school, in words both cutting and dry — the very tone I attempted to emulate for the rest of my teen years. (In between writing really bad Don Walker-inspired poetry.)

Thus began a love affair which outlasted a century and crossed several decades, through the good times (Cider House Rules, The 158-Pound Marriage, The Hotel New Hampshire) and the What the Fuck? times (Setting Free the Bears and The Water-Method Man), taking me to the cusp of my literary desire in the form of his 1989 novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Newly paroled from my convent school where the “three r’s” weren’t merely taught but canonised, Irving’s blatant disregard for punctuation and capitalisation was as deliciously rebellious to me as sex before marriage and Vodka and Passionfruit UDLs. I wanted to have “UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE” tattooed on my inner thigh, and experienced a giddy delight every time Owen delivered his unrelenting all-caps voice. I decided right there and then that John Irving had to be the most outrageous, experimental, and hilarious author there was. (I mentioned the Catholic convent thing, didn’t I?)

Better yet, the man was handsome — according to the book jacket anyway. (It is only in the process of having watched so many of my friends’ books get published that I’ve learnt the art/ifice of the author photo.) In short, I thought John Irving was creative, inventive, brave and original, and the only man I could ever truly love — literarily speaking, of course.

Did I mention that I didn’t read very widely at the time? Goes hand-in-hand with the Catholic education thing, no doubt. You see, I read voraciously and relentlessly, unforgivingly and repeatedly, but the depth of my reading had little to do with the breadth of it. If I liked an author, I stuck by him or her. I read all their works, from top to bottom, then started again. Anything or anyone I liked, I loved. My teen and early twenties seemed to consist entirely of a series of superlatives and extremes, loves and hates, “discoveries” and obsessions, but sadly, little in the way of range. When I loved an author, or a book, or a series, they loved me back. Soon I was them, and they were me. I wore them like a badge — proudly and ostentatiously, spouting quotations and memorising passages as though my own. Is there anyone better at obsession than a teenager I wonder? I’ve yet to meet one, if there is, and I took that to its monotonous extreme. I was obsession personified.
Along with the obsession, I was also fiercely loyal.

So, it was by drawing on this loyalty that I forgave John Irving A Son of the Circus, and feigned ignorance at his recycling of old stories in Trying to Save Piggy Sneed. My patience was rewarded with the solid A Widow for One Year, and the pending release of the film version of Owen Meany. Finally, I would get to hear Owen’s “wrecked voice”, see what I believed was his vaguely Mr McGoo-like qualities — the ghostly and improbable combination of wispy blonde hair, a cracked and shrieking voice and that permanently dwarf-like height. I faced the prospect of a Hollywood version feeling both eager and tremulous. How difficult to manage! How easy to go wrong! And then my beloved John resolved my dilemma for me, distancing himself — the screenplay having strayed too far from the original story — whereupon I duly cancelled my plans to see what later became known as Simon Birch, and have continued to live in ignorant bliss.

I was delighted by the integrity of this decision — that John Irving wouldn’t allow my beloved Owen to be changed beyond recognition, knowing how dearly we readers cared for him, how loyal and committed we were to our own imaginings.

After this near-disaster, I expected John’s resurgence — a return to the core of what we loved about him. I could not get enough of New England and Vienna, motorbikes, bears, and wrestling; beautiful dead mothers, and oddly innocent yet precocious young boys. Even Canada seemed mildly interesting in an austere and remote sort of way. Surely if I still loved them all, John would too.

I had moved past A Son of the Circus by then, could pretend Piggy Sneed had never happened, and bought The Fourth Hand the same week it was released. This was the moment the cracks truly emerged. Where was his loveable protagonist? The innocent boy, the beautiful dead mother? Even the bears had been replaced with a lion — a hand-eating one, no less — and suddenly all the things I knew and believed about John Irving’s world was being slowly ripped apart.

But worse was yet to come: he shifted from the third person to first in Until I Find You. I have nothing against first person (obviously) — have employed it in my own fiction a lot — but this is not the John Irving I know or love. The self-reflexiveness that seemed both coy and gentle was suddenly brash and loud. Let me explain — and stay with me, if you can: the main character of Until I Find You, Jack Burns, wins an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the same year that John Irving really did win his Academy Award — 1999 — the same year that Jack loses the Supporting Actor Oscar which, in Real Life, was won by Michael Caine for his role in Irving’s adaptation of Cider House Rules. (Still with me?) And then Jack goes to school at the same place where A Prayer for Owen Meany’s narrator, Johnny Wheelwright, teaches English as an adult.
See what I mean?

Coy it ain’t.

Now, what began as possible separation has shifted irrevocably to grounds for a divorce. And the straw for this blessed, overburdened camel? Last Night in Twisted River.

I had so much hope for this novel when I first picked it up — we are back in “innocent young boy with mysteriously dead beautiful mother” territory; there’s Canada and logging, and New England and icy rivers... All the stuff that made Owen and Garp, Cider House and Hotel New Hampshire such riveting reads.

And yet, there’s no love. No warmth. No humour. And, frankly, too many logs.

The real sadness, though, is that I can’t finish it. I’m sure I will one day — as my father used to say when referencing our family’s refusal to quit our lazy attachment to Catholicism, “You don’t change teams mid-season.” I will make myself finish Last Night in Twisted River because I owe that much to John Irving. And I will continue to revisit Owen and friends whenever I need a literary jolt.

But there is no going back. The divorce papers are in and this party, anyway, has moved on: I am no longer in love with John Irving.

At least in this divorce, there’ll be no the custody battle.

The Gender Divide

I just posted an extract from my blog on this groovy little gidget thingy called the Gender Genie and a weird thing happened. I turned into a bloke. (Just don't tell my husband.) According to the website, these people were inspired by a New York Times article that argued they could gauge the gender of the author of texts based on particular word choices and frequency of use. In other words, it's a question of mathematics. Or Algorithms, more specifically.

Here's the thing, I tried this test over and over, and no matter how many cutesy things I say, how fast I bat my eyelashes, or how high I like my heels, apparently I write like a bloke. Sixty to seventy percent male words over female ones, every single time.

Now, this might seem like a simplistic approach to understanding something as complex, fraught and slippery as the idea of gender, and gendered writing, but it interests me because it parallels other experiences I've had. You see, on every forum and bulletin board I've visited anonymously, no matter which country, subject, or field of interests, posters consistently assume I'm male. Not just some of them. All of them. Until I say something declaring my hand, something unambivalent or clearly gendered (like the fact that I'm a mum, or that I went to a girls' school), whereupon I am inevitably met with a chorus of, "Sorry! I thought you were a dude." (Bloke, if Australian.) Or, "You sound like a guy." And variations on that theme. Over and over, everywhere I go.

Now, I've always had interests in areas not traditionally associated with women - footy, politics and debating - so perhaps this shouldn't surprise me. Except that in my fiction, I deliberately and carefully write for women, about women, and about girls. I'm not interested in writing for men, don't choose subjects that would matter to the blokes I know. I actively and carefully target women. As readers, and as subjects.

So you can understand my confusion. And, frankly, concern. Because here's this mathematical theory essentially declaring me a man trapped in a woman's keyboard - a theory that seems to hold up when tested amongst real people - and now I have to wonder if maybe there's something to it. Or at least, something to the perception that there is such a thing as gendered writing. Even if that perception is among readers, rather than writers, or something we've learnt rather than imbibed. Either way, it's tricky.

So why don't you give the test a shot and tell me how it goes? Were they right, or were they wrong? Or are they as confused as you are? (Try to sample at least 500 words - that's the recommendation. But even when I cheated, posting half what they asked, they still pegged me as bloke.)

P.S. For those having trouble posting comments - sorry! I thought I could fix it - twitter me or send a message and I'll try to sort it out. Or post on your behalf.

Fact or Fiction: Does it matter?

Australian director Peter Weir's latest film is finally out in Australia. Called The Way Back, it deals with the story of a group of Russian prisoners who make a grueling 4000 mile escape from a Siberian gulag during the Second World War. Based on a book by Slavomir Rawicz of the same title, it depicts what's been claimed to be a true story of the author's journey overland to India.

As so often happens for "true stories", questions have been raised about its veracity, and the likely role Rawicz played. Weir himself almost dropped the project on the basis of these claims, believing the only way the film could work was if it was a "true story". It does seem to have had a negative impact on its American release, having come out there in January, just in time for the 2011 Oscars (it's been nominated for Make Up), but died a quick and nearly silent death within weeks. Maybe it's the ruthless tentpole market that Weir talks about in the below interview, or maybe it was a direct response to the queries regarding the "true story" tag. Either way, the rumours couldn't have helped in a world that seems obsessed with the "true story" over the fictional one.

In the interview captured below, Weir decided to pursue the project, despite lingering doubts, largely because the research he unearthed suggested that there were many documented stories of escapes similar to this one; that the fact that they have happened in some form, in similar situations and with similar outcomes was enough to hang the "based on a true story" tag on The Way Back.

My question is, though, why the obsession with the "true story" label? Why does a dramatic feature film have to have its grounding in actual events? Is it less satisfying if it's fictional - made up, created in someone's head - rather than taken from their life? Actual experience? Real events?

Where do we draw the line anyway? If it happened somewhere, or we think it happened somewhere, is that "fact" enough? Even that it could happen somewhere - do we need to know to whom, when, and where?

How much non-fiction is true anyway? It's supposed to be true, of course, but how can we know? And why must we know? What is truth anyway, when all of these renderings come in the form of someone else's musings, their perspective, their slant? Always the story is viewed through a distorted or filtered prism. It is always someone's take - whether the screenwriter, the author, the director or even the producer. Maybe it's even the actors'. Or a combination of all of these. How can we know where the story starts and the facts stop?

Worse still, this push for "facts" in our stories could arguably be the reason for so many literary hoaxes of late, James Frey being probably the most widely vilified. He couldn't sell his novel as fiction, so he sold it as memoir. He really had spent an afternoon in jail for drug related offenses - didn't that qualify him to tell a "true account" of the life of a drug addict who, after a stint in prison, redeems himself and gets clean?

Did the fact that this "memoir" was plugged as self-help somehow make Frey's crime worse than had he written a "factual" account with no redeeming message of hope? No, "look what I did - and survived!" theme underpinning it? I'd guess if we asked Oprah, her answer would be yes. It's much worse.

My question is, are we kidding ourselves that we can somehow learn more from "non-fiction" than we can from fiction? That its message is somehow more reliable, more accessible, and more believable because the events "really happened".

Peter Weir believes that he'd found enough evidence in the research about other stories of long walks across the desert to justify his faith in the veracity of The Way Back as a "based on true events" story. Maybe he did.

My question is, does it matter?

Here's the link to the interview.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2011/3138933.htm

Asking for notes etiquette

Below is a piece by screenwriter Derek Haas that he posted on Artful Writer in response to the countless people who ask him for notes.

I, too, get a lot of requests for feedback on manuscripts and feature film scripts - sometimes I say yes, occasionally, if I'm feeling really brave, I say no. I wish, though, that I could always say this:

With permission from Derek and the fabulous screenwriters' forum, Done Deal:


http://messageboard.donedealpro.com/boards/showthread.php?t=60328&highlight=etiquette


The point of this is to remember that no one is entitled to help. No one should expect to be read. Everyone who is prepared to offer time and effort for no good reason other than they can, or would like to, deserves consideration, space and the courtesy of not feeling obligated.

Easier said than done, but no one ever said the world needs another writer. We might need to write, but the world doesn't need to listen.

The Kids Are All Right, but...

What about the mums?

I was really looking forward to seeing this film for all kinds of reasons. Firstly, I have a heterosexual girl-crush on Julieanne Moore (who doesn't, I ask you) and, as someone who's dabbled in the art/craft/torture of screenwriting, have dreamt of the day when Annette Benning is cast in one of my films. (OK. First I need to get one made. But, then, the moment that happens, I have no doubt Annette will come running.) Plus, Mark Ruffalo is yummy in all the right ways.

But mostly because it's about time that this increasingly visible kind of family is acknowledged in popular culture in an intelligent and considered way.

So the synopsis is simple enough: The two children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) of a lesbian couple - one born to each mother but with the same father - decide they want to meet their sperm-donor dad. There's the obvious discomfort and uncertainty when these middle class, smart and sophisticated women learn of their kids' desires, but both mums are doing their best to be understanding and patient with what is, at this point in their lives, a difficult and fraught decision.

The meeting, when it happens, is delightfully believable. Awkward silences, overcompensating gestures, and the squirming humiliation all adolescents display when they can see their parents trying too hard. Good fun and very believable. And not so far from what any meeting of adoptive and biological parents might look like. I liked that part the most - how similar the arrangement, and how irrelevant, ultimately, the gender breakdown is when it comes down to love. Loving parents are loving parents. Biology has its place in the parenting process, but family is really about who's there, night and day, day after day, loving and caring, talking and fighting, growing and learning, living and dying. Basically, it's about being together.

So far so good. And then a weird thing happens...

********************SPOILER ALERT*****************

Scroll down for the rest.











Struggling with strained relations with her wife, Jules (Julieanne Moore) gets involved with Paul (Ruffalo), the donor dad, first, as his landscaper, and then, well, kind of as his landscaper again. But a different landscape altogether.

Basically, they screw. A lot, it has to be said.

This is where the film loses me. While, from a storytelling perspective, it answers the important dramatic question we're supposed to ask when dealing with story arcs - Find the worst thing that could happen to your main character and make it happen - it slides into that murky, chauvenstic old chestnut that argues that all lesbians really need is some solid man flesh. (I had a quicker, sharper ending to that sentence, but resisted the impulse.) Basically, that belief that lesbians are somehow missing out on something essential to human sexuality as long as they persist with this whole lesbian thing.

The film's message isn't as simple as this, of course. Nor do I think it's even the writer's intention, interestingly. The film spends a lot of time giving these amazing women real consideration and pathos in the process of making very difficult decisions. Jules experiences much angst and guilt associated with this tryst, which Paul is taking to heart in a way that she is not. He's ready to settle down, see - catalysed by his kids' appearance in his life. He dumps his easy lay, focuses on changing his life, and embraces this strange but intoxicating mantle of fatherhood with impressive, if naive enthusiasm. The kids like him a lot, and their relationship with Paul changes into something real and substantial over the time they spend together.

The result is that Paul sees this relationship with Jules as the beginning of his "family" - now that he's ready to have one. She sees it as a reaction to the hurtful things her wife has been saying and, it must be said, seems as much about getting her rocks off with someone who couldn't be more different from her wife if he tried.

Of course, the deceipt is the killer, but not just between Jules and Nic (Benning), although the betrayal is fraught enough. (Not just an affair, but an affair with a man, and not just any man, but the father of their children, and not just... It goes on.) The clincher is what Paul and Jules seem not to have factored in - the betrayal their children feel, and their subsequent guilt that they have somehow brought Paul and Jules together. In effect, threatening to destroy their family.

The performances are lovely. Wasikowska and Hutcherson display just the right amount of uncertainty in this new life that they feel partly responsible for creating, mixed in with all the completely normal (horrid but inevitable) adolescent angst that plagues any family with two teenagers making their way in the world.

There are several funny/painful moments, particularly Nic's drunken rendition of Joni Mitchell at the dinner table right on top of the moment she realises Jules's betrayal. This is truly squirmworthy storytelling. Nic is so vulnerable in that moment - passionate, loving, open and in pain - so completely different to how we've seen her until then, made all the more excruciating by her refusal to let up, even after the point is made. Her lilting, husky rendition of the lullaby persisting in the face of prolonged and awkward silences... Really powerful stuff.

I just wish Jules had not so desperately and urgently embraced heterosexual lust as though it were somehow better or more than what she had known with her wife. While it was most likely intended as a comment on how stale and tired a long marriage can become, and how fresh and intoxicating new love/lust can be, particularly the forbidden kind, the fact that he was a he, and the father of her son, gave it a layer that, I feel, undid a good chunk of the subtlety and respect the writers had shown this non-mainstream but unquestionably loving family.

But the ending is extremely satisfying and in some way compensates for that aberration of a midpoint.

See it or rent it because it's worth it - funny, smart, different and sophisticated - but I'm still waiting for a time when a lesbian family graces our films without the patriarchal/heterosexual hangover anywhere to be seen.