into

brew

2700 words of fiction.

chew

http://thefastertimes.com/fiction/2009/11/14/nabokov-in-audio/ (via Meanjin)

kangaroo

Best Australian Fiction of the 21st Century #3, #2, #1.

blue

‘When I have acted like a human being for a few hours, as I did today with Max and later at Baum’s, I am already full of conceit before I go to sleep.’ – Franz Kafka’s entry in his journal, 28 December, 1911.

Bruce

+

overdue

misconstrue

walking shoe

supposed to

too true

you?

I read it, and it was great fun – particularly the raunchy historical Scottish sex, and the time-travel element. I gave it to my sister (now a bookstore girl herself) and she went on to read the whole series.

I found out the author, Diana Gabaldon, was going to be in town at a dinner event hosted by Dymocks Camberwell on my sister’s birthday, on the back of her new book An Echo in the Bone. I took Sonja along for her birthday, and followed it up with a few questions about what it’s like to meet your favourite (and a very famous) author…

Pictured: Diana Gabaldon, Sonja and I.

It was a massive event, hey? What did you think of the crowd and the other fans?

Yeah, it was a big event – but then I haven’t been to any other author dinners so I’m not sure what’s normal. I believe there were 200 people in attendance. The crowd was generally women in their 40s and 50s, I was possibly the youngest person in the room. This wasn’t surprising, considering that the themes in her novels generally appeal to that audience. I must be weird.

You’re not weird! Maybe other young people just haven’t discovered her because her books are marketed a certain way? When we walked in the room, you were talking about the role that authors seem to play in this day and age – as presenters and actors. It contradicts their actual job – sitting in a room alone, forming this massive work, yeah?

This I definitely don’t understand! Writers seem more inclined to be of the ‘hermit’ variety of human (at least at times). Creatively, they like to be alone where they can get their head around how best to execute their art. It seems so odd to me that part of the job for a highly successful author these days is to stand up in front of a massive crowd and deliver a perfectly memorised 45 minute speech, before sitting down to sign books with their perfectly practiced plastic-looking camera-smile. All for the sake of sales. What if you had stage fright? I would be wondering when it was I signed up to be an actress.

Yeah, there’s a real contradiction there – though DG did seem quite happy to talk to us all. What did you think of her in person? And what of her speech?

DG as a person exceeded my expectations! She was very professional – she seemed comfortable in displaying herself and grateful to us for appreciating and supporting her work. She was a shortish gypsy-looking woman with long hair and an attractive face that seemed younger than her years. Her voice surprised me: a raspy fast-paced American accent that gave the impression she could barely keep up with her own thoughts, and with it she successfully entranced us. Her talk was witty, honest and delightfully nerdy. A scientist by trade, she is clearly intellectual. I loved that she had the guts to read one of the great erotic scenes from An Echo in the Bone. She knew what we would want, and she delivered!

She did speak super fast, like her brain was working a million miles an hour, though she also managed to come across as calm and comfortable! You had a bit of an awkward moment when you got your books signed, though, didn’t you?

Ha! I knew you would bring this up. You had been telling me earlier I should say something to her, and I didn’t know what to say because I know I am just another number and I don’t want to try and say something clever just to be remembered. Anyway, without anything planned we leaned in for a photo and I thought it would be nice to just connect with her for a moment. So I said (stupidly) ‘Ha, everyone must smell like wine’ (because they have to lean over her for the photo). It seems she didn’t even hear me, as she replied ‘There you go, thank you’, handing me my signed book. I walked off in a state of embarrassment and started giggling my arse off with you as soon as we were out of hearing distance. Ergh. I blame the wine.

There were some hardcore fans aiming accusations at her about the books and characters, weren’t there? It was almost like they felt they had this sense of entitlement and ownership over the works and the author as well, yeah? And then there was the dog lady…

Oh the dog lady. During Q & A this lady asked a question about DG’s many dogs and then proceeded to have a conversation with her about breeding and the appearance of her own canines. Hello? She doesn’t care, and the whole room is listening! As you said, another woman was almost making accusations at DG rather than asking a proper question.

As far as their feeling ownership, I agree that it seemed that way. It was DG’s brilliance that brought this imaginary world into our lives in the first place – so what gives these people a right to the way the story goes?  It is her creation. I guess some people see it differently. It was so good though how when DG didn’t understand one of the ’smart’ words in the aggressive woman’s question she just said ‘Sorry, I don’t understand?’ which made the woman look totally ridiculous.

You don’t think an author has some responsibility to his/her readers? The people who are supplying them with an income?

Well, to some extent. Especially when working on a series such as DG’s ‘Outlander’. There needs to be consistency in both the content and writing style from book to book. Otherwise readers’ expectations will be understandably upset. But my point is some people seem to feel a need to challenge someone who has been more successful than them. I’m not sure why. As you know, I’m also bothered by the slow pace in her most recent novel, Echo in the Bone, and the depth in which she describes her characters’ movements. If she loses my interest then yes, there is obviously something she is doing wrong. But if I were inclined to ask her about it, I don’t think I’d do it in an assuming, superior sort of way that attempts to put her off and make myself look good in front of others.

Hehe, I’m glad. But then I know one question I asked at a recent writers fest I really stuffed up, and it seemed accusatory. Sometimes it’s an accident I think.

Does it make a difference, meeting an author (to the reading experience)? Would you want to meet anyone else?

I don’t think it makes a difference to the reading experience. Do you? But I suppose I can now see parts of her own personality that she has put into her main character, Claire, and I like that I can see this. It makes Claire even more real, somehow. But when I said this to one of the ladies at the dinner, she hadn’t noticed. I will probably think of her more now as I read, I don’t know. There are plenty of authors I would love to meet, if only to see what they are like. I don’t think it changes anything unless you love their book and they turn out to be a nasty person. I wonder if you would be loyal to them anyway because of their work or write them off because of their personality? I’m sure you have had experience with this.

Well, with some it has enhanced the experience, with others … I’ve never read their books again. Meeting both Gail Jones and Alex Miller (my two favourite Aus writers) were memorable experiences. Another author (who I shall not name) treated me like a little girl. I’d travelled pretty far for that event too. So, regardless of the fact I like this author’s writing, I have been turned off picking up their books! So it can have an effect.

Which author would you most want to meet then? Let’s make it fun and say – alive or dead? And lastly, what was the highlight of the evening?

Hmm, tough one. At the moment I would probably say Vladimir Nabokov. I am intrigued by him, as are many. But there are still so many authors I haven’t read so it could change later.

The highlight of the night for me would be the reading. I particularly remember the point where she said unflinchingly in her accent: ‘A shiver ran through him at the warmth of my mouth and I lifted my hands involuntarily, cradling his balls.’ Ha! I love her unabashed countenance and wish I had such a quality without worrying about putting people off. Care to share your highlight?

Okay – mine was when she said how when people asked her: ‘why would you have a thing for a man in a kilt?’ her reply was: ‘You can imagine it’d only be ten seconds before he had you against the wall’. Aye!

Readers – have you had the chance to meet any of your favourite authors? Was it wonderful or woeful? Who would you most like to meet?

The Tiger Man of

Reviewed by Pamela Wilson

When you’ve got a story full of intrigue, deception, torture and murder, you’ve got the makings of a good thriller. When that story is true, you have the makings of a great one. Because of this, I snapped up the chance to read and review The Tiger Man of Vietnam, by Frank Walker. Given the choice, I will always pluck from the shelf a biographical account that promises a good story as well as enlightenment of a foreign place, era, or event; and, on all accounts, I wasn’t disappointed with Walker’s book.

The Tiger Man of Vietnam recounts the two years that Australian war hero Barry Petersen spent heading a covert CIA mission to train up a paramilitary force deep in the Vietnam jungle. In this short space of time, Petersen honed his skills in guerrilla warfare, mastered the cultural requirement of skolling home-made rice wine – even when grit and wriggly weevils were present – and was instrumental in quelling a rebellion that would have resulted in bloodshed. He made friends and enemies everywhere he went. But few in the Australian government even knew he was there; before long, few in the CIA wanted him to remain.

Sympathetic to the Montagnard – the tribespeople being squeezed by both the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese forces – that he was training, Petersen got too close to them and their cause. Revered and honoured, he became a demi-God. So, when the CIA asked him to turn his troops, The Tiger Men, into assassination squads, he refused. Shortly after, he found himself to a target on the CIA’s own assassination list.

When I target the bookstores, I always aim to get the best bang for my buck, to get value for money. I expect something worthy from the words I read, whether it is entertainment, insight or knowledge. I got all three with The Tiger Man of Vietnam. I learned that the Vietnam War, as it was run by the Americans and allies, was even more abhorrent and unforgivable than I previously realised. I was horrified to learn the true extent of the CIA’s dirty tactics and, worse still, that they continue today. I was surprised to discover that for many years a ‘torture school’ existed at the School of Military Intelligence at Middle Head in Sydney. Even better, I got all this from well-formulated prose and description, and not in the format of extended teachers’ notes that some historical books bog us down with.

However, as gripping and fascinating as Barry Petersen’s story is, I tired of this man who seemed too good to be true: a champion of the wretched, a soldier with a conscience, a man enough brave to stand up to authority. To Walker’s credit, he launches into a series of interviews with men that Petersen worked with, about two-thirds of the way into the book. Here, we begin to see Petersen in a new light, as a man who gets ‘carried away with himself’ and ‘a megalomaniac who fancied himself as another Lawrence of Arabia’, but it came a little too late for me. I would have liked to have seen this side of Petersen’s character sooner so I could get to know him properly – warts and all – from the start.

Despite this, Walker has done a thorough job in fleshing out this important story. As you would expect from a journalist with 32 years experience in newspapers, this book is meticulously researched and the interviews are informative and insightful. Walker’s knowledge of military and defence is evident from the years he spent covering these topics, along with security and politics, for the Sun-Herald newspaper.

I would highly recommend this book. In fact, I already have, to a number of colleagues, friends and family. This is a story for anyone who enjoys the feeling that they are not only being entertained, but that they are learning something when they sit down for a quiet night in with a good book.

Pamela Wilson is the freelance writer, journalist and editor who talks a little too much and laughs a little too loud. She also facilitates author ‘in conversation’ events, teaches a freelance feature writing course at the Sydney Writers Centre and writes a blog for aspiring writers. (www.writesmart.com.au)

Pictured: Opera House – Brett Whiteley.

This is a whole other blog post sometime but while in Sydney I had an urge to reconcile my bad feelings about the city. See, I lived there for three months when I was 18. I will tell you the whole story sometime. It’s hard to, though, because it was one of the most difficult and depressing (and I don’t use that word lightly) times of my life. I used to spend a lot of time at the state art gallery, and yesterday I went there, for the first time in years. I stared hard at some of the paintings that were my favourites, and I tried to remember what I was looking for in them, back then. It surprised me to realise I could see much more around the edges now. Fascinating, how visual art, much like books, is a two-way communication between artist and viewer/reader - perhaps even more-so than books because two people could interpret a painting or sculpture so differently. One of my favourite things about galleries is discovering art and artists I didn’t know of before (or didn’t know I liked). The finalists for the Dobell Prize for Drawing were on show, and I discovered an artist called Tanya Chaitow. See some of her work here.

Did I reconcile my bad feelings about Sydney? It was an incredible, sunny day on Saturday. It was difficult to feel negative in that kind of weather. Sydney and I are learning to become friends, but we can only handle each other in short bursts. I can’t see myself living there again. Now Melbourne – Melbourne and I like each other much better – you might even call it love.

I was very excited to hear that an independent anthology out of Toronto, which I contributed to, has come out. It’s called Goodbye Billie Jean, the Meaning of Michael Jackson. It has quite an impressive list of contributors (Pulitzer Prize-winner, monk, drag queen). The pieces are thoughts, opinions and ideas on the meaning of MJ. You can get it online (details here). It’d be cool to see an Australian micro-publisher or zine distributor pick it up here also.

Also, a couple of days ago, the Charter for Compassion was revealed. I think this is a great way to get us all thinking about our contribution to the greater good, in a broad way. It’s a universal charter – not coming from any one belief system. It quite simply enhances the word ‘compassion’ so it is more present in our lives. Learn more about it through these links:

Australians on Compassion Video.
Website.
Facebook.
Twitter.

A bit more about the project:
‘The Charter for Compassion is the result of Karen Armstrong’s 2008 TED Prize wish that seeks to bring together voices from all cultures and religions, and remind the world that we all share the core principles of compassion. The Charter has already been affirmed by world leaders such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Queen Noor of Jordan, Deepak Chopra and author Elizabeth Gilbert.’

Okay, I’m off to breathe some fresh air, have D&M conversations, and use my muscles they way they’re meant to be used.

I recently reviewed the thriller Ravens, by George Dawes Green, for The Book Show on ABC Radio National. Have a listen, here.

Prompts: LiteraryMinded
Responses: Kathy Charles

LM:

I have this photograph of John Belushi as a canvas print in my hallway. Recently a friend asked me why I had a picture of Guy Sebastian hanging on my wall. Guy Sebastian aint got lapels like this.

History (destroyed, captured, mythologised).

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the idea of ‘Dark Tourism’, which is when people visit places where death and suffering have occurred. When bad things happen there is an inclination to erase any evidence of the event, which is understandable, but I think it is just as natural to want to see these places for yourself. Los Angeles has a booming Dark Tourism industry, due to the number of scandalous incidents the town has played host to. But LA is also a town that constantly reinvents itself, and so many of theses sites, like the Ambassador Hotel where Senator Robert Kennedy was assasinated, are being lost to development.     

Fame.

I was once a paid-up member of the David Bowie Fan Club. This was mainly so I would be one of the first to be able to buy tickets to his Melbourne concerts. The first night I was in the front row, within spitting distance of the man himself. I like to think we made eye contact on more than one occasion. The second night I was way up the back, but Bowie decided to mix things up and play the entire first half of the album Low which more than made up for the crappy seats. David Bowie is an architect of our modern idea of fame, and managed to combine both style and subtance without forsaking one for the other. In an interesting side note Gus Van Sant directed this music video. He also directed a music video for the boy group Hanson of ‘MmmBop’ fame. Someone once told me that my head was so full of trivial pop culture nonsense that there couldn’t be much room for anything else. I guess they had a point.

‘For every two minutes of glamour, there are eight hours of hard work’ – Jessica Savitch

I once saw Paris Hilton shopping in Bel Air. There was one lone photographer with her and it seemed pretty obvious in the way they interacted that she had enlisted him to follow her around. Celebrity is largely an illusion. When the young and beautiful hit the town in Hollywood they have their publicists send out a press release so the paparazzi will know where to find them. The same actors who shield their faces and beg for their privacy know very well that if they choose to lunch at The Ivy they will be photographed. The reluctant star is a very carefully constructed persona that plays on our sympathies. It takes a lot of hard work to make it look so unwanted.

Classifying and cataloguing.

Some people believe that numerology plays a significant role in celebrity death. There is a group called the Forever 27 Club that refers to musicians who died at the tender age of 27. Members of this club include Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. Chris Farley died at exactly the same age as his idol John Belushi. Then there’s John Lennon and his connection to the number 9. I think such superstitions help us fathom why people we love die and admire die so tragically. It gives us some kind of weird logic we can grasp onto.

LM:

In 1932 a young actress named Peg Entwhiste moved to Hollywood with dreams of being a movie star. She was signed to a contract at RKO Pictures but only ever received a small role in one film. When RKO decided not to renew her contract she walked up to the end of Beachwood Drive and made her way through the thick brush to the Hollywood sign. When she arrived at the sign she climbed the ladder to the top of the 50-foot letter ‘H’, looked out over the town that had rejected her, and jumped. She was 24 years old.

Tragedy.

It makes me sad when people who seem to have so much going for them die tragically and needlessly. Every time I listen to a Kurt Cobain song or watch a John Belushi movie I can’t help but wonder what else they could have achieved had they stuck around. Some days it’s enough to bring me to tears. Most people have little sympathy for celebrities who throw it all away, as they appear to have it all. I think the idea that you can be rich and famous and still miserable scares us. Sometimes it’s easier to judge than empathise.

End credits.

In the song ‘Sunset Strip’ Courtney Love sings: ‘Rock star. Pop star. Everybody dies.’ No matter how famous you are, in the end we all fade to black.

www.kathycharles.com

Text Publishing’s Hollywood Ending page.

The next five books I’m planning to read in no particular order: Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey), Siren (Tara Moss), Parrot & Olivier in America (Peter Carey), The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (J Randy Taraborrelli), The Year of the Flood (Margaret Atwood).

Time I got to bed last night: 3:30am.

Number of creative projects I’m currently working on: four.

Currently reading: Brothers and Sisters (ed. Charlotte Wood), Collected Stories (Richard Yates), Rushing to Paradise (JG Ballard), Ulysses (James Joyce) – yes, still – and various poetry books.

Recently framed photograph:

(Kafka).

Books recently returned from friends: The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas), Conditions of Faith (Alex Miller).

New position at Bookseller+Publisher: Acting editor (of the print magazine).

Book my sister and two friends are going to borrow: The Boat (Nam Le). A huge congrats to Nam on his Prime Minister’s Literary Award win! So well deserved. Congrats also to Evelyn Juers, Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds.

Language I’m going to learn next year: French (I’ll explain more about this later).

Link of the week: ABR’s Favourite Australian Novel (FAN) poll – get your nomination in.

Out of the fifty billion launches on in the next week, the one I’m most looking forward to: Iain ‘Huey’ Hewitson’s Bloody Good Recipes. Huey will be cooking lunch. Mmm, mmm.

Two launches you should go to if in Melbourne: Visible Ink (Monday); The Words We Found (Thursday) – or, on Thursday, you could go to the Victorian state final of the Australian Poetry Slam.

Recently interviewed in: An extensive one in Voiceworks #78: Fluid (interview not online – buy it!); an in-person one (part one, part two) with Chris Flynn on Fly the Falcon (he’s been doing a few with up-and-coming creatives, check them out); and Damon Young interviewed me about my favourite tool for writing.

Recent flights booked: To Adelaide for Adelaide Writers Week – Feb 28 to March 5. Join us.

Current craving: pretzels.

Coming up on the blog: Review of Cate Kennedy’s The World Beneath; ‘responsive’ interview with Hollywood Ending author Kathy Charles; an interview with Lisa Dempster re her travel memoir Neon Pilgrim; more from my interview with Alex Miller – extended from our talk about his new novel Lovesong, in Readings Monthly; and more fresh faces bringing you guest reviews.

Want: An e-reader.

Number of bookshelves needed for new pad: About eight.

What I’m going to do now: Watch The Seven Year Itch.

Part One of this interview can be found here.

Pictured: Emily Maguire and I before the Sleepers Salon in October.

I ask Maguire about the setting. Is it pertinent for this story to be set in Sydney? She says it probably could have been a few cities, but ‘western Sydney is – the cliché is ‘melting pot’, but it’s not very melty actually, it’s more like lots of different kinds of people clashing with each other.

‘Part of it is, Adam is an outsider, his expectations of Sydney are Bondi and beaches, sea water, all that side of it, and it’s not that, y’no?. But there are two universities near there so there are students, there are a lot of international students, there are a lot of immigrants, but it’s also partly, newly gentrified so you have wealth cropping up and – it’s a clash.

‘There were a few other places in the world, there are probably parts of Melbourne, there are certain American cities that have that too. But as an Australian writing, and as someone from Sydney, I think that particular area is the kind of place where you do get these odd mixes of people who have smashed into each other and are a bit stuck where they are and so you get these weird kind of friendships.

‘There are a lot of street characters there too, they’re known as that although I’m sure they don’t think of themselves as characters – they’re living their lives – but, people who’ve lived there a long time can tell you the stories about these street people. “The man with a stick” is kinda based on a real guy.’

I was really struck by how calm the character Katie is after she acts out, such as after she harms herself. Her calmness is what’s really confronting to Adam and the other characters. There’s a scene where she’s bald, barefoot and scarred, and she’s wearing a red dress ‘of a style Graeme recognised from his youth’, and a navy and white polka-dot apron. She is making Graeme dinner. It’s a very beautiful, sad and tense scene. I asked Maguire if she thought some readers might be confronted by the book, the way the other characters are sometimes confronted by Katie.

‘Yeah. It’s really interesting to me how different people relate to the characters when they read it – I feel like I learn a lot about them. Some people have said “she’s so irritating, she’s so self-indulgent”, which I think is partly true, but others have said “I love her, she’s great” – and I feel somewhere in between the two. I hope both things are true – that even though she is irritating and kind of self-indulgent, that’s the flip-side of what I think is lovely about her, which is the deep empathy and the way she doesn’t “mature things away”. She takes everything seriously, whether it’s a celebrity’s crisis, or cooking dinner – she really throws herself into everything – which can be trying, if you’re actually with someone like that’.

There’s a part in the book, in one of Katie’s chapters, about distraction being ‘the stuff of life’ and being what allowed Katie to ‘get on with the stuff of life’. I did sort of see it as the symbolic part – of contemporary existence in general. But Maguire said that’s only one part of it: ‘I don’t mean to highlight it in just a cynical, critical way because I think distraction is a big part of actual survival. The characters don’t really have a religion or an afterlife to look forward to and you do kinda get to that point of “what’s the point?” And part of that is just connecting with other people and finding beauty in the world and things to care about. So that’s the other side of that. So it can become a really negative thing if you never stop to reflect – if you’re always concentrating on the next thing so you never have to stop and you never have to think about your life, but to an extent it’s quite a healthy coping mechanism, too.’

Because I always love to know what authors read, particularly if I admire them and their writing, I ask Maguire about some of her favourite books. She goes back often to Graham Greene. ‘He’s a Catholic writer, in that his Catholicism comes into his work, but he’s very cold and hard. His writing is old-fashioned in a way but it’s sort of the way I write too, and what I love, that old-fashioned psychological realism. Characters that really start delving into their soul, and books that examine how they make choices in their life. One of his books in particular, The Heart of the Matter, was hugely influential for Smoke in the Room.’

Jane Eyre is Maguire’s ‘touchstone book’, but more for her as a person, than a writer. ‘It’s just a really important book to me … I just love it’. She also cites Nadine Gordimer – the South African novelist, ‘who is my idol in the way she can write about politics or political situations, but her novels are still really character-driven. You never feel like you’re reading a political novel, but it’s there. It’s South Africa and it’s the context of the lives of her characters. She’s wonderful’.

After our talk, I watch Maguire in Q&A with Steven Amsterdam at the Sleepers Salon, and learn that at an early stage of writing this book, she suffered a stroke. What happened, was that she came back to the draft and found it somewhat ‘cold’. The book you read now has come about through a life-changing experience. And the characters have their own revelations – through circumstance, through inevitability, and through conscious decision. It’s sometimes up to the reader to think about just which of these things has affected an outcome (choice or inevitability?). And I’m sure Maguire would be able to see deep inside you, depending what you chose.

You can find more details about Emily Maguire and her books on her website.

Smoke in the Room is published by Picador.

I caught up with Emily Maguire one afternoon in Melbourne to ask her about the book. We sat in the corner of a pub and listened to the kitchen staff belting out 60s rock & roll. I’ve always thought Maguire looks a bit like Christina Ricci – her eyes are large and warm, very deep, and she has the same sort of edge. She is someone whose writing and talks (I have seen her at a few writers’ festivals) indicate that she is one of those people possessed by an honest knowledge about both the sadness and the beauty of the world, and I expect this has been the case since she was very young. She is also often touted, quite truthfully, as a ‘voice of her generation’, writing in both fiction and nonfiction about young people, particularly women, in contemporary Australia.

Smoke in the Room began with the character of Graeme, Maguire says. She had coincidentally been reading a lot of biographies with a similar theme. ‘One of them was of the Aboriginal activist Rob Riley, who committed suicide in ’96. And then I read a long article about Iris Chang, an American writer who wrote a historical account of the rape of Nanking. She was only 36, I think, and she committed suicide, after that book. The book is devastating.

‘So, I was thinking about the toll, that being really engaged in social justice or foreign correspondence, can take. And then I also happened to read a biography of Graham Greene, who’s my favourite twentieth-century writer, and he liked to tell this story – and I wonder if it’s a little bit of an exaggeration – about how when he was a teenager he’d feel depression coming on and he would play Russian Roulette. He suffered from depression his whole life, but he said that he found the best cure – rather than psychotherapy or anything – was to travel to really dangerous places. And so you can track the worst places in the world in the twentieth-century by looking at where Graham Greene went. He went to the most terrible places. And he said that’s when he felt best.’

The character of Graeme in Smoke in the Room is named, then, after Greene, and he too, has travelled to dangerous places all throughout his life. It’s only the young character Katie who has insight into this behaviour, in the book. Maguire wondered whether ‘someone like him is drawn to that kind of work as a way to stave off depression or apathy’. And if not, ‘is this something that will have this cumulative kind of effect when you stop?’

The other part of Graeme came about through people-watching. ‘I would see just around the area these men in their 50s or 60s who look very neat and put-together, not homeless or anything, but just look so lonely and isolated’.

Katie’s philosophical outlook on life – living honestly, emotionally, for-the-moment, no matter how hard-hitting the truth of the moment is – contrasts her new friend and lover Adam’s outlook. Adam prefers to distance himself or step back, or divest his energy in something else – pick up the pieces, despite the weight of his grief. Katie is more inclined to let it in and go with it. Maguire says: ‘Part of it is this kind of context of who you are in relation to society, because Adam is someone who has always been really privileged, and lucky, and his worst complaint is that his mum never felt sorry for him. So when this terrible thing happens to him – to lose someone – he’s almost offended by it happening, and he doesn’t really have any kind of inner resources to cope with something like that happening to him. Whereas Katie’s someone who’s – whether it’s in her nature or related to her experiences in life – a lot more accepting of the fact that shit happens. And that’s all part of life, and she doesn’t take it personally in the same way, so she’s able to kind of roll with it’.

Katie really reminds me of that line in the movie Adaptation: ‘You are what you love, not what loves you.’ She’ll go on loving, believing, feeling, expressing – whether or not it is reciprocated.

Part Two of this interview can be found here.

You can find more details about Emily Maguire and her books on her website.

It’s not online yet, but my feature interview with Alex Miller, on his new novel Lovesong, has just come out in the November issue of Readings Monthly. Pick up a copy if you’re near a Readings store. I’ll post a link when it’s up online. I actually spoke with Miller about his other wonderful books, and other general things, so there will be more to come on the blog…

Also, this is a link of a link of a link, but we can add to this discussion. I was surprised by Mark Sarvas’ admission that his own attention span for reading seems to have shortened. I didn’t expect this from him. But he does provide some suggestions at the end, if this horrible affliction has sprung upon you. I have no problem reading long books – I don’t get weary or distracted (unless, of course, they suck), and I know many people of my generation read some mammoth works. Maybe we’re (Gen Y) more adaptable to different kinds of reading, where for those just a bit older, the giddy, rapid, screen-swapping, talk-back nature of the internet is harder to shake off when they sit down with a book. But Sarvas isn’t too much older, and he has got a new bub in the house (a lovely distraction). For some, maybe it’s a phase of panic – ‘oh no, the internet is melting my brain’ – which paralyses them. For others, maybe they’re really just not enjoying what they’re reading so much, maybe their reading tastes have changed and it’s difficult to admit it to themselves. Over to you…

(And I do apologise if I take a little while to moderate/reply to comments – the moving thing).