Past Programs
Books - Non Fiction - 2008
Taboos in literature
05/12/2008
It's 50 years since the controversial novel Lolita was published and Nabokov said that there were only three taboos in literature: incest, inter-racial marriage and atheism. What is taboo now?
Ars memorativa - the medieval craft of memory
03/12/2008
In contemporary culture we tend to think of the imagination as the highest creative impulse. The imagination is seen as the ultimate source of originality and original thinking is what marks a true artist. But from the antiquities to medieval times memory was highly valued. Both Aristotle and Chaucer thought memory the most important tool a writer or a reader could have. Renowned medieval scholar Mary Carruthers talks about the lost art of memory.
True crime writing
28/11/2008
Recently The Law Report's Damien Carrick moderated a conversation with two authors of true crime books, Helen Garner and Kara Lawrence. Helen Garner is well known for both fiction and non-fiction. Her latest novel is The Spare Room, but in this discussion she revisits her 2004 non-fiction book Joe Cinque's Consolation. Kara Lawrence is a crime writer with The Daily Telegraph. The event was part of the National Investigations Conference, a gathering of professional investigators who work for various police forces, anti-corruption watchdogs and ombudsmen's offices.
Reviving 'The Chicagoan'
28/11/2008
In 1926 Chicago had an unfortunate reputation for organised crime, political mayhem and industrial squalor but there was also gusto, glamour and jazz. The Chicagoan, a magazine to rival the successful New Yorker, appeared on newsstands for nine years until it died quietly in 1935 with the arrival of the Great Depression. The Chicagoan was largely forgotten until cultural historian Neil Harris stumbled upon it in the library of the University of Chicago some 20 years ago. He has now brought this publication back to life with a 400-page tribute The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age.
Holy Warriors: Tim Parks (review)
27/11/2008
It's just over 60 years since India became independent. In her book Holy Warriors: a Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism journalist Edna Fernandes reviews those years and paints a contemporary portrait of the country from its fundamentalist fringes. She begins by looking at Islam, revisits the Catholic Inquisition in Goa, meets Christian Baptist separatists and looks into both Sikh separatism and Hindu nationalism. Tim Parks investigates how much we can learn about India from this book.
EH Carr's What is History? (review)
26/11/2008
EH Carr's contribution to the study of Soviet history is widely regarded as highly distinguished. In all probability, few would argue against the assessment of Carr's 14-volume history of Soviet Russia. For the majority of historians, he pretty much got the story straight.
But for several years there was disagreement about EH Carr's contribution to the analytical philosophy of history. First published in 1961, his ideas were outlined in What is History?
He shifted the focus of history from fact to interpretation.
Jock Given is Professor of Media and Communications at Swinburne University, for The Book Show he explores the relationship between the historian and the past in What is History?
Italian author in hiding from Mafia threat
10/11/2008
There's a price you pay for attacking the Mafia and Italian author and journalist Roberto Saviano is paying that price. Two years ago he exposed the Neapolitan Mafia in his bestselling book Gomorrah, an up-close account of the inner workings of the crime group that's operated around Naples for more than a century.
The book became a bestseller, was translated into 47 languages, and has now been made into an award-winning film. But Gomorrah's success has driven Roberto Saviano into the shadows, with the Neapolitan crime bosses threatening to kill him before Christmas. The Book Show's Linda LoPresti spoke to Roberto Saviano, who's in hiding under state protection
The Atlantic Ocean - essays by Andrew O'Hagan
07/11/2008
The ebullient Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan is best known for his fiction. He has written three novels: Our Fathers, Personality and Be Near Me which have all won prizes. But he also has a reputation as a writer of non-fiction. He's a contributing editor with The London Review of Books and has been described as 'the best essayist of his generation' by The New York Times. At this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival he spoke with journalist Magnus Linklater about his latest book The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America.
Philip Gourevitch, editor of The Paris Review
30/10/2008
A puritanical hedonist -- this is how novelist and nonfiction writer Marilynne Robinson describes herself. She won the Pulitzer for her 2004 novel Gilead and her new book is called Home. An in-depth interview with her is in the latest Paris Review.
Also on the topic of home, when 40,000 prisoners involved in the Rwandan genocide were released from jail, French journalist Jean Hatzfeld wrote about their homecoming. His article 'Together Again' is in the magazine.
This is a topic close to the editor of the Paris Review, Philip Gourevitch, who wrote about the genocide in We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.
John Gascoigne on the enthralling Captain Cook
30/10/2008
The cultures of 18th century Pacific Islanders and Captain Cook aren't normally thought of as having many similarities. But John Gascoigne says when it came to the knowledge of navigation and its romance, these two cultures were closer than we think. Pacific Islanders knew 200 stars by name and both cultures shared an interest in all things nautical.
Professor John Gascoigne's book on Cook was short-listed for the 2008 NSW Premier's General History Prize. It's called Captain Cook: Voyager Between Worlds.
Nina Khrushcheva imagines Nabokov
29/10/2008
Nina Khrushcheva is a Russian writer and academic who proudly labels herself a foreigner.
She lives in New York City, from where she gazes at her country of birth, studying and writing about where it's been and where it's heading.
Nina Khrushcheva is well placed to have some views about Russia's past; she's the great-granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
And Nina believes the man who holds a road map for Russia's future is another émigré writer who lived in America -- Vladimir Nabokov.
She's recently written a book called Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics, in which she entwines the life and works of the renowned novelist with her own views and reactions to his words.
The ABC's Moscow correspondent Scott Bevan spoke with Nina Khrushcheva in her adopted city and she began by explaining that as she read Nabokov's books The Luzhin Defense, Lolita and particularly Speak, Memory she started to see how his writing could serve as a guide to how to be Russian in these changing times.
The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood (review) Read Transcript
27/10/2008
Rachel Power is a writer, artist and musician. She's also a mother of two young children. In her book The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood she writes about her own experience and that of 26 other artist-mothers, who talk about balancing motherhood with finding the space to continue their creative lives. Clare Wright, also a writer and mother, read Rachel Power's book with particular interest.
An Upwrite Man - Tim Parks on the relationship between writers and their families
24/10/2008
Tim Parks is a novelist, essayist, critic and translator. He lives in Italy with his wife and children. Earlier this year, you may remember, Tim spoke to us about his collection of literary essays The Fighter. His most recent novel, Dreams of Rivers and Seas, has just been published. The arrival of the first printed copies of a new book, and the fact that his children are now old enough to read his novels, prompted Tim to think about the relationship between writers, particularly writers of fiction, and their families.
Hunter S. Thompson in words and on film Read Transcript
23/10/2008
There are some phrases and concepts that are forever enshrined in the mythos of a writer. For the iconoclastic Hunter S. Thompson, it's Gonzo journalism, freak power and fear and loathing. Since his suicide in 2005, there have been many memoirs, many of them authored by his friends keeping the mythology of the cult writer alive. But when it comes to a subject as complex as Hunter S.Thompson, there's always room for more.
Slightly Foxed with Gail Pirkis
23/10/2008
The British quarterly journal Slightly Foxed was set up partly to celebrate writers and books that are either neglected or out of fashion and partly as a reaction to a book industry that has become somewhat captive to image and marketing. Michael Shirrefs asked editor Gail Pirkis about the ethic of the journal.
Lewis Lapham on learning
22/10/2008
Henry David Thoreau said "my desire for knowledge is intermittent , but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant".
This ideal shaped his approach to learning and is just one of the reflections on knowledge, education and ignorance that editor, Lewis Lapham has assembled in the latest Lapham's Quarterly on "Ways of Learning".
He also includes the writings of George Steiner, Charlotte Bronte, Salvador Dali and many others to understand the ideals of learning and how they fall short in the education system.
Jazz and literature - Sascha Feinstein Read Transcript
15/10/2008
Sascha Feinstein is a poet, essayist, saxophonist and professor of English. He is the founding editor of Brilliant Corners, a journal on jazz and literature. Sascha Feinstein's latest book Ask Me Now is a collection of musings by writers, musicians, and producers on the relationship between these two forms.
Sadanand Dhume: My Friend the Fanatic Read Transcript
13/10/2008
Sadanand Dhume was in Bali six years ago when terrorists attacked two nightclubs in Kuta. He was on assignment for the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Asian Wall Street Journal. What he saw in Bali led him to investigate the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia and to write a book about his discoveries, My Friend the Fanatic.
Herding Kites - 10 years of writing from the National Young Writers' Festival
08/10/2008
Herding Kites is the anthology of writings from a decade of the National Young Writers Festival.
The festival is part of the broader This is Not Art event which includes parallel festivals: Sound Summit, Electrofringe, and Critical Animals.
Each year, poets, graphic novelists, established writers and emerging voices converge in Newcastle in a writers' festival unlike any of the major literary events that happen in the capital cities each year.
Herding Kites features well known authors like Anna Funder and Max Barry but also many unknown writers who go to the festival to share ideas and network...in their own particularly anarchic way.
Michael Williams is the editor of this collection.
Robert Dessaix: Arabesques Read Transcript
07/10/2008
After a chance visit to the castle where French writer André Gide spent his childhood, Robert Dessaix set off to visit the places where Gide lived out his unconventional ideas about love, sexuality and religion.
Arabesques sees Dessaix journeying from Europe to the edge of the Sahara and features meditations on such varied subjects as why we travel, growing old and illicit passions.
A writer's guide to the marketplace
06/10/2008
Most writers want readers and therefore want to be published. But getting published is notoriously difficult, especially if you haven't done it before. So how to bring yourself to the attention of book, magazine or newspaper publishers? That's the question the Queensland Writers Centre tackles in The Australian Writer's Marketplace.
Pacifism and English Literature with R. S. White
30/09/2008
While war has been a permanent fixture of history, peace seems to exist more in our imagination than in reality.
R.S. White, Professor of English at the University of Western Australia has looked at literature to see how peace has been imagined by writers from the Middle Ages to the present.
He says that peace became part of the language of poetry in the 14th century, long before the anti-war poetry of the First World War.
Robert Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books
24/09/2008
The editor of The New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers, talks about Philip Roth's new novel Indignation. He also discusses the tragic story of scientist Nikolai Vavilov, persecuted in Stalinist Russia, and an essay by British travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron about Marco Polo's extraordinary 13th century journey east from Europe into the exotic lands of the Mongol Empire.
The extraordinary lives of spiders: Bert Brunet and Paul Hillyard
22/09/2008
Did you know that scientists are putting spider DNA into Nigerian goats, that little Miss Muffett's father wrote the first English language book about spiders, or that spider silk is the strongest fabric on earth, the closest other fabric being Kevlite which is used to make bullet proof vests? Spiders have been around for 400 million years and they are miracles of survival and adaptation. They also do everything we do to attract lovers and repel enemies: they dance, dress up and play music by plucking on their webs.
Kirsten Garrett has been looking at two books about spiders; The Private Life of Spiders by Paul Hillyard, which is a study of spiders across the world, and Spiderwatch, about Australian spiders, written by Bert Brunet.
Richard Holmes: The Age of Wonder Read Transcript
16/09/2008
The Age of Wonder is the title of literary biographer Richard Holmes' new book, subtitled How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. Starting when the young Joseph Banks arrived in Tahiti in 1796 Richard Holmes tells us of the grand explorations and discoveries of the age, including a new planet, a new way of travelling and seeing the world by air, and a new way of looking at the make-up of matter itself. It was an age of wonder not only to those who worked in science but to the great writers and poets of the time such as Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron and Keats.
AJ Mackinnon's unlikely voyage Read Transcript
10/09/2008
Jack de Crow is the name AJ Mackinnon gave to his eleven-foot dingy. He named it after a tame crow which would visit the school in England where he was teaching at the time. Sandy Mackinnon set off on his very own 'boys own adventure' in that tiny boat, known as a Mirror dingy. He sailed from the border of North Wales to the Black Sea. He recounts these tales in his book The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow.
For The Book Show Pollyanna Sutton caught up with Sandy Mackinnon at the recent Byron Bay Writers' Festival.
Germaine Greer on rage
29/08/2008
In her opening address at the 2008 Melbourne Writers' Festival Germaine Greer spoke about rage, which is also the subject of her recently published essay - On Rage.
Please note that this broadcast is not available as a podcast.
Philip Gourevitch, editor of The Paris Review
27/08/2008
Italian novelist and scholar Umberto Eco has 30 000 books in his Milan appartment and another 20 000 volumes in his country manor.
The author of Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose is a man of prodigious intellect, fluent in several languages, with an encylopedic knowledge of medieval history.
So you'd never guess what il professore likes to watch on TV. He likes Starsky and Hutch - the clunky, at times slapstick 1970s police buddy drama featuring two badly dressed Califorian cops in need of a good haircut.
Umberto Eco's taste in TV is one of the more trivial things to emerge from a long and fascinating interview with the author published in the current edition of the literary magazine The Paris Review.
The latest issue also includes a moving recollection of a friendship by novelist and children's writer Paula Fox and the diary of fire lookout, who spends his summers watching for smoke a tower on top of a mountain in a New Mexico national park.
Times Literary Supplement editor Peter Stothard
21/08/2008
Peter Stothard discusses three histories of women in the ancient world, a new edition of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, published fifty years after the first book Justine appeared, and the collected letters of writer Penelope Fitzgerald, who was in her sixties before her first book was published and who went on to win a Booker prize.
Art books
15/08/2008
Do you ever find yourself drawn to publications full of seductive images, flipping through pages just to stare at the pictures - alluring, double-page spreads of glossy full colour images? We're talking, of course, about art books.
Art publishing - catalogues, monographs, art history, art theory, art criticism - is an industry in itself, with very exacting standards.
Joining Peter Mares to discuss art and books is arts writer Chris McAuliffe, Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne. Chris's most recent publication is Possible Histories a monograph on the work of Melbourne artist Jon Cattapan, who also joins the discussion. With them is John Dunn, publisher of Piper Press, which specialises in books about contemporary Australian artists.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn Read Transcript
12/08/2008
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died last week aged 89.
The author of a One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward, First Circle and many other books, Solzhenitsyn exposed the brutality of the Soviet system to his fellow Russians and to the rest of the world.
To discuss the extraordinary impact of this dissident writer, Peter Mares is joined by Judith Armstrong who taught Russian studies at the University of Melbourne for twenty years and is a Fellow of the Contemporary Europe Centre at the University of Melbourne.
Car Lovers with John Dale and Tony Davis
12/08/2008
The road trip is a strong theme in Australian film but what about in our writing? Car Lovers: Twelve Australian Writers on Four Wheels is a collection of new writing about our relationship to cars as vehicles of memory, grief and freedom. Writers like Peter Carey and Debra Adelaide contributed their stories about cars to this collection.
Southern Lands through French Eyes Read Transcript
11/08/2008
Josephine Bonaparte is said to have kept kangaroos and emus in her garden after the 19th century French expedition of Nicholas Baudin and Francois Peron returned from Australia. At the time, an Atlas about this voyage was also created and the Atlas has just been published in facsimilie for the first time in Australia by the Friends of the State Library of South Australia.
Inside the PR industry with Bob Burton (repeat)
06/08/2008
Moving from fiction where, for the most part, you know you're not dealing with fact, to the world of 'spin', where it can be very hard to know who is telling the whole truth about anything. There's fake TV news, carefully crafted media messages, and more and more stuff on the world wide web where you wouldn't know who's saying what. Canberra journalist Bob Burton has written Inside Spin: The Dark Underbelly of the PR Industry.
(First broadcast 19/11/07)
Luc Sante: devoured by his book collection Read Transcript
28/07/2008
There have been many rules put forward about the sorts of books that should be in a home library but Luc Sante doesn't follow book collecting etiquette.
His passion for books goes beyond how they look and feel and he describes his far ranging book collection—from alien abductions to minor German Romantic works—as a 'hive of activity, abuzz with rhythms and images and ideas'.
Luc Sante is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and he's written about what he collects and why he collects in The Wall Street Journal in an article called 'The Book Collection That Devoured My Life'.
The end of the golden age of biography Read Transcript
23/07/2008
Biographer Kathryn Hughes asks whether it is the end of the golden age of biography because all the most interesting subjects have already been written into the history books.
Travel writing Read Transcript
17/07/2008
What skills do the best travel writers use to interpret the world around them? And where do travel writers fit now, in a world where blogging means anyone can share stories and give helpful hints? To talk about the role of travel writers and how travel writing has changed over the years, Ramona Koval is joined by travel writer and editor Tom Swick and travel historian Richard White.
Spurious and bogus Botany Bay literature
14/07/2008
Bogus stories about imaginary voyages to the Antipodes were popular in Britain in the 18th century.
And the most popular story from this time was A Voyage to New South Wales -- later just Voyage -- and its author was celebrity convict George Barrington, an elegantly dressed pickpocket who moved in exalted circles and who was sentenced to transportation to Australia in 1790.
Charles Dickens, Walter Scott and Edgar Allan Poe had heard of him, but he didn't actually write a word of these popular accounts of coming to Australia.
Nathan Garvey has been following the trail of where these bogus stories came from.
Writing, procrastination and creativity Read Transcript
11/07/2008
Today we ride the pendulum of creativity that swings between writer's block and hypergraphia. Writer's block and procrastination have been the trusty companions of writers from Joseph Conrad to Franz Kafka.
And then some writers suffered from hypergraphia, like Dostoevsky, who for his suffering wrote 19 novels as well as other works. But for other writers like John Updike, writer's block is as foreign as an empty page.
Geoff Dyer and Alice Flaherty have both swung on this pendulum. Geoff Dyer set out to write a serious study of his literary idol DH Lawrence but instead he ended up writing Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of DH Lawrence which is an exhilarating and excruciating journey through the twists and turns of his procrastination about not writing about DH Lawrence.
Alice Flaherty is a neurologist who has written a book that investigates the link between creativity, the brain and emotion. It's called The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writers Block and the Creative Brain.
André Schiffrin: A Political Education Read Transcript
04/07/2008
André Schiffrin was born in Paris, the son of one of France's most esteemed publishers, into a world that included some of the day's leading writers and intellectuals. This world changed completely when the Nazis marched into Paris on André's fifth birthday. Schiffrin's memoir A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York recounts the twists and turns of a life that saw Schiffrin become, himself, one of the world's most respected publishers.
The Science of Fiction Read Transcript
04/07/2008
When it comes to literature, are we what we read? Well, if you read novels, it seems that the answer is 'Yes'. Cognitive scientists at the University of Toronto in Canada claim to have found that reading fiction affects our psychology, in effect re-wiring our brains as we process the emotional ebb and flow of character and plot.
One of the researchers, cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley, speaks to Ramona Koval about the findings, and explains how they were able to measure the impact of such a private, silent pursuit as reading.
Lapham's Quarterly: Book of Nature
02/07/2008
From Adolf Hitler's affection for animals to Rachel Carson's warning about dangerous chemicals to Walt Whitman's ode to the city, the latest Lapham's Quarterly charts the rocky terrain of our dealings with nature. The editor, Lewis Lapham, excavates the relationship between poetry, nature, morality and the future of the planet.
Robert Silvers, editor, New York Review of Books
25/06/2008
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, joins The Book Show again to discuss highlights from the latest issue.
First of all, with the presidential election looming (as it seems to have been for years now), we look at someone who could well emerge as a major figure in a future Democrat government, but who few people in Australia will have heard of—Jim Webb. This is a man who's being touted as a serious contender for vice-presidential running mate, alongside Barack Obama. But he's also a remarkable character in his own right, with a public profile that's equal parts 'war hero' and writer. His first book Fields of Fire, written in 1978, has been called the best book about the Vietnam war. And his writing, along with a passion for boxing, has had him compared to the late Norman Mailer. He's also a screenwriter (Rules of Engagement) and a documentary producer, but so much of Jim Webb revolves around his experiences and attitudes to war. So Robert and Ramona discuss Jim Webb's latest book, A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, which reads as something of a manifesto—a pitch for high office.
Then Robert and Ramona move on to Italy, and the rather epic figure of Giuseppe Garibaldi. According to reviewer Dave Gilmour, while other heroic Italians such as Mazzini, Cavour and Victor Emmanuel have become tarnished as clear historical facts start to eclipse pure nationalistic sentiment, Garibaldi remains 'an authentic Italian hero', one of 'the generation of giants' who helped to create modern Italy between 1848 and 1870. They discuss a new book which looks at this revolutionary life—Alfonso Scirocco's Garibaldi: Citizen of the World.
And finally, a look at Edmund White's review of three new translations of work from French writer Marguerite Duras. And in the process he paints an extraordinary image of her post-war years and her intemperate lurchings from alcoholic deathbed to social centre of attention.
The Anatomist Read Transcript
24/06/2008
One of the most famous books ever produced is the medical text known as Gray's Anatomy, published 150 years ago. In his book The Anatomist, science writer Bill Hayes investigates the lives of the two men behind the creation of this classic, the surgeon Henry Gray and his colleague Henry Vandyke Carter, who was responsible for the drawings.
Cover design -- Meanjin
24/06/2008
The discovery of a cupboard full of gems from another world is reminiscent of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from CS Lewis's Narnia series. Sophie Cunningham recently had a 'Narnia moment' when she opened a stairwell cupboard at the old Meanjin office. Inside were 68 years worth of past Meanjinjournals all stacked up in rows.
The first Meanjin under her editorial guidance has come out. Sophie Cunningham said that opening that cupboard was like opening a door on the history of Australian book design, and this Meanjin has a feature on cover design. It is, of course, destined to join those towering columns of history too.
David Blow: Persia Read Transcript
23/06/2008
Ramona Koval says she didn't read classics at Oxford or Cambridge (which she regrets) and so she has a tendency to gravitate towards books that will round out her education. Like Persia: Through Writers Eyes, edited and written by David Blow, who did study history at Cambridge, and Persian at the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London.
He's been a journalist, a publisher and a broadcaster with the BBC's Persian Service. And his book is really a history of Persia through the words of writers from Herodotus, Marco Polo and Vita Sackville-West to writers commenting on present day Iran. He's written a preface to each section outlining the history of the period in which they wrote, and mapped the history of Persia up to latter day Iran—which adds up to about three thousand years of history—just what the autodidact with a thirst for knowledge needs.
EW Cole and the Cole's Funny Picture Books Read Transcript
18/06/2008
A treasured reading memory for many Australians will be Cole's Funny Picture Books -- full of pictures and puzzles and limericks and optical illusions and strange, idealistic little blurbs about life, the universe, and everything. I suspect that, as children, we probably looked at the pictures and puzzles more than we read the text -- which by today's children's books standards is pretty dense. And at the time I certainly knew little about the books' creator, EW Cole.
Edward Cole was an extraordinarily skilled entrepreneur, though not to be confused with the storekeeper, businessman and philanthropist GJ Coles.
Edward Cole did not sell groceries, he sold books, and he was way ahead of his time understanding the value of publicity, advertising and branding. He drew huge crowds into his Bourke Street emporium, Cole's Book Arcade.
And Cole was also an idealist with a Utopian vision of how wonderful the world would be in the year 2000.
Lisa Lang has researched the story of the marvelous EW Cole and has written a book about him called Chasing the Rainbow.
How did Winnie the Pooh get its name? Read Transcript
02/06/2008
How did those charming stories called Winnie the Pooh come to have this particular name?
In his collection Why Not Catch 21? Gary Dexter charts the stories behind the titles of many popular, controversial and important books.
Gary Dexter says the background story of the title of AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh involves a real life bear in London Zoo during World War One, and a swan called Pooh.
Great Australian Eulogies
30/05/2008
Eulogies are strange beasts. They demand eloquence at the very moment that grief tries to steal the words from your mouth. And in a culture where we find any discussion of death difficult, coming up with the right words at the right moment can be a struggle.
Publisher and editor Richard Walsh has put together a collection of moving, funny and often very quirky send-offs in a book called Great Australian Eulogies. And it's not just the large public figures that warrant fine elegies, some of the most poignant moments are low-key and beautifully simple memories of ordinary folk.
At the recent Sydney Writers' Festival, Richard Walsh spoke to an audience about the power and distinctive quality of our parting words in the ritual of death.
Writings on Calcutta with Amit Chaudhuri
29/05/2008
While it may have changed its name to Kolkata, the Calcutta of Amit Chaudhuri's childhood has influenced his writing and sense of self.
The city has also been the home of other famous Indian writers. The West Bengal city of Calcutta is the literary home of the giant of Indian writing Rabindranath Tagore.
But it's with the literary successors of this icon that Amit Chaudhuri as novelist, essayist and musician finds a sense of comradeship -- with their sense of exile as migrants, foreigners and visitors in this city which is a seething, cosmopolitan metropolis.
Amit Chaudhuri has written about the contribution of writers to the aesthetic of Calcutta in a May edition of the Times Literary Supplement. It is an extract from an anthology he's edited on Calcutta's literary heritage which is coming out later in the year, called Memory's Gold: Writings on Calcutta.
How the novel 1984 got its name
28/05/2008
In his collection Why Not Catch 21 - The Stories Behind the Titles, Gary Dexter has compiled the stories of how our favourite works ended up with their names.
While George Orwell was writing what is now the classic 1984 his working title for the book was The Last Man in Europe?
Gary Dexter explains how Orwell settled on 1984 as the title.
Why Not Catch 21? Gary Dexter looks at the stories behind book titles Read Transcript
25/05/2008
Coming up with the perfect title for a book can be a challenge for writers. In his collection Why Not Catch 21: the Stories Behind the Titles Gary Dexter has compiled some explanations for how our favourite works ended up with their names.
From Plato's Republic to Catch 22, he uncovers the debate and the lingering questions about titles we now take for granted.
So how did Joseph Heller come up with the title Catch 22? Gary Dexter explains.
David Rieff live at the Sydney Writers' Festival Read Transcript
23/05/2008
David Rieff is the author of seven previous books on immigration, international conflict, and humanitarianism.
He's been a literary editor, a journalist and is now a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research, a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a board member of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch and a board member of the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute.
But his new book, Swimming in a Sea of Death, is very much rooted in his position as the only son of writer Susan Sontag.
Its subtitle is 'A Son's Memoir' and it concerns his mother's final experience of cancer -- a disease she had overcome three times before.
Susan Sontag was a novelist and an essayist and a writer of non-fiction books like On Photography, Regarding the Pain of Others, Illness As Metaphor, and Aids and Its Metaphors.
David Rieff is a special guest of the Festival and joins Ramona Koval for The Book Show.
Why Not Catch 21? Gary Dexter looks at the stories behind book titles Read Transcript
20/05/2008
Coming up with the perfect title for a book can be a challenge for writers. In his collection Why Not Catch 21: the Stories Behind the Titles Gary Dexter has compiled some explanations for how our favourite works ended up with their names.
From Plato's Republic to Catch 22, he uncovers the debate and the lingering questions about titles we now take for granted.
So how did Joseph Heller come up with the title Catch 22? Gary Dexter explains.
Parallel universes - the politics and history of alien abduction Read Transcript
08/05/2008
Stories of alien abduction, that is, close encounters of the fourth kind, have been around since the 40s.
Bridget Brown has cast her anthropologist's eye over these accounts and says that the sorts of stories abductees tell have intriguing parallels with political events and social changes that define the 20th century - things like the cold war, the biological revolution and ecological destruction.
They tell a story not just of individual experience but of the collective psyche and are a reflection of our fear about war and scientific progress.
The literary Karl Marx Read Transcript
06/05/2008
Karl Marx became one of the most significant political scientists of his age and then of the 20th century, but during his college years he wasn't sure what path to take in life. At one stage he considered a literary future but wasn't sure if he should write poetry, plays or fiction. He burned much of his lyrical work after his political transformation but his fictional attempts are contained in a violet notebook that he sent to his father.
Clunes Booktown - John Marsden
02/05/2008
John Marsden hasn't had to travel very far to get to Clunes Booktown.
John is a popular Australian children's and young adults' author, his books include the popular Tomorrow series, The Head Book, The Boy You Brought Home and many more.
He is a teacher who set up a school near Hanging Rock, Mt Macedon, called Candelbark, which is in this beautiful region. And he's come here today with some of his students.
He'll be in Clunes over the weekend in conversation with the other guest writers too, and he joins Ramona Koval and Michael Mackenzie for a reading from his book Marsden on Marsden.
John Updike's Due Considerations (review) Read Transcript
29/04/2008
Few people in America can compare with John Updike in the art of short-form non-fiction writing -- essays, reviews, critiques and introductions. Updike's prodigious output over more than half a century has, periodically, been brought together in published collections, and the sixth of these is titled Due Considerations. Literary critic Don Anderson reviews this new collection.
Philip Gourevitch, editor of the Paris Review
20/04/2008
American short story writer Leonard Michaels once said that he hated to use adverbs because the 'ly' endings seemed like sloopy trailers.
This enticing bit of information is in a lost interview that was recently unearthed from the Paris Review archives and features in the latest edition of the literary magazine.
Also in that issue is a charming photo essay about dirigibles that explore the terrain of tree canopies, prospecting for flora and fauna, and a feature on the collages Louis Armstrong made which are now on display in the Louis Armstrong House and Archives at Queens College.
Lewis Lapham looks at past thinkers on money Read Transcript
17/04/2008
Lewis Lapham is the editor of Lapham's Quarterly. The second edition of this new enterprise focuses on the history of money and what people have said about it.
Philip Gourevitch, editor of the Paris Review
09/04/2008
American short story writer Leonard Michaels once said that he hated to use adverbs because the 'ly' endings seemed like sloopy trailers.
This enticing bit of information is in a lost interview that was recently unearthed from the Paris Review archives and features in the latest edition of the literary magazine.
Also in that issue is a charming photo essay about dirigibles that explore the terrain of tree canopies, prospecting for flora and fauna, and a feature on the collages Louis Armstrong made which are now on display in the Louis Armstrong House and Archives at Queens College.
Peter Cochrane: Colonial Ambition Read Transcript
07/04/2008
The story of Burke and Wills, and Ned Kelly -- these are the familiar characters in Australian history that re-surface in the popular imagination.
But why do we always return to these stories? Is it because, unlike America, we didn't have a war of independence, that our civil rights movement was overshadowed by what was happening on the international stage, that we formed government through consensus?
Is it because our colonial history is considered fusty and, well, a little dull?
Peter Cochrane thinks it doesn't need to be this way. He says that if historians used the toolbox of the novelist, Australian history would come to life.
Peter Cochrane is the author of Colonial Ambition, which won The Age Book Of The Year Award and was joint winner of the first Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History.
Colonial Ambition focuses on the character William Wentworth, and Peter wrote an article about this man's place in the human drama of our early colony in an article in the recent Griffith Review. The essay's called 'Stories From The Dustbin', and Peter joins Ramona Koval from the ABC's Sydney studios.
Peter Stothard, Times Literary Supplement editor
02/04/2008
The unmistakable sounds of Elgar's best known work, 'Land of Hope and Glory' from the Pomp and Circumstance March, lead us into a conversation with Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, in the ABC's London studio.
Today he's talking about a number of books that have come out to coincide with the recent 150th birthday celebrations of that quintessential English composer Sir Edward Elgar. Peter's also looking at a new book from controversial Nobel prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk -- Other Colours: Essays and a Story. And a new collection of writings from the current embattled head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, titled Wrestling With Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology.
The brush or the pen? Great writer-artists Read Transcript
27/03/2008
In his introduction author Donald Friedman notes that for some of the writers in The Writer's Brush 'a coin toss could have determined whether to spend the day standing in a smock or seated with a pen'. This collection shows what writers like Joseph Conrad, Hermann Hesse, Dostoevsky, Sylvia Plath and many others achieved in their other, lesser-known lives as visual artists.
City of Words: Alberto Manguel Read Transcript
26/03/2008
This Sunday night on Radio National, the Big Ideas program begins a new series of six programs: the Massey Lectures, first broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last year. The lecturer is internationally acclaimed writer and translator Alberto Manguel, who has written novels, film scripts, essays and a range of non-fiction works. He has edited anthologies on a variety of themes including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading and, more recently, The Library At Night.
The Massey lecture series is titled The City Of Words and in it Alberto Manguel turns our attention to a variety of literary sources from the biblical story of the Tower of Babel to the Epic of Gilgamesh; from Don Quixote to Stanley Kubrick's film of 2001: A Space Odyssey and many more. The aim is to address the problem of how we are to live together in this complex, multi-voiced world, where many of the voices are raised in anger and in fear.
Alberto Manguel joins Ramona Koval from a small village in France (where he lives with the gorgeous library he created in a 15th century barn) near the Loire valley.
The plight of book reviewing with Gail Pool Read Transcript
25/03/2008
Gail Pool thinks that book reviewing, especially in America where she is based, is in crisis. In Faint Praise she asks what has gone wrong with book reviewing and has some suggestions for improvements.
Speaking up for silence: writing, silence and solitude
23/03/2008
In speaking up for silence, Aldous Huxley said in the 1940s that the volume of the world had been turned up and he blamed radio for this increase, but now we could say that the volume of the world has been turned up even louder with saturation advertising, mobile phones, internet, blackberries, ipods, the list goes on -- all today's modern distractions.
It's not surprising that it can be hard to gather your thoughts sometimes, and for writers, it seems even more crucial to be able to carve out time and space to compose an argument for an essay or a character for a novel.
Stuart Sim is so passionate about noise pollution that he's written a Manifesto for Silence. He says having quiet space is crucial to our literary culture, and to religious and philosophical thought. And he also looks at how the concept of silence has been used by writers to signify death, the unknowable and the unspeakable.
Writers' retreats can provide the perfect refuge for those who can't write in cafes or at home -- they are reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's belief in the need for 'a room of one's own'. One that's been set up over the last couple of years is Glenfern house in Melbourne.
It has fine artistic pedigree because it was formerly the home of the creative Boyd family, and is now part of the National Trust. With the help of Iola Matthews it has been converted into a writers' retreat, and now there's a new community of writers at the historic house, including bird watcher Sean Dooley and literary fiction writer, Hilary Bonnie.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange ponders the connection between writing, silence and solitude, with a personal reverie about the need for quiet.
Journeying through America with Don Watson Read Transcript
19/03/2008
After reading Don Watson's new book American Journeys, you realise that some things are just 'very American'.
Don's the author of bestselling books on language - Death Sentence and Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, and his celebrated book on his time as Paul Keating's speechwriter and advisor Recollections Of A Bleeding Heart. But Don Watson has lately turned his eye, and it seems his heart, towards the United States of America.
Taking trains, and sometimes driving, he covered 39,000 kilometres, from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, to the Deep South, to Yellowstone National Park, and many motels and diners in between, Don Watson writes of his impressions of the greatest democracy on Earth, a phrase that you hear often in what's also the greatest parochial society on the planet as well.
And Don Watson joins Ramona Koval for The Book Show.
History, geography and culture of the novel Read Transcript
16/03/2008
Franco Moretti, professor of literature at Stanford University, has an innovative approach to examining fashions and styles in literature. It's led to accusations of literary heresy, but Franco Moretti maintains his way of understanding literary history helps the rest of us understand why Sherlock Holmes has endured -- while others of his time gather cobwebs in musty libraries.
Poetry and military life ... teaching literature at West Point Read Transcript
16/03/2008
Elizabeth Samet has spent the last 10 years teaching literature to cadets at West Point, where her students go from reading poetry in the morning to training for combat in the afternoon. In her book Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point she talks about how her students negotiate the world of literature and the world of war, and how being so close to war has affected her relationship to literature.
Damien Wilkins Read Transcript
13/03/2008
New Zealand novelist, short story writer and poet Damien Wilkins has received the Whiting Award for promising young writers and his work is winning wide praise. He's also known for his astute literary reviews and critical essays. Damien Wilkins talks to Ramona Koval from the New Zealand Post Readers and Writers Festival in Wellington.
The poetry of Ted Hughes
05/03/2008
Ted Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998. Although critics are divided about work produced during his Laureate years, many still consider him one of the best poets of his generation. Ted Hughes was married from 1956 to 1963 to the American poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide at the age of 30. His last major work Birthday Letters explored their complex relationship. Julie Copeland enters the poetic world of Ted Hughes.
Robert Silvers, editor, New York Review of Books
04/03/2008
Robert Silvers, the editor of the New York Review of Books, joins Ramona Koval to discuss three new books. First they look at the phenomenon of the online encyclopedia, which is the subject of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton. Some fascinating bits of information emerge, for example, more people use Wikipedia than use Amazon or eBay, and its usage is up there with MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.
Also in the next edition of the New York Review of Books is a review of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A new Verse Translation. British poet, playwright and novelist Simon Armitage has translated this 14th century tale, originally written in Middle English, into contemporary idiom. Does this type of translation work? And what makes this tale from 1380 worth reading today?
And finally, a book about what we eat -- Michael Pollan's In Defence of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Michael Pollan's book is about the industrialisation of the American diet and what that has meant, not only for Americans but for citizens of the many countries around the world, including our own, who have followed America into a fatty, starchy, sugary diet. How did refined white flour, sugars and animal fats come to dominate the American diet?
The history, geography and culture of the novel Read Transcript
28/02/2008
Franco Moretti, professor of literature at Stanford University, has an innovative approach to examining fashions and styles in literature. It's led to accusations of literary heresy, but Franco Moretti maintains his way of understanding literary history helps the rest of us understand why Sherlock Holmes has endured -- while others of his time gather cobwebs in musty libraries.
Memoirs of Zimbabwean-born writer and journalist Peter Godwin Read Transcript
22/02/2008
Peter Godwin's memoir Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa told the story of a boy becoming a young man in the middle of civil war. In When a Crocodile Eats the Sun Godwin returns to Zimbabwe where he finds his parents struggling to remain in a country that has descended into chaos and where he discovers a 50-year-old family secret.
Poetry and military life ... teaching literature at West Point Read Transcript
19/02/2008
Elizabeth Samet has spent the last 10 years teaching literature to cadets at West Point, where her students go from reading poetry in the morning to training for combat in the afternoon. In her book Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point she talks about how her students negotiate the world of literature and the world of war, and how being so close to war has affected her relationship to literature.
Dancing in the Streets with Barbara Ehrenreich Read Transcript
17/02/2008
In her latest book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, acclaimed US writer and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich traces the connections between communal dance parties (like Berlin's Love Parade) and the collective atmosphere of sporting events with the ancient Greek cult of Dionysus, early Christian ecstatic dance, the European carnivale and tribal rituals.
Meanjin's new editor, Sophie Cunningham
11/02/2008
From contributor to editor -- Sophie Cunningham is the new editor of the literary magazine Meanjin. She hasn't started in the job yet, but how is she going to put her mark on this magazine that's been around since 1940? She's taking over from Ian Britain.
She's had many years in publishing; first at McPhee Gribble/Penguin then, from 1994 until 2003, at Allen & Unwin. She's also been at Lonely Planet and is a freelance writer. Her first novel Geography came out in 2004 and her second book, Bird, is coming out later this year.
Sophie Cunningham joins Ramona Koval on The Book Show.
American poetry critic Helen Vendler Read Transcript
07/02/2008
We get inside the mind of eminent American poetry critic Helen Vendler, who sees meaning in the shape of poems, as well as in the words.
Writing numbers -- Rachel Robertson and Toni Jordan
06/02/2008
What is it like to write about numbers? To tell a story through characters who count? To make numbers almost another character of the work?
Two writers who have written about people with numbers obsessions are Rachel Robertson and Toni Jordan. But neither Toni nor Rachel are obsessive themselves.
Rachel Robertson is the co-winner of the Australian Book Review's Calibre essay award for her piece called 'Reaching One Thousand' about her autistic son who's fixated on numbers and measurements.
And Toni Jordan's debut novel called Addition has just been published. It's about Grace Vandenburg, who's witty, attractive, but numbers obsessed to the point where she can't make a decision if it disrupts her numbers routine.
While both these writers deal with the subject differently: one from experience, the other from her imagination, there is a lot of crossover between their works.
Robert Silvers, editor, New York Review of Books
30/01/2008
Noel Coward corresponded with some of the mightiest pens in literature and show business throughout the 20th century. Today, Robert Silvers from the New York Review of Books reviews the publication of the personal letters of the actor and dramatist which expressed the hopes and fears of a society and of an age.
He also talks about Wernher von Braun - the American rocket scientist, born in Germany, who served as an SS officer during the second world war but was taken in by American's to assist in the big space race. And he reflects on a wonderful piece in the Review by Indian novelist Pankaj Mishra, who met, in Beijing, with the dissident writer who goes by the name of "Woeser", and whose voice the Chinese authorities are trying their best to silence.
Dancing in the Streets with Barbara Ehrenreich Read Transcript
29/01/2008
In her latest book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, acclaimed US writer and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich traces the connections between communal dance parties (like Berlin's Love Parade) and the collective atmosphere of sporting events with the ancient Greek cult of Dionysus, early Christian ecstatic dance, the European carnivale and tribal rituals.
Germaine Greer: Edinburgh International Book Festival
25/01/2008
The irrepressible intelligence of Germaine Greer has recently been applied to a subject she knows a lot about. She did her PhD in 1968 on the ethic of love and marriage in Shakespeare's early comedies, and in her latest book Shakespeare's Wife, she takes another look at the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. The marriage has had a very bad press from generations of Oxford and Cambridge dons, who regarded it as cold and loveless. But Germaine argues that Anne has been undervalued both for what she meant to Shakespeare and what she contributed to his work.
This lecture was recorded by the Book Show at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Imagining the Arctic and Antarctic Read Transcript
18/01/2008
The polar regions have been in the news a lot lately, be it in the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, or with images of polar bears perched on melting icebergs -- it's also International Polar Year.
There is something very romantic about the poles, isn't there? They occupy a special place in our imaginations. Antarctica is described as the only true wilderness and is the coldest, driest and windiest place on earth, the Arctic on the other hand has a complex human history from the Saami to the Inuit, but because of the threat of global warming their destinies -- and ours -- are linked.
So, this morning we are joined by three eminent polar writers: a naturalist, historian and archaeologist who have all been either to the Arctic or Antarctic or both.
Bartholomew Roberts: King of the Caribbean Read Transcript
15/01/2008
Pet parrots, excessive drinking, skull and cross-bone flags -- these are all things we associate with pirates but, did you know that in the 18th century when you became a pirate, you had to sign up to special pirate rules, or that there's a tradition of homosexuality within the ranks of pirating?
Well, Bartholomew Roberts raided 400 boats in his short career as a pirate in the Atlantic from 1719-1722 but, unlike the classic image we have of pirates, he didn't drink, gamble or carouse with women. Richard Sanders is a pirate historian and he's written about this disciplinarian pirate in his book If A Pirate I Must Be: The True Story of Bartholomew Roberts, King of the Caribbean.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Richard Sanders about the allure of pirating for the common man.
John Berger's political ways of seeing Read Transcript
14/01/2008
John Berger is a novelist, storyteller, poet, screenwriter, and art critic. His 1972 BBC series and book Ways of Seeing made an enormous impact as a reaction to Kenneth Clark's series on art Civilisation. Now 80, his new book is Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance and it's a series of reflections written between 2001 and 2006, arising from contemporary political moments -- London in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings, New Orleans after its destruction by Hurricane Katrina, New York after 9/11, and the Middle Eastern troubles, from Bagdad to Gaza.
Re-reading DH Lawrence: Tim Parks
07/01/2008
Author, essayist, critic and translator Tim Parks is based in Italy. Tim was asked by a newspaper journalist about the books and authors that he, as a writer, keeps returning to. He considered this question and realised that the work of DH Lawrence loomed large for him.
Calum's Road: Roger Hutchinson Read Transcript
02/01/2008
Journalist and author Roger Hutchinson first encountered the tough and charming Calum MacLeod during the 1960s. But his book Calum's Road is more than just a tribute to this one man. It's an eloquent telling of the history of Raasay's people, of the cruelties meted out to these crofting communities, and of the road that is now something of a shrine to engineers and land-artists and awe-struck people from all over the world.
Roger Hutchinson spoke to The Book Show's Michael Shirrefs from the BBC studios in the Scottish city of Inverness, and he describes the landscape that produced this story.
