Past Programs
Books - 2007
Michael Ondaatje on Divisadero Read Transcript
27/12/2007
Recorded at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal, novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje, the celebrated author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion, speaks to Ramona Koval about his remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time, Divisadero.
Divisadero begins in the 1970s on a ranch in northern California, where Coop, Claire and the narrator – who, as the story opens, tells us she has stopped calling herself Anna – are divided by an act of violence. Anna's mother died giving birth to her. Claire was also orphaned at birth and was left without a family, so Anna's father took both babies home from the hospital and raised them as sisters. Coop is five years older. His parents, who owned the next farm, were murdered by their own hired hand when he was four.
Michael Ondaatje begins with a reading from Divisadero.
Learning to write - the art of the short story
26/12/2007
Now we're going to discover the ingredients for writing a ripping - but short - yarn. Short stories are sometimes considered the lesser cousin of the novel but short story officiandos say they're actually harder to write. What happens when you add a pinch of character, plot and setting and mix in theme and voice? Is there more to learning to write a short story than this recipe?
Get your pen and notebook ready as we go on a creative writing class and find out what it takes to master the art of the short story.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange took part in a four week writing workshop at the Victorian Writers Centre which was led by writer, David Astle.
David Malouf's Typewriter Music Read Transcript
25/12/2007
David Malouf brought out his latest collection of poems, Typewriter Music in 2007. It happens to be the first collection of Malouf poems in 26 years. David Malouf describes Typewriter Music as 'A collection of poems written during 10 years or more. Some of them were written in Italy, others were written in Sydney and have echoes in earlier poems, or in novels or stories; or they spring from the same interest in words and music that produced the librettos.'
David Malouf speaks to The Book Show's Ramona Koval.
Best of Australian poetry (review) Read Transcript
17/12/2007
As the year draws to a close and the silly season approaches, the publishers of Australia's two Best of poetry collections offer some respite from Christmas parties and consumerism, and offer an opportunity to reflect on the work of our finest poets.
Reviewer Geoff Page has been admiring the depth of the work in these two books.
Kathryn Lomer's Two Kinds of Silence (review) Read Transcript
29/11/2007
Poet and novelist Kathryn Lomer has recently published Two Kinds of Silence, her second poetry collection after her award winning Extraction of Arrows.
Reviewer Geoff Page feels Lomer draws on both her crafts, as storyteller and poet. He is entranced by the delicate narrative threads she weaves, which move 'by a series of intuitions and thoughtful observations.'
He starts with a reading of the poem 'Vortex'.
Tim Thorne's A Letter to Egon Kisch (review) Read Transcript
27/11/2007
Poetry reviewer Geoff Page has been laughing out loud in coffee bars, which is a bit unusual for him. What's brought this on? He's been reading Tim Thorne's latest book, A Letter to Egon Kisch. He starts his review by reading us section four from the book.
Barbara Cullen - Outgoing CEO of the Australian Bookseller's Association
27/11/2007
It's turned into a week of major upheavals in the world of politics, and I suspect the Jobs pages, for many senior positions in the public service and beyond, will be full to overflowing for the next few months.
In the midst of all this, though unrelated to the election, a senior figure within the book industry is about to step down. Barbara Cullen, CEO of the Australian Booksellers Association, is stepping aside after four years at the helm of one of our most important industry groups. And although the change of guard is not tied to federal politics, her successor is going to be very interested in whether the new federal government is going to pay any attention to the needs and concerns of the book world.
Barbara Cullen is in that quite luxurious position of being able to reflect about the way the industry has evolved over the 24 years since she first started working in bookshops, moving then to owning her own bookshop in the 90s, and then her most recent work with the Australian Booksellers Association.
And Barbara joins Ramona Koval on The Book Show.
Political satire...we promise we won't talk about the election...maybe
23/11/2007
Now it's a fair guess that, apart from the hard-core political junkies among us, after such a seemingly interminable federal election campaign, most of us are well ready for a good, cathartic scream, followed by a lie down.
Why do they do it to us? Why do we allow them to do it to us? Maybe the answer is that it provides the excuse, and the fuel, for that most exquisite of creative forms -- satire. And the more we hate our pollies and bureaucrats, the more we love our purveyors of political parody.
And for some reason, this political campaign seems to have generated a glorious revival of the art-form of (to use that most Australian of colloquialisms) the 'piss-take'
So as we take a sharp intake of breath before the scream, Ramona Koval is joined by three people who indulge in a bit of parodic behaviour themselves.
Fiona Katauskas, one of this countries marvellous cartoonists, whose work appears mainly in the Sydney Morning Herald and who also produces the 'Talking Pictures' segment of the Insiders program on ABC TV.
Danny Katz, writer and columnist and an expert in the art of social satire; contributor to The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and author of a very cute new children's book called A Little Election, with fabulous images by Mitch Vane.
And finally, the man who has been distilling the output of our newspaper artists for many years now, as editor of the much anticipated annual Best Australian Political Cartoons, Russ Radcliffe.
New York Review of Books update with Robert Silvers Read Transcript
22/11/2007
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, talks about Philip Roth's new novel Exit Ghost, the latest and last in the series begun in 1979 featuring New England writer Nathan Zuckerman. He tells us about environmental activist Dai Qing on China's dire water shortage and a 'looming environmental catastrophe'; and about several new books revealing how drug companies have helped exaggerate the extent of serious depression in order to push sales of antidepressants.
Philip Roth's Exit Ghost (review) Read Transcript
21/11/2007
It can be difficult for novelists to write endings. But the end of a much loved series can also be difficult for readers, when characters they've come to know so well are finished off -- often because their creators want to move on to other pastures.
Harry Potter's last appearance was made in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus took his bow in Exit Music. Now Philip Roth has written the swansong of his character Nathan Zuckerman. In fact, in Exit Ghost, 71-year-old Zuckerman is contemplating the meaning of his own existential end.
Geordie Williamson has been reading Exit Ghost for the Book Show.
David Edgerton's Shock of the Old (review) Read Transcript
20/11/2007
Which do you think was the more important technological advancement -- the rickshaw or the jumbo jet? The condom or the contraceptive pill?
Perhaps the answers are not as obvious as you might first think...
In The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, well known historian of modern military and industrial technology David Edgerton challenges the idea of technology as a glistening behemoth, frog-marching us ever forward into a bigger, better, brighter, faster, future...
Reviewer Jock Given takes a closer look for The Book Show.
Judith Bishop's poetry collection -- Event (review)
08/11/2007
One of the defining characteristics of poetry can be the subtlety of its imagery. We can read a poem over and over before we find a sympathetic interpretation. Judith Bishop's first collection of poems is called Event, and reviewer Geoff Page finds some arresting images among the enigmas. He starts with a reading of Judith Bishop's poem 'Late In the Day'.
Libel tourism - shopping for scandal
05/11/2007
One of the more astonishing aspects of the legal universe, a world where more money can often mean more justice, is a phenomenon known variously as 'Forum Shopping' or 'Libel Tourism'. This is the playground of the wealthy and powerful, where a person (or a company) who doesn't like a legal judgment in one jurisdiction will seek out another, in a country where the laws are more likely to produce a favourable result.
And libel is one area of law most suited to this type of behaviour. A recent case has involved the Saudi billionaire Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz going after Cambridge University Press over a scholarly text called Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World.
Nic Pullen is our libel tour-guide.
Sara Paretsky's Writing in an Age of Silence (review) Read Transcript
02/11/2007
Sara Paretsky is well known for her best-selling VI Warshawski crime novels, and her tough-talking, Smith and Wesson wielding heroine, Vic, who was one of the first female crime fighters to grace the pages of genre fiction.
But Radio National's Lynne Mitchell has discovered that this time she's written a very different sort of book called Writing in an Age of Silence.
The Librarians
31/10/2007
Most institutions are ripe for satire, though the humour is often as much based on myth and stereotype as it is on reality. But there's usually enough truth in the fiction to keep the story interesting.
Well the latest candidate for a good old mocking is the glorious institution of the library, with a new series starting tonight on the ABC called The Librarians. The series is set in an inner suburban community library, staffed by an odd mix of the remedial and the nefarious -- and with a head librarian, Frances O'Brien, who's racist, sexually repressed, deeply insecure and an organisational tyrant.
But we're not going to attempt any comparisons with our guest, Victorian State Librarian Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, CEO of the State Library of Victoria.
Anne-Marie speaks to Ramona Koval.
Inscriptions and marginalia - a tradition of annotations
19/10/2007
How many of you feel comfortable about picking up a pen or pencil and writing inside a book that you might be reading? For example, to create a book program, which involves a great deal of reading with the purpose of a subsequent interview with an author, we have to work quickly and directly with the text to make sense of our thoughts. And this is only possible by making notes in the margins, a sort of shorthand that allows us to then construct a conversation.
And although some people might consider this to be disrespectful of the work, we're certainly working in a very long tradition of people inscribing their thoughts around an existing text. A loose definition for these sorts of annotations is 'Marginalia' - although today guests manage to fine-tune that definition quite substantially.
The history of Marginalia goes back a long way before the printing press, with early hand-drawn manuscripts and books being constantly added to and modified, to make sure that the text maintained its relevance to contemporary thinking.
So on The Book Show today we look at the function and value of these inscriptions over the centuries. And to help us with this, we've been joined by three people who have spent a great deal of time surrounded by books of all descriptions.
In Melbourne is Professor Margaret Manion, who is one of Australia's most eminent and valued Art Historians, and it's Margaret's deep understanding of Medieval and Renaissance books and manuscripts that we delve into today. Margaret is currently the guest curator for a wonderful exhibition, due early in 2008 at the State Library of Victoria, called The Medieval Imagination, which will bring together illuminated manuscripts from Cambridge, New Zealand and Australia. Many of these works have never been loaned before, so the access will be remarkable.
From Palmerston North in New Zealand we're also joined by Dr Nikki Hessell, who teaches in Communication and Journalism at Massey University. Prior to that though, Nikki worked closely with Professor Heather Jackson in Toronto, studying the Marginalia of the Romantic Period, and especially the prolific annotations by Samuel Coleridge - and together Nikki and Heather produced a book called Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia.
And our third guest is Kay Craddock, whose antiquarian bookshop is something of an institution in Melbourne. Kay and her parents have been dealing in rare and valuable works for a many decades and she brings a rich knowledge of the world of the book collector, and the importance of Marginalia in determining the provenance and the authenticity of books.
A tale of two Gertrudes -- with Robert Silvers
18/10/2007
Robert Silvers from the New York Review of Books with a tale of two Gertrudes: Gertrude Stein who, with her partner Alice B. Toklas, is the subject of a new book by Janet Malcolm, and Gertrude Bell, the snobbish Englishwoman who translated Persian poetry, climbed mountains, and was the architect of the modern state of Iraq.
War, Denmark and Hans Christian Andersen
17/10/2007
After the Bible, Hans Christian Andersen's popular fairy tales are said to be the most translated works in literature. But some of his minor stories speak directly to our times, as they did in his 19th century Denmark which faced German expansionism. Scholar and cultural commentor Norman Berdichevsky explores the social significance of Hans Christian Andersen's stories to today's readership.
Not just a big nose - the real Cyrano de Bergerac
16/10/2007
The movie Roxanne with Steve Martin and Darryl Hannah is just one of the many movies inspired by the famous play by Edmund Rostand about a 17th century free thinker with a big nose -- Cyrano de Bergerac. Other than pride in a big nose, the similarities between the real man of French intellectual society and Rostand's character end there. In real life he wrote satirical plays and fiction and his works are considered a precursor to the science-fiction genre.
Margaret Sankey will be discussing, in French, the differences between Rostand and the real Cyrano at Alliance Francais in Sydney on Tuesday 16 October and she joins the Book Show to tell us about it in English.
Frankfurt Book Fair
11/10/2007
It's that time of year when all the important folk of the book industry gather in Frankfurt, as they deal and scheme at the World's largest annual book fair.
Andrew Wilkins, publisher of Bookseller + Publisher magazine and the online Weekly Book Newsletter is there.
He spoke to Ramona Koval about the heightened emphasis on digital publishing and rights, about the featured language and culture of Catalan -- but most importantly it seems for Andrew they spoke about food and food writing.
Book to movie adaptations
05/10/2007
It is, of course, stating the completely obvious that many of the films we see on the big screen have their origins in places other than a film studio. Some screenplays have their seeds in familiar oral traditions, myths, fairy stories, historical tales and even computer games. Very often though, these stories have been adapted from the pages of books. But a book is NOT a screenplay and the fact that a story reads well on the page doesn't automatically mean it will translate to a coherent visual form on the screen. So are there easy ways to determine whether a good book will be a good basis for a film? So today on The Book Show, Ramona Koval speaks to film-maker Bruce Beresford and to Dr Simone Murray, who's devoted a great deal of time to research the relationship between these two forms.
Plus we hear from author Thomas Keneally, whose novel Schindler's Ark was adopted by Steven Spielberg and adapted to the screen, resulting in the remarkably successful film Schindler's List, an experience that seems to be a very rare moment for a writer. Since that time, Tom Keneally has pondered this relationship between book and film. And although Schindler's List was the result of chance events, which he describes as being much like a lightening strike, Tom feels that it is possible to create an environment where book publishers and film producers can share ideas about writing that has screen potential.
National Young Writers' Festival
03/10/2007
What have characters like zombies and Death got to do with writers' festivals? They were part of the controlled choas of this year's National Young Writers Festival for the annual This Is Not Art gathering in Newcastle.
Young writers, creatives and zinesters converged on the beach town to share ideas, home-made books and to have fun, and the Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange was there. She discovered that over the festival's nine year history, it's changed lives.
Legal control of book covers ... the fate of Judith Wright's property
25/09/2007
An interesting issue arose recently, one that's not uncommon, where the release of a book was challenged, not because of the writing, but because of the image on the cover. The book, which was a fairly benign work about Australian cricket, had among its photos on the front cover one of the Captain of the Australian Men's Cricket team, Ricky Ponting. Ricky's management were challenging the use of the photo, not because Ricky owned the rights to the image, but because it was suggested this was a misuse of an image, implying the cricketer's endorsement of the book.
This has become a common bluff by celebrities and celebrity management folk who wish to exert unreasonable control over the way their clients are portrayed in the media. But if they're not the copyright holders, do they have any valid argument?
And in a completely different subject that we can only touch upon here today, but which we'll follow up in greater detail later -- the fate of the home of one of our most iconic poets and writers, the late Judith Wright, is reported to be hanging in the balance at the moment. Judith gave her property to the Australian National University to be used for ecological research, specifying on the Deed of Trust that the property not be sold before 2014 unless there was a necessity to do so. However, before she died, Judith grudgingly agreed to the ANU selling the property to the Duke of Edinburgh Trust -- for $1.
Now the Duke of Edinburgh Trust is trying to sell the property after they unsuccessfully attempted to subdivide the land. And, of course, the Trust stands to make a very large sum of money for their $1 investment. Many people are alarmed by this, and by the fact that there has never been a Heritage assessment of the property.
You would imagine that there are some serious legal impediments for people wanting to dispose of a major bequest like this. But how binding is a Deed of Trust?
Our legal pundit Nic Pullen is a lawyer and partner with TressCox, specialising in publishing and the media, and he joins Ramona Koval to discuss these issues.
Bill Bryson's Shakespeare (review) Read Transcript
17/09/2007
Popular author Bill Bryson is best known for his travel writing, but he's also penned a few very intelligent books about the English language. This interest stretches its legs in his latest title, a biography about William Shakespeare that aims to dispel the myths. Patricia Maunder reviews this new addition to the ever-expanding library of scholarship about the Bard, it's simply titled Shakespeare.
The empire strikes back: Nury Vittachi's literary report from Asia
13/09/2007
Where the Man Booker's concerned, the Empire has really struck back in recent years, last year's winner was Indian born Kiran Desai and this year, among the Asian writers long- and short-listed is Nikita Lalwani for her first novel, Gifted, Indra Sinha for Animal's People and Tan Twang Eng for Gift of Rain. So, it's a good time to have a chat to our man in Asia, Nury Vittachi from the Asian Literary Review and find out if this is just a coincidence.
Napoleon's Double by Antoni Jach (review) Read Transcript
06/09/2007
What happens when you take seven characters whose names start with Jean, throw them into the Egyptian desert, meet Napoleon, and then send them off to Australia to do some cartography? The answer is nothing much, but that was part of the appeal for Brendan Gullifer, writer and broadcaster. He read Napoleon's Double by Antoni Jach for the Book Show and he was swept away by the journey.
Cate Kennedy on the Australian rural voice
30/08/2007
Cate Kennedy is one of Australia's most successful short story writers. She has twice won The Age Short Story Competition and 'Cold Snap', one of the stories in Dark Roots, was published in the New Yorker magazine in late 2006. It was also shortlisted this year for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.
Cate, who has lived in many Australian cities and towns as well as in Mexico, moved to a farm in north-east Victoria some years ago. There she's been soaking up stories and tuning her ear to the voice of Australian rural life.
A guest at this week's Melbourne Writers' Festival, Cate was also recently at the writers' festival in Byron Bay, where she caught up with Pollyanna Sutton for the Book Show.
Banned books in Australia: from moral crusaders to national security Read Transcript
24/08/2007
From the moral conservatism that led to the banning of books like Lady Chatterley's Lover to the more recent banning of the book Defence of Muslim Lands, this panel discussion delves into the history of censorship in Australia.
Petra White's debut poetry collection, The Incoming Tide (review)
22/08/2007
One of the good things about a first collection of poetry is its variety, as the poet experiments with theme and style. Reviewer Geoff Page enjoyed Petra White's first book, The Incoming Tide, where he found much that was original and memorable. Geoff begins with a reading of Petra White's poem 'Ricketts Point'.
Jorge Luis Borges - politically blind but a literary visionary
20/08/2007
It's the 108th birthday of Jorge Luis Borges -- the great Argentinian writer known for his short stories and strange mythical creations in The Book of Imaginary Beings.
In his honour, a Symposium on Borges is being held in Sydney from 23 to 24 August. It's a collaboration between Macquarie University, the Argentine Consulate General of Argentina and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. The Symposium is looking at Borges's literary connections with the English world.
Jeff Browitt is giving a presentation at the symposium. Jeff is Senior Lecturer Latin American Studies, University of Technology Sydney, and he joins us on the phone from Sydney.
Cameron Forbes on Bali Read Transcript
15/08/2007
Peter Mares talks to Cameron Forbes about his new book Under the Volcano: The Story of Bali.
Learning from South Park Read Transcript
14/08/2007
According to a report by the Australian Communications and Media Authority reality TV programs are good for young people. Apparently, shows like Big Brother and Biggest Loser teach teenagers empathy. While this might be hard to believe, as we know, pop culture is not just pop culture - it can be a source of deep intellectual inquiry - the latest issue of the New York Review of Books has a tribute to the Sopranos, there've been countless dissertations on Buffy the Vampire Slayer not to mention the Simpsons.
Now it's the turn of the Simpsons irreverent counterpart - South Park. A book called South Park and Philosophy, subtitled you know I learned something today by academic publisher Blackwell ruminates on the deep philosophical questions posed by this satirical cartoon, which by the way is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Lynne Mitchell has been reading South Park and Philosophy for the Book Show - let's see if she's learnt anything.
What is structural editing? Read Transcript
08/08/2007
Just about every time we speak about the poor state of editing in today's publishing industry, mention is made of the lack of money and about the lack of attention to structural editing. But what exactly is structural editing? At the Byron Bay writers Festival a couple of weeks ago, a workshop on structural editing was given by Freelance editor and writer Shelley Kenigsberg.
Shelley has coordinated and delivered the Macleay Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing in Sydney for 16 years, and has developed and presented courses for the Society of Editors around Australia the Style Council, and language and corporate institutes overseas.
International book aid
08/08/2007
You've heard of Live Aid, but have you heard of book aid? It might seem like stating the obvious that libraries need books -- but what if your country doesn't have a large publishing industry and poverty and social unrest mean libraries don't have the purchasing power to buy books? It often means developing countries rely on international aid for books.
But before you donate that box of books you keep stubbing your toe on in the hallway to a developing country to help out, you need to check whether the books are relevant and useful and in the correct language.
For the Book Show Sarah L'Estrange reports on the international aid of books for libraries in Malawi -- and closer to home, in East Timor.
She started speaking to Jeff Samuelson, from Book Aid International, on the phone in London about the work of the organisation.
Bound for Timbuktu
07/08/2007
Evidence of the West African renaissance of literature from the 1500s is turning up in wooden trunks, caves and boxes hidden in the sand in Timbuktu. Shahid Mathee from the University of Cape Town has been studying these Mali documents known as the Timbuktu manuscripts. Shahid Mathee joins the Book Show from South Africa and talks about some of the surprising finds in these manuscripts, like advice on how to improve romantic liaisons for men.
Creating Big Characters
03/08/2007
If you're in the business of writing stories, it's a fair bet that you'll be needing to populate these stories with characters. Sounds easy! You just need to plonk a few people in there -- a couple of cats, a budgie -- not a problem. But who are the people? What colour's the cat? Has the budgie got issues? Now it's starting to get really complicated. Where do you start?
And is it enough to create characters that are perfectly to scale? Without exaggeration, either physically or emotionally? Is an utterly 'true' character actually interesting on the page or the stage or the screen? Does a story in fact demand something different? Something bigger and more dramatic?
At the Byron Bay Writers Festival last Saturday, some creative folk pondered these questions, and so we thought that we could assemble our own focus group to enlighten us.
Stephen Sewell was on that panel in Byron Bay. He's one of our great playwrights and screenwriters, having constructed some very memorable characters for stage and screen. And even if you haven't seen any of Stephen's plays (his 2004 work Myth Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America - A Drama in 30 Scenes is the most awarded play in Australian history), you'd have been hard pressed to miss the AFI Award-winning film The Boys, a story full of violent ordinariness, cast on a terrifying scale.
Mary-Anne Fahey has been well known as a comedian and comedy writer for TV, and of course her character of the chewing gum twirling schoolgirl Kylie Mole is, quite simply, an Australian archetype. And Mary-Anne debuted as a novelist this year with her children's book called I, Nigel Dorking, about an unhappy young boy who escapes his suburban misery by rewriting his own life as the story of a brave knight.
And our third character artisan, writer Shane Maloney, is the man who brought us the scary and squalid world of state politics in the fabulously funny series of mystery books starring the rather inept, but strangely likeable character of Murray Whelan.
Andrew Wilkins: Bookselling and Publishing News
02/08/2007
Today, Ramona Koval is joined by publishing industry analyst Andrew Wilkins, who's the publisher of the online Weekly Book Newsletter and the monthly Bookseller + Publisher magazine - Australia's two major publishing-industry journals.
Andrew has just returned from New Zealand, where he attended the Montana Book Awards and a publishing industry conference. So Andrew tells us about the award winners and, more generally, the state of the industry in New Zealand.
Plus, in bookselling matters close to Australia, and with the imminent visit of some of the bigwigs from Amazon, the undisputed world champion of online bookselling, Andrew discusses the likelihood of Amazon setting up a division in the region. And he looks at the latest prospective buyer for the 24 Borders stores in Australia and New Zealand.
Robert Dessaix
01/08/2007
At Byron Bay Writers' Festival Ramona Koval compares notes with writer, broadcaster and translater Robert Dessaix on the topic of books, the literary life and the experience of being on the radio.
Robert's stellar career as a writer really took flight with his autobiography A Mother's Disgrace. This led to his novels Night Letters, Corfu and Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev.
But for 10 years, Robert Dessaix was the presenter of the ABC Radio National program Books & Writing. When he left to be a writer full time, Ramona Koval stepped into that role for the following 11 years, until the beginning of 2006 when Books & Writing morphed into this daily program, The Book Show. And so that's why Ramona and Robert got together in Byron Bay, to talk about books on the radio.
50 years On The Road
27/07/2007
Now it's time to get into the groove -- get hip, feel the beat -- because it's just over 50 years since the publication of a novel that defined the post-war counter-culture. On The Road became a subtext to the Beat movement of the 1950s and cast its author Jack Kerouac as the 'King of the Beats' -- and he's even been described as the 'Father of the Hippies'.
But it was the hypnotic musicality of Beat poetry that Kerouac really perfected with On The Road, and along with people like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, a style, a feel and an ethic was created that has been revered, mimicked and adapted ever since.
Recently, at the State Library of Victoria, writers, poets and musicians gathered for a celebration of On The Road and of the Beat style that many of them so admire. The evening, which was called The Beat Goes On, began (quite appropriately) with a reading from On The Road by actor David Tredinick.
Then, staying with the spirit of the Beat, we hear from poet Dorothy Porter whose latest book, the verse novel El Dorado, resonates strongly with the echoes of Kerouac and his cohorts. Dorothy Porter reads from El Dorado in which one of the main characters is a Melbourne-based detective called Bill Buchanan who, caught up in the case of a serial killer, waxes lyrical about the city of his birth, Sydney.
Finally, poet John Tranter, who professes a great love of the Beat poets, brings us a literary conversation between two of the great American poets, separated by 100 years, Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg.
Arthur Boyd's artist book: Sangkuriang, a mythical Indonesian story
23/07/2007
Sangkuriang is a collaborative work between Indra Deigun and Arthur Boyd, who created swirling, magical images to accompany this mythical Indonesian story about volcanoes and strange, unearthly creatures. It was printed in 1993 and is in the State Library of Queensland artist book collection.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to librarian Helen Cole about this book, which is one of her most treasured items in the collection.
The future of digital publishing
20/07/2007
What does the future of the book look like? Imagine a Dungeons and Dragons role playing type game but that instead of pretending to be a knight or a wizard, you're doing it with characters from a funky new novel - say from The Raw Shark Texts. Or, if you're an author, imagine you no longer make money from your book, but from the tie-ins your book produces - maybe a computer game like the one just described.
These scenarios have been hot topics of discussion this week at a seminar about the future of digital publishing organised by the Australia Council. Publishers, literary agents and authors have been imagining a world of print on demand and ebook utopia. They have been nutting out issues from the more glamorous side of marketing to the fiddly problems of digital rights management.
Tom Shapcott's City of Empty Rooms (review) Read Transcript
19/07/2007
Now to the latest poetry collection from prize winning writer Tom Shapcott, The City of Empty Rooms.
For the Book Show, reviewer Geoff Page has been reading this collection.
Nic Pullen on contracts for ghostwriters and biographers
19/07/2007
Contracts are the basis of all formal publishing relationships. Usually they are a fairly straightforward two way agreement between a writer and their publisher. But what happens when a third party is involved, as is the case with authorised biographies and also ghostwritten autobiographies? Suddenly there are three stakeholders, each potentially having a distinct view of how a project should unfold.
What sort of contracts are required then? Can you devise a three way contract that effectively protects the interests of all parties? Who is the publisher answerable to? If there's a dispute, who trumps who? Is it like a game of scissor-paper-rock?
Excess Baggage and Claim (review) Read Transcript
16/07/2007
Excess Baggage and Claim is a literary cross-cultural pairing of the poets, Singaporese Cyril Wong and Australian Terry Jaensch. It pounds the pavement of Singapore's karaoke scene and evokes gay love and desire.
Cyril Wong was winner of the Singapore Literature Prize last year. He is the author of five poetry collections published by Firstfruits Publications.
Terry Jaensch is a poet, playwright and actor. He has been published both in Australia and overseas, with his work broadcast on radio and television.
Poet, writer and broadcaster Alicia Sometimes has been reading Excess Baggage and Claim for The Book Show.
The poetry of JS Harry
16/07/2007
Jan Harry, or JS Harry as she is known, has been described by Peter Porter as 'the most arresting poet working in Australia today'. Her work clearly challanges the form, because other reviewers have said that reading one Harry poem 'is no guarantee that you will make sense of the next'.
Born in South Australia, Jan Harry has lived in Sydney most of her life, and since her first book of poems was published in 1971 she has been given many awards, including the New South Wales Premier's 1996 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize for her selected poems.
Her new book is called Not Finding Wittgenstein and it's a collection of Peter Henry Lepus poems. This Peter Rabbit is on a voyage of discovery, he is an explorer rabbit and also a reporter rabbit and is on a quest to meet and talk with some of the world's great philosophers, in an effort to perhaps understand the world of human beings.
Tom Staley ... the Harry Ransom literary archive in Texas Read Transcript
12/07/2007
A literary archive that contains thirty-six million manuscript pages, five million photographs, a million books, and ten thousand objects including a lock of Byron's hair must be a pretty impressive place. According to the New Yorker magazine, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin also has Ezra Pound's copy of The Waste Land in which TS Eliot wrote a dedication to him, as well as the corrected proofs of Ulysses, on which James Joyce rewrote parts of the novel.
For the last twenty or so years the director of the centre has been Dr Tom Staley, who joins Ramona Koval from the US to discuss the scale and role of the archive.
Untouchable literature - publishing about India's caste system
12/07/2007
If you've read novels like The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy or A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, you'll be painfully aware of the ubiquitous discrimination against Untouchables -- or Dalits -- in India.
Well, an independent publishing house called Navayana, which means new vehicle, is also trying to awaken Indians to the discrimination of the caste system against Untouchables through its non-fiction.
And S. Anand, the founder of Navayana, won the International Young Publisher of the Year Award at the London Book Fair in April this year for publishing books about the caste system and also books by Untouchables themselves.
Anand spoke to Ramona Koval on the phone from Delhi, and Ramona congratulated him on the award.
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books Read Transcript
11/07/2007
A new novel from JM Coetzee is always a publishing event. An excerpt just published in the New York Review of Books of Diary of A Bad Year suggests that Coetzee is yet again playing with the bridge between fiction and non-fiction.
Also we look at two new books which attempt to reveal the real Hillary Clinton...
And we ask, what's behind the new surge of interest in the writing of the late Latin American writer Roberto Bolano?
To discuss all this and more is the editor of the New York Review of Books and Book Show regular, Robert Silvers, speaking to Ramona Koval.
Neil James ... Plain English
11/07/2007
What do Shakespeare, Austen, Churchill and Martin Luther King have in common? According to Neil James, they all have a good handle on the merits of plain language, which is something that our workplaces and public institutions would benefit from.
Neil James is executive director of the Plain English Foundation, based in Sydney. You might have heard him recently on Radio National's Lingua Franca program, talking about the ethics of everyday language.
Neil James was a guest at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival, and that's where Catherine Freyne found him, to ask him about the relevance of Plain English principles to all kinds of expression, including poetry and literature.
She began by asking him about the origins of officialese.
Learning to write - the art of the short story
10/07/2007
Now we're going to discover the ingredients for writing a ripping - but short - yarn. Short stories are sometimes considered the lesser cousin of the novel but short story officiandos say they're actually harder to write. What happens when you add a pinch of character, plot and setting and mix in theme and voice? Is there more to learning to write a short story than this recipe?
Get your pen and notebook ready as we go on a creative writing class and find out what it takes to master the art of the short story. The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange took part in a four week writing workshop at the Victorian Writers Centre - led by writer, David Astle.
Andrew Wilkins - Borders, Booksellers and Digitisation
09/07/2007
With the latest and most important news from the book universe Ramona Koval is joined by Andrew Wilkins, who's the publisher of the online Weekly Book Newsletter and the monthly Bookseller + Publisher magazine -- Australia's two major publishing-industry journals.
Last time Andrew was on the program, he spoke about the surprise decision by the US book giant Borders to withdraw from all its Australian and NZ operations. At that time Andrew discussed what this might mean for the local booksellers that remain.
Now the reason we would want to talk about this is, quite simply, that the arrival of Borders in the first place was so consequential for the way we thought about bookselling in Australia. And so their decision to go is both odd and, whether or not you liked Borders as a retail model, it'll leave a massive hole in the landscape.
Also, at the recent Australian Booksellers Association conference, the president of European Booksellers Federation (EBF) John McNamee gave a keynote address, in which he delivered a sobering assessment of the landscape for local booksellers. He basically said that the 'digitisation' of books was a reality, that it was not going to go away, and that, if booksellers wanted to survive, they'd better start trying to figure out how to live with, and take advantage of, the digital book.
Dave Eggers' What is the What (review) Read Transcript
04/07/2007
The American writer Dave Eggers has a cult following, especially with younger readers. He came to international fame with his part-fiction, part-memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and in his latest novel, Dave Eggers has also blended genres; What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng is based on a real-life story. It's told by Valentino, a Sudanese refugee in the USA.
Ryan Paine is editor of Voiceworks magazine, and a fan of Dave Eggers. For the Book Show he's been reading What is the What which he received as a parcel in the mail recently.
The story of Penguin Classics
04/07/2007
In the year when classic literature topped sales, we meet classics publisher at Penguin Books, Adam Freudenheim. This world-famous series consists of over 1,200 titles ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Australian illuminated manuscripts
03/07/2007
The heyday of illuminated manuscripts was in the middle ages. But, did you know there is a tradition of illuminated books in Australia and that works by Henry Lawson, AB Patterson and Ogilvie have been given this ornate treatment?
The State Library of Queensland has a collection of exquisite Australian illuminated books on display in the Talbot Family Treasures Wall at the moment.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange spoke to the exhibition conservator about some of her favourite exhibits. Rhiannon Walker starts with the Australian history of illluminated books.
David Astle reviews Granta's Best of Young American Novelists #2 Read Transcript
29/06/2007
How do know who the latest and greatest new writers are? Well you can read reviews, or play lucky dip at the book store, or, of course you can listen to the Book Show. But another good way is to browse books of collections for a sneak peak into the creative worlds of different writers in a sort of one-stop-shop.
Our reviewer David Astle has been doing just that, and for the Book Show, he's been reading Granta's latest collection called Best of Young American Novelists #2.
An intimate relationship: editors and writers Read Transcript
29/06/2007
Editors are like invisible menders. If they're good at what they do their tracks are invisible but without their contribution, the work would fray at the edges. So how is this invisible work done? What goes on between writers and editors? What are the politics and protocols of the editorial relationship?
On the Book Show today we're joined by a writer/editor pair who have consented to reveal all! By hearing the perspective of both author and writer, hopefully we'll get some insight into what it's like to edit, and be edited.
Judith Lukin-Amundsen is one of Australia's leading editors, she's worked with the likes of Tim Winton, Robert Dessaix, Delia Falconer, Rodney Hall and Charlotte Wood, who also joins us today. The two have collaborated on all three of Charlotte Wood's novels - one which is forthcoming in October: The Children.
We're also joined by Jacquie Kent, an editor herself, and biographer of the late Beatrice Davis (1909-1992), the legendary editor at Angus and Robertson from 1937 to 1970 - the woman who practically invented the idea of the professional editor in Australia.
Literary knighthoods with Peter Stothard
28/06/2007
A fortnight ago Britain awarded a knighthood (for services to literature) to the author of The Satanic Verses -- one of the world's most lauded and most divisive writers, Salmon Rushdie. The Satanic Verses, 18 years ago, caused such offence to Muslims that a bounty was placed on his head and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill him. Rushdie went into hiding and the British government spent millions protecting him.
To find out more about the decision, the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Peter Stothard, joins me on The Book Show from our London ABC studio.
Ideology in children's fiction
27/06/2007
You don't have to look too far to find examples of ideology in children's literature. Feminist revisions of fairy tales, for instance and you might say that When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs in an example of a kids' book with a strong ideological anti-nuclear message.
John Stephens has made the production of ideology in children's fiction the focus of his research. He is Professor in English at Macquarie University, and he's won the 11th International Brothers Grimm Award for his outstanding body of research into children's literature.
Sanskrit texts for all
26/06/2007
The Clay Sanskrit Library is the brainchild and heart's desire of investment banker John Clay. It aims to produce bi-lingual volumes of Sanskrit literature, with the original Sanskrit text printed in Roman script on the left-hand page and a modern English translation opposite. This way poetry, drama, satire and epic works will be brought to the general reader.
Greg Bailey is Reader in Sanskrit in the Asian Studies Program at La Trobe University in Melbourne, and is translating Sanskrit for the Clay Sanskrit Library project.
Judging a book by its cover
24/06/2007
Do you ever wonder how much thought writers give to the way their books are packaged, especially the covers of the books? Tim Parks, our Italian scribe, has given this subject quite a lot of thought.
Australian crime-writer Peter Corris
24/06/2007
Peter Corris has often been called the Godfather of contemporary Australian crime-writing and the master of the meanest Sydney streets. Cliff Hardy is just one of his creations -- there's Ray Creepy Crawley and there's Luke Dunlop and there's Richard Browning -- and at 65 Peter Corris has now published his 31st Cliff Hardy novel. Mr Hardy has been stripped of his investigator's licence and he's had an appeal denied. But then something happens to make him investigate, regardless of having his ticket removed.
Peter Corris joins Ramona Koval from Sydney and reads a passage from his latest Cliff Hardy novel, Appeal Denied.
The passion and pain of literary translation Read Transcript
21/06/2007
Who would have thought that translating 19th century literary greats would be an activity infused with the possibility for passionate debate over a word used by Emile Zola -- and even global outrage over how to organise a collaboration between translators of the multivolume Remembrance of things Past by Marcel Proust?
Translators are considered to be cultural mediators and ambassadors of foreign literature, but what do we really know of the pain and suffering that goes into their work; and how well recognised are they? The English language translators for Emile Zola and Marcel Proust who are based in Australia will be speaking about the art of translation at an event organised by PEN Sydney next Wednesday 27 June, at the NSW State Library. They join me to discuss contemporary debate in literary translation.
Judging a book by its cover
21/06/2007
Do you ever wonder how much thought writers give to the way their books are packaged, especially the covers of the books? Tim Parks, our Italian scribe, has given this subject quite a lot of thought.
Nic Pullen - Literary marriages, separations and contracts
19/06/2007
Recently we saw one of our most familiar literary figures, Tim Winton, change publishers, moving from his long-time home at Picador, and finding new house-mates at Penguin.
From the outside, a move like this might seem uneventful, even routine. But Tim Winton's departure from Picador must have been cause for a gnashing of teeth. And his arrival back at Penguin - originally his publisher for titles like Cloudstreet, That Eye, The Sky and An Open Swimmer - would be viewed as quite a coup.
One reason for Tim's move may well have been the departure from Picador of his publisher Nikki Christer. She's now Deputy Publishing Director at Random House. But, as with any separation, we may never know the full story.
But what causes authors and publishers to separate and, perhaps more importantly, what role do contracts play in this ebb and flow of literary lives?
Today, Ramona Koval is joined by legal specialist, Nic Pullen.
Tim Parks: Umberto Saba's poem 'Goal ' Read Transcript
18/06/2007
Few things engage the minds of Italians like the sport of football -- or soccer. 'Love' may inflame Italian passions, but football animates Italians like little else. And if we think passionate writing about sport is a recent phenomenon; writer, essayist and translator Tim Parks is about to set us straight.
Here is one of five poems by Umberto Saba (which was the pseudonym of Italian poet and novelist Umberto Poli) written at the time of the 1938 World Cup, held in Italy during the time of the Fascists.
Australian crime-writer Peter Corris
18/06/2007
Peter Corris has often been called the Godfather of contemporary Australian crime-writing and the master of the meanest Sydney streets. Cliff Hardy is just one of his creations -- there's Ray Creepy Crawley and there's Luke Dunlop and there's Richard Browning -- and at 65 Peter Corris has now published his 31st Cliff Hardy novel. Mr Hardy has been stripped of his investigator's licence and he's had an appeal denied. But then something happens to make him investigate, regardless of having his ticket removed.
Peter Corris joins Ramona Koval from Sydney and reads a passage from his latest Cliff Hardy novel, Appeal Denied.
The Power of Literature: Andrew O'Hagan Read Transcript
17/06/2007
Today we bring you the opening address of the 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival by one of Scotland's most gifted writers, Andrew O'Hagan. In his address titled 'The Power of Literature: The News That Stays News', he argues that words and imagination are our great protectors. And when you hear what he has to say, delivered in his sonorous Glasgow accent, you might also walk away convinced of the power of books. It's quite a feast of ideas this morning, told by an erudite and funny writer, so I hope you can stay with us.
But first a little more about Andrew O'Hagan, widely recognised as one of the finest writers in the UK. He's been twice Booker-shortlisted for his novels Personality and Be Near Me. He writes for the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. His latest book, Be Near Me, a novel about the nature of moral ambivalence, tells the story of a priest and his developing relationship with teenagers Mark and Lisa. It's about the effects of grief, longing and the violence of the mob. You might have heard my interview with Andrew O'Hagan here on The Book Show late last year.
O'Hagan's work has always concerned itself with Scottish identity, and more generally with the structures and ideas that hold societies together and the frail bonds which hold individuals to the body of society -- with a tender concern for the people who find themselves adrift and inadequate.
Here he is, Andrew O'Hagan, with his opening address to this year's Sydney Writers' Festival, 'The Power of Literature, The News That Stays News'.
The death of Australian literature Read Transcript
15/06/2007
Are reports of the death of Australian literature greatly exaggerated? Can Australian writing compete in a globalised book trade? The Book Show checks the pulse of our national literature.
In recent months we've seen a changing of the guard among the stewards of Australian literature at our universities.
Peter Pierce, Foundation Professor in Australian Literature at James Cook, has stepped down from his Chair, and Elizabeth Webby has retired after 17 years as Professor of Australian Literature at Sydney University.
But it's been a case of musical chairs in Australian literature. Robert Dixon was appointed to the Sydney University Chair, while the James Cook Chair was taken away. (At least for now - its fate is still being decided.)
Musical chairs is an ominous kind of end-game. But do these developments really sound the death knell for OzLit, as many in the media have suggested?
Seen alongside dwindling undergraduate enrolments in literary studies, in favour of cultural studies and creative writing courses, and the out-of-print status of many Australian classics, it's easy to see why there's a concern about the future of our national literature.
On the other hand, Australian literature is flourishing in international markets as never before. And maybe it's a sign of good health that AusLit has lost some of its 'special case' status in our universities - that it's come out of the ghetto to be included in courses concerned with broader categories of literary and cultural analysis.
On the Book Show today, a crack team is assembling around the prone patient that is AusLit, to check the vital signs.
Elizabeth Webby joins the program from Darwin where she's presumably enjoying the early stages of retirement from her Chair in Australian Literature at Sydney University.
David Carter's with us too, he's Professor of Australian Literature & Cultural History at the University of Queensland - he's in our Brisbane studio. You might say he's part of the new guard of AusLit.
And Mark Davis from the University of Melbourne is here to tell us how Australian literature - and literary culture more broadly - is faring in a globalised, rationalised, 'informationised' world!
Book Expo America
14/06/2007
Book Expos are the place where publishers big and small go to wheel and deal and to discover the Next Big Thing. And Book Expo America is one of the largest forums for book business in the world. For the Book Show, Brendan Gullifer reports from this year's Book Expo America, which ran in New York City from 31 May to 3 June.
Andrei Makine's The Woman Who Waited Read Transcript
13/06/2007
The Woman Who Waited tells the story of a woman's 30-year wait for the man she loves to return from the front during WW2, a wait that seems impossible and inhuman in the eyes of the book's narrator -- a callow, 26-year-old writer from Leningrad who has travelled to a remote northern village of the Soviet Union to record the local customs.
Andrei Makine was born in Siberia in 1957 but sought asylum in France in 1987. With his fourth novel, Le Testament Francais, he became the first author to win two of France's most important literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis.
Andrei Makine was a guest of the recent Sydney Writers' Festival, where he talked with The Book Show's Rhiannon Brown.
9/11 fiction: does it work? Read Transcript
12/06/2007
In the six years since the September 11 attacks on America, the large-scale violence and chaos forced many American and British novelists to reconsider the value of their work and its relation to understanding current events. The 9/11 episode has made its way into more than one work of fiction -- but how successful have the various attempts been in capturing it? Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, discusses this, and the most recent attempt to deal with the issue by American author Don DeLillo and his new novel Falling Man.
The Power of Literature: Andrew O'Hagan Read Transcript
08/06/2007
Today we bring you the opening address of the 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival by one of Scotland's most gifted writers, Andrew O'Hagan. In his address titled 'The Power of Literature: The News That Stays News', he argues that words and imagination are our great protectors. And when you hear what he has to say, delivered in his sonorous Glasgow accent, you might also walk away convinced of the power of books. It's quite a feast of ideas this morning, told by an erudite and funny writer, so I hope you can stay with us.
But first a little more about Andrew O'Hagan, widely recognised as one of the finest writers in the UK. He's been twice Booker-shortlisted for his novels Personality and Be Near Me. He writes for the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. His latest book, Be Near Me, a novel about the nature of moral ambivalence, tells the story of a priest and his developing relationship with teenagers Mark and Lisa. It's about the effects of grief, longing and the violence of the mob. You might have heard my interview with Andrew O'Hagan here on The Book Show late last year.
O'Hagan's work has always concerned itself with Scottish identity, and more generally with the structures and ideas that hold societies together and the frail bonds which hold individuals to the body of society -- with a tender concern for the people who find themselves adrift and inadequate.
Here he is, Andrew O'Hagan, with his opening address to this year's Sydney Writers' Festival, 'The Power of Literature, The News That Stays News'.
Janette Turner Hospital's Orpheus Lost
07/06/2007
In Greek mythology, Orpheus was believed to be one of the chief poets and musicians of antiquity, and the inventor or perfector of the lyre. He travels to the underworld in search of his dead wife, Eurydice. In Janette Turner Hospital's new novel, Orpheus Lost, mathematically gifted Leela, from the town of Promised Land in the American South, travels into an underworld of kidnapping, torture and despair in search of her lover Mishka, a musician from the Daintree in northern Queensland. It's a book that explores the nature of obsession and some of the issues of our time of terror.
Meanjin: the future
06/06/2007
On Wednesday afternoon, the future of one of Australia's oldest and most respected literary journals, Meanjin, will be decided by a subcommittee of the University of Melbourne's governing administration.
Meanjin was founded in Brisbane in 1940 and moved to Melbourne in 1945, and in that time it has been one of the most important conduits of contemporary thinking, with essays from some of the most distingushed writers from Australia and abroad.
In recent years, the magazine has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Melbourne University, but has been able to operate with complete editorial and administrative independence. However, increasingly, there's been pressure on Meanjin to come under the umbrella of Melbourne University Publishing. And it is this decision that has divided opinion and caused quite a stir among supporters of the journal.
At first glance this might seem like little more than a structural adjustment, but in fact it goes to the heart of ideas of independence and of the trend towards convergence and streamlining that seems to be the corporate way within our modern universities.
I'm joined in the studio by the current editor of Meanjin, Ian Britain. We did also ask Louise Adler, the CEO of Melbourne University Publishing, to join us but have not had a reply.
However, we do have some of Louise Adler's comments about the proposal, made last Thursday to John Faine on Local Radio in Melbourne.
Lorien Kay reviews Ten Days in the Hills Read Transcript
05/06/2007
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, that medieval story of a bawdy party in the countryside around Florence, provides the inspiration for Jane Smiley's latest work Ten Days in the Hills, which is essentially a story about a Hollywood house party and the conversations of the guests.
For the Book Show, Lorien Kay has been reading Smiley's latest offering: Ten Days in the Hills.
The poetry of Bei Dao
05/06/2007
Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of the tragedy at Tiannanmen Square in China. Bei Dao's poems became slogans for the many students who gathered in 1989 seeking change, and today we hear his conversation with Ramona Koval at the Sydney Writers' Festival, accompanied by his translator, Eliot Weinberger.
David Malouf's Typewriter Music Read Transcript
03/06/2007
David Malouf has just brought out his latest collection of poems, Typewriter Music, which happens to be the first collection of Malouf poems in 26 years. David Malouf describes Typewriter Music as 'A collection of poems written during 10 years or more...Some of them were written in Italy, others were written in Sydney and have echoes in earlier poems, or in novels or stories; or they spring from the same interest in words and music that produced the librettos.'
David Malouf's Typewriter Music Read Transcript
29/05/2007
David Malouf has just brought out his latest collection of poems, Typewriter Music, which happens to be the first collection of Malouf poems in 26 years. David Malouf describes Typewriter Music as 'A collection of poems written during 10 years or more...Some of them were written in Italy, others were written in Sydney and have echoes in earlier poems, or in novels or stories; or they spring from the same interest in words and music that produced the librettos.'
Clunes Booktown for a Day
27/05/2007
How do you reinvent your town to attract tourists? One way that has been successful in rural towns in the UK and USA is to market it as a 'booktown' and make it a mecca for all things bookish. That is what Clunes, near Ballarat in Victoria has done. On the weekend, Clunes held its first ever 'Booktown for a day' and rare book traders—and book lovers—flocked to the gold rush town. But there's more to making 'booktown' a success than bringing the tourists—there needs to be support from booksellers and the local community.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange went to Clunes on the weekend to witness its transformation into a 'booktown'.
The novel gene - literary Darwinism
25/05/2007
From the selfish gene to the literary gene, can evolutionary theory explain great literary works, our love of storytelling and the behaviour of characters in novels? In an article for the New Scientist, Jonathan Gottschall argued that the present state of literary criticism is outdated, and he has applied what he terms 'Darwinian literary theory' to works like Homer's Iliad, and to Jane Austen's novels. Today on the Book Show we explore whether there is a relationship between natural selection and our penchant for storytelling.
Clunes Booktown for a Day
24/05/2007
How do you reinvent your town to attract tourists? One way that has been successful in rural towns in the UK and USA is to market it as a 'booktown' and make it a mecca for all things bookish. That is what Clunes, near Ballarat in Victoria has done. On the weekend, Clunes held its first ever 'Booktown for a day' and rare book traders—and book lovers—flocked to the gold rush town. But there's more to making 'booktown' a success than bringing the tourists—there needs to be support from booksellers and the local community.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange went to Clunes on the weekend to witness its transformation into a 'booktown'.
Michael Ondaatje on Divisadero Read Transcript
20/05/2007
Recorded at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal, novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje, the celebrated author of The English patient and In the skin of a lion, speaks to Ramona Koval about his remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time, Divisadero.
Divisadero begins in the 1970s on a ranch in northern California, where Coop, Claire and the narrator – who, as the story opens, tells us she has stopped calling herself Anna – are divided by an act of violence. Anna's mother died giving birth to her. Claire was also orphaned at birth and was left without a family, so Anna's father took both babies home from the hospital and raised them as sisters. Coop is five years older. His parents, who owned the next farm, were murdered by their own hired hand when he was four.
Michael Ondaatje begins with a reading from Divisadero.
Arts and letters portfolio with opposition minister for the arts, Peter Garrett
17/05/2007
Last week, The Book Show met Senator George Brandis, federal minister for arts and sport, and quizzed him on the Howard government's policy in relation to the book industry and Australian literary culture. Today, it's Labor's turn with Peter Garrett, shadow minister for climate change, environment, heritage and the arts.
Writing underpins so many of our arts products - film, television, theatre, new media - as well as being the mainstay of publishing endeavours. The quality of these products is to a large extent determined by the quality of the writing.
Yet writing is an aspect of the arts portfolio which can easily be eclipsed by the bright lights of the performing arts and film industries.
So how is writing taken care of in the Australian Labor Party's arts policy? What would a Labor election win mean for our writers, publishers, booksellers and booklovers?
Michael Ondaatje on Divisadero Read Transcript
14/05/2007
Recorded at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal, novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje, the celebrated author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion, speaks to Ramona Koval about his remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time, Divisadero.
Divisadero begins in the 1970s on a ranch in northern California, where Coop, Claire and the narrator – who, as the story opens, tells us she has stopped calling herself Anna – are divided by an act of violence. Anna's mother died giving birth to her. Claire was also orphaned at birth and was left without a family, so Anna's father took both babies home from the hospital and raised them as sisters. Coop is five years older. His parents, who owned the next farm, were murdered by their own hired hand when he was four.
Michael Ondaatje begins with a reading from Divisadero.
Sucked In, by Shane Maloney
13/05/2007
For fans of Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan series, the wait is over. Number six in the series is here. Sucked In. No – that's the title.
It's 1997 in Victoria and the premier of the state is lording it over everyone and everything – standing tall at the opening of a big new casino.
And Murray Whelan himself? The ALP member for Melbourne Upper is enduring the long lonely slog of opposition – and within a page or two of his new adventure, he is indeed sucked in – this time into a mystery about some human remains that have turned up in a dried-up lake.
If you're already addicted to these very funny books, then your new fix has arrived. And if you're new to the Murray Whelan books, why not start here?
Murray Whelan's creator (and winner of the wonderfully named Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel) Shane Maloney joins Michael Gurr for a natter.
The Secret of Lost Things with Sheridan Hay
10/05/2007
In Sheridan Hay's debut novel The Secret of Lost Things the 18-year-old Tasmanian, Rosemary Savage, goes to New York after the death of her mother and finds a job at the Arcade – a huge, rambling bookstore – and ends up working with people who seem like they've just stepped off the pages of a Dickens novel.
The Secret of Lost Things is a coming-of-age novel about a young woman dealing with grief and finding that a big part of her education is in the bookstore. But there's also a literary twist, she ends up on an adventure searching for records of Herman Melville's lost manuscript The Isle of the Cross. Along the way there are also references to Melville's Moby Dick and Redburn, but also to Shakespeare's Tempest. In her novel, Sheridan Hay explores the idea of the work-within-the-work.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Australian born Sheridan Hay in New York, where she has lived for many years. Sheridan starts with a reading from the book.
Sucked In, by Shane Maloney
07/05/2007
For fans of Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan series, the wait is over. Number six in the series is here. Sucked In. No – that's the title.
It's 1997 in Victoria and the premier of the state is lording it over everyone and everything – standing tall at the opening of a big new casino.
And Murray Whelan himself? The ALP member for Melbourne Upper is enduring the long lonely slog of opposition – and within a page or two of his new adventure, he is indeed sucked in – this time into a mystery about some human remains that have turned up in a dried-up lake.
If you're already addicted to these very funny books, then your new fix has arrived. And if you're new to the Murray Whelan books, why not start here?
Murray Whelan's creator (and winner of the wonderfully named Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel) Shane Maloney joins Michael Gurr for a natter.
Dorothy Porter: El Dorado
06/05/2007
When you hear the words 'widely read' and 'poet' in the same sentence, you could be forgiven for thinking that someone's got something wrong.
But Dorothy Porter's verse novels have won thousands of new readers to a form that many people are a little bit scared of. The Monkey's Mask has been a film, a play – and has been recently adapted for radio by the BBC.
Two of Dorothy Porter's other verse novels – What a Piece of Work and Wild Surmise – have been short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and she's worked with the composers Jonathon Mills and Paul Grabowsky.
She's got a brand new verse novel out – it's called El Dorado – and it's about some really nasty crimes and some very troubled people.
Alex Jones on the meaning of Helen Garner
03/05/2007
Alex Jones's book Helen Garner And The Meaning of Everything is about a retired professor – the Dreamer – and his search for the meaning of everything.
It's part literary detective novel, part free-fall shaggy dog story and it's also a portrait of a generation, the Baby Boomers – or at least one slice of that generation.
David Malouf has called it 'farcical and slyly illuminating'.
Alex Jones has spent most of his working life teaching at the University of Sydney, where language and literature were his daily food. He is now retired and joins us on The Book Show.
Charles Dickens World
01/05/2007
There is a new addition to the literary landscape in Kent, England, called Charles Dickens World. It will feature Europe's largest themed dark boat ride, transporting visitors from the depths of London's sewers through atmospheric streets, courtyards, markets and shops, to a magical flight across the rooftops of London. The ghosts of Ebenezer Scrooge will come back to haunt you in the Haunted House and children can have fun in Fagin's Den – the children's play area. A 250-seater 'theatre' provides an up-to-the-minute, multi-sensory animatronic performance throughout the day, with a live 'supper' show in the evening.
Andrew Wilkins talks about this strange new land. Andrew Wilkins is the publisher of the online Weekly Book Newsletter and the monthly Bookseller + Publisher magazine.
Dorothy Porter: El Dorado
30/04/2007
When you hear the words 'widely read' and 'poet' in the same sentence, you could be forgiven for thinking that someone's got something wrong.
But Dorothy Porter's verse novels have won thousands of new readers to a form that many people are a little bit scared of. The Monkey's Mask has been a film, a play – and has been recently adapted for radio by the BBC.
Two of Dorothy Porter's other verse novels – What a Piece of Work and Wild Surmise – have been short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award and she's worked with the composers Jonathon Mills and Paul Grabowsky.
She's got a brand new verse novel out – it's called El Dorado – and it's about some really nasty crimes and some very troubled people.
Judging a book by its cover
26/04/2007
How many love affairs with a book begin with that first glance at the cover? A book jacket can lure us in; the images, colours, even typeface speaking a subliminal language which engages the reader and suggests the pleasures that lie within.
Within the specialised world of book designers, New Yorker Chip Kidd is an acknowledged master. He's been called everything from the Elvis of the industry to a 'design demigod' and he's currently in Australia speaking at various design events around the country.
He's created covers for a long list of contemporary authors including William Boyd, John Updike, Michael Crichton and Peter Carey.
For the Book Show, he spoke to Radio National's Annie Hastwell about the relationship between author and designer.
Kirsten Alexander reviews The Emperor's Children
26/04/2007
Claire Messud is a writer of fiction, primarily novels, and the author, most recently, of The Emperor's Children. It's described as an astute and poignant evocation of hobnobbing glitterati in the months before and immediately following September 11. Reviewer Kirsten Alexander had a look at the novel for the Book Show.
Tim Parks on The Mezzanine
24/04/2007
Novelist, essayist and translator Tim Parks these days observes the world from his vantage point in northern Italy, just outside Milan. Today he shares his reflections on an extraordinary novel first published in 1988. It's by New York writer Nicholson Baker, and it's called The Mezzanine.
Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and England's richest literary prize
23/04/2007
Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and Book Show regular, Peter Stothard, talks about Ian McEwan's new novel On Chesil Beach, the much anticipated follow-up to Saturday. It tells the story of a young couple's wedding night, but what McEwan has created here is a social and political portrait of Britain in 1962, on the verge of major social change. We also find out about the controversy surrounding England's richest literary prize – the David Cohen – which was awarded to the Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon.
The Dangerous Book For Boys: Conn Iggulden (repeat) Read Transcript
19/04/2007
Now I'm going to talk to the men out there (although I suspect a lot of women will relate to this as well). How many of you have fond memories of a childhood full of books that told you how to make things, how to do things that were really fun, told you ripping yarns -- Boys Own Annuals, Eagle Comics, Coles Funny Picture Books?
(First broadcast 28/2/2007)
How Novels Work: according to John Mullan (repeat) Read Transcript
16/04/2007
The Book Show's first guest for 2007, John Mullan, said that until recently, literary criticism was something that only professors and students did, sealed away in classrooms. (First broadcast 29/1/2007)
50th anniversary: The Cat in the Hat (repeat)
16/04/2007
Of all his books, it's The Cat in the Hat that he's most remembered for. Dr Seuss, that is, or Theodor Seuss Geisel, to use his proper name. And earlier this year was the 50th anniversary of the publication of that zany title that's been so seminal in promoting literacy among young children. The Cat in the Hat is famous for its lively use of limited vocabulary ... putting the fun into learning to read.
To read it, one of Australia's most popular children's writers, Duncan Ball.
(First broadcast 2/3/2007)
Sarah Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan Read Transcript
15/04/2007
The setting for Sarah Dunant's new novel In the Company of the Courtesan is 16th century Venice. It opens with the violent sack of Rome in 1527 by Spanish and German armies, and there we meet Bucino Teodoldi, a protective and clever dwarf employed by Fiammetta Bianchini, Rome's most celebrated courtesan, all of 21 years old.
Novelist, broadcaster and critic Sarah Dunant trained as a historian at Cambridge. She is known for her crime novels featuring private investigator Hannah Wolfe, and more recently for her historical novels, the first of which was The Birth of Venus.
Sarah Dunant joined the Book Show from London and starts with a reading from In the Company of the Courtesan.
Life writing, trauma and healing
13/04/2007
How healing is it to write personal stories of trauma about very intimate subjects like child abuse, neglect and incest – and then to publish them? This may sound like a heavy subject, but these painful stories are often tales of survival. Might this explain why they're so popular with readers and why they're flying off the bookstore shelves?
In today's panel discussion we take a deeper look into the issues around traumatic life writing. What are the ethics of revealing all, what are the risks, and is it therapeutic?
Sarah Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan Read Transcript
12/04/2007
The setting for Sarah Dunant's new novel In the Company of the Courtesan is 16th century Venice. It opens with the violent sack of Rome in 1527 by Spanish and German armies, and there we meet Bucino Teodoldi, a protective and clever dwarf employed by Fiammetta Bianchini, Rome's most celebrated courtesan, all of 21 years old.
Novelist, broadcaster and critic Sarah Dunant trained as a historian at Cambridge. She is known for her crime novels featuring private investigator Hannah Wolfe, and more recently for her historical novels, the first of which was The Birth of Venus.
Sarah Dunant joined the Book Show from London and starts with a reading from In the Company of the Courtesan.
Women and publishing
11/04/2007
After all the gains for feminism in the last 30 years, it might surprise you that women are still under-represented in the book publishing world.
A new study in the United States called Women and Books 2007 is looking into why women's non-fiction writing is not seen in the best-seller lists as often as men's.
Jan King has developed this study to look at the gender imbalance in publishing and she spoke to the Book Show on the phone from California.
Voiceworks magazine for young writers
11/04/2007
The magazine Voiceworks is a platform for emerging writers, as well as cartoonists, illustrators and photographers to have their work published. Voiceworks is run by Express Media, which provides avenues for young people to be heard through the media.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange visited the busy office of Voiceworks and met some of the contributors. She started by asking the new editor Ryan Paine about his ideas for the magazine in the future.
Giampaolo Pansa: The Big Lie Read Transcript
10/04/2007
Australia isn't the only country in which history – and the way it's being interpreted – is being played out in politics.
Italy is in the midst of yet another battle in its long-standing history wars. And this time, it's all over a book.
It's called The Big Lie, the latest work of Giampaolo Pansa, a well-known journalist of the Italian left. And his political affiliations are an important part of the story. That's because Pansa is attacking the sacred cow of Italy's former and current communists; the World War 2 Resistance.
Radio National's James Panichi moved to Italy with his family as a young boy, and he's been taking a look at The Big Lie.
Adib Khan: Spiral Road
10/04/2007
Now to a new book by Adib Khan which deals with the loyalties – personal and political – of a migrant Muslim man, Masud Alam. After living in Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne, for many years, he goes back to visit his family in Bangladesh. Things are of course not the same as when he left – his father is succumbing to Alzheimer's disease, his mother is finding it hard to cope, his brother has all the family responsibilities on his shoulders, and his sister is now a divorced woman after her violent marriage has been dissolved. And of course this is post 9/11 so he is now officially living in a time of terror.
Adib Khan lived in Bangladesh till 1973 when he came to Australia, studied English literature and history, and worked as a teacher. He started writing in his 40s and had great success with his first novel Seasonal Adjustments, which won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the Book of the Year award in the 1994 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and the 1995 Commonwealth Writer's prize for Best Book.
Spiral Road is his fifth novel and before he speaks to Ramona Koval, Adib Khan reads a passage from his book.
Adib Khan: Spiral Road
10/04/2007
Now to a new book by Adib Khan which deals with the loyalties – personal and political – of a migrant Muslim man, Masud Alam. After living in Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne, for many years, he goes back to visit his family in Bangladesh. Things are of course not the same as when he left – his father is succumbing to Alzheimer's disease, his mother is finding it hard to cope, his brother has all the family responsibilities on his shoulders, and his sister is now a divorced woman after her violent marriage has been dissolved. And of course this is post 9/11 so he is now officially living in a time of terror.
Adib Khan lived in Bangladesh till 1973 when he came to Australia, studied English literature and history, and worked as a teacher. He started writing in his 40s and had great success with his first novel Seasonal Adjustments, which won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, the Book of the Year award in the 1994 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and the 1995 Commonwealth Writer's prize for Best Book.
Spiral Road is his fifth novel and before he speaks to Ramona Koval, Adib Khan reads a passage from his book.
Georgina Harding's The Solitude of Thomas Cave
03/04/2007
For some people, the thought of spending months on end alone would be like a personal hell, and writer Georgina Harding explores this idea in her debut novel, The Solitude of Thomas Cave.
The novel is set in the 17th century – a time of exploration and discovery – and whaling ships are going further afield than they have previously. After experiencing personal grief, the British whaler Thomas Cave bets his crew-mates that he can survive the winter by himself on the whaling station, in what was thought to be Greenland. The question is will his mind survive the ordeal of solitude?
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Georgina Harding in the ABC's London studios about her novel. Georgina starts with a reading from her book.
Miranda Seymour's memoir of obsession: In My Father's House Read Transcript
01/04/2007
In her new book In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love, Miranda Seymour turns her considerable powers of observation, research and language to a story close to home, indeed the story revolves around her home and the obsessive love of her father, George Fitzroy Seymour, for a house called Thrumpton.
Hamid Dabashi Read Transcript
01/04/2007
To understand a bit more of the place of Iran in the world, Ramona Koval is joined from New York by Professor Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
Felipe Fernández-Arnesto: the Idea of 'Nation'
30/03/2007
Today we talk about nations – sociologists call them 'vertical communities', which is an interesting image. But what do you think the concept 'nation' means? How does one go about thinking of a description? Are nations something testable and measurable – like the patch of land we inhabit and make our life on, within its designated borders? Or are nations more of an idea, an emotional or even mystical notion, to which we attach and derive our sense of belonging? And if that's the case what's happening to the concept of nations in our increasingly globalised world?
Some meaty questions there, and who better to explore the idea of nations and where they might be heading in the future than a historian? One who might look at past trends to determine where we might be heading in the future.
Felipe Fernández-Arnesto is a British/Spanish historian, and he is a man who moves with startling ease across large intellectual landscapes. By day, he is the Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary University of London, and since 2005 has been Principe de Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at Tufts University; and is a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford.
He is a British historian on a truly grand scale, impressive not only for the volume, but the range of his output; including the books Millenium: A history of the Last 1000 Years, A History of Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed, and Civilisations. He has also written a history of food, and a history of the world. And in his most recent book he's explored the idea of discovery – of how civilisations converge and diverge.
Filipe rejects the idea of progressive history. He says he wants history to be scientifically informed and generously defined. He's not a relativist or a postmodernist but a man who believes in objective historical reality, which is, in itself, quite a bold stance these days.
He has described the future as 'the past we have not experienced yet', and today he's going to explain why, according to the normal rules of futurology, nations should disappear from the 21st century lexicon ... and why they wont!
Here's the flamboyant Felipe Fernández-Arnesto recorded last August addressing an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Miranda Seymour's memoir of obsession: In My Father's House Read Transcript
29/03/2007
Miranda Seymour joins us to talk about her memoir, In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love. Miranda Seymour has written novels, children's stories, and several works of non-fiction including literary biographies of Henry James, Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Ottoline Morrell. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts, and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Nottingham Trent.
In her new book In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love, Miranda Seymour turns her considerable powers of observation, research and language to a story close to home, indeed the story revolves around her home and the obsessive love of her father, George Fitzroy Seymour, for a house called Thrumpton.
Kate Bochner reviews The Shoe Queen
29/03/2007
Radio National's own Kate Bochner reviews a book about a tale of forbidden love and must-have shoes set in 1920s Paris. It's the fourth novel by author Anna Davis, it's called The Shoe Queen, and it's part chick-lit, part historical saga.
National Biography Award winner: Jacob Rosenberg Read Transcript
28/03/2007
The National Biography Award 2007 was announced last night, and the winner, Jacob Rosenberg, joins us on the program this morning. Jacob won the prize for his book East of Time, which also won last year's NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Jacob Rosenberg has written a number of books, both prose and poetry, in English and in Yiddish, his first language. This latest book is a collection of stories he has carried in his head for a long time, stories from his childhood to his early 20s.
Jacob Rosenberg has lived in Australia since 1948. He was born in Poland, the youngest member of a working-class Jewish family. The family lived in Lodz, a city known as the Polish Manchester because of its textile industry. With the German occupation of Poland, Jacob and his family were confined to the Lodz ghetto until they were sent to Auschwitz. Within a few days of arriving there, he was the only one of his family still alive.
Hamid Dabashi Read Transcript
27/03/2007
To understand a bit more of the place of Iran in the world, Ramona Koval is joined from New York by Professor Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
The 'Song of songs': eroticism in the Bible
25/03/2007
The 'Song of songs' is attributed to King Solomon, and some might say that it's not surprising that a man who had a thousand wives might have come up with a poem a bit on the blue side. 'Let my lover come into his garden/and taste his delicious fruit,' the Shulamite beckons. 'And oh, may your breasts be like clusters/of grapes on a vine, the scent/of your breath like apricots/you mouth good wine,' he answers.
But religious historians have bent over backwards to argue that what seems to be a description of the relationship between a young woman (the Shulamite) and her lover is actually a political or religious allegory. Some argued it was an account of God's relations with Israel from the Exodus to the coming of the Messiah. Luther thought of it as Solomon's thanks to God for his divinely ordained and peaceful kingdom. In 1992, a Jesuit theologian said it was about the restoration of the monarchy in Judah after the exile.
So what is this poem doing in the Bible?
Dr Michael Fagenblatt, lecturer in Jewish civilisation in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, joins us to discuss the poem.
Rachel Seiffert's Afterwards
21/03/2007
Rachel Seiffert's first novel The dark room was a book that explored the effect of the Second World War on three Germans. And it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In her latest book Afterwards war is a theme again, along with the way that men who see action can suffer in silence for the rest of their lives.
Guilt, grief, and memory are also themes here. Afterwards raises questions about how much we can share in each other's stories; how much telling things can be a help; and whether telling and not telling is the difference between men and women.
Rachel Seiffert joins us on the phone from London.
The 'Song of songs': eroticism in the Bible
21/03/2007
The 'Song of songs' is attributed to King Solomon, and some might say that it's not surprising that a man who had a thousand wives might have come up with a poem a bit on the blue side. 'Let my lover come into his garden/and taste his delicious fruit,' the Shulamite beckons. 'And oh, may your breasts be like clusters/of grapes on a vine, the scent/of your breath like apricots/you mouth good wine,' he answers.
But religious historians have bent over backwards to argue that what seems to be a description of the relationship between a young woman (the Shulamite) and her lover is actually a political or religious allegory. Some argued it was an account of God's relations with Israel from the Exodus to the coming of the Messiah. Luther thought of it as Solomon's thanks to God for his divinely ordained and peaceful kingdom. In 1992, a Jesuit theologian said it was about the restoration of the monarchy in Judah after the exile.
So what is this poem doing in the Bible?
Dr Michael Fagenblatt, lecturer in Jewish civilisation in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, joins us to discuss the poem.
Worldwide reading in memory of Anna Politkovskaya
20/03/2007
Over the past year, the plight of writers and journalists, working under threat of violence and death, has been brought to the fore, with the very conspicuous murders of Russian journalist and writer Anna Politkovskaya and the Armenian/Turkish newspaper editor Hrant Dink. And just last Friday, we heard of the suspicious death of another Russian journalist Ivan Safronov. While these types of murders are nothing new, they do tell us that the stakes can get very high, if you try to report the truth and threaten people in power. Ivan Safronov had been working on some damning exposes of failures within the Russian military, and of course Anna Politkovskaya had been reporting on the brutality of Russia's protracted military campaign in Chechan.
So to honour the courage of journalists and writers, a worldwide reading of the work of Anna Politkovskaya is being held today - organised by the Berlin-based Peter Weiss Foundation for Art and Politics, in conjunction with International PEN. The Australian readings have been organised by the Melbourne chapter of International PEN are to be held this evening (Tuesday 20th March 2007) at 7.30 at La Mama at the Carlton Courthouse. Everyone in Melbourne is welcome, but for those of you who can't attend, we've got an excerpt from A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya. The reader is Jema Stellato Pledger.
Modern applications and abuses of copyright law
20/03/2007
We know Copyright Laws have clearly been created and have evolved for very good reasons. But strict application of the laws isn't always in the best interests of everyone involved in the care of an original work of art, whether it be music, visual art or writing. So our regular expert on the legal side of the literary world, Nic Pullen from Holding Redlich joins Ramona Koval to discuss these issues.
Artists' books: A creative collaboration
15/03/2007
Collaborations are an important feature in the creation of finely made artists' books. Professor Sasha Grishin says that "collaboration is like the art of listening, but listening for the harmony, not the melody."
We meet two people who have been working together, in harmony, for over 15 years making artists' books: printmaker, Bruno Leti and poet, Chris Wallace-Crabbe.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange visited the studio of Bruno Leti in Melbourne to discover how they work together. Chris Wallace-Crabbe begins with a poem that marks the beginning of their collaboration.
Books as works of art
15/03/2007
Today we explore the poetic world of finely made books which are objects of art in themselves: that is, artists' books. These books are neither about art nor about artists, so how do we define them?
Dianne Fogwell and Sasha Grishin join us to discuss this hybrid form, which cuts across printmaking, bookbinding, words and images.
Dianne Fogwell is curator of the touring exhibition on artists' books that opens this weekend at the State Library of Victoria. She was also lecturer-in-charge until 2005 at the Edition + Artist Book Studio in the School of Art at the Australian National University.
Professor Sasha Grishin is head of art history at ANU and wrote the catalogue essay for this exhibition.
William Boyd's novel Restless
11/03/2007
Scottish writer William Boyd is the author of nine novels, two collections of short stories and 13 screenplays. His characters are mainly misfits and flawed drifters on the run from something and his new spy novel Restless is no exception.
In 1976, Ruth Gilmartin learns that her very English mother, Sally, is not English at all. She is really Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigrée and second world war spy recruited by the British Secret Service recruited into the British Secret Service in 1939 by Lucas Romer as part of AAS, Romer's somewhat maverick branch of the service.
And she's behaving very strangely. Even her grandson notices she is odd. And that's when she gives her daughter Ruth a memoir that tells the story of her involvement with the world of spies and intrigue. And in the mid-70s setting, another story of intrigue takes place with a background of German terrorists, the Bader-Meinhoff gang, and the activities of SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency founded in 1957 that spied on and tortured and killed opponents of the Shah.
William Boyd speaks to Ramona Koval from the ABC's London studios.
Janette Turner Hospital
09/03/2007
Janette Turner Hospital is one of Australia's literary diaspora, and as such she has much to say about being a stranger in a strange land.
She currently resides in the US, as she is the Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. But she has been a traveller since birth. She's perhaps best known for her most recent work Due Preparations For The Plague, but today she reads a piece she wrote as part of a series on being a writer, and a stranger in a strange land.
William Boyd's novel Restless
05/03/2007
Scottish writer William Boyd is the author of nine novels, two collections of short stories and 13 screenplays. His characters are mainly misfits and flawed drifters on the run from something and his new spy novel Restless is no exception.
In 1976, Ruth Gilmartin learns that her very English mother, Sally, is not English at all. She is really Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigrée and second world war spy recruited by the British Secret Service recruited into the British Secret Service in 1939 by Lucas Romer as part of AAS, Romer's somewhat maverick branch of the service.
And she's behaving very strangely. Even her grandson notices she is odd. And that's when she gives her daughter Ruth a memoir that tells the story of her involvement with the world of spies and intrigue. And in the mid-70s setting, another story of intrigue takes place with a background of German terrorists, the Bader-Meinhoff gang, and the activities of SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency founded in 1957 that spied on and tortured and killed opponents of the Shah.
William Boyd speaks to Ramona Koval from the ABC's London studios.
50th Anniversary - The Cat in the Hat
02/03/2007
Of all his books, it's The Cat in the Hat that he's most remembered for - Dr Seuss that is or, Theodor Seuss Geisel, to use his proper name. And today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of that zany title that's been so seminal in promoting literacy among young children, with its lively use of a limited vocabulary and for putting the fun into learning to read.
To read it, one of Australia's most popular children's writers, Duncan Ball.
The Dangerous Book For Boys: Conn Iggulden Read Transcript
28/02/2007
Now I'm going to talk to the men out there (although I suspect a lot of women will relate to this as well). How many of you have fond memories of a childhood full of books that told you how to make things, how to do things that were really fun, told you ripping yarns -- Boys Own Annuals, Eagle Comics, Coles Funny Picture Books?
Well what seems like a distant memory has been revived in a new book, titled The Dangerous Book For Boys, written by two brothers Conn and Hal Iggulden. This book is filled with the most extraordinary mix of 'things you really ought to know' (poetry, grammer, Latin, history, first aid), and 'things you, perhaps, ought not to know -- but are exceedingly fun'. Having said that, there is nothing in this book that should raise the eyebrow of any parent. The fun described is that sort of lo-tech, quaintly nostalgic mix of billy-carts and tree houses and juggling and skipping stones.
The other remarkable thing about this book is that, while it's been sitting at the top of the UK's non-fiction bestseller list, Conn Iggulden's had another book at the top of the fiction list. This is unprecedented. Conn is best known for his epic series of novels based on the life of Julius Caesar. His lastest novel, Wolf of the Plains, is the first in a new series based on the life of Genghis Khan.
But it's good, old-fashioned fun that we're interested in today, and so Michael Shirrefs decided to do some serious research with The Dangerous Book For Boys, making paper planes and water-bombs -- and then he asked Conn Iggulden if the neatest trick was getting two books to sumultaneously top the UK lists?
Nic Pullen, literary lawyer
19/02/2007
Many people could be mistaken for believing that book publishing is a delightful pastime, I mean, you get to choose, nurture and encourage authors. Together you publish books to an adoring audience. Both you and the authors make money, allowing you all to write and publish more books ... and the world is a nicer place for all your high-minded endeavours.
The reality, of course, is a bit different. Financially, choosing authors and manuscripts and getting their books on a shelf where they'll be noticed is a huge gamble, with narrow margins and the need for enormous amounts of capital, just to get started.
And then there are the legal risks. Defamation, libel, plagiarism, contempt, inaccuracies and outright lies, all potentially there in the pages of a manuscript, waiting to catch out a too-trusting publisher.
So, how do you protect yourself? Well, only experience will really give you a good eye for avoiding the financial risks. But when it comes to tricky legal landscapes, you turn to someone like our next guest.
Nic Pullen is a lawyer and partner with the legal firm Holding Redlich and Nic specialises in the legal particularities of the publishing and media industries. And we thought we might invite Nic in every now and then to discuss the sorts of dilemmas that face publishers and authors and literary agents.
Liberal Jews and anti-semitism and Norman Mailer's Hitler novel
07/02/2007
Our regular US commentator and editor of the New York Review of Books, Robert Silvers, discusses the bitter controversy simmering away in the United States linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism, which has reportedly entangled government officials, academics and other opinion-makers including the American historian Tony Judt and former president Jimmy Carter.
We ruminate on 'poetic truth' in Norman Mailer's The Castle in the Forest, a biographical novel about Hitler as a young boy. The narrator in Mailer's book -- his first novel in a decade -- is a demon posing as one of Adolf Hitler's SS intelligence officers.
Plus botanical classification and the sex life of trees -- who would have thought mushrooms are closer relatives to humans than to the cauliflower!
In memory of Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007)
30/01/2007
On The Book Show, we note the passing, last week at the age of 74, of the remarkable Polish writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who made a career of reporting from the third world where he was sent by the Polish News Agency he worked for, covering the African continent for over 40 years including 27 revolutions and coups.
He had acquired an almost celebrity status in Poland, where his books were read as thinly disguised commentaries on communist Poland. They included The Emperor (1978), on the fall of that extraordinary figure Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. (It was his first book to be translated into English, and Jonathan Miller adapted it for the Royal Court Theatre in 1985.)
Another Day of Life (1976), was a unique and closely observed account of the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in Angola. Shah of Shahs (1982), was about the last days of the Shah of Persia, He wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union in Imperium (1993), essays and reportage on the Soviet Union, and five volumes of essays and poems, Lapidarium. A sixth was due to be published soon.
He was admired by writers like Salman Rushdie and John Updike for his lyrical prose and was regarded as a major figure in the world of literary non-fiction where he used metaphor in a way that some journalists have found closer to magic realism than to reportage.
Ramona Koval spoke to Ryszard Kapuscinsky in 1995, and she asked him about his passion for Africa, a place he returned to again and again. He described it as an African fever.
The Complete Book of Aunts: Rupert Christiansen
30/01/2007
When you become an aunt, it's hard to know exactly what kind of an aunt you might best be. There are several models, all of them supported by famous auntly types in literature and in real-life, as described in many novels, memoirs and even poems. You know, Auntie Mame, Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene, Aunt Augusta in The Importance of Being Earnest...who exactly should you be? Well, now there's a kind of auntly handbook to help you decide. It's called The Complete Book of Aunts, and in it writer Rupert Christiansen has done all the work for you in trawling the literature of the aunt, and reporting on the wonderful world of the aunt in life and on the page.
Rupert is currently opera critic of London's Daily Telegraph and a member of the editorial board of Opera magazine. He has contributed to many newspapers and magazines, including The Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement, Harpers & Queen, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, New Yorker and Talk.
Rupert Christiansen speaks to Ramona Koval on the phone from London.
Arnold Zable: From Socrates to Politkovskaya Read Transcript
29/01/2007
A familiar voice to many listeners is writer and storyteller Arnold Zable. But today he's with us in a slightly different role, that of president of Melbourne PEN - the international organisation that exists to advance the cause of writers worldwide and to highlight the plight of writers who are abused, imprisoned or killed because of their work.
Here's Arnold's reflection on the dangers of speaking out - from the case last year of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, all the way back to Socrates.
Simon Armitage (Edinburgh International Book Festival)
26/01/2007
From an evening in which Simon Armitage delighted the audience with readings from his latest collection.
Simon Armitage – poet, novelist, and librettist for the Edinburgh International Festival Opera The Assassin Tree – is originally from West Yorkshire, which you can hear in his speech and in the language of some of his poems. And then again, he has written his version of Homer's Odyssey too – a gorgeous take on that fundamental poem of human storytelling – which started out as a play for BBC Radio. His new book of poems is Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus The Corduroy Kid.
(First broadcast on The Book Show on 1 September, 2006.)
Edmundo Paz Soldán on cyberterrorism, globalisation and political oppression
25/01/2007
Edmundo Paz Soldán is a prolific novelist but a relatively new name to English-speaking audiences. The Bolivian writer has just released his sixth novel, but it's only the second to be translated into English. The book is called Turing's Delirium, and it tells a very modern Bolivian story – but a story that also conjures terrible ghosts of the past.
An old dictator, Montenegro, has been democratically returned to power in Bolivia, mere decades after a bloody anti-communist reign. New Bolivia is now a player on the global stage, but a poor player, easily abused. Edmundo Paz Soldán's tale is set in the fictional city of Rio Fugitivo, where the local power company has been privatised and bought by a multinational firm. Far from this bringing benefits, the price of electricity has skyrocketed and there are constant blackouts.
This sets the scene for a battle between angry young people who use computers to hack and vandalise these new global enemies, and the state – in particular the codebreakers of the old regime who work in a place called The Black Chamber. Part of this story is told through the mind of a dying man ... Albert, the founder of The Black Chamber. His mind is slipping. He's a belligerent and evil old bastard who's determined to live, but who's losing his grip on reality.
(First broadcast on The Book Show on 14 September, 2006.)
Geoff Page reviews My Tanka Diary by Kawano Yuko Read Transcript
21/01/2007
Now to the work of Japanese tanka poet Kawano Yuko, and Amelia Fielden's translation of her collection, My Tanka Diary. Poetry reviewer Geoff Page reads one of the tankas from the collection.
(First broadcast on The Book Show on 24 October, 2006.)
Bartleby & Co, by Enrique Vila-Matas Read Transcript
18/01/2007
Don Anderson recently went to his favourite bookstore to purchase a book for his son, the 'Pure Mathematician', who was reading Calvino, Perec, and Harry Mathews between algorithms. The book was Herman Melville's novella Bartleby, which is an informing presence behind so much modern angst.
While in the store, he wanted to see what they had in stock of William T. Vollmann, whose National Book Award-winning novel, Europe Central, he was reading with a view to reviewing. None. But down among the Vs he saw a slim volume, Bartleby & Co, by one Enrique Vila-Matas. Serendipity.
He discovered that Vila-Matas 'novel' consisted of a brief statement of intention followed by eighty-six footnotes. There is an outbreak of footnote novels in the United States – Nicholson Baker, David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann – but, if one recalled Borges, Hispanic writers were the only begetters of the footnote novel, or footnotes in lieu of novels.
Anderson then recalled that he had on his shelves two books about the bottom of the page; The Footnote: a Curious History by Anthony Grafton (1997) and The Devil's Details: a History of Footnotes by Chuck Zerby (2002), wherein it is asserted, 'the main job of the footnote is to interrupt. Simply interrupt.' Enrique Vila-Matas' Bartleby & Co, it would appear, was Don Anderson's sort of book.
(This was first broadcast on The Book Show on 18 April, 2006.)