Trendy But Casual

Misadventures in Literature

I’m en route again: this is my habitual state, I think, on my way somewhere else. It’s hard being away from T. Middy. After three weeks apart when I was in New Zealand, we’re now facing another four weeks on opposite sides of an ocean. This time it’s the Atlantic. I have six weeks in (or near) London to get a lot of work done, and to take the short screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School. This latter I’m excited about, and dreading, in equal measure.

There’s also a wedding to attend, and friends to see – including the long-threatened Virgin Classics reunion. TM arrives at the end of June for two weeks, and we already have numerous theatre tickets sorted out, and various social plans in place. Before he arrives, I’m off to Luxembourg with my friend Sarah for a couple of days, to see fireworks and a parade. And this weekend I’ll be in Wales, which always makes New Zealand look a paler shade of green, at the home of my good friend, Deborah Keyser. She tells me her daughters associate my visits with gin & tonics, and the excessive watching of property-buying shows on the computer (Location x 3, Property Ladder, Streets Ahead, etc). I’m glad to provide such an educational, non-Welsh-speaking presence.

My trip home to New Zealand earlier this month was great in many ways, in no small part due to my niece, who is very funny, and excellent company. The visit was marred by two things. I’m the editor of the new issue of Landfall. Here’s the cover. It’s called “Flung”, and it’s an expatriate issue, of sorts.

I’m very happy with this issue, but regret soliciting submissions by email. I did this to make it as easy as possible for people overseas to submit; it also meant that I could get submissions directly, rather than waiting for daunting, fat envelopes from the OUP office in Dunedin. (Although these arrived, in large numbers, as well.) 

But it also meant that I needed to send out rejection emails personally, rather than relying on standard letters sent out by the OUP office. This task took me much longer than it should, and the final emails were only sent out a week or so ago. And the fake intimacy of email meant several people wanted to prolong the correspondence, requesting more detailed opinions; announcing their profound disappointment or ongoing frustration with Landfall; and, in one bizarre and semi-coherent case, abusing me for perceived crimes against the New Zealand literary canon, the healthy development thereof, etc. At the airport last Sunday, it was hard not to feel … hmmm, how about: glad to see the back of them?

The other disappointment was courtesy of my publisher, Penguin. Forbidden Cities was one of the few short-story collections that made it onto a Commonwealth Prize regional shortlist.  I was hopeful that it might also wriggle onto the shortlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. That’s a shortlist with potential career-changing ramifications; the FOC is also one of the few international awards for which obscure short-story collections published only in New Zealand can qualify. But Penguin forgot to submit the book in time, and now it’s too late. I’m upset, and very disappointed, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It looks as though Forbidden Cities will just get to fade away. I know: I need to make much more effort trying to sell my books overseas. Writing them seems like enough of an effort, but clearly I have to hustle harder, become a squeakier wheel. Invest more money and time in getting the books to agents and rights sellers and publishers overseas.

Exhausting just to think of it. I’d rather think about my flimsy tissue of a screenplay outline, sure to be shredded next week at the NFTS course. (Or what movies I’ll be sleeping through on the plane tonight.) Wish me luck.

Notes on Surviving a Literary Festival

I’ve spent the last weekend at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, a great event that seems to get bigger and livelier each year. This is my third year at the festival, I think, and I really love coming home for it. There are friends and gossip and drinks, interesting sessions, insane people, intelligent people, good cheer. This year I overdid things a little – chairing three sessions and appearing in two others – but I’ll recover, hopefully by the time I fly back to the US next Sunday. The special addition this year was the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, announced in Auckland on Saturday: this meant a number of free events with great writers from all over the world, and a whole lot of buzz over the prize announcements.

There are all sorts of reports on the festival up on various blogs: Bookman Beattie’s, Vanda Symon’s, and the one written by the indefatigable team at Christchurch City Libraries. But here’s a few non-comprehensive notes on what not to do at a festival. Whatever you do, DO NOT:

Commit to taking part in three sessions in one day, especially when the last one is at 6 PM, because you will be well punch-drunk by then, and unable to speak in a coherent manner, especially when you have also agreed to race up to Radio New Zealand in between sessions one and two for a live panel discussion, and especially when all you had for breakfast was the packet of two free biscuits in your hotel room, because you found out that Friday morning’s hotel breakfast (yoghurt, a mini-muffin, and a stale mini-croissant) cost you $25.

Drink heavily on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, when you know you have to get up early in the morning to read books/write questions/do interviews/appear professional and not smell like a brewery.

Grow disheartened when people don’t buy your books. After the short story session on Friday, with Charlotte Grimshaw, David Malouf, and Owen Marshall, I sat as lonely as a clown at the signing table. Various people came up to talk to me, but nobody wanted me to sign a book. I think I did better overall with international writers than with New Zealand readers. One of my friends told me that this is because all local audience members already have my books. Yes, that’s right.

Grow disheartened when well-meaning people say things that are, essentially, a knife to the heart. Like, “you did such a good job chairing that session  -who are you, exactly?” Or “in your sessions today, try and do a better job than you did yesterday.” Or “you did such a good job interviewing Christos Tsiolkas yesterday.” (Charlotte G was the chair of that particular session.) Or “you don’t mind if we don’t come to your sessions, do you?” (Said by members of my family. Really, I didn’t mind.)

Forget that some people have positive things to say, like the nice ladies sitting in Elliott Stables who offered to buy me a coffee after the Sunday session with Monica Ali; and the three writers I had the luck and pleasure to interview: Monica, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Tash Aw; and the amazing festival organizers, especially Jill Rawnsley and Shona Gow.

Even think about speaking to Richie McCaw in the lift on Saturday, because he is mentally preparing for the Crusaders VS Blues game that night, and because he is an All Black, and because you don’t want to cross his girlfriend, top ballroom dancer Hayley Holt.

Look like a publicist. Apparently I do. At the Christchurch Festival a couple of years ago, walking into the Green Room, I was asked which writer I was “looking after.” This year, when I was trying to sit near the front at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize announcement, an usher told me the seats were reserved for writers and their publicists. When I said I was one of the above, she asked (very nicely) which company I worked for and who I was looking after. At the Creative NZ party later than evening, someone very senior in CNZ was introduced to me and asked me which publisher I worked for. (Doesn’t she know I am like Oprah in my homeland????) I haven’t been a publicist since 1993, but clearly I still give off the vibe. Maybe I need to wear less make-up? Seem more disheveled and distracted? Have my own publicist in tow?

Listen to Guy Somerset when he complains that all my blog posts are 5000-words long and yet I can’t manage to get a 450-word review for the Listener in on time. 

The Scudder Road Circus Presents Travel Tips: The Red Carpet Club at LAX

Yes, the Scudder Road Circus is on the road again, taking its animal- and act-free self around the globe to bring pleasure to untold dozens of people, largely by rivaling Frommer’s, Fodor’s, The Rough Guide, National Geographic, The Dead Sea Scrolls, etc, with its insider travel knowledge and up-to-the-moment advice.

The first installment was going to be about Oaxaca, Mexico, until swine flu spoiled everything, so here’s something much more exotic: the old RCC in Terminal Seven, LAX.

1.     On a Saturday morning, the Red Carpet Club is the perfect place to a) get some work done on one of six (count them) public desks; b) to enjoy a selection of breakfast cereals in incredibly tiny bowls, with a choice of skim milk or 2%; c) spot people who may or not be celebrities, because it’s hard to tell if they’re actual celebrities or just people from LA who have expensive clothes and small, taut bodies; and d) spot people who may be important  government figures, based on the number of newspapers they’re reading (three), and the number of secret service guys in good suits and lapel badges lurking nearby (three), and the way they refer to the President as “Barack.”

2.      If you don’t like cereal, don’t worry, because by noon it’s replaced with the RCC’s traditional native cuisine of greasy cubes of cheese, a selection of dusty crackers, and a platter of stunted, torpid vegetables arranged around dip of obscure provenance and gluey consistency.

3.     Do not allow yourself to be distracted by the secret service guys, who stare at you each time you glance over at the mysterious government figure, muttering to each other as though they are about to detonate your laptop and cell phone the second you wander off to pour a cup of lukewarm tea.

4.     Do not allow yourself to be distracted by the desk staff, who are dealing with a long line of upset people wanting to get into the RCC or upgrade or get a different flight.  Sometimes this is hard, especially when the United representative shouts “STEP BACK INTO THE PUBLIC AREA, SIR!”

5.     When you watch episodes of “30 Rock” on Hulu, do not allow yourself to be distracted by the guy at the next desk watching “24” on his laptop, or the way he turns around to glare at you for laughing aloud.

6.     When you watch episodes of “30 Rock” on Hulu, do not allow yourself to be distracted by the ads they stick in for Foundation Rwanda, ads which involve plaintive children, especially if they remind you of the child in Mali who you’re sponsoring through Save the Children, the child to whom you’ve never written despite being urged to do so, at regular intervals, by the guilt merchants at STC.

7.     Don’t worry if a lot of people in the RCC are wearing surgical masks, reminding you that swine flu is rampant across the world, and that you have neglected to take proper precautions – i.e. you’ve got your mini Walgreens-brand  “Instant Hand Sanitizer Spray”, and that’s it, because Walgreens had sold out of everything else, and the woman who was helping you basically mocked you for being the last person in town to wander in looking for pandemic-flu-repellant products.

8.     Resist the temptation to steal a copy of today’s Guardian off a sleeping, snoring man. Resist feeling irritation about the lack of international papers on sale at this airport – the lack, in fact, of anything much aside from the LA Times and pretend newspaper USA Today.

9.     Focus instead on the twenty free copies of Ski magazine displayed on a nearby rack. Wish you found reading about skiing interesting. Wonder if you will ever go skiing in your life, and suspect that you will not.

10. Count the minutes until you can leave the RCC, walk over to Terminal Two, check in for your evening flight on Air New Zealand, and then find sanctuary in the Koru Club. Entertain the usual brief, disturbing fantasy that the rules will have changed since you last flew, and that the Koru Club door police will wave you and your RCC card away. Know that if this happens you will pay, on the spot, for Koru Club membership, because it’s still more than seven hours until your flight, and because this is LAX, with its Jetsons-like unlinked terminals, you will not be able to return to Terminal Eight and the RCC.  Maybe then you’ll realize what you’ve lost, and how early it is, how early.