Begin the Booker Beguine (Again)

Time to slip on your dancing shoes for another year of prize picks and punch-ups. The folk at Man Booker have just released the 'key dates' for this year, which means it's the beginning of my favourite book season. In fact, we only have a few days to wait until the Longlist is announced. Come Wednseday the bickering can begin about who should be shortlisted, who should win, who was left off and whether Hilary Mantel can win back to back Bookers for two consecutive novels, the second being a sequel to the first.

The field of contenders is packed with heavy hitters this year: Peter Carey could be in line for his third, Ian McEwan, John Banville, Nadine Gordimer, Sebastian Faulks, Pat Barker or James Kelman could win a second, and Martin Amis, Zadie Smith or Will Self could finally bag their first. Also present is a slew of other almost-winners: John Lanchester, Lawrence Norfolk, Mark Haddon, Nicola Barker, Michele Roberts and Simon Mawer. And I'm glad to see Australia has fielded a number of viable options with Kate Grenville, Elliot Perlman, Alex Miller, Jon Bauer, Chris Womersley and Anna Funder. Personally, I'd love to see it go to one of the newer kids on the block, such as Ned Beauman, Will Wyles or Lloyd Shepherd though I'd also want to put a sentimental vote in for Dan Rhodes with his beautifully whimsical This is Life?

This all might be a moot point, overshadowed by the great behemoth on the horizon. Following seven Booker snubs J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter squillionaire, is finally releasing her first book for adult readers which might just mean that the panel are ready to deem her sufficiently 'literary' for their consideration. Could this be the gold watch to end all gold watches?

Head to the recently refurbished Booker site on Wednesday to see the Longlist.

The shortlist will be announced on September 11.

The winner will be announced on October 16.

Reckon you can read the entire Booker Dozen by then?

And The Winner is... Syd-ah-Ney (Jewish Writers Festival)

Two years ago I schlepped up to Sydney to play the role of drooling fanboy at The Sydney Jewish Writers Festival. I sat in on a number of fascinating panel presentations and had the chance to mingle with a bunch of great Australian and international authors including Peter Manseau (author of the fantastic Songs For The Butcher's Daughter), Steve Toltz, Morris Gleitzman and more. I still recall with great fondness the panel with Siegmund Siegreich, newly-published octogenarian author of The Thirty Six in conversation with Australia's finest fabulist Arnold Zable. The depth of insight on the nature of Holocaust memory was astounding, as was the warmth between these two wonderful artists. There was also a tinge of sadness - I had worked for quite a while to get the great Czech author Arnost Lustig to come, and was to host a discussion with him at the Melbourne Jewish Museum about the responsibility of third generation authors when it comes to fiction and the Holocaust. Unfortunately Lustig cancelled in the eleventh hour due to poor health, and died a few months later. His was a great loss.

Fast forward two years and I'm heading to the festival again (it only runs every second year). The 2012 Sydney Jewish Writers Festival will take place on August 25-28 and boasts an amazing lineup: Tom Segev, Elliot Perlman, Anna Funder, Mark Dapin, Danny Katz, Austen Tayshus, Ita Buttrose, Michael Gawenda and many more. Check out the full list here.

In a weird twist of fate, I'm not just a fanboy this time, but also a presenter. I am thrilled to tell you that I will be participating in two panels, one about short stories and one about blogging (hopefully that's not too meta for my brain as I write this here).

So check it out. This is the link to the short stories panel, entitled Does Size Matter?. It is with Arnold Zable and chaired by Amy Matthews. For those of you who live on Mars, Arnold is a wonderful writer of both short and longer form fiction and non-fiction. His new book, Violin Lessons is very well worth you reading. I'm sure he will have lots to say about the craft, and I can only hope to add something of value on the side.

The second panel is called Opinionated and Online, and features Meiron Lees, Loren Suntup with Lauren Finn in the chair. These folk are serious bloggers, so it will be fun to be the self-indulgent, hermit-like scribbler in the corner. Perhaps I'm there to answer why people bother writing what few people want to read. That gives me a month and a bit to come up with an intelligent-sounding answer!

Anyway, I urge all you Sydneysiders to purchase tickets ASAP for what I am certain will be a wonderful festival. If you live elsewhere and can get to Sydney in August, I think you'll be very glad you did. Hopefully I'll see you all there. In the meantime, have a good laugh at my festival profile!

The Decline Of The Patriarch

Having watched the sad decline of some beautiful minds first hand, I was dismayed to read today that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winning pioneer of the magical realist movement and author of a couple of my favourite novels (No-one Writes To The Colonel, The Autumn of The Patriarch) is now suffering from the late stages of dementia. According to his brother Jaime, Gabriel is doing well but experiences frequent memory lapses.

Speaking at the Inquisition Museum in Cartagena, Jaime said, "Dementia runs in our family and he's now suffering the ravages prematurely due to the cancer that put him almost on the verge of death... Chemotherapy saved his life, but it also destroyed many neurons, many defences and cells and accelerated the process."

That Marquez had the condition was hardly a secret. Writers don't just 'retire' for no good reason. Nevertheless, his legion of fans have continued to cling to the hope that they might still see some more books before Marquez dropped off the scene altogether. That doesn't seem to be on the cards anymore. Asked about the next two instalments of his autobiography (the first being 2002's Living To Tell The Tale), Jaime said, "Unfortunately, I don't think that'll be possible, but I hope I'm wrong."

Looks like it will be a sad, quiet end to the Patriarch.

My Very Own Book Club!

Writing, so it is said, is a lonely pursuit. For the most part I agree, but when I looked up from my desk today, it occurred to me that I am keeping some pretty enjoyable company here in this little library of mine. Turns out, 210 posts down the line, they want to say hello.(And I swear I'm not suffering from cabin fever)

First is old Don, picked up at a tacky Barcelona souvenir store near my hotel. I thought he was made of metal but he broke in transit and I saw that, beneath his shiny armour is cheap, flimsy plaster. Unintentionally fitting, methinks.

The latest addition to my circle of friends is the elusive scented bookworm. He smells like flowers and seems to enjoy Bernard Malamud. Need I say more?

Then there is Huld, my amazing Czech marionette. He seems to creep people out when they see him perched above the door as they walk in, but I like the way he watches over me with that serious face of his. Extra points for getting the reference.

And then, of course, there is Louie. When things go to shit, and the words just won't come out, he is always there with a wagging tail and a ball ready to take my mind off it all. Even better, when inspiration hits, he is happy to curl up at my feet and keep them warm. If I ever get this thing finished, it will be thanks to him.

Another Reason To Miss Maurice Sendak

Ok, other than that whole "writing Where The Wild Things Are" schtick, he said this about digital publishing:

"I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be. I'll be dead, I won't give a shit."

He's right. Now he is and he doesn't.

Champion.

2012: The Mid-Year Report

Time, I have come to learn, is inversely proportional to productivity and, in that respect, Einstein's ghost has taken a massive dump on my head this year. July? Already? How did that happen? Guess I ought to look back at my New Year's Aspirations and see how I've fared. *gulp*

New Year Revisited

1. Write More Than I Read: Well it certainly has been a slow reading year. In fact, had it not been for two long haul flights and one crazy reading weekend, I'd have been lucky to crack the half ton. Six months saw me get through a measly 56 books; well below my yearly average. That said, I'm glad to report that I have spent a fair amount of my non-reading time writing, though you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you could see what's left of my manuscript. Having cut 60,000 words some time in April, I'm currently at a net loss but, hopefully, it's all for the better. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

2. Stop Being Such a Lit-Wanker: I set out to read less high brow literature this year and while there were a few brief moments of mass market enjoyment they were very much in the minority. Oh well. I'd hate for you to think I had stopped being a total knob.

3. Smell the Roses: Read slower? Me? No chance. I'm just reading less in the same furious bursts.

4. The Tangible Aspirations: Well this one is easy. War and Peace? Nope. Road To Freedom? Nope. Lev Grossman? Nope. American Gods? Nope.

5. Lose 95 Kilos and Exist in a Vacuum: Again, nope. Still here. And heavier than ever!

So far, not so good. *cough cough*

Moving right along...

Top 5 of 2012 (So far)
Hopefully this is just a function of my not having read enough this year, but I can't even scrape together five books that I would be willing to hold out as raveworthy. So, without further ado, here's my top 4:

1. Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Another completely impenetrable work of intellectual gymnastics by the master. A downtrodden village somewhere in Hungary is turned upside down by the arrival of the devil. Petty rivalries flare, ruin looms. Satantango is horribly bleak but, as a work of literature, totally invigorating.
2. Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander. Woody Allen type moves to rural America to escape his Jewish neuroses only to discover Anne Frank hiding out out in his new attic. It is as hilarious as it sounds, and Auslander manages to sustain the dark comedy throughout. Elderly, mean-spiritied Frank - desperately trying to write a sequel to her first book - is a brilliantly realised creation.
3. This Is Life by Dan Rhodes. Another charming, quirky book from England's most underrated writer. Not unlike The Family Fang, it lampoons the idiocy of the art world, but in a way so gentle and warm-hearted that even the most strident defender of "art" will be willing to come along for the ride.
4. Melisande! What Are Dreams? by Hillel Halkin. A lifetime of translating the works of great Yiddish and Hebrew writers has clearly taught Halkin how fiction works. His debut is a measured, beautifully crafted and often poetic look at the failure of a marriage. In many ways it reminded me of the greatest love letter ever written, Andre Gorz's Letter to D. Indeed, after that book, it has the second best declaration of love I have ever read: "If I had a thousand lives to live, I'd want them all to be with you." Awwwwwww.

Top 5 Of Every Year But 2012
Now this I can do with a little more confidence.

The Devil All The Time by Donald Ray Pollack. Stark, brutal and sure-footed debut by another possible heir to the Cormac McCarthy throne.
Purgatory by Tomas Eloy Martinez: To my mind the best book on the Central American disappearances. A woman enters a cafe and is shocked to see the husband she thought killed thirty years earlier. Thus begins Martinez's final novel, a painful exploration of the schisms that still tear at his country's heart.
The Family Carnovsky by I. J. Singer. I was slightly disappointed with Yoshe Kalb, so was overjoyed to see Singer in top form on this one. Another intergenerational saga, it never quite reaches the lofty heights of The Brothers Ashkenazi but still towers above most novels written today.
My Life In CIA by Harry Matthews: As the only American member of the Oulipo group, Matthews' life was as absurd as his writing. This memoir of a single year in France, where everyone was convinced he was a CIA agent so he decided to play along is a short work of wacky genius. Well worth checking this guy out if you've never heard of him.
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster: How did I miss this as a kid? With his rampant punning, mathematical hijinks and total capitulation to the ridiculous, Juster is the modern incarnation of Lewis Carroll (except he didn't write to mack on a twelve year old girl. But I digress...). If your parents also denied you this wonderful pleasure, drop everything now and go buy a copy. Then hide it from your kids. Balance will return to the universe.

Half A Crystal Ball
So what's left for 2012? Plenty of promising books are on the horizon, so hopefully there will be enough to fill out a top ten come December 31st. I'm still going to be writing more than I read - Goddammit I need to finish this frigging book - but I will crack the ton, and I still have a firm belief that I will find one book to add to my favourites of all time. So who will it be? Ian McEwan? Philippe Claudel? Michael Chabon? Or someone I've never even heard of? Pressure's on, folks!

A Small Tribute To Some Literary Giants

It's shaping up to be a sad year for literature.

Having just read that Barry Unsworth died, I realise that we've lost three writers who, if you will pardon the pun, bookmarked significant developmental stages in my reading/writing life.

First, of course, was Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are. I still remember sitting on the huge caterpillar pillow in my primary school library, sailing off to the world of Max and the wild things, oblivious to the other kids or teachers around me. Although I might not have truly understood the book at the time, it encouraged me to disappear into my own imagination and actively engage with the people and things I met there. I dare say it was also the precursor to my tenth grade Creative Writing teacher calling my parents in to discuss my "very fertile, but rather disturbing" mind.

Like many teens I gravitated toward dystopias, thanks in part to the great Ray Bradbury. Cormier's I Am The Cheese might have pipped it at the post, but Fahrenheit 451, with its world of banned books (take it as allegory for censorship or, as Bradbury himself claimed, the destructive force of mindless entertainments on reading) played an important part in opening my eyes to the subversive potential of the written word.

Barry Unsworth played a much more subtle role in my life, and not through any of his more celebrated works. Losing Nelson, Unsworth's tale of a lonely old man playing with his army figurines in a dark basement, taught me the importance of quiet beauty in literature, and showed me that a microcosm filled with compassion and empathy (the whole book takes place in his flat) can be just as weighty as a multi-generational, multi-national epic. In my humble opinion, it should have won him a second Booker.

Sendak, Bradbury, Unsworth and, of course Carlos Fuentes. Mortal men, it turns out, but immortal artists.

Microviews 16: Amis, Morrison, Barry

Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis
There was a time when Martin Amis could do no wrong. Money. The Rachel Papers. Time's Arrow (yeah, go stuff yourself, haters!). The Information. And then came Yellow Dog. If ever a single book destroyed my love for a writer, it was that pile of steaming crap. Since then, Amis has struggled to get back on track, regularly putting out fair-to-middling shadows of his former brilliance.The bitterness remains, as does his linguistic mastery. But, in every other sense, age has not done him any favours. With Lionel Asbo, Amis is trying his level best to recapture the acerbic satirical stylings of his early years but he just ain't got the knack to pull it off anymore. Lionel Asbo is a lower class pommy hooligan who wins 140 million pounds in the national lottery. There was a time that this premise would have been perfect fodder for Amis's cannon but these days the old fuddy duddy doesn't seem to know what to do with it. There are some mildly amusing moments, but for the most part it just reads like an aristocratic prat taking cheap shots at the English working class.

Home by Toni Morrison
The Nobel curse is a weird beast. It either drops the laureate immediately back into obscurity (Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Muller), turns them into complete dicks (Gunter Grass, V.S. Naipaul - though to be fair he was already a complete dick) or allows them to continue on in slightly diluted form (Doris Lessing, J. M. Coetzee, as much as it pains me to say so). Very few actually rise above their earlier work to make even greater art. Toni Morrison is one of those few. Since being awarded literature's most prestigious prize, she has written three beautiful, if ever shorter, works that have not only done justice to her name but arguably added to its gravitas. She has also managed to cultivate the world's best set of dreadlocks. But I digress... Home is another small, powerful novel to add to the pile. The story of Frank Money, an African American veteran who returns from the non-segregated army in Korea to the still very much segregated "homeland" of America, it is searing in its indictment of the recent past. It is also a beautiful hymn to the downtrodden - Money's redemption is a wonderful thing to behold. I wonder whether there should be a special Nobel Prize for surviving the curse.

We All Fall Down by Peter Barry
I don't know whether it is a spectacular case of 'sophomore album slump' or whether We All Fall Down was the book left languishing in Peter Barry's bottom drawer only to be resurrected in the wake of his debut's success, but this has got to be one of the most disappointing follow ups to a literary bolt from the blue that I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I Hate Martin Amis Et Al was an absolute cracker. Hilarious, madcap, insightful and superbly original. In other words, everything that Barry's latest effort is not. Supposedly a skewering of the advertising world in times of financial collapse, it charts the downfall of a high-flyer who (surprise surprise) eventually finds dignity in poverty. Ho hum. Didn't Elliot Perlman do that over a decade ago? We all know how vacuous and demoralising the advertising industry can be. If Barry had intended to show us that it can also be incredibly boring, he didn't need to make us experience it first-hand. Turns out in this round, Amis gets the win.

The Cunning Conspiracy of Awesome: How My New Year's Resolution To Read Less Is About To Be Massively Thwarted (As Is My Preference for Pithy Post Titles)

Not that I think everything is about me, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Gods of Literature have gathered on Mount Papyrus to punish me for deeming 2012 my Year of Lesser Reading. As I said back in January, I have set this year aside to write. That means no 250 books, no fast living, minimal socialising and a gradual slowdown of my legal work. Alas, while I have no problem with the majority of those sacrifices, 2012 is shaping up to be one of the best years for literature in recent memory and I am dying to throw my computer to the wind and curl up on the couch with a pile of good books. I have already enjoyed newies from Laszlo Krasznohorkai, Toni Morrison, Shalom Auslander, Laurent Binet and Dan Rhodes. Then there were the ones I just haven't got to yet (Joyce Carol Oates, Ben Marcus, John Burnham Schwartz and collections from Jose Saramago and Roberto Bolano) and a couple of disappointments (I'm looking at you Iain Banks!!!!).

If that wasn't enough already, a quick glance on the literary horizon sees:
- Charles Yu returning to the short form after his incredible debut novel How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe. Early reports for Sorry. Please. Thank You have been glowing;
- Michael Chabon channeling his inner Nick Hornby and doing for music what he previously did for comics in the highly-anticipated Telegraph Avenue;
- Ian McEwan getting in touch with his feminine side in the spy-thriller Sweet Tooth;
- Martin Amis hoping to redeem his recent career slump with the seemingly crass state of the nation novel Lionel Asbo;
- Salman Rushdie finally giving his side of the fatwa story in his memoir Joseph Anton (expect annoying appearances from Bono);
- Enrique Vila-Matas nodding furiously at James Joyce in Dublinesque which, I hope, is more Montano's Malady than Never Any End To Paris;
- Junot Diaz, who has remained suspiciously silent since winning the Pulitzer for Oscar Wao, finally sticking his head above the water line in a new collection of short stories called This Is How You Lose Her.
- the publication of Jose Saramago's early rural novel Raised From The Ground (yep, that's two books from him in one year - pretty impressive output for a dead guy!);
- Last but most certainly not least the latest book from one of my absolute favourite living writers Philippe Claudel. If The Investigation is anywhere near as great as Brodeck's Report I can safely assume it will top my list at the end of the year.

Yes, I am being heavily tested and I already know that I am going to fail. The temptation is too great. Alas, I have no choice but to anger the Lit Gods. Prepare for paper cuts...

Microviews 15: Vann, Rhodes, Binet

Still hiding in a dank corner attempting to be productive, but the pull of enticing literary treats has drawn me out once again and forced, yes forced, me to show my face back here for a minute.

Dirt by David Vann
It is a testament to just how high on the DEAR list David Vann has risen, that I dropped two other books I was reading - one of which was by a lesser (arguably former) DEAR author - the moment Dirt arrived in my mailbox. Comparisons are often made with Cormac McCarthy and while they might have rung true for his first two books, Dirt owes more to William Golding or JG Ballard than the literary Lone Ranger. Opening with the most sexually-tense, oddly-erotic series of incest scenes I think I've ever read, it follows young mama's boy Galen in his search for deep transcendence (with some help from Herman Hesse and Richard Bach) on a remote Californian walnut farm. The first third of the book is taken up with the strained relationship between Galen, his mother, aunt, cousin and rapidly-deteriorating grandmother. When the family head up to a cabin for some family time (read: to confront their demons), the entire structure falls apart. Galen gets his wish of bedding young Jennifer, but it is to predictably catastrophic ends. For the rest of the book it is just Galen and his mother in slow, torturous decline. Having threatened to report Galen to the police for statutory rape, the mother is locked in the farm shed and essentially left to die while Galen goes all primal, rubbing himself in dirt and destroying all the family mementos. As she fades, he finds transcendence. Needless to say, Dirt is a disturbing, often callous book. And while it does not quite reach the heights of Vann's previous work it is still an excellent read by a bona fide "One To Watch".

This Is Life by Dan Rhodes
Ever since I first read Timoleon Vieta Come Home, I've had a major soft spot for Dan Rhodes. Consistently funny and seriously warped, he has continued to deliver without ever really writing a "conventional" novel. Until now. This Is Life is a meditation on the wankiness of art, much like Kevin Wilson's wonderful 2011 novel, The Family Fang. But whereas Wilson's book dealt with a series of absurd performance pieces perpetrated by parents on their poor kids, this centres around one act - a totally shaved man called The Machine shitting on stage. To be fair that isn't Rhodes's whole schtick here; the main narrative concerns Aurelie, a young art student left caring for a baby after accidentally hitting it in the face with a rock. As her final school project she had planned to throw said rock in the air and then follow whoever it hit for a week to document their life. When it hits the kid, its mother foists it in her hand and says she is now responsible for its welfare. Implausible, sure, but a fun setup for the ensuing hijinks. A number of other absurd threads are woven in to the story and, as one might predict, coincidence piles upon coincidence until they are all drawn together. Many have compared this book to the film Amelie and it is not hard to see why. It too raises a glass in celebration of serendipity. And it is almost cringe-worthily cute. Thank the literary gods for the guy shitting on stage or I'd be knee deep in saccharine puke. Despite its general cutesiness, and even though it doesn't possess the delicious nastiness of Rhodes's last book Little Hands Clapping, This Is Life is still wonderful.

HHhH by Laurent Binet
The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich is one of the great resistance stories of the Second World War - a team of parachutists dropped in to occupied Prague with a mission to kill Hitler's favourite, most vicious lapdog; a comedy of errors leading to the botching of the attack; the fluke death of the target due to blood poisoning; and the remarkable, heroic siege in the crypt of the Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius where a handful of resistance fighters held off swarms of Nazis before opting to take their own lives before falling into enemy hands. In his Prix Goncourt-winning debut, Binet doesn't just recount the story but attempts something far more ambitious - he tackles the whole question of writing historical fiction, asking what limits fidelity to history must necessarily place on a writer's imagination. The result is a complex, troubling work that I'm not certain quite succeeds but is well worth your attention anyway. Binet intersperses the assassination narrative with personal asides, reflections and anecdotes about the writing process and his struggle with the material. Throughout he is firing on all cylinders, often taking nasty swipes at others who have undertaken similar tasks (a particularly humorous broadside is saved for fellow Prix Goncourt winner Jonathan Littel). To his credit he saves some of his harshest criticism for himself, attacking many of his own devices. All this makes for a compelling, albeit disjointed read. I never quite got swept up in the story of Kubis and Gabcik because Binet's absolute adherence to verifiable historical evidence doesn't allow him to flesh them (and most of the other major players) out as characters. Furthermore, I was troubled with his calling the book a "novel" when it was more the literary equivalent of a documentary with the director's commentary switched on. Presenting strict historical fact as fiction poses all sorts of problems, not the least of which is setting a precedent for others to do likewise and, in the foreseeable future, make fact and fiction indistinguishable. That said, HHhH remains an important book; one that ought to be read and discussed in detail.