Shine Bright, Fierce Star: On the Loss of Daša Drndić (1946-2018)

My dearest, dearest Daša.

For two days now, I have been crying. You are gone and I have only this: memories of a friend. So indulge me.

I'll start at our first meeting; an entirely unremarkable one, the same as any between reader and writer. Back in July 2012, I was in London, perusing the new releases in Hatchards. For some reason, I was drawn to one book in particular. Its dust jacket was a simple tan, the colour of unbleached pulp. The author's name was unfamiliar to me, though I must confess a soft spot for part of it. My grandmother's name was also Daša. And those red lines, stark bolts bleeding from the letters of the title: TRIESTE. Train tracks, perhaps, bent briefly out of shape to form the symbol that still strikes fear into any Jew who might happen upon it. SS. I flicked through the pages, saw the photographs, the documents, the transcripts, the lists. I read the first page right there in store, Haya Tedeschi sitting with her box of memories, and I was transfixed. I went to the counter, bought it, and spent the rest of the day under your spell. I knew right away that I had stumbled across an outright classic, a revelation.

Had I only read your magnificent book, it would have been enough.

I reviewed it a couple of weeks later on this blog. You must have set up a google alert, because within a few days I received an email. Polite, but unimpressed. "Dasa Drndic calling," it began. "Thank you for understanding my book." You then took issue with one aspect of what I'd said. I had been sucked in to a controversy surrounding Trieste, that you thought unfounded. We discussed it at length, emails flying back and forth, and I was swayed by what you had to say. For the first (and last) time ever, I printed what amounted to a retraction. Trieste went on to become my Book of the Year. At which point, it should have ended. Who has the chutzpah to write to a blogger to complain, anyway? Isn't that the cardinal rule: "Ignore your reviewers"? Do not engage. It can only end badly. But somehow, in those furious few days, we had proven the adage wrong. We had forged a bond. You, the literary titan of Croatia. Me, a struggling writer here in Australia, who spent most of his time procrastinating, reading books by the dozen and pontificating about them on the internet, when he should have been writing. We were, dare I say it, becoming friends.

I have spent the last two days reading over our six years of correspondence. In it I found entire lives - ours, our families', our books'. We spoke of everything: literature, criticism, politics, the mundane and the ridiculous, often punctuated by you with cat emojis. I was reminded of that first while, when everything about you struck me as intense, fierce. Your extraordinary intellect intimidated me no end, and I was always waiting for the moment you would cut me off. You were cynical and sarcastic, unforgiving and unrelenting. Holy shit, you were impressive. But here's the kicker, the thing that made it all the more delightful to speak with you. You were funny. Like, fuck off, fall-on-the-floor-laughing funny. Yes, behind that uncompromising wall was one of the funniest people I've known. You made me laugh through some pretty dark times. Both mine and yours. And you were generous. You knew me only as some guy across the world who once said something infuriating about a book he loved and who you set straight. Yet, when I told you about my friends Mieke and Will, editors at the literary journal Higher Arc, who wanted us to have a conversation "on the page", you jumped at the opportunity. I've read over it today, cringing at my contributions. But you, you answered so beautifully, every word a deadly weapon. You doubled down on your ferocious railing against the shitness of the world. It was, like much of what you wrote, a massive middle finger to convention, to complacency, to human failing. Yes, a warning to us all: Do better.

The years passed, and the books kept coming. Leica Format, which you were disappointed to hear I didn't like as much. And then Belladonna. You sent me the uncorrected proof, made me promise I wouldn't tell your publisher that I had it. What a magnificent achievement it was; arguably an equal to Trieste, and one for which you are still garnering great praise. Also, Doppelgänger and EEG, which have yet to be translated. In the background, I was finishing The Book of Dirt. You hadn't read a word but you were unwavering in your support. When at last it was done, I spent weeks building the courage to ask you to read it. "Yes," you said without pause. "Send it over." Did you know that impressing you was the single most important thing for me at the time? Did you see in what you read, a letter of devotion and admiration? Did you realise, at that point, that you had taught me how to write, had shown me the potential of unconventional literary form? In your work, I discovered the key to my own voice. I waited the next however long, nervously checking my inbox each day, wondering if you'd read it. Then: an interrogation. We spent a couple of hours on Messenger while you subjected me and the book to critical vivisection. I got defensive, upset. We argued. And then, at the point of greatest despair, you laughed and told me I'd passed the test. Of course you liked it. You would provide a quote. If you could only have seen me then, a shaking mess on the floor of my study, giggling like a maniac.

When the diagnosis came, you slipped it casually into conversation. "And now some bad news..." you said. It became a constant cloud over our chats. We spoke as we always did, but there was the odd comment about a bad test, some pain, a setback. You didn't let it dampen your vigour, though. You were always rushing off to this book fair, that literary festival. There were book launches and celebrations. You sent me photos, always smiling. Yes, there were flashes of anger, of despair. But they were soon washed away by another excitement: a new book, a different edition, some achievement by your daughter. Mostly, you deflected the conversations back to me, to my book. You took pride in its success like a godmother might. And, above all, you wanted to know about my little girl. That always made you happy. Knowing you, in part, inspired her name. "I miss it, having little children," you wrote. "She makes me smile."

A few months ago, I asked you to send me a signed book. I wanted something inscribed from you, a token of our friendship. Neither of us said it, but we both knew why. Things were not good. You were in bed, with back pain. The cancer was spreading. You said you'd try. "When I'm feeling a little better." I didn't say anything. We had tried once before. A friend of mine was on a panel with you in Edinburgh. You gave him a book for me, but he was unable to take it. So you had your publisher mail it to me instead. It got lost along the way. I like to think it is in some Kafkaesque postal nightmare, maybe even an existential Escher painting. Anyway, I waited and didn't push the point. Then you told me you just received the Italian edition of Doppelgänger. "It's ugly," you said. "But I will send it anyway." A few days later, this: "I went last night to send you the little ugly book, it was cold and pouring, and i forgot to write anything inside, i haven't even signed it. I feel like punching my nose. So sorry... the post office is less than a kilometre from my home. It took me almost an hour to limp there and back." This time it arrived, much cuter that you made out. The inscription, of course, is what's on the envelope. My name in your handwriting. And the knowledge of your effort to send it. That I possess a clean copy of a book I've never read in a language I can't understand is the kind of absurdity you loved. We laughed about it together. You said you'd send something else when you had the chance.

Our last exchange was from our respective sickbeds. Your health was rapidly deteriorating. The cancer had reached your brain. I, meanwhile, had just had a minor stroke. We talked about brains and memory and language. "I just said parmesan instead of marzipan," you said. "It's ok," I replied. "I prefer parmesan anyway." And you left me with a somewhat reassuring thought as I waited for the results of my MRI: "Don't worry. If your brain is broken there's nothing to find out. Relax." Followed by five emojis of cartoon sheep blowing kisses. It was the last I'd hear from you.

Last month I sent you the link to an article in an Australian paper in which, as always, I raved about Trieste. You didn't write back, though you shared it on your Facebook page. I wrote to you again a week later but you didn't see it. I tried not to think what that might mean. And again last week. But you didn't see that either. I didn't have the guts to say goodbye. I hoped that you would pull through and write something back. I didn't want to have to explain that I might have given up on you. You would have ripped me to shreds. Also, like now, I was not ready for our friendship to end. You fundamentally changed me as a person and as a writer. I still can't imagine not having you to turn to when things get too hard in this shitty writing caper.

You are already being spoken of as one of the greats, as one of the most important emerging voices from Europe. A successor to Ferrante, The Guardian said only two weeks ago. Yes, your star is still very much on the ascent. And I will be at the frontline, screaming your name to anyone who might listen. We will continue to talk. That is, I suppose the magic of what we do. Our voices live on even when we are gone. Knowing there are books of yours that have yet to be translated, that are in the process of being translated, means that I can look forward to new conversations, new arguments. Yes, we will continue to speak for many years to come. Because yours is a voice I refuse to stop hearing.

My dearest, dearest Daša. Thank you for everything. I will miss you forever. And I will hold you close for just as long.

The Worm Goes Wireless (and National)

Just a quick one to let you know that my story, The Prisoner of Babel, will be read on ABC Radio National Sunday Story tomorrow (Sunday, December 16) at 2.30pm. I'm super excited that it was chosen, a little nervous to hear it and still a tiny bit hopeful that it might be read by James Earl Jones (even though I know it will not). Check out the feature on the ABC here, where I think you will also be able to download it as a podcast.

For those of you who want to read it in print form, it was published in The Sleepers Almanac Vol. 7 which you can check out here.

Steppin' Out On A Slow Canoe

If you're in Melbourne and looking for something to do this Friday night, come and support independent Australian writing at the Slow Canoe Reading in Abbotsford. It's a great monthly affair, having hosted a slew of exciting local writerly peeps, and this time round will be the scene of my second-ever public reading. I haven't decided whether to air a new story or a segment from my book, but either way it'll be something totally new and exclusive to the night. Hope to see you there!!

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!

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.

Unearthing The Bookworm: "In Conversation" with Etgar Keret

As Futurama's Professor Farnsowrth is wont to say, "Good news everybody!"

After hiding behind a computer screen for the past couple of years, I'm finally making like Jeff Daniels in Purple Rose of Cairo and appearing in the real world as the host of my first ever "In Conversation". The super extra exciting bit is that it will be with Israeli literary/cinematic superstar and fellow lover of the absurd, Etgar Keret. I've been a fan of his for years and was chuffed the first time I got to meet him in my former incarnation as a Hebrew punk rocker, but this is a step above. Nothing like chatting with someone you admire in a room full of serious readers!

It's all going down at 7pm on the 8th of March at the Waverly Library in Bondi Junction, Sydney. I'll be posting the proper flier in the next couple of days but for now you can check out event details and even book your tickets here. It's going to be a blast - Keret is a fantastic guy, his stories are mind-blowingly fun and thought provoking, and he is at the forefront of contemporary world literature. Put simply, if you're in Sydney and you like books, you'd be a schmuck to miss it! I'll even be throwing it open to the floor so you'll have the chance to ask him all your burning questions. In the meantime, check out his wonderful new collection, Suddenly, A Knock On The Door, available whoever good books are sold (and quite a few places that sell crap too).

See you in March!

Big Fuss About Small Crumbs: The Age Short Story Award

For once I won't do the talking.

Read the article about my story Crumbs here.

Read Crumbs, the winner of The Age Short Story Award for 2011, here.

Hope you all enjoy it!

I'm open to discussing it here or by email at baitforbookworms@gmail.com and will post a few thoughts further down the track.

The Uncertain Precipice: Awaiting the Likely Publication of Crumbs

Right now I feel like I've been stripped naked, shoved into a giant, curtain-covered glass box, wheeled into the city centre and left to sit there overnight, awaiting some great unveiling. Tomorrow, my story Crumbs, which won The Age Short Story Award, will (I am led to believe) be published in the Summer Reading Supplement of The Saturday Age, and will also be put online for hapless litnerds to stumble across forever more. It may well be something that every writer dreams will happen, but right now I'm a pathetic bundle of neuroses.

I've read over Crumbs several times and am certainly happy with it (notwithstanding the one annoying typo that I found and am really hoping the editors did too). But it's still a weird feeling, to think something you have made is going out into the world to be picked apart and judged by all manner of people you're never likely to meet. I had the same feeling whenever a Yidcore album was about to drop, but this has a much heavier weight of expectation. People will read it expecting it to prove itself worthy of having won.

If these nerves weren't enough, there's also an odd sense of uncertainty because, while I do recall the Books editor of the paper telling me it will be published on the first Saturday of January, I have yet to hear anything since and, the more I think about it, the more I suspect I could be wrong. I was pretty pepped up on adrenalin when I received the call. Yep, I have a sleepless night ahead of me (which will be ably assisted by little Louie), and tomorrow I'll either be posting a link to the story or returning here, tail between my legs, to sulk. Either way you're in for some high-end entertainment. See you tomorrow!

Holy Crumbs! It's The Age Short Story Award 2011

KAPOW! Take that, crappy year of extreme sadness. Following eleven months of tragedy, fear and disappointment, December has swooped in and delivered a knockout blow of super awesomeness to 2011. Not only did my first ever piece of published fiction, The Prisoner of Babel, appear in the wonderful Sleepers Almanac Volume 7, but HOLY AMAZEBALLS(!!!) my short story Crumbs has just won the 2011 Age Short Story Competition. Kind of hard to believe, given that the short story is a form with which I am profoundly uncomfortable (as evidenced by only one - now two- of the 175 posts on this blog being about short fiction).

Of course there are the masters: Bruno Schulz, Daniil Kharms, Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, JG Ballard, Alice Munro, Robert Walser and pretty much every Yiddish writer that ever lived. But other than these dark fabulists I have struggled to read, let alone appreciate, much of the stuff, even when it was written by authors that I otherwise love (I'm looking at you Don Delillo and E.L. Doctorow!). If reading them presents a challenge, writing them is even harder. At least in long form you can overstep your mark and be forgiven. With short stories there is a crushing pressure to fully contain a world in less than ten, or in my case three, thousand words.

Luckily my background is in punk music so I've learned to think of short stories accordingly - blistering bursts that do the work of a Pink Floyd epic in the time it takes Roger Waters to play the first bar. Not that it's greatly helped my literary output. The vast majority of stories I have written are dismal failures. Two, however, appear to have worked. Thankfully they account for two of the three I've ever submitted for publication. And Crumbs is actually a modified version of the prologue to a novel I've been working on for five years so arguably it does not count.

For what it's worth, I do have a holy trinity of stories that I think anyone who loves to read ought to hit up at some point in their life. First is Kafka's In The Penal Settlement, a story that is just as harrowing as any of his novels. Next is Edgar Allen Poe's The Telltale Heart. Probably the greatest meditation on the nature of guilt, you're at least likely to recognise it from the classic Simpsons Diorama episode. And finally there's the saddest of them all, the absolutely heartbreaking Bontsche The Silent by I. L. Peretz. Also, if you like story collections that are thematically linked or that form a tenuous narrative, I'd recommend Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles, Jim Crace's Continent or, most recently, The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad.

As for me, I'll just be content with my two little additions to the sea of stories. You can read The Prisoner of Babel in The Sleepers Almanac Volume 7, available at all great bookstores in and around Australia and New Zealand. Please pick it up and help support independent Australian publishing (plus you might just find your next favourite author amongst the thirty two wonderful people in the book). Crumbs will be published in The Age newspaper on the first Saturday of January 2012 in the Summer Reading lift out. You can read the announcement here.

Hopefully this will give me a much needed kick in the arse to finish the book!

The Bookworm, Exposed: My First Published Story

After one hundred and seventy-odd posts about other people's writing, I figure I might be forgiven for taking a brief moment to yap on about some writing of my own. Next week sees the release of the seventh volume of The Sleepers Almanac which, for those who don't know, is an always-exciting compendium of short stories by new and established writers, put out annually by Australia's finest independent publisher, Sleepers. The publication of the first six volumes were, to me, worthy of celebration, but I'm shouting this one from the rooftops because it contains my first piece of published fiction (as opposed to the reams of newspaper columns, reviews and academic articles), a story called "The Prisoner of Babel". I'm told the story is funny, though I thought it horrifying when writing it. I guess, as I told the editor, one cannot judge one's own children (actually I told her that I was willing to accept that my child is a little shit, even if I can't see it). Either way, hopefully, you'll like it because right about now I feel like I'm standing in front of the class naked!

The Sleepers Almanac is being launched at Bella Union Bar in Trades Hall (corner Lygon Street and Victoria Street, Carlton in Melbourne) at 6.30pm on Thursday December 1. Jessica Au will be hosting the show and I shall be doing a brief reading from my story, as will four of the other authors, Rosanna Stevens, Julie Koh, Eric Dando and Pierz Newton-John. If you're in Melbourne and can drag yourself away from the computer screen for an hour, please come down and help celebrate great Australian writing (hey, it'll be worth it just to find out if Pierz is related to Olivia and Eric is related to Evan). If you are unable to make it to the launch, make sure you pick up a copy of the Almanac at your favourite independent bookstore when you next stop in. There will also be a Sleepers Almanac iPhone App, but more on that as it comes to hand.