Wednesday, September 12, 2007


WRITERS OFF THE RECORD

Mary Sayer lifts the lid on life behind the scenes at literary festivals.........

Included in the Weekend Australian last Saturday was their marvellous REVIEW section with special attention given to the Brisbane Writers Festival which opens today.

I started by reading a great piece by David Malouf on Brisbane, his birthplace, in which he explains that there has always been more to Brisbane life and letters than outsiders understand.

Then I was caught by the next story on some of the shennanigans that go on behind the scenes at literary festivals.

Here is an excerpt by Mandy Sayer whose novel The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (4th Estate) has just been published:

IT probably all started with Charles Dickens and Mark Twain: gifted prose writers who were also blessed with a talent for public speaking and storytelling. In the 19th century they travelled the world and, perched on their respective literary soapboxes, entertained readers from all walks of life, from miners to magnates, from cowboys to clergy.
The world's first official writers festival was staged in Adelaide in 1960. Growing out of the city's biennial arts festival, the event featured a small gathering of writers who discussed and read their work to a crowd of less than 100 people. Today, about 46 festivals of various sizes occupy Australia's annual literary calendar.

But let's face it: the temperaments of most writers don't really agree with the performing arts. Most of us spend years on our own, having conversations with imaginary characters, killing off people who were never alive, falling in love with someone we've dreamed up. In fact, the temperaments of a lot of writers don't even agree with the social arts, which is one of the reasons why the verbal post mortems of so many festivals feature a section on naughty behaviour.

There are usually one or two scandals every year, which can be as entertaining as the programmed events.

In 1997, author Bob Ellis and screenwriter Alexandra Long took the prize at the Byron Bay Writers Festival when they were found snogging in the public bar; it was the beginning of a romantic tryst that would later result in the birth of a daughter.

Last year, The New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Maureen O'Dowd stunned her Sydney audience when she remarked that she was looking for a boyfriend and then announced her hotel room number to the swelling crowd. No word yet on whether she got lucky.

One man who certainly didn't get lucky this year was French author and philosopher Michel Onfray, who hit on so many bemused women that he was granted the dubious honour of being named the Sydney festival's serial sleazebag, 2007.

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