AN HOUR WITH LLOYD JONES

AT THE CHRISTCHURCH WRITERS FESTIVAL

I so didn't want to go to this event, it was the last event of the Festival, it was late Sunday afternoon, and I was all Festivalled-out. But Lloyd is currently NZ's highest profile writer and I hadn't seen him since the Man Booker Prize Dinner at the Guildhall in London last October so against all my inclinations I settled down in a seat in the third row. And I was very pleased that I did.

Lloyd told us about the genesis of Mister Pip and its various incarnations along the way, how the voice and narrative eventually took over resulting in it being set in Bourganville.

I like his comment that "the difference between words and langauage is voice".

He talked of Great Expectations which he had read as a sick nine year old and how when he read it again as an adult he realised that "the orphan and the immigrant have a lot in common, the past is severed".

He talked briefly of Berlin, I would liked to have heard a lot more about his experience there; he referred to his two projects underway as a result of his time as the holder of the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer's Residency; he declined to say anything about his next novel, "if you are baking a cake you don't take it out of the oven half way through to check on it",; then he threw in a wonderful quote from Daid Grossman at the Berlin Festival, "the mass media make the masses, literature makes the individual", he suggested that empathy was one of the nicest of human values; then talked of the negative impact of the Man Booker shortlisting -no writing for six months, and an astonishing 12 visits to the UK during the time of his residency.

It was all most interesting but for me the two highlights were his two readings.

He has long lamented the absence of the essay for the NZ literary scene, in fact he started a press some years ago soley to publish essays, and while visiting County Kerry in Ireland he was commissioned, along with Ann Enright, Seamus Heaney and an eight year old to write an essay on the theme of Out West. His essay, dedicated to Rick Keeling, was a superbly constructed and moving one about death and going west.

Then as a closing piece he read us a few pages from Mister Pip from the section where Mr.Watts first introduces the children to Mr.Dickens. Delightful.

So back to the hotel to collect the luggage and off to the airport after a hugely stimulating few days in the garden city.

Footnote:

Long piece on/about/with Lloyd Jones and his writing in The Listener 13-19 September, on sale today.