"They're wonderful in bed!" Previewing AWF 2014

The approach of Auckland Writers Festival 2014 has Booklovers in the City abuzz. Central City Library is running a Festival Preview series, featuring some of the city's more noted booklovers regaling audiences with their takes on the line-up. This guest post by Joanne Drayton, author of The search for Anne Perry and Ngaio Marsh: her life in crime, recapitulates the entertaining presentation with which she kicked off the series.


Dr. Joanne Drayton's "Full Story" on AWF 2014

Outside Bennetts Bookshop in Wellington, I read their thought for the week. The words of American historian Marilyn Young:

"If I ever get married, it will probably be to a book. I’m always falling in love with them and they’re wonderful in bed."

Joanne Drayton
(photo by Cass Power)

I was left pondering the awesome power of books. For they exist in two worlds: in the twilight of private life (in moments of quiet reading) and in the full blaze of public scrutiny (in press and magazine reviews). We read them as individuals, but also as part of the mob, with a “thumbs-up”, “thumbs-down” mentality. Reading books is essentially a private experience that plugs us into the public grid, connecting the individual to a greater matrix. So if we were to look for the source of their power, it is in their capacity to connect two worlds: the private and the public domain.

Books move us, they change us, they excite us in bed the way nothing else can (almost). In the ephemeral word of voice-mail and electronic messages, the published word speaks to us with a sense of permanence, in a coveted pact of isolation, at its best in a one-on-one relationship between writer and reader. Few other things rely on such intimacy: few other things touch us in such a personal way. But at the same time they have the power to shape our cultural memory; to assume the voice of ‘authority’ in the highly contested and contentious area of cultural activity, to tell our histories, to establish our iconic heroes – the famous and the infamous – to define our identities, and to tell us who we are.

The Auckland Writers Festival is a time when the private and public worlds of books collide. What a responsibility!

It is a banquet. A feast of Words, Ideas, People and Personalities – and someone’s just handed you a half sized dinner plate! You know, the ones always handed to ‘the women’ at family get-togethers and bar-b-ques.

So how do you make a choice when there's so much choice?

 I decided to work out what thrills me the most. A quick look through the programme and I had my answers…

MURDER
FEMINISM
CREATIVITY

Not necessarily in that order …

Camilla Lackberg

One
CAMILLA LACKBERG, SCANDINAVIAN CRIME QUEEN
43: Saturday May 17 2.30-3.30pm, ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Why?

Because I’m fascinated by the whole crime phenomenon – why is it so popular, why has it infested popular television with almost the same degree of pestilence as cooking programmes? Why are people fascinated? Why does it grip all kinds of audiences from the Lords and landed gentry to the average and ordinary – like me?

Because I’m amazed by the virtuosity of the Norse … of the “Scandi-Noir pantheon”, as it says in the catalogue. Think of the greats that have come out of this part of the world – Stieg Larsson’s Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander. And now, a Scandinavian Crime Queen -- Camilla Lackberg, sometimes called the Swedish Agatha Christie.

Lackberg became a writer after her family enrolled her in a creative writing course as a Christmas present: "For me, actually, specific images – snapshots – come first, and then the story starts to come together from those bits and pieces. I am very visual when I write, I 'see' the story in pictures and writing a book is like having a movie running in my head 24/7." Imagine how harrowing that must be!

But this is what I find fascinating … what interests her most of all (and me too), is the psychology of it all: ‘Just how horrible people can be!’ And where does this come from? And why? Each time a great crime doyenne sits down to write a new book, they visit this fundamental question, which I think remains the greatest mystery of all!

(This is fiction, but if you want to explore the politics of these issues in history, I think Reza Aslan’s session "The Politics of the Prophets" looks absolutely fascinating, too… 63: Sunday May 18 11:30am - 12:30pm, ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre)



Two

GENDER DIVIDES 68: Sunday May 18, 1.00-2.00 pm, ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre

Why?

Well, here are the issues on the table for discussion:

• Gender 
• Politics
• Feminism
• Sexual violence

and

• Twerking!

Twerking (I learned with the help of Wikipedia) is a type of dancing in which an individual, usually a female, dances to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low squatting stance. Though the term seems to be of uncertain origin, common assumption suggest it is a contraction of “footwork” and a portmanteau of the words "twist" and "jerk". And just in case you didn’t know, the word was a runner-up in the Oxford Dictionaries "Word of the Year 2013".

While I can’t guarantee there will be a demonstration (perhaps with twerking on the table, this would have worked better as a workshop than a panel discussion), but this and more will be discussed by a stunning panel that includes:

Eleanor Catton

• Eleanor Catton, who has her own amazing session Our Booker Winner (53: Saturday 17 May, 5.30-6.30pm, ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre). Author of The Luminaries and Man Booker Prize winner for 2013.

• Jessica Jackley, an American businesswoman and entrepreneur. Jessica was the co-founder and CEO of ProFounder, a platform that provided tools for small business entrepreneurs in the USA to access start-up capital through crowd funding and community involvement. She is married to Reza Aslan (whose session I have already mentioned).

Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

• Dame Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Professor of Research at the School of Māori and Pacific Development, at the University of Waikato – and such a good choice.

• Sandi Toksvig, who is a Danish/British writer and comedian who is a regular participant in QI and Whose Line Is It Anyway? And is chair of The News Quiz on the BBC’s Radio 4. Just 3 words: Funny, fascinating and smart!!

Three
EXPLORING THE CREATIVE PROCESS: WORKSHOP WITH MICHAEL LEUNIG
68: Sunday May 18, 1.00-2.00 pm, ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre

Michael Leunig: Self portrait

Why?

Because I love the combination of

• Cartoons
• Writing
• Painting
• Philosophy
• Poetry

And these are the qualities, the abilities, the special talents that Michael Leunig brings together in a workshop that is essentially about two things: Creativity and You. This is a workshop where you can discuss and explore the creative process with a practitioner who has shared and told stories in ways that we can learn from and learn about.


Whatever you put on your plate … make sure it sustains you imaginatively, creatively, and intellectually … because the choice is yours!

Joanne Drayton

Next AWF preview is 22 April, 5:30-6:30 pm, with Carole Beu, book  reviewer and owner of the Women's Bookshop, and Iain Sharp, writer, former Books editor at Metro Magazine and the Sunday Star Times, and Manuscripts Librarian at Auckland Libraries Sir George Grey Special Collections. Central City Library, 44-46 Lorne St. Free entrance.

Winning with Poo: thoughts on the Diagram Oddest Title Prize 2014

"A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King"

(Emily Dickinson #1333)

At 36, the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year may be the youngest among the many eccentric traditions of the British springtime, centuries behind cheese-rolling, the Nutters Dance, and the Hare Pie Scramble, but it need harbour no inferiority complex. The prize, which is awarded annually by the book industry trade magazine The Bookseller, lacks neither for prestige -- in fact its custodian, The Bookseller's "legendary" diarist Horace Bent refers to it as "my prestigious prize" - nor for popularity. More people voted for the Diagram of Diagrams, won by Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers, than voted for the Booker of Bookers, won by Salman Rushdie.

Greek Rural Postmen and Their  Cancellation Numbers obviously merits its star status, but the Diagram Prize has called our attention to many sleeper glories over the years, including these, a few of my personal favourites:

How to Avoid Huge Ships
Designing High Performance Stiffened Structures
People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It
Highlights in the History of Concrete


which are now joined by the 2014 winner

      How to Poo on a Date

Subtitled The Lovers' Guide to Toilet Etiquette, this book answers "one of the most important questions that has played [sic] on the mind of mankind for centuries", according to its publishers.

The runners-up are:

Pie-ography
Subtitles are de rigueur with odd titles and are usually prosaic, as in the case above. But Pie-ography's subtitle, When Pie Meets Biography, is perhaps even more satisfyingly odd than the title.

"Anger" van Damme

How to Pray When You're Pissed at God
Here it was the publisher's blurb which was odder than the title. "Have you ever gotten pissed off at God? Moses did. So did Jesus and Anger van rear," I read.

Anger van Rear? Who's that? Some Jean-Claude van Damme rip off?

Reading on, all was revealed. That "van" was just a typo: "Anger van rear its ugly head" the line went on to say. Indeed it van. And proofreaders bow theirs.

The Origin of Feces
 Subtitle: What excrement tells us about evolution, ecology, and a sustainable society

Are Trout South African?
Subtitle: Stories of Fish, Places and People. 

and the one I voted for:

Working Class Cats
subtitle: The Bodega Cats of New York City

Tom Tivman, Features Editor at The Bookseller, was plumping for Working Class Cats to win as well, describing it as "a blend of feline heroism, Brooklyn hipster chic and Soviet realism".

You can get an idea of what's in the book by visiting the facebook page of this laudable awareness-raising initiative supporting "NYC cats who don't get paid for their labour", which contains gems such as:

"ScuzzBucket from Bleeker Street Records wins the fatty award, hands down."

So there you have it, a shortlist which Tivnan announced as one which "taps into the zeitgeist", with something for everyone, from internet cat-watchers to fans of foodie shows, and, "And we have two books about poo".

And this is where I come to the question "playing" on my mind, I might even say "preying" on my mind (but not "praying", pissed or not):

Is Poo odd?

Although last year's Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop-led shortlist did feature a number of titles on topics of perennial interest and oddity such as penises, knitting and Nazism, and none at all on human waste, the previous year it was again poo, in the guise of Cooking with Poo, which took the prize. Horace Bent recalled "a long tradition" when he announced this year's winner on Twitter, adding in How to Shit in the Woods ('89 winner) and American Bottom Archaeology ('93).

This pairing exactly illustrates my point. Is that first title really odd, or just a title containing a word which clamours for attention? My hunch is that as with people, the truly odd are always the ones who are not aware of being odd:  the aristocrat who goes around in glasses held together with tape, the grown man in front of you in the line for ice-cream, asking a lot of questions about the chocolate dip as the movie is about to start. In fact, the second of those titles, American Bottom Archaeology is wonderful to us in the same proportion as it was ordinary for its authors. American Bottom Archaeology is, they go on to tell us in their subtitle, simply A Summary of the FAI-270 Project Contribution to the Culture History of the Mississippi River Valley.

That's how I see it anyway. I am clearly a minority, given that the Diagram Prize is selected by public vote. In the old days, in the nude mice days and the lengthwise rolling days, Horace Bent decided the prize. He seems as chipper as ever when announcing the outcomes, but he has over the years let slip a comment or two about his dislike for the "intentionally rude".

A pity I didn't come across this 2013 title in time or I could have nominated it:  How To Seduce Women With Good Spelling, subtitled The Three Words You Can Learn To Spell Right Now In Order To Become A More Successful Lover, available on Amazon for kindle (never more apt), author a certain "Emma R".

Emma R? Emma R? Why does this sound familiar?

 Why of course!

Emma Rouault was the name of that irrepressible reader of romantic novels who made the big mistake of marrying the dull, definitely not odd, Charles Bovary.