Melbourne Writers Festival Day 10 Crims and Creepy

MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL: China Mielville (Photo courtesy MWF: Jim Lee)  

The last day of the Melbourne Writers Festival, 10 days of talking, listening, and word related creativity is finally coming to a close. But there are still 32 sessions on the program and that’s not including Magazine, ArtPlay and all the other activities. Where to start? The first session was the clue – it was to be a day of mysterious crime.

Maybe I was jaded, maybe I’d seen just too much. The day was grey and the morning wet, without a lot to recommend being under the big wide sky. I found myself headed to a small dark room. I wasn’t alone. Three men sat waiting. They wanted to talk. I could feel the dark side was tugging at me like dog a on a lead…it was a lead I knew I’d have to investigate... I could only hope picking up the traces wouldn’t smell as bad as what my dog left behind. Little did I know then what all this talk would tell me…

It was for the Thrill of It, that Simon Kernick and Peter James had been brought together to talk blockbuster, edge of your seat thrillers with James Phelan.

Peter James came to successful novel writing after an early unsuccessful novel writing career. In between he’s been a very successful television and film writer / producer. Picture him in the crime-writers uniform, sports jacket with white tee, jeans and black shoes; his accent nasal upper-crust Brit. When at home he likes driving expensive cars around Sussex.

Over the hour we discovered that his early influences were the great English ‘cosy’s, body in the library stuff, and Sherlock Holmes. He started out writing very bad spy thrillers because he thought they would sell, they didn’t. He was told to write what he was passionate about, not for money. He’s incredibly research driven, almost like a method actor, and sometimes spends a day a week hanging out with police to get character and action right. Each book takes about seven months, but a month will be on the first chapter and up to a week may be on the first sentence.

Simon Kernick also first had an unsuccessful writing career. He sent his first book to all 150 agents in the UK and got rejected by them all. Not put off he did the same with his second novel, which was 1000 pages long, and got the same response. Third time, he got published. He sits with his long legs stretched out in front, and is a bit like one of those ex-pat Brits you see at Sydney Yacht Clubs who turns out to be a capital funds manager. He’s got a loud deep voice, and the the blue shirt, blue jeans and a puppy-faced lad look. Simon is plot driven, the characters have to fit the story. Sometimes he likes to kill major characters off just to keep people guessing. He’s had the British army bomb squad help him design a fictional terrorist bomb in one of his books. It’s amazing who will talk to you when you’re a fiction writer. He doesn’t like writing gratuitous violence, cause its meant to be an entertaining yarn.

I’m not sure I know any more about how to write a thriller having heard them speak, but they were entertaining. I didn’t do a survey of the 40 or so women in the room (3 men) but I’m guessing a lot of them had novel writing in mind. So it helps to hear that really successful writers have made all the same mistakes and had all the struggles as other writers starting out.

***

China Mielville was the first guest for The Big Issue’s afternoon in the ‘crate’ as the Magazine shipping container is being affectionately called. Mielville’s a star in the world of fantasy fiction, though his work is sometimes called’ ‘weird fiction’ in the tradition of writers who have blended sci-fi, speculative, supernatural and mythical elements in their work. He either wins or is nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C Clarke Awards for just about every novel, and probably will again with his latest, ‘Kracken’.

He’s a striking fellow, the combat pants, black tee with a pretty blossom silhouette design, loose over a chest that may well be as gym-buffed as his biceps. His head is polished and earring studs like claws run down the lobe of one ear.

He was all the more incongruous standing on the small stage made to look like a 50s lounge, a chandelier almost brushing his noggin’ talking about the ‘Scooby-doo’ impasse. This is basically that even the scariest monsters don’t scare us anymore – we just expect the costume to be lifted at the end.

So he got us thinking like surrealists and a bit avant guard by making the group of us draw ‘exquisite corpses’. This is where everyone gets a piece of paper they fold into thirds. You draw the top, maybe it’s a head, it’s up to you, on the top third, fold it over and pass it along. Hopefully you’ll receive a new sheet from someone else. Then without looking at what’s been done before, you draw a middle - and finally repeat for the ‘legs’.

Getting interactive was a lot of fun. With 20 or so of us in the container and large pieces of paper to manipulate there were a lot of giggles, and bumps. When we were done, China asked someone to volunteer their ‘corpse’ and he promised he would write a short story about the ‘creature’ they had created in the next year and have it published. All the writers in the room had to decide if they too would make the commitment. Then we looked at what we had.

He may regret that pledge! Melissa Cranenburgh of Melbourne’s Big Issue however, says they’ll publish it if he writes it – so keep an eye out.

***

Next was the announcing of the 26th Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for 2010. There are 10 award categories with total prize money worth $180,000. This is the first year the Awards are being managed by the Wheeler Centre, having taken over the job from the State Library.

The 34 short-listed works show the diversity and talent of Victorian writers, Peter Batchelor, Minister for the Arts said. The Awards were a key element in Melbourne’s bid as a City of Literature, showing the support for local talent and literature.

The short listed Writers were announced by Head of the Wheeler Centre, Chrissie Sharp and the full list is available on their website.

There were then eight readings from nominated authors of their work. Amongst them, Rodney Hall read a vivid passage about being rescued from his house after an incendiary bomb has landed in the middle of the night in their back yard. His book Popeye Never Told You: Childhood memories of the War has been short listed in the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non Fiction.

David Hansen read from ‘Seeing Truganini’ (Australian Book Review), which is up for The Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate. Also short listed in this category were Waleed Aly for Patriot Acts (The Monthly) and Gideon Haigh for Stupid Money (Griffith Review).

Winsome of Rangoon by Michelle Aung Thin; House of Sticks by Peggy Frew and Cambodia Darkness and Light by Andrew Nette are in the running for The Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript

The winners will be revealed on Tuesday 28th September.

***

Robert Richter QC is known as the barrister of choice when Melbourne identities get themselves into trouble, especially Underbelly characters, like Mick Gatto. This made him a particularly fascinating person to have discussing the Real Life of Crime. Along with him was investigative journalist Jake Adelstein (Tokyo Vice) who gave a hair-raising insight into what happens to people who say dishonourable things about the Yakuza.

Writer and columnist Mark Dapin chaired this session, which was a fascinating insight to what real crime can be like.

Richter QC compared the TV version of Underbelly to what ‘really’ happened when Andrew Veniamin and Mick Gatto faced off at the back of a Melbourne Italian Restaurant. He talked about where the bullets went, the characteristics of a 38 revolver, how the gun jammed and when. Sure, hearing the detail was voyeuristic, but the insight it provided into the understanding of crime a defence lawyer develops was fascinating.

The Yakuza in Japan are out in the open, everyone knows who they are. While not completely tolerated, they are seen by some as a second tolerated police force. The Yakuza prevent petty street crime, have fan magazines, business cards, legitimate business fronts, office buildings, a career structure, and pension plans. They’re Japanese; they’re very organised. He has friends who are in the organization, who find it a quite reasonable place to work, so long as you’re not in the Molotov cocktail department it’s fine. But none of that means they can’t be very scary indeed. Adelstein has had three death threats over the past 15 or so years. He has to have a full-time body guard when he’s in Japan.

By contrast Melbourne’s crime in Richter’s experience, is disorganised. There’s been a history of family dynasties but he’s never come across any ‘organised’ in Melbourne. Quite the opposite. That’s reassuring.

Even when talk turned to ‘Are people born evil?’, Richter said he hadn’t had to deal with anyone that was evil. Mad? Yes. But not evil. Adelstein however is addiment there are evil people, sociopaths, sadists; people who don’t feel any empathy; people who will inflict pain for their own pleasure. His apparent personal experience meeting these kinds of people was chilling.

Actually made me feel much safer living in little ol’ Melbourne.

***

The last session of the day wanted to change that – it wanted to unsettle me deeply. It was called The New Gothic, which is to say, it’s not new but these are new people writing gothically.

The setting was Feddish, looking out on wet dripping trees, darkening into night. Somewhere below the Yarra River bloating its banks, sluiced slowly. One crowd slowly edged out as the next session began, drying up to a quiet attentive few listening intently, as if spirits were being raised.

Sue Turnbull chairing the session, suggested gothic is a style rather than a genre, it can be found in many places. When she thinks gothic she thinks Robert Louis Stevenson, and the visceral effect of Treasure Island. There was talk of Wuthering Heights, Edgar Allen Poe. In modern contexts we often think of television of Buffy or Being Human, the work of Tim Burton, the music of Nick Cave or classic films like Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Each of the panellists read from their novels. Poet turned author, Joel Deane told of a dark meeting with monstrous man in the hold of ship in The Norsemen’s Song.

Tartan noir writer, Louise Welsh transported us to a lonely Scottish Island where Dr Murray Watson accepts a lift from a near stranger in Naming the Bones. And Chris Womersley’s character discovers sorcerous trinkets fashioned of dry grass and bone dangling from trees, pages of a bible rolled and dangling like disembodied fingers in Bereft.

Chris Wolmersly, enjoys the way gothic fiction allows room for evil, and the occult, the way it challenges the boundaries of what we take to be solid. His work epitomises what Louise Welsh says she loves about gothic, that you don’t quite know where you are.

For some reason I think of Welsh as a Glaswegian Pam Ayers, a kinder teacher who whispers of ‘Meerder”. It’s delightful to hear her read, the touch of whimsy that she adds, a foil that provides contrast, making the dark seem darker. She says she’s amused and excited that we’re frightened and unnerved by the same things as our ancestors, the dark.

For Joe Dean it is the romantic, the intensity of feeling that draws him in. He wants to be shaken– the work to have an effect.

It was agreed there is a connection between noir and gothic. As Welsh said, they’re natural friends, like fish and potatoes. But gothic is about corruption more than crime. It’s about what gets eaten away in the mind.

That was my very last session of the Melbourne Writers Festival, over thirty in ten days, three note books full. It was time to venture back to the ordinary world, to leave Federation Square behind. At the entrance to the Atrium, little Reading’s workers were bundling books into boxes, packing them away. I’d seen them unpack books in the same way just ten days ago, echoing thumps in the cavernous space of the Atrium.

Outside the traffic coasted in red and white waves, back and fore down Flinders. I crossed, made my way up the still, steep bluestone laneway. The only people were inside, painters in a closed restaurant, white washing the walls. In the dark ally, grotesque faces watched me indifferently from the rough walls. Rain stumbled off the buildings, splattered in the crevices. Was it really over, the blur of so many faces and words? The stones shimmered like boiled black lollies, light bending off them at my feet. Into the forest of concrete mountains only the click of my shoes on stone walked with me.