Month: August 2010

Slow dancing with kangaroo and donkey

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You’ve heard of course of the slow food movement. Well, I’ve launched the slow blogging movement. There were some very funny people at Byron Bay Writers Festival, some of whom are known as comedians such as the brilliant John Doyle (doesn’t everyone love him?), Lily Bragge, and then there are the people who tell very funny stories, often against themselves. A.J Mackinnon is one of them. He told of how he swam across a Chinese river to enter China and was arrested for not having a visa. How can this be funny? Well, because he is Australian he was asked by the guards if he had a pet kangaroo, and when he said he didn’t, the guard roared at him, “Why you not have a pet kangaroo?” It’s a difficult question to answer, said Mackinnon. If there was a sartorial prize being awarded at the festival Jack Marx would win hands down. Marx said he gets really annoyed that if he has a reputation at all it’s as someone who has no ethics when it …

The glorious contradictions of people

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Apologies for not ‘live’ blogging on Sunday. The Wi Fi Gods dictated against it so I’ll put up the posts over the next day .. I watched the session where Sally Neighbour talked about interviews with profound and unexpected consequences such as that with Jack Thomas where the interview material was used as evidence against him for the Crown. And there was Ben Naparstek, the controversially, at the time of his appointment, young editor of The Monthly. He recounted a scene from his book In Conversation how Peter Handke picked up a knife and lunch and said he was going to kill him. Random conversations with people in the lunch region sparked mentions of ‘that gorgeous young man, so clever’. Some were old enough to be Naparstek’s grandmother. And speaking of grandmothers, Romana Koval mentioned she is one. She also mentioned it during her interview with Bret Easton Ellis on Friday (to be played on The Book Show on August 9). I don’t think BEE gave a …..um fig about Koval being a grandmother. Koval …

The decadence of our times

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John Keane, Professor of Politics, is so easy to listen to and right across so many issues. He is despairing of the K-Mart vs KK-Mart style of the Australian election contenders. He recently returned to Australia after many years spent predominantly in the UK. His most recent book is The Life And Death Of Democracy, an epic written with the intention of being a lasting work. It has been shortlisted for the Prime Ministers Literary Prize. I made jottings from John Keane’s festival appearance: There is a maturing sense not only in Australia but in Europe and America that the representative system is not working, especially in addressing climate change. We see a new wave of calling out for parliament and politics to act differently and a recognition that institutions even those as revered as democracy can rot. Keane identifies a decadent trend in the falling away of public sympathies for parties – there’s still an affection for parliament but disaffection for politics that has become a dirty word about what goes on in Canberra. …

The many masks of authenticity

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A somewhat surreal interview between Romana Koval and Bret Easton Ellis, a little like when Parkinson and Meg Ryan were not quite on the same page. Meanwhile Kathy Lette schooled Simon Marnie in the finer points of quip-lashing. Ramona asked a Book Show kind of question, and B-E-E mused about watching “this woman, what is her name?” “Delta Goodrem” and noticing how hot she is and how she stomped about, and her lyrics that say how her persistence made a difference. “So I tweeted this and went to bed and then awoke to a fuselage of tweets,” he said. One said saying ‘I am sorry she had cancer but I still think she is a sow,’ and another saying ‘I’ve always respected you as an author but if you like that woman you will lose my respect’. Interesting, the degree of possession that readers can feel they have over a writer. You might be too old for her Ramona suggested. There was some discussion of who her partner was and an audience member clarified that. …