Dr Phil, Jim Henderson’s Muppets, Godzilla and those groovy plastic boobs aprons. These somehow unlock and create discussion upon discussion about gender-fucking, identity, ego, family and culture (especially in the university creative writing courses in which this book is being studied, I would imagine). Tom Cho’s collection of short stories in Look Who’s Morphing contains surprisingly strong common links about the aforementioned themes, and, more impressively, seems to bring out the creative and articulate side of this book’s reviewers.

Short story collections are hard to enjoy for most people. Compared to novels, they seem more about the craft itself and the writer’s ability to capture a moment in time, and less about engrossing a reader in the writer’s world. So to go into a book of short stories and find yourself deeply involved in the characters and their lies, demonic possessions and loving aunties and uncles, is a surprise. Tom makes what looks like a conscious effort to confuse us about the identity of the narrator, also named Tom Cho, and effectively succeeds.

There’s also a plethora of aunties and uncles with whom he seems to share a close-ish sort of relationship that I’ve only really seen in ethnic families, including my own large one. Then again, Auntie Wei becomes demonically possessed when she dons a plastic-boobed apron in “The Exorcist”, and Tom realises the full extent of Auntie Lien’s rage issues in “Today on Dr Phil”. Tell me you can’t relate to demonically possessed or rage-filled relatives and I’ll never bring this up again.

The so-lame-they’re-cool pop culture references saturate Look Who’s Morphing: The Bodyguard, The Sound of Music, Godzilla, The Hulk (okay okay, The Hulk is bonafide cool); rather than detract from the stories, they comically intertwine the nonsensical with the real-life ponderings of cultural and gender identity.
I’ve read a few reviews of this book, all of them better than the one you’re reading now. But one thing that seems to be clear is that its impact on the reader comes from its ability to morph (hehe) into something attractive to each individual.

For me, it’s his seeming cultural self-assuredness that fascinates. I’ve always struggled with my own cultural identity, and am almost envious of friends, and writers, who can say with confidence that they are Chinese, or Korean, or Polish, . They learn the language (sometimes forced by their parents as a child) and know what all their native dishes are called, they’re simply able to identify with their ethnic background.

I still don’t know how to answer the question “Where are you from?” “Brisbane” “No, where are you really from?” In the story “Aiyo!!! An Evil Group of Ninjas is entering and destroying a call centre!!!”, I was giggling over having found someone else in who uses the word ‘Aiyo!!!’ other than my middle-aged Malaysian aunties, and I still get excited if I meet another Malaysian, for the vain hope they can teach me something about the country I was born in and therefore am “from”, in some respect.

See? This was supposed to be a freaking book review and it turned into a weird ‘who am I’ self-reflective piece of dribble. THAT’S what makes a good short story collection, people.

In any case, if you’re not into the whole ‘deep thought’ that accompanies these short stories, just read it for the final story, “Cock Rock” in which ‘Tom’ at 55-feet tall, rampages on Tokyo, but ends up with sexytimes and gigantic rock guitar riffs and a randy sailor-girl.

Apologies for the title. It’s just my fancy way of saying I went to the NSW Writers’ Centre History Festival, Writing The Past, today and am considering an affair with non-fiction. I’ve always loved and been loyal to reading fiction and literature but realised today that some stories are just too interesting to have been made up. Henceforth goes my affair with reading non-fiction/history/biography. Going to attempt to summarise today as succinctly as possible, which, as always, is actually impossible.

Crime and Politics Session

David McKnight and Tom Gilling spoke about writing crime and political history. McKnight shared with us his tactics for obtaining (sometimes illegally) and publishing information about former ASIO members in his book Australia’s Spies and their Secrets. Despite winning the 1994 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for the book, David was disappointed his book didn’t attract any outrage from ASIO. A just complaint.

If I stick to my non-fiction reading goals, I will add Tom Gilling’s forthcoming book to the reading pile. He is writing about the Mount Rennie Outrage, an incident in 1886 where a young woman named Mary Jane Hicks (seriously, how great is that name?) was gang-raped by a group of larrikins (not so great). Nine of the men that were tried were sentenced to death by hanging, but after appeals and public outrage, only four of them were hanged in the end. What’s interesting is that Hicks’ story soon became riddled with inconsistencies, which then fed into the press’s campaign to sully her name, casting her as a disreputable character and prostitute. So we’ve got a female rape victim who, after speaking out about her ordeal, is suddenly portrayed as a sex-crazed trollop. And there are people jumping to the defence of her rapists (although the execution of justice in this instance was so poor, that’s a whole separate issue). Seriously guys, where have we heard this before?

I was hoping Tom would talk about his book Bagman, about Queensland’s police corruption, so was disappointed. One idiotic member of the audience asked a question about omitting/changing certain names of criminals when writing crime history and had to have defamation explained to him. In school they teach us that there’s ‘no such thing as a stupid question’. I wish my grade six teacher Mrs. Crokidas had heard this guy’s question.

Sydney Stories

Con artist Jean McDonald

Anyway. The Sydney Stories session was particularly interesting for its inclusion of Peter Doyle on the panel. Peter shared photographic selections from his published research of police photographs from Sydney in the 1920s. But it was the combination of these photographs with the stories he told about various con-men and con-women that made the session so damn captivating.

There are questions such as, ‘how do you maintain the integrity of the family who was survived by the criminal?’ as well as Peter’s assertion that we’re fascinated with these imprinted characters of the past because of our own secret desire for black sheep members in our own family history. I don’t think this is a hard and fast rule. Then again, I’ve lost count of the amount of Irish-Australians who’ve tried to convince me they’re somehow distantly related to Ned Kelly. In their dreams.

Crooks Like Me is Peter Doyle’s second book of black and white police photographs, following City of Shadows: Police Photographs from 1912-1948. I bought Crooks Like Me because the other was sold out. Having only skimread it so far it wouldn’t be fair to review it just yet. But freaking hell these photos are amazing. Boys as young as sixteen, sentenced to jail for a year for theft; female con artists whose clever cons are explained in enough detail to make me want to try them out, if I had the guts. These aren’t mug shots. The faces vary from forlorn, to defiant, amused, hard, and sorry. But perhaps most frightening are the empty eyes that stare back from the pages in the chapter “Killed, Being Killed”.

One in particular, William Cyril Moxley, has startlingly pale eyes that are are shrewd and calculating. He doesn’t have the gaze of a stupid man. Moxley’s crime CV was long and chilling, including robbery as well as rape and murder. He lived on Arundel Road in Glebe which is so close to where I live that I can’t even tell you how close because of um, internet stalkers, and stuff. There’s something about reading about the history of the city you live in, whether you’ve lived here all your life or have recently made it home, that just makes you look at everything in such a different way.

Historical Fiction

Final session of the day was Historical Fiction with Ashley Hay and James Bradley. Much of the discussion revolved around research: James seemed to be of the notion that too much research can ruin a good historical novel. Fiction writers have an escape route if their book is not historically accurate . But it was also argued that there is an even greater need for accuracy, because you need to show some authority to your reader in order to have them believe the world you’ve created. This was the second time I’d heard James speak about his latest book The Resurrectionist, about the illegal body trade of 1820s London. He’s still as fascinated with cadavers now as he was last time.

But is writing historical fiction really relevant? I know I’m not a huge fan of it but I don’t necessarily believe that it is, as some believe, an escape from ‘real’ fiction, which is supposed to deal with the contemporary. There are always things we can learn about ourselves through the past, whether in a historical or fictional context. And, as Ashley Hay said, our treatment of the past is informed by our experiences of the present.

Days like these make my brain want to explode with all the new ideas that suddenly bloom from being surrounded by so many writers and recorders of history. It’s enjoyable and stressful at the same time, but has cemented in a couple of floating ideas I had of my own despite having never really considered writing about the past in any form.

If I’m going to *force* myself to read non-fiction this year, I think local crime history is going to be a very interesting place to start.

Connie Willis has won more Hugo Awards than any other writer. Apparently. Blackout is her first book in nearly a decade. Even without ever having read one of her books, I went into this one thinking ’sci-fi nerd alert’. It’s not. It’s history-time-travel-nerd-alert.

Merope, Polly and Mike are three Oxford historians in the year 2060. And, as per standard sci-fi, they aren’t your average historian. They get to travel back in time to document moments of history with unmatched accuracy. In this case, 1940 London. The Blitz. Sounds cool right? After all, if Crichton could make an interesting character out of a paleo-freaking-botanist (Dr. Ellie FTW), then surely Willis can make her historians interesting. Yes, I know that is a totally inappropriate comparison. Hush you.

Not quite. Merope, under the alias Eileen, takes care of evacuees in a country house, barely managing to control the two child terrors Binnie and and Alf. It’s Goodnight, Mr Tom but instead of tear-jerking scenes you get bratty kids and a vicar who may or may not have the hots for the babysitter even though she’s from the future (but he doesn’t know that).

Polly becomes a shopgirl on Oxford Street who continually pisses off her boss for wearing a navy skirt instead of a black one. Befriending a group of fellow shelterers, she isn’t prepared for the famous actor, Sir Godfrey, who is a little more switched on than everyone else, and sees through Polly’s tremendous lies. Also, he hates J.M. Barrie’s plays with a passion. It’s amusing.

Mike has been ‘dropped’ kilometres, and days, from where he was supposed to be (known as ’slippage’ in time-travel lingo), and ends up in Dunkirk, where he may have unwittingly changed the entire course of the war.

The time-travel in this story is linear. That’s something I just can’t, or won’t, wrap my head around. It’s too simplistic, and Willis never explains it in a satisfactory way, putting the whole book less in the ball park of sci-fi, and more in the ballpark of historical fiction. In her world, there laws of time-travel: If you were to change history by be being at Dunkirk in September 1940, the machine would never have let you travel back in the first place. Or there would be a retrieval team waiting for you upon arrival. How Mike manages to create drastic changes is not answered, because there’s a freaking part two that’s coming out soon.
It’s not bad. I mean, if you like the suspense, it’s great Not quite a burning cliffhanger, but tight enough to annoy me because I can’t read it right now. The sequel is called All Clear.

I can tell you all the problems I had with this book: a plodding plot, boring and ineffectual protagonists, and no real action. There are moments when a character slowly (too slowly) realises the horror of their situation, grasping at this revelation and constantly being interrupted, to the point where you want to scream at them; “YES YOU EFFED UP.” But the truth is, I raced through this book. There’s something in the pace of it, and Willis‘ dialogue-driven plot that makes it compelling reading. She polarises readers and it’s easy to see why.

Anyway, I promised some how not to time-travel rules. The double negatives were doing my head in. So I changed it to general time-travel advice.

1) Remember Abe Simpson’s advice to Homer on his wedding day: If you ever travel back in time, don’t step on anything because even the slightest change can alter the future in ways you can’t imagine.

2) Children, no matter what era they’re from, are little shits. But this will be exacerbated when snakes and a measles epidemic, unrelated, get thrown into the mix.

3) Um, don’t time travel. Duh. We keep seeing it go so so wrong, time after time. Take a hint people of the year 2060? (And you, reader, in case you were getting any machine-building ideas.)

4) If you find yourself back in the middle of World War II, beware of your own unintentional heroics skills. Saving hundreds of soliders’ lives may seem like a good thing, but, well, see rule 1).

5) Beware of kindly old actor gentlemen who lend you their newspaper. They’re a lot more clued up than you give them credit for.

6) If you’re a woman, it’s really really bad, even during the Blitz, to be running around without stockings. Keep a spare pair handy.

7) If you sent historians to the past before and accidentally got them smack bang into the middle of Black Death-riddled Middle Ages (see Willis’ earlier The Doomsday Book), take the freaking hint. Something’s probably going to go wrong. Basically, if you’re a time-traveller who is being written about in a book, you can bank on things going wrong. And it will involve a) getting stuck in the past, b) changing history or c) both.

Zine Day

On Saturday, did some zine-making over at magnation in King Street. Bird In The Hand Zine Shop organised it, and Bettie Brimstone plus friends hosted. The first act of my completely solo weekend went swimmingly. Everyone was friendly and there were no glue hogs or scissor hogs. (These used to cause me panic attacks as a kindergartener.) Some poor artist-in-crisis had dumped armfuls of arty goodness outside for collection, and quick-thining Bettie Brimstone brought it along. There was a giant ruby red manual typewriter with a dodgy ribbon that kept dislodging. But it was gorgeous! Typing on a manual typewriter is one of the most soothing motions. The punching keys noise is rhythmically uneven but everyone at the table agreed it was conducive to the ‘creative process’ or something. We sat in air-con. Suffice to say I was there pretty much the entire day.

Made the very first With Extra Pulp zine! It’s called “Characters for your next novel” and it’s filled with random type-written passages, torn out pages from my Moleskine diary and exquisitely pretty paper that some poor artist chucked out (along with their hopes and dreams). You could win it, if you enter my Blogiversary competition.

A Book Launch and then Amanda F***ing Palmer

Kinokuniya Bookshop hosted the launch for Solace & Grief, the debut novel by YA author Foz Meadows. I got a copy signed and told Foz I was her ‘Twitter-stalker” (most people get all weird around famous actors/musicians. I get stage fright around authors.) But she still signed my book. And got the spelling of my name right in the FIRST GO. Scott Westerfield MC’d. Just a quick question to any authors who may be reading this: Do you find it weird when someone comes to your launch by themselves? I’m curious.

Anyway. So some girls gave Foz a large yellow capscicum. And then I felt bad for not bringing along a garden vegetable. So after getting my book signed I left. Solace & Grief is about a teenage girl named Solace living in foster care who, as it turns out, is a vampire. She meets a faceless man and subsequently realises she can’t keep hiding what she is. Oh, and there’s some sort of strange underworld beneath Sydney’s Hyde Park. Urban fantasy Aus style.

My solo weekend wasn’t over yet. Amanda Palmer rocked the Opera House. She was accompanied in part by Lance on the marimba (plus four other instruments) and a rocking string quartet. But back to Amanda. She is hilarious. And talks to the audience. A lot. She completely fucks up her final song. (Everyone got their lighters out, old school style, and it made her laugh.) She plays an impromptu, slightly disturbing song with her support act, Mikelangelo, on vocals. She does a cover of John Cage’s 4′33″ and more than half the audience has no idea what the hell is going on. She has a gorgeous gothic half-skirt (as in, there’s no front half), that she arranges carefully on the piano stool. But she gets stuck every time she has to stand up. She pulls up random audience members (one of which has her own ukelele) and a man who has an iPhone, but when it doesn’t work she gives it back and lets him sit on stage watching and filming the whole thing from the freaking prime seat.

She opens with my favourite song, Astronaut. And finally succumbs to audience pleas at the end for Oasis. She sings a song about how her burning hatred for Vegemite. “I cannot hold a man this close who spreads this cancer on his toast. It’s the Vegemite or me.” She also refers to it as ‘foul death-paste’ as well as..oh just watch this video. She seems to think everyone in Australia loves Vegemite. The audience sets her straight.

Amanda encores, as per the usual standard. She plays NIN’s Hurt followed by a few more songs.

She answers questions from the audience and deftly fended off the stalker-ish girls. She flashes us her $9 Aussie flag undies, which were purchased in Adelaide airport. She laments about not being able to be with her fiance, Neil Gaiman, who is at the Oscars right this very second. But she assures us that she loves us. She spills her red wine all over her copy of her book “Who Killed Amanda Palmer” just as she is plugging it. She plays the Opera House Grand Piano with her FOOT.

The audience are hilarious hecklers. They really love her. (And one guy really loved Pokemon, as 4′33″ revealed). She doesn’t play Leeds United, another of my favourite songs, but it’s forgivable. She is an amazing performer and being engaged to Neil Gaiman has just made her even awesomer (if that were even possible). Amanda is so public about her life it scares me slightly. I’m surprised she hasn’t been kidnapped or something during her Australian tour. My fears of going by myself were unfounded. When you watch Amanda perform it’s like you’re the only one in the room. And the wooshes of crowd cheering and laughing are just part of the background noise. She’s a gothy, punky, scary woman who is brilliant.

This is my favourite song of hers.

Lovely present and future readers of With Extra Pulp, It has been exactly one year since I began the treacherous and harrowing journey into the blogosphere. I’ve had many blogs since I discovered LiveJournal as a naive and, well, let’s face it, angsty fifteen-year-old, but this one lasted the longest. It’s my favourite.

To celebrate my One Year Blogiversary, I’m hosting a totally rad giveaway. It’s international, because well, I have too many Yanky-doodle and Pommy-licious readers to ignore. (Plus, according to GetClicky, some Google-strays from Sweden, Belgium and Spain. Rad.)

Prizes were picked based on books I read in 2009 that I loved, and zines, because not many people seemed to know what these are. Aaaaand, just because I love to pimp out Aussie lit journals, each prize pack will also contain an excellent new um, Aussie lit journal. The awesome folks from Kill Your Darlings have kindly sponsored this leg of the booty (Thanks Kill Your Darlings team!)

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 1: Superheroes and Their Tight Tight Pants.

1 x Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

1 x Deadpool comic

1 x First Issue of Kill Your Darlings

As you all know, superheroes and supervillains are so cool it’s hard to find the words to describe just how cool. Soon I will be invincible looks like it was meant to be a comic book, but it’s not. It’s an entertaining novel. About superheroes. Me likey.

Deadpool goes in here because, um, I heart Deadpool. He’s such a smartarse. And compares himself to Ryan Reynolds (which is hilarious, if anyone saw a little movie called Wolverine: X-Men Origins). And then later, he teams up with Cable and they get some great banter going. So yep, you get a copy of an issue of Deadpool. Which one? You’ll have to wait and see.

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 2: Dirty Stinkin’ Beats

1 x Howl by Allen Ginsberg

a few x Zines from Sticky

1 x Kill Your Darlings

I get made fun of for my *cough*small*cough* obsession with the Beat Generation. You can all shut your faces now, because I’m giving away a free copy of Ginsberg’s Howl and other poems. Put it on your bookshelf or next to your bed. It should impress potential lovers and friends (well, potential lovers and friends with street cred). Or you could, I dunno, read it.

This prize also includes a selection of zines from the Sticky Institute Zine Fair. Don’t think of it as second-hand. Think of it as “personally handpicked for this special prize by the ever so tasteful Elena”. Now, doesn’t that sound much better?

Awesomundo Prize Pack No. 3: Aussie. Sort of.

1 x Romeo of the Underworld by Veny Armanno

1 x handmade zine

1 x Kill Your Darlings

This one’s a little different from the others. I’ve picked one of my favourite reads of 2009, by one of my absolute favourite writers, who happens to be Sicilian-Australian. Romeo of the Underworld by Venero Armanno. This book holds fond memories for me. I bought it on a family trip to Maleny last year from a gorgeous bookshop that could’ve been straight out of a European film, with its wooden floorboards, and its lingering smell of toast. Except it was in Queensland wine country. So it is second hand, but in excellent condition (no doggy ears or post-it rips. Yippee).

And, because I’m sticking with the theme of this particular prize pack, you could also win a HAND MADE ZINE by yours truly. zomgwtfbbq. I’m only ‘sort of’ Australian (born overseas). Okay some people might feel like they’re getting ripped off with this last prize pack. It’s self-indulgent and self-congratulatory and not a little uppity. Why the hell would you want my battered and read book (I mean battered emotionally, not physically)? Why the effing hell would you want a crappy handmade zine by yours truly, the epitome of artistically-challenged? Because this particular prize has HEART. And HEART is the thing that wins Oscars and makes people cry and spreads the love. Gush time over. It’s not that bad a prize. Please don’t cry if you win this. It would suck big time.

Boring stuff, aka The Rules:

• Leave a comment answering the following question

Would you rather be

a) A half-titanium cyborg with intimacy issues?

b) a grizzly-faced poet whose words land him in court?

c) caught in a messy love triangle with your mate, a beautiful woman, and your Sicilian temper?

And then tell us why.

• Tweet* about this giveaway (+3 entries) (include URL in your comment)
• Blog about this giveaway (+6 entries) (include URL in your comment)
• Subscribe to this blog on RSS (+1 entry) (let me know in the comment if you are a subscriber)
• The competition will end on at 11.59pm AEDST (GMT+11) on Friday 19th March.
• Three winners will be selected at random and announced on Monday 22nd March

* Only your first tweet will gain you extra entries. Spamming is lame.

Good luck!

Affirm Press

March 2010

The nineteen seventies were, according to Barry Divola’s narrator Charlie, every shade of brown with the constant soundtrack of cicadas. And there’s nothing particularly glamourous in this collection of short stories. It’s all teenage boy awkwardness and girls with three nipples, high school rock bands and Sunday night youth group. It’s delightfully ordinary.

Each short story is a chapter of Charlie’s adolescence, and while Charlie himself is a little too ‘nice guy’ to really relate to, it’s the people in his life that seem to dictate his experiences, including all the girls he falls in love with. It almost seems as if Charlie is merely the vessel through which the reader gets to travel back to yester-decade.

Now, you may find this hard to believe, but I have never been a teenage boy. So it’s always, always that little bit comforting to read stories where the girl seems to have control over the romantic situation. (A real fiction in my life so far) It’s only through books like these I can begin to formulate ideas of the kinds of thoughts that permeate a boy’s brain. Maybe I should’ve read this when I was a confused teenager. May have even shed a bit of light on the confusing male perspective of relationships.

But I digress. It’s really the music references that really drive home that 70’s mood that permeates throughout. Charlie and his friends lie around in their bedrooms listening to The Best of Bread on vinyl; after much deliberation, Charlie handpicks Harvest by Neil Young as the soundtrack to losing his virginity. And later, his crush on Angie Perrotta intensifies when he learns that she learned to touch type by practising on song lyrics by Elton John, Carol King and Cat Stevens. And whether or not you grew up listening to Cat Stevens or Neil Diamond or America, it’s not an outrageous theme: We all have albums and songs and artists that have shaped our childhood.

In “Small White Triangle”, Charlie sits at youth group daydreaming about his future as a hair metal rock god, and contemplates Rock Star Jesus, the ultimate makeover. In “Nixon”, Charlie’s ignorance of American politics combined with his ability to regurgitate other people’s opinions, cuts him off from second base with touch-typing extraordinaire Angie, who is also opinionated and idealistic. But it’s the final story, “Patience” that is the sweetest culmination of the previous stories. It’s the only story where we get to see Charlie’s impact on someone else’s life, rather than vice versa. Patience is the name of the elderly woman whose place Charlie cleans on Saturdays. She calls him Einstein, he tells her about his current girlfriend. They become better freinds than any of the boys from school. Patience makes an oxymoron out of her name, and is subsequently not a little feisty. She gives him a cat. While many of the short stories in this collection teeter over oddball and drily funny, the last story is just plain sad, in a final, conclusionatory way.

It’s the second book in Affirm Press’s Long Story Shorts series (following Under Stones by Bob Franklin) And if you’re in Sydney, both books are being launched at Gleebooks next Wednesday (17th March).

Michael Chabon is a freakishly awesome writer. And Kavalier and Clay is kinda cool too.

It took me about ten years to get around to reading this book. Mainly because when it was published I was twelve years old and not very sophisti-ma-cated in my reading taste. So it feels slightly redundant to only just now be reviewing the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of epic proportions.

And epic doesn’t only apply to the nearly 700 pages containing said Amazing Adventures. The story itself spans decades, from the moment cousin Joe makes his great Prague-ian escape to New York, with his cousin Sam Clayman, to post-war New York, long after Joe and Sam have gone their separate ways and forged new lives.

I love that it’s about two cousins who take on the world with their Nazi-busting comic creation, The Escapist. I love that it’s based on the guys that created Superman. And I love that it’s tragic and full of metaphors concerning Joe Kavalier’s obsession with magicianship and escape artistry. Joe is enigmatic and distant: Despite the tragedies that befall him one relentlessly, he is difficult to sympathise with. Perhaps due to his stoicism.

People rave about this book, but to be honest *hides behind desk*, I just don’t get it. I mean, it’s a marvellous story, and it injects a little humour into those dark days of Hitler and it’s heartbreaking. Maybe it’s because other than them being cousins, I couldn’t really see a relationship between Joe and Sam. They fit together in as much as Joe was a fantastic artist, and Sam was a master storyteller, and together the comics they made were just what the young boys of their generation needed. But that was it. Maybe it’s a male thing – close bonds are defined by what’s not said, rather than what’s said. Also, there was an impression of Sam’s marrying Rosa that felt a little like he was keeping the seat warm, so to speak.

Joe and Sam’s eventual reunion should have been all the more sweeter considering all the years that passed of Joe’s most triumphant disappearing act since he left Prague. But it all felt so matter of fact. Chabon’s beautifully constructed sentences render his writing a separate entity to the story itself. The best writing is the writing that becomes part of the story.

Sentences/paragraphs that sounded pretty impressive:

“His eyes were pink and glittering from the dope, he was thickly covered in a reddish pelt of reindeer fur from his sleeping bag, and he stand more than any human Joe had ever smelled (though there would come worse), as if he had been dipped in some ungodly confection of Camembert and rancid gasoline brewed up in a spit-filled cuspidor.” (p458-9)

Or

“Boyfriend. The word flew into Sammy’s mind and careened blindly around it like a moth while Sammy chased after it with a broom in one hand and a handbook of lepidoptery in the other. It sounded like a wise-crack, acidulous, hard-bitten, italicised.” (p572)

I didn’t hate the book. Far from it. Maybe it was just hyped up too much and I was expecting to be moved by the story. No, it was more like appreciating a party from the outside: You smile along and get that it’s really awesome, but you’re not in there celebrating with everyone. I dunno, that’s a dumb analogy.

There are people out there who love this book: Show yourselves, defend it, tell me how off the mark I was. ^_^

Severus Snape. Gosh, where do I start? The greasy mop of hair? The large hook-like nose? Now some of you may object to this choice, or even to Harry Potter being counted as ‘literary’ but quiet, you. I heart Severus. Especially because we got to find out I was right about him all along. He WAS good. And he loved Lily. It was so sweet and tear-jerking. Also, he died. Nobly. He didn’t WANT to kill Dumbledore, he HAD to. To save Draco. One of those bad on the outside, good on the inside types. It’s a massive turn on. Also, Alan Rickman is sexeh! Best. Voice. Ever. Every time I read a book, I want to turn to page three hundred and ninety-four.

I also delightedly received the Prolific Blogger Award from Mae at Mad Bibliophile. Yay! (and thank you Mae) It’s  a very special award, and even as a whole page dedicated to explaining it. The seven bloggers I’ve chose to award are:

Fresh Ink Books

Lorelei V

Turning The Leaves (a new blog, but already filled with interesting reviews and literary insights)

Tooth Soup

Wordsmithonia (Ryan has given me awards before, but they got lost in my messy blogosphere -Sorry dude! – His blog rocks)

Savidge Reads (who have also started a new PenPals project that I think is quite rad)

Avocado and Lemon – a relatively recently discovered blog, but excellently written, and with some great discussion points on writing and literary events etc.

Okay I’m aware that I’m being a very bad book blogger and haven’t posted a book review in a long time. But last night I saw Spring Awakening at the Sydney Theatre and, well. Yeah.

It wasn’t without its faults. But I’ve been looking up YouTube videos from the American Broadway versions, and have to say, in comparison, the Sydney Theatre production was much less polished (this worked for and against it at different times), and the costumes were pretty awesome. Reminded me of my own Catholic all-girl schooldays when we used to find the private school boys’ uniforms real sexy. *eyes glaze over* Oh, you’re still here? Anyway…

It’s ultimate teen angst (if teenagers broke out into well-choreographed song every so often), but for some reason this didn’t piss me off as much as it usually does. Perhaps because the play it was based on (Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind) was written in 1891. It effectively reminds us that teenagers have had to deal with sex, getting good grades, and evil grownups since forever.

Wendla’s mother refuses to tell her the truth about where babies come from, out of embarrassment. The consequences are grave and sad. While the girls are dealing with their own problems: sexual and physical abuse, kept complete ignorance of the real world, the boys aren’t much better off: Clowny Moritz has just had is first erotic dream and is utterly petrified of it. He’s also being sabotaged by his teachers, who plot against him in order to keep their school’s pristine reputation.

Wendla and Melchior (Image from www.springawakeninginaustralia.com.au)

I’m hesitant to get into detail of the plot because you can easily read about it somewhere else. Spring Awakening shows us a world in which school children frolick in the gardens under moonlight, and are curious and get hurt and are betrayed by those who should be caring for them: their parents and teachers. It’s a world in which sex is a complete mystery, and while smart, likeable and radical thinking Melchior (the male protagonist) is somewhat sexually educated, he is still naive and idealistic. His modern thinking becomes the reason for his downfall.

While it has its comic moments at the beginning, the story spirals into darkness: Abuse, suicide, and other themes that I won’t mention (in case it ruins the storyline), but all of these informed by and resulting from the hypocrisy and ‘eyes-shut’ attitudes of the adults and the conservative Christian society at large. Normally, I am easily moved to tears when I watch things. I didn’t have this reaction here, but the grief and indignation at the utter injustice of the situations that arise are no small impact.

It’s a musical, so I should probably mention the songs. The songs are great. Well, most of them. I wasn’t a fan of My Junk, however I loved Wendla’s pleading Mama Who Bore Me, the schoolboys’ Bitch Of Living (spazzy dancing galore), Melchior et al’s Totally Fucked and the finale ensemble song, Song of Purple Summer were beautiful and angsty and rageful. Oh, and I loved Melchior’s All Who’ve Known. So yes, quite a few. It was great to see ‘fucked’ rhymed with ’self-destruct’ in the lyrics: it wasn’t simply a word to fill in syllables.

The musicians were absolutely amazing, particularly the violinist, and while at times the accompaniment was a little too loud, it was still easy to appreciate the arrangement of it all. Occasionally, the singers used handheld microphones, which was possibly necessary, but definitely quite hard on the ears. When you sing with a microphone, your whole projection needs to change, otherwise the over-pronunciation normally required sans mic becomes very spluttery. And for most of it, I was struggling to understand the lyrics, although when the song itself is a pleasure to listen to, this can sometimes be forgivable.

Anyway, the magnetism of Spring Awakening was in its story: sexual repression, coming of age, and the aloneness of those awkward teenage years. There was something very Picnic At Hanging Rock about it all.

(I wonder if plays count for my Literary Lusts…I have my eye on Melchior or Moritz..)

Note: This wasn’t meant to be a proper review, just my thoughts of the night, so apologies for not being tight on acknowledging the right people, if you really want to know, I’m sure you’ll read on elsewhere.

Oh yeah btw this was the book they were all talking about for some reason...

Journalism fail No. 1: Going to author event with intention of blogging about it and not taking a camera.

Journalism fail No. 2: Going gonzo and inviting myself along to post-event dinner; sitting at dinner table with writers and grilling said writers with questions, without means of recording their responses.

But more to the point…

Elena fail No. 1: Introducing myself as a writer, and then fumbling awkwardly when asked what I actually write (still don’t know quite how to answer this one).

Elena fail No. 2: Tagging along unashamedly to dinner at lovely Vietnamese restaurant on King Street and eating a half rice-paper roll.

Elena fail No. 3: Trying to explain the name of this blog without sounding like a wanker.

Elena fail No. 4: Smiling non-stop. (I’m seeking therapy for this.)

Elena fail No. 5: Telling everyone I reviewed Mic Looby’s book last year to make clear I wasn’t just some random tag-along…even though that’s what it was.

But then there was

Elena win No. 1: Meeting Soph from Avocado and Lemon who is very cool and has some fantastic ideas about literary endeavours…

Elena win No. 2: An awesome conversation (and writing advice) from novelist and screenwriter Virginia Duigin.

Elena win No.3: Discovering a new bookshop to stalk. Gosh Newtown, you really know how to spoil a gal for choice.

All in all, I believe I sufficiently made an arse of myself. But at least I learned that I don’t have any desire whatsoever to become a travel writer.

EDIT: Err, reading over this latest post, realised that I’ve given you NO details of the actual event itself.

Mic read an excerpt from his book, exposing the ridiculousness of one of his main characters. He was interviewed by travel writer and soon-to-be-published-author Ben Groundwater, about the horrors ups and downs of travel guidebook writing, and the importance of leaving the best stuff out.

It also turns out Mr Looby sufficiently pissed off enough embittered guidebook writers and guidebook publishers to deem his work a success. Agreed.

The term ‘value judgement’ popped up a lot, from the author and the audience.

Mic and I anguished briefly about the difficulty of writing a truly funny book, something he seems to have accomplished.