If you haven’t seen this German film yet, drop everything and GO. It won Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards, but from all accounts it should have won Best Film (a category in which it wasn’t even nominated). My cinema-going has been curtailed in the last year or so, mainly out of boredom at what’s on offer, but this more than made up for the bland also-rans.

The Lives of Others is set in East Germany before the Wall came down. Its peculiar genius is in creating an empathetic hero out of a man who, when we first meet him, seems to be a soulless Stasi officer. The film balances so many complex elements so beautifully, I staggered out of the cinema with my similarly affected friend. We had no choice but to find the nearest wine bar in order to balance ourselves out.

Raving about the film last week to anyone who would listen, I discovered a serendipitous connection between an acquaintance of mine and the film’s director. A friend of my client Simi, a German filmmaker called Christian, speaks to the director’s mother on the phone every day. The reason he does this is that the director’s mother is best friends with Christian’s aunt, who lives here in New York and who has recently been unwell. She calls him to see how her friend is doing. She did this while I was working with Christian during filming of Simi reading from her memoir to a group of young disabled women last week. I was trying to hold a boom microphone and not make too much noise as I moved it around.

From Christian (and his wife, whom I met in the car on the way home to Brooklyn – imagine, a lift home, in a car!), I learned that the only person of their acquaintance in Germany who did not enjoy the film was a theatre actress who, on principle, could not accept a rounded and sympathetic portrayal of a Stasi officer. This actress had herself been imprisoned during the years portrayed in the film; a misfortune made worse by her impeccably poor timing: apparently she had fled Romania to Germany … only for the wall to go UP three days after she arrived.

My “two degrees of separation” life continues apace.

I can’t believe it. The day after I wrote my thoughts about Clive James and his ability to write about anyone and anything without letting self-doubt censor him, I saw listed in my Time Out New York that the man himself was appearing in conversation with the editor in chief of Slate magazine at the New York Public Library.

“Now this is why I’m in this city!” I thought to myself, salivating at the prospect of an hour or so of (hopefully) witty exchanges between two erudite chaps. James’s Cultural Amnesia has just been published here. He must be winging his way to Australia for a Writers Festival launch there in July … which, come to think of it, I’ll also miss.

This afternoon in preparation for my cultural excursion I looked up the NYPL website to find out more details about the location, and found to my dismay that the event has been sold out for weeks. I am devastated. Why bother listing the event? To rub my ill-preparedness in my face? Having learned my lesson the hard way, I have now subscribed to the Library’s listserv for announcements of future events. Harrumph.

For a refreshingly self-deprecating take on celebrity fundraising, take a look at this video Ricky Gervais has written and produced. It runs for about six minutes so I’d recommend a lunchtime viewing.

He’s made the video to help raise funds for The Red Cross, thereby inevitably condemning himself to be part of the same problem he pokes fun at. I’d recommend a dose of his humor to some of the holier-than-thou celebrities flying to African countries at the drop of a designer hat.

This is a question I have been pondering recently, although as usual, trying to avoid thinking in terms of favourites. If it’s a question of influence, then the answer would probably be Clive James, whose Unreliable Memoirs was one of my touchstone reading experiences growing up. I hungrily gobbled his fourth volume, North Face of Soho, over my summer sojourn without feeling the lack of having missed volumes two and three.

There is a certain type of male writer – I cannot think of a single woman whom I can place in such a category – who without compunction feels able to write about any topic, roaming freely among historical, literary, political, technological, and cultural reference points with all the hutzpah of a prize stallion in a paddock of bored mares.

I have envied the confidence of this approach to writing my whole life, and have only recently come to understand that it can be as much of a front as a corporate wardrobe. It has been exacerbated by my being a woman, and discovering that, despite my education and other forms of privilege, on some level I’ve been waiting for permission – from whom, I am not sure – to try it myself. Which of course is a large part of the reason for my being in New York these days.

I will always remain a fan of Clive James because of his catholic interests and passions, at the same time as I wish I could edit his work (they don’t call me the Book Butcher of Brooklyn for nothin’), and I’m sure as sh** glad he wasn’t my husband. In a world of specialists I seek out and respect the generalists, who seem to have a gift for connecting dots that others miss. Here is a wonderfully generous review of James’s Cultural Amnesia, just published in the US and forthcoming in Australia via Picador, my old stomping ground, later this year. I don’t usually fall on the side of globalisation with two steady feet, but in the realm of the intellect I realise that I do.

Last week in a fit of consumption I splurged on a small black handbag. I justified it on a number of grounds – goes with jeans, works for day or evening, spring’s around the corner; also, just possibly, to mark the end of a long drought for this Australian.

Anyway, I was already feeling quite good about my purchase. But I had no inkling of how downright fashionable my new handbag was until yesterday afternoon. I walked out of The Normandy, the apartment building on 86th Street where I work two days a week, and directly into the oncoming traffic of three young women who looked to be straight out of the prequel to Sex in the City. The leader of the trio, a tall skeletal type with mousy brown plaits, could not have been older than ten or eleven. She already had her swagger down pat.

“Hey, I LOVE your handbag, SO stylish!” she beamed at me, not breaking her stride. Her two cohorts, trailing in her wake, smiled at me with that mixture of sheepishness and bravado so typical of sassy young girls. I smiled at them, feeling a bit silly to experience validation in the form of a pre-pubescent fashion victim.

On Sunday afternoon I joined Simi, a few of her friends and a camera crew – well, her mate Christian and his colleague – to film her protesting the war in Iraq on its ignominious fourth anniversary, as part of the process of creating footage for use in the theatre piece and/or subsequent documentary based on her memoir. The march began at 40th St and 6th Avenue, where I took a few photos. If you click on the crowd shot above and squint, you might recognise a famous actor well known for his political views. (Hint: he’s married to Susan Sarandon.)

I felt a bit ridiculous amid the shouts for Dubbya’s impeachment – as if that will happen – but it seems a very long time to wait until “the Merkin people” vote this circus out of town. Especially for those people who will die in Iraq between now and then. Only 1000 people turned up to march. It all came to a whimpering finish at the United Nations Plaza, or at least as close as we were allowed to it. I had hoped for a protest experience of some vigour and energy, but it was all way too genteel.

Yes folks, a Power That Be declared that daylight savings time would be brought forward a couple of weeks, and was introduced overnight last Sunday. Immediately the lengthy afternoons seduced me into a fantasy of how many late-afternoon strolls I would take in Prospect Park, before scooting out somewhere for a bite to eat or to catch a film or a play …

No sooner had these fantastical notions taken hold than the weather decided to remind us all that it wasn’t quite done yet with winter. This morning it began snowing and hasn’t stopped since, although the snow has turned to sleet and its icy blanket has covered everything completely. Tomorrow it will all likely be a dark-brown mush, trammelled by car tyres and prams and the heavy footsteps of pedestrians whose hopes of an early Spring have just been dashed.

But GREAT weather to work on a draft of Chapter Five …

I did not invent this brilliant title, it’s the name of a one-man show currently playing at the Culture Project in SoHo. Here is the New York Times‘ review. Lawrence Wright, whose book The Looming Tower has generally been acclaimed as one of the notable US-published books of 2006, has turned his narrative history of Al-Qaeda into a theatrical piece of compelling and unnerving power.

Simi Linton and I attended a weekend matinee performance as part of our research into how we might adapt her memoir to the stage. But before we could settle in for the show, we had to deal with a rude man who accused us of sitting in the wrong seats. He and his friend literally appeared out of nowhere and said, “You’re in the wrong seats.” Neither of them realised that (a) Simi had her own seat at the end of the row (her power wheelchair), and (b) I was sitting on a single chair at her left, physically separate from the rest of the row. )Often theatres have a pair of seats they remove in order to accommodate a wheelchair user and his or her companion.) It soon emerged that the woman on my left was inadvertently sitting in the wrong seat – but did this guy apologise? Of course not. I did let him know he had been rude, though.

The show featured plenty of archival footage and photographs projected on a screen, although the stage itself was quite bare – a desk, a chair, a Persian carpet beneath it, and a pinboard full of post-it notes each with an Al-Qaeda name written upon it (the skeletal structure of the book that was to become The Looming Tower). Wright called Al-Qaeda “an engine that runs on the despair of the Muslim world”, whose main achievement has been to aid the corrosion of civil liberties in the US, and to inculcate a culture of fear.

I wonder if this will get any performances in the 51st State?

How remiss of me not to write about catching up recently with my former colleague and good friend Annette, who was passing through New York en route to a pro bono law conference. Given that dinner was on the company credit card, I was a little more expansive in my choice of venue than I would have been had I been footing half of the bill myself. I boldly made a reservation at the Union Square Cafe, a Manhattan institution for more than twenty years.

We chewed the fat – actually, I had gnocchi followed by the sea bass special – and discussed past, present, and future plans. Annette was so excited to be back in the city, I realised suddenly how much of a local I felt.

Having decided we hadn’t eaten quite enough, we met up for breakfast a few days later at Balthazar, another culinary institution, this time further downtown at the corner of Spring and Crosby. Very French, very busy, very SoHo. Having a friend in town is a perfect excuse to go there – if I needed an excuse, that is.

This is not my description of a bad date, I’m relieved to report, but rather the title of David Kowalski’s novel, which is being published by Pan Macmillan Australia in August this year. I’m biased of course but I really do think this is an amazing work – a genre-bending blend of thriller, science fiction, adventure, and alternate history.

This is a rough version of what the cover will finally look like, but I love it. If you really want to help a novice agent and her client, place an advance order for a copy in your local bookshop. The bookseller will be intrigued that you know about this title, and will probably order a few more copies for her store.

What would you do if you could go back and alter the past?

What do you ever do? Continue Reading »

At last, a glimmer of hope that the “best of the worst” of winter is over. I have just arrived back in my apartment, still dewy from my walk in Prospect Park, with the following pieces of evidence that Spring is about to, well, turn into a verb.

1. The ice in the duck pond had retreated in places to the thickness of an exhaled misty breath, just visible upon the water 
2. The horses were back in action on their dedicated trail, ridden by young white smiling ladies
3. The children’s playground was full of children
4. Green grass was visible as far as my eyes could see, emerging from beneath the half-inch white coat it had been wearing only two days ago
5. Gloves, for the first time in months, were optional.

One of the best things about my immediate neighbourhood – apart from the park, the museum, the library, the express subway stations, and the couple who launder my clothes for a ridiculously low price each week – is Cheryl’s Global Soul. This fabulous little cafe/restaurant, run by the eponymous chef Cheryl Smith, is the first cafe where I have been able to establish more than eye contact with the people who work there.

I never realised how much I valued that “Cheers” effect – having a regular place to drink coffee where someone, if not everyone, knows my name – until I had spent some time in Manhattan. (Evidently my friends at the Locantro Deli in Leichhardt had spoiled me.) After my first months on the Upper West Side, my most significant daily interactions were still with the parade of doormen at the Chatsworth building. I just couldn’t find a cafe that didn’t charge an arm and a leg for a latte, let alone welcomed me with a smile or – god forbid – a look of recognition.

So until Cheryl’s opened around the corner from me here in Prospect Heights, I had no coffee shop to call my own. Call me bourgeois, but this small thing has made a huge difference to my daily life, for which I’m grateful.

Australians like to think of places far afield as being “beyond the Black Stump” or “the back of Bourke”. Last night I experienced spatial dislocation of the most extreme kind while talking to my friend Fiona.

Fiona lives on a farm four hours west of Brisbane. That, as far as I’m concerned, redefines remote. Apart from a violent thunderstorm two nights ago, the place hasn’t seen rain of any significance in years. She and I were talking via Skype - what did we ever do without it? – about books and writing and the philanthropic sector (in which she works) and … feral cats, as it happens.

Strangest of all was our respective weather experiences in the 24 hours prior to our conversation: Fiona’s thunderstorm, which momentarily threatened the viabiliy of their sorghum crop, was juxtaposed with my first experience of being caught in a snowstorm – brief, sweet, soft flakes of snow descending at a gentle angle on to my eyelids, nose, cheeks, lips. I poked out my tongue and licked them away and blinked them out of my eyes, marveling at this meteorological miracle. Like Fiona’s lightning storm, the snow in Brooklyhn lasted all of ten minutes. But not a feral cat in sight.

Forgive this indulgence, but I could not resist sharing with you this surprisingly musical performance from Nora, the piano-playing cat. I found it on my favourite website Arts & Letters Daily, but it originated on YouTube. Watching her at the keyboard made me miss my piano. By the time I get back to it I will probably sound much like Nora does when she plays.

One quite extraordinary feature of television advertising in the US is that the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to promote individual drugs direct to the public. As an industry with enormous lobbying power and vast quantities of cash, this practice produces many “side-effects”. For one thing, there is at least one commercial for a drug in every ad break during a TV show. In order to grab our attention, these ads appeal to people’s fears that there is something the matter with them.

Since living over here, I’ve been amazed at how many men seem to “suffer from Erectile Dysfunction, or ED”; at how many people not just have trouble sleeping, but actively “suffer from insomnia”; or, my favourite, the numbers of Americans beleaguered by something called “Restless Leg Syndrome, or RLS”. Why have an occasional niggling sensation in your calf when you can complain about a fully fledged syndrome you saw medicalised and legitimised on TV to a doctor who can write you out a prescription for it? (I thought the internet provided sufficient means for people seeking to self-diagnose. Once years ago I concluded I had Multiple Sclerosis based on completely spurious and unrelated symptoms and poor internet searching skills. That is why I’m not that sort of a doctor.)

To be perfectly honest with you, I think I might even be developing … TIMMS. But if I just keep watching television, I’m sure there will be a pill for me to purchase someday soon to alleviate my symptoms.