I’m very excited to read The Lost Mother, the new book by Anne Summers, which I discussed with her in its early stages of development. Anne worked furiously on the book throughout 2008 and it’s wonderful to see her receiving so much attention for this new work. Being in New York at the moment I am far from getting my hands on a copy, unfortunately. But from speaking with Anne when she was visiting recently, I learned that her publisher, Melbourne University Press, has done an outstanding job in terms of the book’s production values – colour plates and everything. I’m always delighted to share anecdotes of positive treatment by publishers of their authors, as an author who has been treated with kid gloves by UQP.

The Lost Mother is about Anne Summers’ relationship with her mother, told through her search for a lost painting of her mother as a child. After her mother’s death in 2005, Anne inherits a portrait of her mother as a child. Mesmerised by this image, she finds herself drawn into the story of how the portrait was painted and eventually found its way into her family. She soon learns the artist painted another portrait of her mother; this time as the Madonna. Anne’s search for the Madonna painting and the mysterious Russian émigré collector who bought both paintings takes her down unexpected paths. Her search soon turns into a parallel quest to rescue Constance Stokes, the artist, from obscurity, and to learn why the collector suddenly abandoned the paintings. Along the way Anne finds she must face the truth of the relationship she had with her mother.

Anne Summers is an important writer and commentator. She’s the author of several books including Damned Whores and God’s Police, Ducks on the Pond and The End of Equality. She has edited the landmark American feminist magazine Ms. and Good Weekend and these days writes for several publications. She has been an advisor to two Australian prime ministers and chaired the Board of Greenpeace International for many years. Her website is www.annesummers.com.au.

 

It’s years since I’ve seen a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, one of my favourite of his plays (you’d have to be a right curmudgeon to dislike it). So when a friend offered me a last-minute free ticket courtesy of a colleague who was the fight-scene choreographer, I jumped at the chance. Three days of an enforced “vow of silence” due to severe laryngitis were broken with a huge thermos of tea, some chocolate biscuits, and emergency throat lozenges. I had also brought with me a hat, a camera, a raincoat, all shoved into a large canvas bag.

My friend didn’t tell me it was opening night. There were actors I recognised, actors I didn’t recognise, TV presenters, a lot of women who looked in need of a good feed, and the two of us, underdressed for the occasion and lugging a bag the size of a small child. But it mattered not. Don’t you love iambic pentameter!

I don’t mean to gloat, but this was one of those defining and memorable nights in New York. The weather, for once this month, was dry and clear, with a slight breeze wafting over us with the occasional bird and, on one occasion, an NYPD helicopter. Belvedere Castle was lit like Notre Dame Cathedral and cast its own spell as the backdrop to the fictional troubles of Violet, Orsino, Olivia, Sir Toby, Malviolio et al. The set was a gorgeous expanse of green grass, dotted with trees and rolling hills used to great effect in the staging and blocking of every scene, characters running up and falling down, hiding and revealing themselves. And the cast, a true ensemble, was a delight to watch. My favorites were Hamish Linklater as Sir Andrew Aguecheek and David Pittu as Feste, the witty court jester non pareil. And Anne Hathaway, the ostensible star of the show, did a thoroughly convincing job as Violet/Cesario, standing out naturally among the cast without stealing the limelight.

Also noteworthy was the seemingly effortless use of music throughout the production, with a small group of musicians on and just off stage in almost every scene. With so many musicians among the cast (including Audra McDonald as Olivia) it would have been wasteful not to use them thus. The music itself was full of lovely folk-inflected melodies and simple harmonising, which was totally compelling.

At one point I looked up from the stage to the starry night sky, dazzled by the thought that here were hundreds of people gathered to watch a play written close to 400 years ago, in the most mellifluous language imaginable, which speaks to us from another time and place altogether, in a way that serves only to demonstrate how simple and unchanging human nature is.

If you can possibly get there, it will be worth the wait for tickets. Here’s the glowing New York Times review.

 

According to International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee, prominent dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, former President and Board member of Independent Chinese PEN Centre, is to stand trial on charges of ‘incitement to subversion of state power’. Liu Xiaobo was arrested on 8 December 2008 for his role in publishing Charter 08, a document calling for political reform and human rights. He has been held under ‘residential surveillance’, a form of pre-trial detention, at an undisclosed location in Beijing since his arrest. International PEN demands the immediate and unconditional release of Liu Xiaobo and all those detained in violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory. PEN also seeks assurances that he is granted access to his lawyer and family as a matter of urgency.

According to the official Xinhua news agency, Liu Xiaobo is accused of ‘spreading rumours and defaming the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years’. He is said to have confessed to the charges against him, which carry a maximum five-year prison sentence.

Charter 08, a declaration calling for political reforms and human rights, was published on 9 December 2008 as part of a campaign to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Initially signed by over 300 scholars, journalists, freelance writers and activists, the Charter now has more than 8000 signatories from throughout China.

Read the Guardian’s article on Liu Xiaobo’s arrest here.
American PEN Center’s page on Liu Xiaobo contains background information, press releases, and a video message from the writer.

Please consider becoming a member of PEN, which advocates on behalf of writers like Liu Xiaobo, and send your own letter to the Chinese president protesting the charge against Liu Xiaobo, and calling for his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory. You can send your appeal to:

His Excellency Hu Jintao
President of the People’s Republic of China
State Council
Beijing 100032
P.R. China

New York, like Sydney, has been experiencing a lot of rain. The improbably cheerful weather presenter on morning television today said that it had rained 21 out of the last 23 days. Certainly the weather has not helped me get over my May flu, as my regular exercise program has waned, and this past week has seen a resurgence of the symptoms I thought I’d beaten a month earlier. Only this time around I avoided the cold and went straight to laryngitis. Did not pass Go, did not collect $200. Can’t remember the last time I lost my voice. Which of course is ironic, given that I’m trying to write some dialogue at the moment, and usually speak out loud everything to test its rhythm and credibility.

Ah, the whistle blows. That would be the kettle, full of now-boiling water to pour into a bowl of chopped lemons, which I will inhale with an old pink handtowel over my head.

I just stumbled across this article from the LA Times about the declining sales of acoustic pianos, the rise in sales of electronic instruments and digital keyboards, and what it all might mean. According to the article, 105,000 acoustic upright and grand pianos were sold in the US in the year 2000, but only 54,000 in 2007. Sales of electronic pianos and keyboards soared over that same period. Most people reading the article might reasonably assume that piano sales have declined with the 21st century, but they would be wrong: piano manufacture and sales have been in serious decline since the 1920s, when the phonograph and wireless radio became the entertainments around which a family gathered in the living room, rather than the piano. After all, it takes time, and practice, and expensive lessons – in short, money and leisure – to learn to play. Compare 1910, when 360,000 pianos were made and sold in the US alone (according to the whimsical and exhaustive Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History by Arthur Loesser, a volume first published in 1954 and into which I have recently been delving at length). The digital revolution of the last two decades has made the decline particularly sharp.

The LA Times article trots out the usual reasons for the decline in the piano’s centrality to American living rooms: the increasing popularity of other forms of entertainment, the overly scheduled nature of children’s lives, and the general portability of music in contemporary life (iPods, MP3 players, CDs, even the ubiquitous piped music while shopping and eating). But while I think these reasons (particularly the latter) play their part, I think the real change that mirrors the piano’s rise and decline is the changing roles of women in daily life. For almost 200 years being able to play the piano was a critical ingredient in a young woman’s marriageability, in the days when women’s work was all conducted at home and in the socio-sexual playing field of the parlour room. Think of Jane Austen’s heroines, who were all able to play, albeit to varying degrees of competence; or that peculiarly French genre of “young girl at the piano” paintings of the second half of the 19th century. I don’t recall seeing any formal portraits of female musicians and their electronic keyboards in recent years, but perhaps that’s because they are too busy earning a living and writing their own music to sit still long enough.

Having recently been invited into the ranks of Brooklyn’s HAWG – or Horribly Awkward Writers’ Guild – as an associate member, I feel compelled to share with other writers the Guild’s speed-writing game that I’m finding very useful in my writing generally.

How it works: First, there need to be at least three of you present in the same room/cafe. Tear up small pieces of paper and hand around four or five per participant. Each person writes one title for each piece of paper they’ve been given, then folds and places them in some receptacle (hat, used coffee cup, recyclable/biodegradable plastic bag). Pass the receptacle around, pick out one title each (if you pull out one of your own, put it back and pick another), then let your mind wander for several minutes as you write a few sentences, a few paragraphs, or a complete short story depending on your level of inspiration from that particular title. One person will usually finish a lot sooner than the others; do not let this distract you as it will be a different person next round who finishes first. Then take it in turns to read out your work to the others. Rinse and repeat.

Some of the titles I’ve either created or responded to recently include: ‘Gambling with your kids already’; ‘A termite with discretion’; ‘The modern sherpa’s keys to happiness’; ‘Taco crush fever’; ‘Death threats and other come-ons’; ‘The uneducated guesses of Phineas Wurlitzer’; and ‘The best elbow in the world’. Several years ago I would have been too paralysed with fear to even make a stab at a response to most of these. But there’s something honourable and satisfying about focusing your mind for a couple of hours in the company of other writers, producing words and ideas rather than moaning about how much you haven’t written lately.

Call to action: I would love to hear from anyone who takes a stab at any of the titles above – send me a piece of not more than 200 words and if it takes my fancy I’ll post it on this site. As a starting point I’ve included my response to one of the titles above.

Gambling with your kids already
It had been a long trip, and Suzy couldn’t tell which was more irritating, the neon flashing incessantly in her peripheral vision as she drove along Atlantic City’s main street, or her twin boys, full of sugar and mayhem in the back of her beat-up van. She won a brief respite from the kids with a promise of McDonalds, and tried to remember the name of the hotel where she had agreed to meet Ronaldo. Ronaldo! He had sounded so exotic, and tall, and rich. Then he had to go and ruin it by sending her a more recent photograph. On the upside, as a janitor for one of the big casino hotels, Ronaldo was going to get her and the boys free food and drinks, and even some gambling chips that the rich guests couldn’t be bothered with, like they were pennies dropped on the street. Oh, and free accommodation – but Suzy preferred not to think about what she’d have to give Ronaldo.
‘Twins? You didn’t tell me you got twins, madonna!’ he said, crestfallen.
‘Two, Ronaldo,’ Suzy said. ‘As in too bad. Two for the price of one. The one being me.’

Most surprised to report that I’ve just sneaked into the Top 50 Australian Writing Blogs, according to Johnathan Crossfield’s blog CopyWrite. This list tracks the most popular blogs written by Australian writers about writing, and is a movable feast depending on the preferences of readers, the content of the blog, and the rankings of blog trackers (Technorati, Google PageRank and something called Alexa, which I must confess I had never heard of before). So I can freely recommend Johnathan’s blog without a whiff of conflict of interest.

Of the other Australian writing blogs on the list, I am a regular reader of three: Angela Meyer’s LiteraryMinded (#2), Max Barry (#5 and Sydney PEN’s next ‘Voice’ in our Voices: 3 Writers Series in July), and the elegant City of Tongues by novelist James Bradley (#22 with a bullet). Inevitably the rankings will have shifted by the time I finish this post, including my own.

Back in New York and working on my next project, I have found renewed enthusiasm for my blog – and just in time, as there’s plenty of scope for its improvement. Fortunately I have been hanging out with a few people steeped in social media, so I’m learning a few things I will put into practice over posts to come. Even though I’ve been blogging regularly since early 2006 I have kept things very basic, technologically speaking. Time for this old blogger to learn some new, and not so new, tricks.

Twenty-year-old Nobuyuki Tsujii is the joint winner of this year’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held every four years in Fort Worth, Texas, over a gruelling 17 days. As is often the case with such competitions, the judges’ decision has been dissected and contested. The dissections were sharper about this year’s winner because Tsujii, blind since birth, is the first pianist with a visual impairment to win the competition.

Today’s Wall Street Journal’s piece on Tsujii couldn’t resist using his blindness as a departure point for roaming over a number of topics, some of which bear little if no relevance to Tsujii himself. For example, the article’s discussion of blindness and absolute pitch is not directly related to Tsujii in any way – whether he does or does not have absolute pitch is not clear – and overall the piece is focused on the mechanics and logistics of his technique rather than the artistic achievement of his musicianship. To me it reflects a sighted person’s disbelief that a blind person could play the piano at such an elite level.

Nowhere did the Journal mention what was most important to Tsujii about his win, namely the fact that it was the first time Asian musicians took out the top spots of the competition. Japan’s Yomiyuri Shimbun quotes him as saying: “The first and second places were shared by pianists from Japan, China and South Korea, which is very meaningful.” In fact, the emergence of Asian musicians on the world’s concert stages over the past two decades has been a significant development in the history of music performance that has gone largely unremarked, except by the likes of Edward Said and Alex Ross.

Take a deep breath and check out the new Air Piano, a German invention showcased this week at the Berlin Design Festival. Fashion Week Daily nails it as “a piano that Purell addicts will love”. Standing in front of the “keyboard” (welcome to another technology-induced crisis of vocabulary), waving your arms around slightly in front of you, the “performer” looks as though he’s doing the washing up. While the Design Blog valiantly attempts to describe how the technology works – sorry, how to actually play the Air Piano – at the end of scrolling through endless pictures and this YouTube video, I’m still stumped as to why anyone would want to play the instrument. There’s also that pesky pre-requisite of having to understand notated music in order to know where exactly to swing one’s arms above this technological marvel. Unless I’m missing something, which in the realm of new technology is more than likely. Suggestions?

Here’s a great summary on the Associated Press wires of what’s so appealing to so many readers at the moment about romance novels. While the rest of the publishing industry stares at the headlights racing towards it, the sales of romance novels are on the rise. The AP article claims that the novels offer strong heroines overcoming obstacles and finding happiness, which accounts for their current blossoming in sales. Overall sales of fiction (not just romance novels) are up 1%, while travel is down 16% (the economy, stupid) and – somewhat surprisingly, to me at least – mystery/detective fiction has slumped 17%. Self-help has also fallen by 17%. Does that mean that people who bought self-help books also read a lot of crime novels? The demographic profile gets curiouser and curiouser. Maybe it has something to do with an interest in solving puzzles, whether they are shocking crimes or the mystifying complexities of daily life.

Given that more people are buying alcohol and going to the movies at the moment, the spike in buying romance novels is consistent consumer behaviour in a rather cold economic climate. The President of Romance Writers of America, Diane Pershing, says that romance novels offer

rich, complex stories about good people overcoming obstacles to achieve intimacy and an eventual joining of their lives. … Along the way, they have great sex. What’s not to like?

Hard to argue with that. Only, I would prefer it to be non-fiction, at least in my own life.