Sydney Book Launch of Paradiso A Novel July 2022

A great book launch in Sydney. Fifty book lovers turned out on a Thursday night in the middle of a squally Sydney winter to share an hour and a half with Nick Fury and myself at Berkelouw Books in Leichhardt.

Nick and I are old clown mates from way back, so as well as telling some good stories of Italy and travel, and little known aspects of this 19th century Italian-Australian story, we also managed to revisit a few old clown moments. The audience was a little bemused to begin with but warmed up quickly and understood that book launches could be both informative and funny.

Thanks to Co.As.It. and the Sydney Italian Cultural Institute for agreeing to support this event. The result was a mixed audience of descendants, local Italian community members (hi to Joe at Bar Sport who came along with his two daughters) and some general Sydney-siders who were all interested in this remarkable story. In retrospect I must apologize to any native Italian speakers who might have not thought my mock Italian was as funny as I did. It was the best I could do, having lost the language two generations back when speaking English was the only way to fit in.

The novel is now available at the following Sydney Book Stores:

Berkelouw Books. Leichhardt

Abbey's Bookshop,York St Sydney

Gleebooks, Glebe

Gleebooks, Dulwich Hill

Better Read than Dead, Newtown

There is also a spare copy at Anthony Albenese's Electoral Office in Marrickville. I suspect he won't get around to reading it for a couple of terms of Parliament. He seems pretty busy.
 

Tim Parks "A Literary Tour of Italy"

Tim Parks

English writer/translator Tim Parks, who has lived in Milan for over thirty years, has just released a new book on Italian Literature, "A Literary Tour of Italy". He devotes a chapter each to a series of famous Italian writers or characters beginning with Dante. Quite a span and includes a few notorious figures including Mussolini and heroes Garabaldi but mostly writers. It was written as a series of essays but with the book in mind.

I have only known him as an entertaining commentator/observer of Italy but he's much more than a travel writer or an observer of Italian culture. Here's a link to a lovely piece he wrote for The New Yorker where he imagines meeting a series of famous authors including James Joyce, Charles Dickens, DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. It's a beauty.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/imagined-meetings-with-joyce-dickens-hardy-and-lawrence 

I sent him the link to my piece on Italian Literature on the Avid Reader blog. He might even read it!

The Novel - a reading from

Brunswick River - winter

Have not written here since my return from Italy but it doesn't mean I haven't been busy - including a couple of georgeous weekends at the beach.

Here's an update.

• Wrote a review of Italian books I have read in the past while for the Avid Reader Bookshop website.https://avidreaderbookshop.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/italian-literature-a-taste/
• Did a reading from my work in progress at Avid Reader as (part of) the support act to Gail Jones talking about her new book "A Guide to Berlin." Exerpt of my reading below.
• Interviewed Shirley Barrett at Avid Reader about her new (first) novel, "Whale OH!", about whaling and killer whales and the Davidson whaling family set in Eden (NSW) in 1903. Very funny, touching, illuminating. Shirly has been writing and directing film and TV for the past twenty years (South Solitary, Love Serenade). This book began life as a script but she couldn't get the finance to make it so she has become a novelist. She was great to interview.
• Have almost finished the second draft of "Paradiso". Its been a hard slog at times but I'm confident this draft is a big improvement on the first. Next draft will be even better.

Here's the piece I read at Avid. I chose a fairly quiet piece. I wanted to feel comfortable standing and reading in front of fifty people. I must say reading exerpts aloud is a great way to hear the writing clearly. I discovered that some of them were clumsy and uneven in places; in others the rhythm just didn't feel right; others were good but not stand alone pieces. It was an interesting and challenging exercise.

Ephiphany

Domenico

Papa looks at me and smiles and then looks at the bonfire which is now a raging volcano cracking and snapping as it accelerates towards its climax. I take his hand.

 ‘Look Domenico. Which way are the sparks flying?’ I look to the peak of the fiery mountain and see a spray of sparks explode from the top.

‘Which way is that?’ I ask pointing to the far side of the square. They are blowing away from us, neither towards where I know the mountains begin nor towards the sea, which I know lies to the south. ‘Is it Milano and the River Po in that direction?’ I ask.

I have learnt the geography of my country from maps on walls and views out my classroom window. Maestro Carros takes us out into the school grounds and has us face the mountains. ‘This is north,’ he tells us. He has us imagine we can see Venezia to the south. He teaches us north and south and then tells us that even further south lies Roma and the ancient civilizations. And further south still is the Kingdom of two Sicilies where Italians speak another language, eat different food and have black hair and dark skin.

To the north lies Austria and beyond the mountains, countries with many cultures and many languages until there is nowhere left to go. Only ice and frozen waste. Maestro Carros does not tell us much about the east except to say that if you go far enough you reach the lands of China and of silk and spices. And even further lie the islands of the Pacifique, undiscovered islands of mystery and magic.

He has never been east of Udine but of the west he has many stories.  He tells of getting lost in the richest streets of Milano, of travelling on steam driven trains between cities, of lakes as large as seas and of his own home, once part of Italy, now France.

‘Milano is west?’

‘Yes’ confirms my father.

‘So the sparks must be flying…’ and here I stop and face the invisible mountains and repeat my compass points mantra. If I raise my right arm it points in the direction of the disappearing sparks.

‘It’s east papa. They are travelling east.’

My father hesitates.

‘Another unproductive year with another poor harvest,’ my father observes. ‘The signs are clear. We will not be here to see another summer Domenico.’ He says this calmly. We both look towards Mamma and Marietta whose aprons swirl as they move between tureen and table, ladling out portions of hot soup. I wait, but there is no more information forthcoming. He pats me on the shoulder and pushes me towards the food.

Vecia has disappeared in the smoke and glare of the inferno. Someone calls out and we turn to see a flare of light as she is engulfed in flames and, for a moment, is lifted above the fire and she is gone. 

Name Dropping - Lily Brett and Lola Bensky

I've just read Lily Brett's Lola Bensky. It was a mixed read for me. It was my first foray into Lily Brett and only triggered by my membership of my Australian Bookclub.

The novel centres around a young Australian music journalist who travels to London and New York in the 60s to interview the rock stars for her Australian magazine. She's very young, quite innocent and ends up backstage with the most amazing array of iconic characters. It verges on unbelievable.

The conversations she has are often about herself and her family and their holocaust experience. At times it felt a bit twee to find her with yet another star innocently musing on her weight (another theme) and her life. I felt engaged with the Jewishness of the Bensky character but her drive-by relationship with the musicians of the 60s didn't quite work for me. I guess Lola's (Jewish) tendency to constantly ask questions and become absorbed in her own life , triggered by her conversations was the intent but it became a bit predictable and indulgent for me. Jimi Hendrix is portrayed as a sweetie, Jagger as intelligent and insightful and Jim Morrison as an arsehole. Mind you, I did find myself singing many of the tunes of the 60s which she dropped into the text along the way. Am I just nostalgic, or was that an era of exceptional pop music? Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Mamas and Pappas, Sonny and Cher, Canned Heat, the Doors etc etc to name just a few that appear on the pages.



As it happened I was finishing reading "Pig City" by Andrew Stafford at the same time (a factual account of the politics and music of Brisbane in the 70s, 80s and 90s). Stafford is not Brisbane born and was a kid when all this happened so, I suspect. he's not setting out to create some new mythology. His account explains the phenomena of creativity thriving under adversity. The era was characterised by political oppression and an attempt to smash the counter culture and suppress dissent. The pig in the title is a slang reference to the police and the 'police state' of the time.I was excited by the dash and daring of the Brisbane bands of the era even though I seemed to have missed many of them (Saints, Gangajang, Tex Perkins, and my favourite band name - Pineapples from the Dawn of Time). I was a late convert to the Go Betweens even though I was at Uni with their drummer Lindy Morrison. My turn to drop names. Stafford finishes with Powderfinger in full flight.

My Coat

Loani had asked me to MC her book-launch. Oh god! Public speaking. A joy. And a reason to have a nervous breakdown. I had two weeks notice. I began with a self hypnotic mantra which was intended to convince myself that if I just allowed time the ideas would come. The toilet was a pretty productive place as was my regular 20 laps of the local pool.

In my mind I was very clever, not to say hilarious, as I churned through the laps; laps turned out to be better than the toilet seat. Thirty minutes meditation on the loo I realised, was not only going to cause some disruption to family habits but to bowl habits as well; I remembered my mother's words: ' get off the toilet Stephen, you'll get piles.'

On lap 68 my plan began to develop. I would tell the story of the Adelaide woman who had knitted thirty of Loani's tea cosy designs and offered them to the local coffee shop where people came just to admire the wacky creations. And order a pot of tea on the side.

I would take the piss out of the self proclaimed 'Queen of the Tea Cosies' by quoting from the comments on her blog left by her acolytes. I would pose the possibility that Loani had, in fact, created a cult, with her as the goddess. There was plenty of material. My 'piece de resistance' would be to demonstrate that not only was most men's first response to a tea cosy one of putting it on their head but I would go one better, I would wear a teapot (and tea cosy) on my head as the final joke.

There was too much chlorine in the pool that week I suspect, because I couldn't figure out how to attach a tea pot to my head so my punchline was dead in the water, as it were.

By now it was the morning of the book launch. The table was littered with things. A couple of tea pots, some double sided tape, a roll of gaffa tape, an akubra hat and a length of cotton cloth. It was a disaster scene. I needed saving from my creative chaos. In stepped my regular saviour in these matters - Mistress A, mother, wife and costume designer, 'wear that dress up coat of yours. Add the tea cosy and it'll look great.' Where's that coat I wondered? Oh yeah. In the spare cupboard with all the other leftovers I am saving for an unknown occasion.

One set of things I've never chucked out is my costume collection from my performance days. I have the black twirly coat, a yellow and black check jacket, my original clown's hat; I even have my original striped circus bloomers from 1983. I can't bear to dump them. They have such memories, such stories to tell.

That evening at Avid Reader Bookshop, my swimming meditation paid off; my script flowed, my jokes hit the mark. Loani was brilliant.

One of my oldest friends asked: 'What show was that coat from?'. 'The Bob Club' says I. 'Remember. When every character was called Bob and the subtitle was "A Few Bob's Short of a Quid". It was a show full of acrobatics, cabaret, music and political satire, I played "Bobby Pin", a punky slapstick character obsessed with supermarket trolleys. 'Yeah. That was one of my favourites' says she. Did she remember the show? My performance? Or just the coat? No matter, it had helped a moment survive the moth eaten remnants of the past.

And so my curly coat goes back into the wardrobe for another possible occasion. It's been 27 years. In another 27 I'll be wearing it to funerals. There's a thought. I'll dictate in my will that I am to be buried in style. In my favourite coat.


For a great account of the meaning of things:
Sarah Toa over at A WineDark Sea has been moving house. She has written a great piece about the dilemna she confronted when faced with the choice of throwing or towing some of her 'icons' she discovered in the process of packing up.

How Tea Cosies Changed the World

Old mate and Tea Cosy obsessive Loani Prior launched her third book of Tea Cosy creations last Thursday night. She and I have become a bit of a double act. I helped her launch her last book at Avid Reader bookshop in 2010 and she invited me to do the honours again with this years offering.

Loani has a gift for creating art from tea cosies. She has also learnt over the past 5 years that tea cosies have much more to offer than their capacity to keep tea warm. I'll admit I was confused when she first told me the title of this publication. I presumed that "How Tea Cosies Changed the World" was going to be Loani's quirky history of tea and tea cosies and their place in changing social mores.

My reference point was a book I discovered many years ago titled: "How the Irish Saved Civilisation". I was convinced that that title was ironic and that it would be a spoof, Irish style. It turned out to be the opposite, a very serious analysis of the dark ages and Ireland's role in saving many of the classic tomes which were being destroyed by barbarians.

In Loani's case I was again confounded. Her Tea Cosy book is really about how tea cosies connect us to our history and to each other. Life Changing? Is that too big a claim? Well not according to a couple of people I met at the book launch. A young woman told me that she had bought Loani's first book and set out to teach herself to crochet and knit. She was struggling and so set out to find some like minded people. Twelve months later she has 100 knitting/crocheting colleagues who meet weekly at various places across the nothern suburbs of Brisbane to 'stitch and bitch' 'knit and natter' and she is now connected to a whole new world.

Not only does Loani's book contain some great knitting creations, it also has some great and touching stories about people she's met, stories they've shared with her and she's dedicated a cosy to each of these people.

It's a strange world where knitting tea cosies can verge on becoming a cult; where a Tea cosy book written by a Brisbanite can become an international phenomenon and be translated into French, Dutch and even Estonian.

At Loani's book launch I said " I've come to understand that this phenomenon is not about tea (some of the knitters don't drink tea); it's not even about knitting; it's actually about people having their creativity liberated and how the things we love can knit us all together."

Sweet.



PS I misread the invitation. I thought it said 'Come as your favourite tea cosy'!

Book club musing

I'm a member of a book club at my local bookstore, Avid Reader.

Every month Avid publishes a magazine reviewing books but also inviting writers to contribute material on the monthly theme. The last one focused on the Brisbane floods, in particular the impact on the local community. I contributed a couple of pieces which I had posted on this blog.

Last week I received an email from Krissy at the shop asking if I'd like to contribute to the next one. The theme: 'Book Clubs'. She sent me a series of questions to answer and I thought that, as I have been a bit tardy with my blog lately, that this might interest a few people. so here are the questions and my answers:

1 Which bookclub are you a member of and how long have you been in the club?

Austrtalian Book Club first Tuesday evening of the month.

2 Can you remember a particular discussion that stands out from one of the bookclubs? Something funny or aweful or divisive or a transformative moment that changed your mind about a particular book? Tell us what happened.

Most interesting night was the night Justice Michael Kirby was speaking on the back deck. We were an embarrassment to Avid in our jeans and with a bottle of plonk being shared around our circle, so we were hidden upstairs in the store-room. We organized ourselves with some crackers and cheese (courtesy of Avid) balanced on a packing crate and found some seating, some on chairs, others on benches. Someone offered to sit on the floor. Fiona popped a bottle of red and then apologised and left us to ourselves. We were a bit miffed about being abandoned in favour of Justice Michael but soldiered on.

This group of five mature adults were suddenly faced with facilitating our own discussion. Or just drinking. We had a great time and, as is always the case, the absence of one changed the dynamics of all and we found ourselves having the same conversation but in a different way.

Fiona had to throw us out eventuually. And we didn't regret missing Justice Michael at all.

I can't even remember the book we were disecting.

3 Why did you initially join a bookclub? Why do you stay?

I was interested in connecting with other readers and possibly writers. I was also keen to connect with local community activities as I was moving from full time to part time work. I wanted to feed my creative side after too many years of work,which I loved but which dominated my life.

I 've been a member since it started which I think is about 12 months.

I keep coming back for a couple of reasons. Firstly I like the imposed discipline requiring me to read at least a book a month. Secondly I like the social element - meeting a small group of people over a glass of wine where the personalities emerge over time. And we laugh.

4 What book are you currently reading for bookclub?

'Bereft' by Chris Womersley

5 What is your favourite book that you have read for bookclub?

Favourite has probably been 'Me and Mr Booker' by Cory Taylor

but the one which has stayed with me has been Ashley Hay's 'The Body in the Clouds' which had a magic realism quality and spanned the period from the first days of the colony to the present; a series of parallel stories all built around Sydney Harbour and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

6 Are your favourite books the best to discuss? Or are there other factors that make other books better to talk about?

The most interesting discussions have been where members of the group had widely different responses to the book of the month. In that case each of us had to pause and try and understand what others saw in the book and be challenged to articulate our point of view. Much more interesting than all agreeing with each other.

writing not writing - Lorenzo's Laugh

Last week I attended the first of five writing workshops I've signed up for.

The series is called "The Year of the Novel" The tutor/workshop leader is Nerida Newton, a published author, who has run these for the Queensland Writer's Centre over the past five years. A group of fifteen writers of varying experience (some with none!!) will meet every 8 weeks to discuss our projects and to receive some guidance from Nerida.

The goal: a full length first draft manuscript by the end of the year. I had enrolled in their "Year of the Memoir" but that got subsumed in the "Y of the Novel" due to low enrolments. After one day I'm confident that the same writing principles apply so, though I was a little reluctant to transfer, I feel conmfortable now.

I'm telling you this because it is dominating my time and satisfying my creative urges, to the extent that blogging is taking a bit of a back seat in my consciousness.

I will use this blog to report on progress (as well as have a bit of a play from time to time) by way of keeping in contact with people and as a bit of pressure to stay on track.

So what is my project?

Working Title: "Lorenzo's Laugh"

Briefly its my quest to uncover the mystery behind my family name. Without giving too much away it was triggered by the discovery that we don't carry the name which my great grandfather was registered under on his voyage from Italy to Australia.

Lucky for me there is a rich story of hope and dashed dreams; of a cunning French Marquis who sells poor Italians a trip to a non existent paradise in the Pacific.; of beautiful landscapes and untimely deaths. And then there's me.

The one thing I learnt from Nerida last week was that even a memoir needs a protagonist and an antagonist which means that unless I try to write a factual history of these events (which I am not interested in doing) I will be there in the story and I will need to be brave enough to be fairly self revealing to make people interested in my quest.

I wrote 2000 words today. Much more than I expected. I thought I would get stuck on page one but the story kept flowing. I expect it will emerge as a series of episodic accounts of varying aspects of the puzzle. My plan at this stage is to keep writing without too much concern for the final product. Let the juices run free and, fingers crossed, hope the story takes shape through the telling and through some judicious (and tough Ouch!) editing when the time comes.

Let's hear it for the hand made

While many of my writing friends may not be into knitting, I suspect many will be into art and in this case the art of knitting.
I had the privilidge last Friday to launch Loani Prior's second book aimed at the eccentric knitters market. Really Wild Tea Cosies takes up where Wild Tea Cosies left off.
How does a non-knitting bloke launch a knit one purl one book to an audience of youngish women (age range 30 up) many of whom are sitting in the audience watching, waiting and, yes, knitting. I was feeling a bit initmidated but they were very forgiving.

I won them over by establishing my knitting credentials through my late mother whose eccentric jumper I draped around my shoulders in solidarity and reverence. 10 years ago she knitted me an oversize multicoloured jumper which I had chosen from a pattern book she had unwisely offered me. It nearly killed her.

I was on a roll when I did a reading from Loani's book - as you do at book launches - and read out half a page of knitting instructions. When I was able to translate sl st to slip stitch - there were nods of approval and a wave of spontaneous applause. I was home.

So what does this re-emergence of the 'old' crafts mean. Perhaps these women are reaching an age when they can see value in their mother's ability to create things of beauty from simple materials.
Perhaps they are bored with reality TV and chatting on-line and yearn for direct human contact. Perhaps they are sick of being sold a materialist, consumer oriented message at every turn.
What about the blokes? Well the phenomenon of 'Men's Sheds' is sweeping Australia - where local councils or community organisations set up shared spaces with shared equipment for blokes to make things. It's part of the move to reduce isolation in older men and to reduce depression. They're joining in droves.
Women have always been much more social and know the value of sitting and chatting or stitching and bitching as one of my friends describes it. They learn from each other and even from the women next door who are also making things by hand but don't need large machines and 3 phase power to do it.
I hope that this means a return , not to old fashion values, but to the valuing of the personal and the human in creating a meaningful life.
That's why I write. And garden. And join a book club. And .....

A Tale of Two Books - Birth and Death

Two things bookish have emerged in the last week for me.

First an imminent birth.

My mate Loani - she of the bestselling 'Wild Tea Cosies' fame is launching the sequel, 'Really Wild Tea Cosies', in Brisbane at our local book shop Avid Reader on Friday March 26. Wild Tea Cosies was Avid Reader's biggest seller in 2008 and the publishers went on to launch it in Britain and the USA where it also sold like hotcakes.

In recent years there seems to have been a surge of interest in the crafts our grandmothers' plied and Loani is surfing the craze. Young and old are rediscovering the old skills of hand crafted objects, clothes and giftmaking. Even in my job working with young people I have been amazed to find teenagers using cut and past techniques, handwritten and typewriter written stories and handdrawn illustrations to make their zines. They just love the hands on experience of making their own publications from go to whoa. At our resource centre http://www.visibleink.org/ we are in the process of setting up a retro-technology room to allow young people to generate these projects.

So back to Loani. She has an eccentric knitting website which links with fellow eccentrics across the globe. They are intent on reinventing the old craft. So successful has this been that Loani currently has an exhibition of her tea cosies at the prestigious Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. Who would have thought that the humble tea cosy would sit alongside engineering displays, intergalactic photography and socially insightful exhibitions about Indigenous storytelling. Museums have certainly transformed themselves in recent years.

And here's the surprise. Loani has asked me to launch the book. The pressure is on. I'm hoping I can contribute to a really wild night.

And a death.

I edited a book 15 years ago, 'Challenging the Centre', which documented two decades of political theatre in Queensland. Unlike Loani's book it was not a best seller but ended up on university library bookshelves, as reading for Drama courses etc. It has probably sold 1000 copies over that period. In my mind it was an important book because it challenged the notion that only Melbourne and Sydney produced anything original or politically significant and it gave official standing to the often neglected work of small poilitical and progressive theatre companies who get swamped by the mainstream state theatre companies. There is an assumption that real theatre happens in real theatres while many of these small companies are touring companies or, as with the company I worked for, based in warehouse or factory spaces.

Anyway it has been remaindered and I am the proud owner of 523 copies of this beaut book. I now have the challenge of distributing copies to the many participants who worked for these companies over 20 years and the remainder? Perhaps there is an online market at discount prices for the last 200 copies.

Big Fish, Big Ocean, Big Julian Pepperell

Julian Pepperell (Jules/Big Julie/Jaws/Big Fish) is in print. Again.
His new Book is Fishes of the Open Ocean. 266 pages of magnificent colour illustrations, scholarly information about hundreds of BIG Fish (accessible to the average joe/jill or non game fisherman/person - its exhausting being politically correct). It's coffee table size and ten years in the making - about how long it would take me to make a coffee table.

What's in it? Fish. Big fish of the game fishing type and of the predatory type. My daughter particularly enjoyed the shark section. Jess is 27 and has a fascination with the idea of swimming with the big ones one day. For mine I am convinced I could walk on water if ever i find myself in the same ocean as a man eater. Man eater - it's not a subtle tag.

The shark section is one of seven in the book. I thought I'd share a couple of thoughts about them rather than do the whole book.
SHARKS
1. There are lots of them
2. Many of them have very big teeth, jaws, appetites
3. They have cute names which are a dead (did I say DEAD?) giveaway to their personality types Tiger, Thresher, Hammerhead, Bull, Cookiecutter
4. Some prefer to keep a low profile with names like Silk, Salmon, Blue, Dusky, Basking Shark.
5. The largest (Whale Shark) is a filter feeding shark which gives me some hope. I'm looking to be part of what gets filtered out.
6. Many are threatened as they are slow to mature and thus breed and are victims of long line fishing and other by-catch processes of the large industrial fishing industry.

The one which unnerves me the most is the Bull Shark. It is one of the three most dangerous fish on the planet says Julian and it frequents rivers and estuaries.
As I sail on the Brisbane River (so does my daughter) and they have been sighted (and had a nibble on people) as far upstream as Ipswich (probably 40 km from the mouth) I am always a litt;le nervous on Saturdays. Moreover, visibility in the Brisbane River is about 20 cm on a good day so there is no way of having any warning of their presence. Perhaps this explains why the sailors of the South Brisbane Sailing Club are renowned for their ability to right their crafts in record time following a capsize.

Julian gives some comfort to victims and potential victims by saying: 'its attacks on humans are thought to be random and accidental' . Reassuring!

So if you're into Sharks, Rays, Billfish, Tuna, Mackeral etc etc this is the book for you. It's beautiful and a beauty.







I highly recommend it.

Tea Cosy fashion parade at Avid reader

Avid Reader, iconic bookshop of West End Brisbane, treated their loyal customers to an early xmas party recently and in true eccentric West End fashion featured, among other things, a fashion parade of tea cosies from the collectiuon of Loani Prior - she of Wild Tea Cosies publishing fame (which by the way has just been launched in London; and to which my darling sister in law Jo and her friend Mel went and hopefully granstanded in the "I know Loani Prior" and "My brother in law wore one of her tea cosies on his head in a fashion parade!" style. You can imagine how impressed the English knitters would have been.

Featured above is moi plus Loani's son Ben, and my former performing offsider Denis (Manly Brother) Peel. Between us all I think we modelled about 30 tea cosies in grand theatrical style.