A greek tragedy: David Vann

It was not my best moment of judgement when last year I gifted to my mum a copy of David Vann’s Caribou Island for mother’s day. For anyone that has read the book, you’ll know why this gift may have been taken the wrong way. For those that haven’t yet had the pleasure, a grab from the NY Times review sums the case up well:

This Alaska with its salmon boats and trash dumps becomes a stage for ancient stories of survival and will and connection and love, and also, in the end, the failures of love. Strong poison.

I repeat, ‘strong poison’. For a few weeks post May 8 2011, Vann and I had at least one thing in common: a temporarily strained relationship with a close family member.

Yesterdays ‘In Conversation’ session with David Vann (hosted by Estelle Tang) was a chance to delve further into the reasons the author is so unpopular with members of his immediate family. As he put it “a writer is the worst thing that could happen to a family”.

Vann began by admitting that his new novel Dirt was not the novel he intended to write. He described the experience of having it published as a sad and awful experience. While Vann’s other novels drew from the troubling aspects of his father’s side of the family, Dirt is the first time he has put the lens on his mother’s side. And with the book now on shelves, Vann seemed to genuinely fear that his mother would never speak to him again once she got around to reading it.

Dirt (which I’m just now starting to read) has received mixed reviews in different parts of the world. His portrayal of feminine characters in the novel was criticised by Stella Clarke’s review in The Australian, but Vann was praised by The Guardian as “the real thing”: “a mature, risk-taking and fantastically adept fiction writer who dares go to the darkest places, explore their most appalling corners.”

In conversation at MWF Vann revealed he felt Dirt was as close as he had come to writing a greek tragedy. He described his process of placing characters under such duress and pressure that they would eventually break, and in that moment of fracture, reveal the truth of themselves. He suggested that in that same moment, readers were forced to question themselves, the impact of which is cause for the enduring use of tragedy in global literature.

At times I can be an incredibly shallow reader, and I had never really thought about how tragedy worked as a narrative.  It was quite a treat to have such an insightful explanation of the process from Vann, a professor and current Guggenheim fellow. It shed new light on why bad things must sometimes happen to our characters even though we might inwardly wish them well, and how the intentions of writers such as Vann could be misconstrued or simplified as evil or misogynistic.

Vann explained his characters were not necessarily bad people, or wished bad things upon each other. Rather, it was their individual natures that worked against the group. In revealing tragic characters, Vann investigates what is good and bad about us, and why we treat each other the way we do.

Vann was also incredibly open about his intentions as a writer. He felt his writing was more important than himself, and also more important than approval of his family, and he had come to accept the resulting collateral damage of taking such a position.

The author revealed that most of his novels were completed within intense sittings and he had a fear that editing might result in him removing parts he didn’t understand yet. His new novel (still unreleased) Goat Mountain was written beginning to end in this fashion, with as little as 1000 words edited from the final manuscript.

I’m often left disappointed by author events. Complex and inwardly focused personalities don’t always shine on stage, nor open up in such a short sessions. But I felt yesterday’s session was a rare exception to the norm, and with it’s small and intimate setting, was easily my favourite event of the festival thus far.

Vann was both intense and talkative. Near the end point of the session he commented that it was the best interview he had ever done, having given him the chance to properly explain the motives behind Dirt.

The right balance of open ended and revealing questions seem to allow Vann to reflect on his book anew, so that by the hour’s end, both the audience and author had gained some new perspective. And that felt pretty special. It got me wanting to write again, and to read. And like a lemming I joined the line at the Dymocks counter shortly afterwards. And now I have Dirt in my hands.

The New Yorker Five

The US contingent of the festival kicked off last night with an evening with The New Yorker 5: cartoonist Roz Chast, art critic Peter Schjeldahl, staff writer David Grann, and music critic Sascha Frere-Jones, hosted by the magazine’s Edtorial Director Henry Finder.

The night promised to deliver recollections and behind the scenes insights into the highly regarded magazine, now available pretty much anywhere you can find a powerpoint.

Being a reader of the The New Yorker (hereafter TNY) myself, I could definitely sense a feeling of shared excitement in the cavernous Town Hall. Anticipation that what that these writers from abroad had to say was bound to be insightful and important, even before they started to speak.

As the panelists fund their chairs, I recalled a letter from Australia published by LA Review of Books last month that read “Like do you guys get how hard we are trying to impress you?”

The letter was written by Sydney writer Sam Twyford Moore, and asks what we’ve all wanted to ask but never could with such intelligence and precision: why does American opinion mean so much to the views of Australians and the careers of Australian writers?

Later in the session, when each of the writers were asked to respond to questions from the audience, Editorial Director Henry Finder addressed part of Sam’s question indirectly when asked why Australian’s cared for TNY.

Finder suggested that with much of the magazine’s audience now based outside of its home town, TNY stood for less of a geographic concern, and more for set of common values; of journalistic vigour, intelligence, humour and creativity.

The night revealed a TNY editorial structure of strict vertical departments, with each ‘vertical’ (such as music, art, nonfiction, fiction) guided by common standards of excellence and accuracy. Much that appears in today’s TNY is months old, with some pieces the product of a year’s work, checked and re-checked by the magazine’s famous fact checking department.

This structure reflects my own reading habits of the magazine. Every reader is different, but I rarely read the commentary or criticism, I flip through the cartoons and bunker down in the glorious long form journalism, usually reading one to two pieces per edition.

I’m happy with this because one good article of TNY replaces a dozen or more average reads of a number of other information sources I draw from, online and off.

Long time New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast revealed the inner machanisms that help ensure the magazine’s standards never slip. Chast submits six to eight cartoons a week to the editor, selling one to the magazine in a good week, but more often than not lucking out completely. There are over 40 contract cartoonists working on the magazine, each submitting a similar amount every week, plus a growing slush pile.

It is hard to get into TNY, even when you’re already ‘in’.

The stories of staff writer (and my current man-crush) David Grann are a perfect example of this uncertainty. He captivated the audience (or maybe it was just me) with the genesis of his 2004 Squid Hunter piece for the magazine, in which he failed to deliver on the original brief to document the successful capture of a giant squid.

Grann, who refined his journalistic knack for accuracy through writing obituaries, explained that not knowing where a story was going to end up had become a necessary part of finding a good story:

The endings we don’t expect are those that most captivate.

As each panelist went on to reveal their own conflicted relationship with writing, the session signed off with a view from art critic Peter Schjeldahl, explaining that writing for him was “hell”:

Just because you like sausages, doesn’t mean you want to see the sausages being made.

While I left the session with my views of TNY unchanged (I’ll still likely never read the commentary), I felt renewed respect for the writers, who ultimately bear the scars of the magazine’s high standards. My only disappointment was that we didn’t get a glimpse into what drives these writers to continue submitting, even when the ends remain unknown.

Stranger than fiction: Q&A with David Grann

With the first big New Yorker event kicking off with tonight’s keynote address, I thought it about time we talked with regular
contributor and author of The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, David Grann on the trials and tribulations of writing nonfiction.

For those hanging on my every word, you’ll remember I reviewed David’s first book The Lost City of Z in a previous post.

In your latest book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes you tackle a collection of ‘fantastical’ true-to-life mysteries, many of which could easily qualify as fiction. What attracts you to the challenge of nonfiction writing?

I’m drawn to non-fiction because of its very nature—its quest to understand some hidden truth about characters or events. Many of the characters I write about are fabulists or imposters, but the crux of reporting is to separate facts from fiction. To me, the most interesting stories are those that may seem fantastical but are true.

The quote from Holmes “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” has been used to describe the theme of the book. With advancements in modern technology bridging time and space between cultures and evaporating mysteries of the past, do you believe this sentiment will always ring true?

I do. Technology can never resolve the riddle of the human condition.

Have you ever had a situation where the truth eluded you such that you couldn’t complete a particular story?

That’s a great question. None of us have the powers of Sherlock Holmes. We cannot see everything and understand everything. There are details that elude me in any story I do. Yet rather than undermine a story I think these gaps, these doubts, can also deepen a story. It shows the way the world really is. And so instead of abandoning a story I try to incorporate that incompleteness into the narrative. Which is why many of the mysteries I write about end with a smidgen of doubt.

Through electronic distribution your writing (both in novel form and journalistic) has more global reach and exposure than ever before. How has your ‘ideal reader’ changed over time?

To me, the ideal reader is anyone who reads, who engages with a text. Technology hasn’t changed that. Yet it allows writers to reach more of them. And technological advancements have also enabled a reporter to no longer be as confined by geography and to find stories on the opposite end of the earth.

____

Notice how my questions are longer than David’s answers? That is the sign of a interviewer at the top of his game…Those lucky enough to nab tickets to one of the New Yorker events (tickets are still available for tonight’s keynote) will certainly get much more David, and much less of me, this weekend.

A beautiful mind

The 2012 Melbourne Writers festival provides an invaluable glimpse into the minds of some of the most talented fiction authors alive today, such as David Vann, Sefi Atta and Tony Birch. For many of these writers, the catalyst of their imaginative tales lies much closer to reality than you might first expect.

There is plenty of intriguing and original fact still ripe for harvesting in the real world, and lucky for us a whole pile of it will be available for the plucking at MWF2012.

First on the plate is immunologist and Nobel laureate Peter Doherty’s talk Contagion (August 31st), which delves into the intriguing subject of ‘sentinel chickens’.

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring first introduced mainstream Western society to the idea that bird species could act as a barometer for environmental hazards. Now fifty years on, we know that birds help us understand a hell of a lot more about our world, including the origins of human cancer, malaria and influenza.

In many parts of the world, epidemiologists park flocks of ‘sentinel chickens’ to help monitor the spread of viral diseases, with global populations of birds closely observed for changes that may ultimately impact our own lives.

“Not only chickens, but puffins, eagles, canaries and toucans—, birds of all kinds are recruited by humans to help us interpret changes in our increasingly challenged and unpredictable world. These wonderful creatures continually sample the atmosphere, oceans, fields and forests, signalling toxic and environmental dangers that threaten all vertebrates.”

Next up is the godfather of creative non-fiction Lee Gutkind. If you haven’t already checked out our recent interview with Lee, you’ve still got plenty of opportunity to hear him talk on robotic subcultures in Making Robots Think (also on August 31).

Gutkind’s latest book Almost Human saw him spend six years as a fly-on-the-wall at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, watching a group of scientists try to develop human movement and decision-making capabilities. To get your AI remakes humming, check out this video of Gutkind talking about some of the highlights of his time ‘amongst robots’.

If that doesn’t shave close enough to your ethical edge, then Margaret Wertheim’s talk Physics on the Fringe should tip you over. An award-wining science writer and journalist, Wertheim has written extensively on the role of physics in modern society.

Her latest book Physics on the Fringe looks at ‘outsider physicists’; non-academics convinced of their own theories of the universe, such as James Carter, a trailer-park owner in Enumclaw, WA, who in 1993 announced the publication of a book in which he proposed a complete alternative theory of physics.

Wertheim is also the co-founder for the Institute For Figuring, an organisation dedicated to the aesthetic and poetic dimensions of science and mathematics. Wertheim’s recent TED talk provides great insight into her approach to science:

__

Peter Doherty and Margaret Wertheim will be joined by fellow science luminaries Michael Corballis and Elizabeth Finkel at The Story of Science on Saturday 1 September at 1.00 pm.

Book Review: The Lost City of Z

Whilst writers festivals are mostly about promoting new books, they’re also a great chance to discover each author’s back catalogue of gems you never knew existed.

I’m a subscriber to The New Yorker, so the name David Grann has come up a few times in my reading list. Having previously been the senior editor at The New Republic, Grann’s written some of the best non-fiction The New Yorker has to offer, while also contributing to a host of other publications, including New York Magazine, The Atlantic and The Boston Globe.

Yet it wasn’t until I heard he was coming to town that I picked up Grann’s first book, The Lost City of Z.

Based on the Grann’s 2005 article of the same name, The Lost City of Z chronicles more than a century of exploration into the Amazon for a fabled lost civilisation, known mysteriously as the city of ‘Z’.

The book centers around real life explorer Percy Fawcett, a kind of early nineteenth century Alby Mangels with tighter morals, who pioneered the theory that an advanced civilisation had once flourished in the Amazon before European invaders wiped out much of the population through disease and brutality. Fawcett’s tale comes from a time where the world was less ‘known’ (from a certain perspective anyway) and being an explorer was a perfectly acceptable career choice.

Fawcett’s also long gone, having mysteriously disappeared with his twenty-one-year-old son whilst making a last ditch attempt to find the city in 1925. For over seventy years since, explorers, both professional and amateur, have attempted to pick up from where Fawcett left off, to discover ‘Z’ and uncover the fate of Fawcett’s last expedition.

Grann deftly weaves a tale of obsession and adventure, drawing on Fawcett’s personal correspondence to piece together the explorer’s incredible career, including numerous near fatal expeditions into the Amazon (otherwise known as the ‘green hell’) where his expedition crew often met with miserable ends:

Then his right hand developed, as he put it, a “very sick, deep suppurating wound,” which made it “agony” even to pitch his hammock. Then he was stricken with diarrhoea. Then he woke up to find what looked like worms in his knee and arm. He peered closer. They were maggots growing inside him. He counted fifty around his elbow alone.

As Fawcett enters the twentieth century, the golden age of exploration fades and technology replaces much of the on-the-ground exploration work. While scientists draw tighter circles around the Z myth, Fawcett’s search turns to obsession, and attaining his goal seems increasingly improbable.

Grann includes his own personal search together with Fawcett’s, and the narrative sustains a cracking pace as competing explorers enter the race to find Z.  The larger than life Fawcett has inspired generations of modern explorers, and his sense of adventure is gloriously infectious here. Like Grann and many others who have followed Fawcett to his fate, I found myself entranced by the lure of Z, fighting the urge to take a peek at the final chapter to see how it all ended.

Grann’s book pays homage to a time when things were just a little bit more mysterious, the edges of every map just a touch more unclear, providing the perfect catalyst for uncovering something new.

Reading it gave me a sense of what may have been Fawcett’s one and only fear; that he would someday discover Z, and have nothing left to look for.

__

David Grann is appearing at the New Yorker events at MWF12, and will be speaking about The Lost City of Z and other tales of obsession on Sunday 26 August at 2.30pm.

Godfather of nonfiction: Q&A with Lee Gutkind

Any moment now, readers of The Age will be opening their morning newspapers to discover the full 2012 Melbourne Writers Festival program. Time to get looking and booking via the main MWF website.

There are dozens of interesting topic streams to fall into this year, and one that I’m very much looking forward to is the creative nonfiction stream.

This year, not only do we get David Grann and his New Yorker pals coming to Melbourne, but Lee Gutkind (aka the godfather of creative nonfiction) will be gracing our shores to present a seminar on the foundations of the genre. Oh, and while he’s here, why not launch the very first Australian themed edition of Creative Nonfiction journal?

Sounds pretty good to me. I asked Lee what the go was with the new edition…

Can you talk about what prompted the Australian edition and what you see as its key strengths?

The story Geraldine Brooks tells in this issue about how and why her father became settled in Australia is exactly the kind of story that cements my long-held belief that creative nonfiction, the genre, and Australia, the place and its people, are inherently in synch—linked by content, style and spirit.

Briefly, Brooks’ father, a Hollywood entertainer, on the run after an affair with the wife of a famous producer, flees to Australia and joins a touring band. But the bandleader ditches his fellow musicians and takes off with the money so her father, broke, is now stranded. A good story as it is—but there’s more. It is 1940. The Nazis invade France. Paris falls. Brooks’ father goes drinking with his Australian buddies—and they all decide to fight the “Nazi bastards.” So they enlist in the Australian Army, including her father, an American citizen. And he never goes home again—at least to stay.

Now that’s as Australian and creative nonfiction-like as can be—a true story that is so unpredictable that you just can’t make it up. There are so many stories like this in Australia. Nearly every person you meet has a tale to tell. This was evidenced in the nearly 350 essays submitted to us for the Best Essay Prize. There’s an inherent theme of restlessness and rebellion in very many of these submissions—writers searching for something different, something better, in life.

Who do you see as the most exciting new voices coming through the field of creative non-fiction in the present day?

Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) is by far the most exciting and accomplished. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild is wrenching and honest.

This year you’ll be presenting a seminar at the festival on the boundaries and pitfalls of writing creative non-fiction. What are some of the common challenges that all writers are likely to face when entering the genre?

So many. Like remembering that creative nonfiction is framed in narrative and explores subjects in scenes. That it takes a lot of time and effort to find the right story, and that the story or stories being told are true and, when possible, verifiable. This includes memoir. And even with memoir the challenge is to realize that your story, no matter how dramatic and potentially compelling, must be directed to the largest body of readership possible. A good memoirist/essayist is inward–and outward. It may take place in Sydney or the Gold Coast, but it must ring true in Perth or in Pittsburgh. And remember also the title of my new book about creative nonfiction–because that says it all: YOU CANT MAKE THIS STUFF UP.

What qualities/characteristics do you tend to encourage in your students?

Commitment to the form and the subject, an ability to go beyond the craft of the genre and think creatively and intensely, to understand the material so well that your words and your stories have meaning behind them. This takes time and effort and a willingness to nurture your work until it is ready–not to send it out too soon because of yearning for reinforcement through publication.

Will we see an electronic version of Creative Nonfiction anytime soon?

You bet. We are working on it now.

Click here to find out more about Lee Gutkind’s MWF events.

Gold canary

Hello there, I’m Mark Welker, the final prong in the 2012 MWF Blogger spork.

I’m a reader, writer and occasional film maker. I have profiles on eighteen different social networks. I own eight electronic screens. Eight hours a day I spend in an office, and all eight of those are spent in front of a screen. I sleep eight hours (on average) each night. What remains is both precious and yet frequently squandered.

I have 126 subscriptions in my Google Reader account.

At some moment in the last four years, I came to think of time as something to be maximised. Crammed full. Aspiring to be ‘busy‘. Today, hardly a minute of my life goes by without some form of information retrieval. My kindred souls and I define a whole new suite of lifestyle demographic buckets, with names like ‘Emerging Digerati’ and ‘Suburban Overclocker’.

It hasn’t always been like this. My parents were books, literally. The sound of my childhood I most relate to is that of my mother’s pages turning in the last moments before bedtime. Yet, in the last few years, I’ve come to find myself far from the tree I fell from.

A friend of mine recently remarked that she never felt more quiet than when reading. This is also how I feel. That cubby house of peace seems to be more relevant, more necessary to retreat into than ever.

So in my bag is dog-eared copy of Douglass Rushkoff’s Program or be Programmed, on my kindle a half finished copy of Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, and somewhere in the middle of my bedside reading stack is William Powers’ Hamlet’s Blackberry.

I’m the most vulnerable reader I know. Someone who was once prolifically bookish, and now in many ways, I’m the canary-in-the-coal-mine of the 2012 festival. Just a reader, distractible as they come, looking for a way back in. I’m just here to read folks. To get excited, and to share some of that excitement with you.

You can find me on:

Pinterest, Findings, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, Google+, Last.fm, Behance, LinkedIn, listgeeks, Readmill, Soundcloud and Readability