Surly to rise

The scraping metallic whistle signaled the approach of a train that was already apologising for any inconvenience that it’s tardiness had caused. It’s been a long time since I have caught a peak hour train, I must have put on some weight in the last six months, as this one seemed a lot tighter than I recalled. Hemmed in on all sides by commuters, I did my best to ignore the restrictive journey, but I couldn’t ignore the chirpy female voice emanating from the speakers in the carriage “Myki can now be used on all Metropolitan trains!” Yes, well, my key opens the front door of my house but it didn’t cost me $850 million.

I was supposed to meet my fellow bloggers for a caffeine baptism to start the festival off with a jitter, but no one was at the café. I bumped into a man that resembled an extremely Irish Yul Brynner. He introduced himself as Chris Flynn and asked if I’d like to see his Torpedo. I recalled the time I had dialled a number I found on a public toilet wall, despite it’s claim, there was definitely no good time had, not by me at any rate. I politely declined his offer. Chris shrugged and told me he was off for his Morning Fix. My bowels gave off a Pavlovian gurgle and I followed him into a large café called Feddish.

The café was warm to the point of stifling and the air seemed thick with pungent chemical fumes. I sat down next to a well-stubbled man and asked if there was a gas leak in the room. He gestured towards a group of pallid people seated around a table. The air above them rippled with last night’s alcohol. Two were propping their heads up with their hands while the third was grimly clutching the table like the steering wheel of an out of control big rig. I watched as the waitress placed three croissants in front of them. The table-driving lady reached into her purse, producing a large pack of Berocca that she emptied into the pastry. She caught my eye while crunching down on her Beroccroissant and apologetically mumbled “Text Publishing party last night”.

Through the wobbling booze air I listened to four authors whom all seemed worlds apart. Despite hailing from different countries, with vastly different upbringings, they all serendipitously read passages from their work that focused on recapturing and reinventing childhood memories. Their words gripped the crowd, bringing forth laughter, smiles, even tears. Although that could have been the fumes coming from table 9.

Day 1: Get your Morning Fix

Chris Flynn is to be forgiven for his opening gambit. “It’s early for me. Is it early for you?” It is early (10 am), and it’s cold outside – hail was still treacherously lurking in my front yard, waiting to wrongfoot me on my way in to the first day of the Melbourne Writers Festival.

A good crowd is seated in and around the restaurant fixtures of Feddish, which has a view of the the Eiffel-like skirts of the Arts Centre. Some of us are perched on bar stools, and others sit in threes or fours around starched white tablecloths, like we’re in on some secret after-hours event run by the restauranteurs. But we’re not doing anything on the sly – we’re at The Morning Fix, the free event held every morning at Federation Square’s Feddish.  The titular ‘fixes’ are short readings from festival guests. It’s a good way to go if you haven’t yet cracked the voluminous festival program. Just turn up, and you’re guaranteed a mix of authors – international and local, non-fiction and fiction.

Other fixes are available too: “Are we open for coffees?” Chris, the session’s chair, asks Naomi, who works here, ponytailed and ensconced in the horseshoe-shaped bar. She confirms that coffee is on. I’m sitting opposite where the house spirits are lined up – Gordon’s Gin, Johnny Walker Red, Jack Daniel’s. If they’re not open for coffees, I could go a Moscow Mule.

Or perhaps a fifth of Jack’s would be a good companion for the first reader: Joe Bageant, an ‘expert on rednecks’, with a reading from his latest, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir. He not only reads his piece, but also sings: ‘Where were you when they nailed him to the boards,’ in a deep rumble that would have no shame in shaking hands with Johnny Cash’s. Bageant’s reading is about ‘being saved’ across the heartland of America. He thinks everything his country does is ‘immoral or downright wicked’ – which you can hear more about at tomorrow’s USA Today session.

From the United States to Australia’s adopted British son, Jon Bauer, with an excerpt from his debut novel Rocks in the Belly. ‘I used to tell people I was a foster child, even though I was the only one who wasn’t fostered.’ He reads from a section where his unnamed narrator is remembering his childhood – particularly a fostered child named Robert, who died. It’s such a harrowing and meditative excerpt that previous listeners have told him they thought the character was in Guantanamo Bay.

Benjamin Law, native of Brisbane, has brought along an entourage – his publicist and his mother, who is a significant presence in his collection of personal essays, The Family Law. ‘I thought I’d bring some brutal warmth into the room,’ he says. I still have my gloves on, so I’m not complaining. He describes weather conditions up north in which you could ‘make pudding in sinks’. His mother is unimpressed with their lack of forbearance. ‘You think this is hot?’ she asks. She grew up in Malaysia, and went to a convent school, where the nuns would wear full habit, ‘their boobs poached in their own sweat like pork fillets’.

I’m not feeling so cold anymore.

Naomi comes out of the kitchen with a wagon wheel-sized plate of cookies. I think Law’s reading has influenced what I see, because at first I think they’re chicken schnitzels. No such luck. I suppose it’s too early for crumbed meat.

The last segment of this literary breakfast is Kim Cheng Boey, who is a Singaporean transplant. Kim travelled from Calcutta to Morocco, and intended to write a travel book. What emerged instead was a collection of essays, Between Stations. Entangled with this writing project were Boey’s attempts to salvage memories of his father, who had passed away. Boey tells movingly of taking his son on walks he used to do with his father: ‘I’ve become my father, and my son is me.’

The Morning Fix is on every day of the festival’s main program. See who will be giving you your your fix here.

Too Much To Think – Part 2

Welcome to the 2nd installment of Too Much To Think.
The concept is simple, all you have to do is release your inner smart arse by submitting a caption to go within the thought bubble in the picture. The thinker/victim today? Chris Flynn. A man vying for the title of most dapper gent of the MWF. If you’re curious about creating your own publication then you can see him chair Fly Like a Butterfly...

Happy thinking!

Chris Flynn - Creator & Editor of Torpedo

Blue is free

Irfan Yusuf

Writers are a notoriously unmoneyed lot. (Not you, JK.) So it will be sweet news to the ears of my impoverished friends that The Morning Read, the first MWF event today — nay, every day — is free. In fact, there’s a free event in the Festival Club in every time block of the festival’s scheduling throughout the main program. In the printed program, all the events headed in blue script are free. So, you could easily attend MWF for the entire seven-day main program and not pay a dime. (Uh, hello, there’s even a free wine tasting.) But back to The Morning Read, chaired by Chris Flynn of Torpedo, which features three authors reading from their work, new, published or unpublished.

Forgive the ‘dime’ anachorism above, though such quirks can surely be forgiven in the presence of China Mieville, who read this morning from a new work about created worlds, metamurder and deaths of gods.

Petra White, a poet, and surely the first guest of the festival to say ‘ablutions’, read two new poems that contemplate no less than the nature of the soul. Her poem ‘Machinery’ was beautiful enough to eclipse the (nevertheless apt) sounds of building works outside.

Well before his normal waking time, ex-Liberal Party member Irfan Yusuf read from Once Were Radicals, a memoir about being a teenage part of ‘the Muslim question’. George Bush, Irfan thanks you for the term ‘Islamofascist’ and your various other charming epithets.

Catch the shining pate of Chris Flynn every day of the main program at The Morning Read. You want the dates? Saturday 22nd, Sunday 23rd, Thursday 27th, Friday 28th, Saturday 29th and, phew, Sunday 30th. Don’t make me write that again.

Estelle Tang, 3000 BOOKS
Festival Blogger