10 Random Questions: Steven Amsterdam

Steven Amsterdam’s novel Things We Didn’t See Coming won the 2009 Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction. We tried to surprise him with our 10 Random Questions.

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Earnest Phlegmingway

I woke this morning to find the influenza fairy had piped a fresh sack of mucous into my sinus cavity. The dull bloat of head pus interrupted all my thoughts. Even the regular erotic daydreams I play during my morning shower seemed slackly monotone and somehow more mucousy than normal. How was I to fulfill my role of festival blogger when the theatre in my mind couldn’t even screen a decent pre-breakfast skin flick?

I decided to dress in a full suit and tie in the hopes that my fashion would trick my mind into feeling better. It didn’t. After ruining a bowl of cereal with something midway between a sneeze and a cough, my flatmate Michelle suggested I try some antibiotics. She galloped up the hallway and returned from the bathroom with a handful of small blue tablets, explaining that they were left over from the time she’d been seeing this guy from Bluejuice. I thought about the number of times my paintings jumped off of my bedroom wall after she had met someone at a gig. I decided I would probably only need a half. I washed down the portion of the pill with some water she handed to me. I almost gagged when I discovered it was gin.  Michelle told me she used to work in a student bar where they served the exact same concoction, named Hemmingway’s Shotgun.

My train ride into the MWF is somewhat blurry after that. I half recall chatting to a group of school kids about why my hands were suddenly so huge and how my feet seemed to be a long distance from my head. By the time my faculties returned, I discovered that I was in the Fed Square Atrium chatting to a group of young writers whose black jeans were so tight, you could count the change in their pockets. The shortest of them had a lisp and $4.25, he asked me what my writing credentials were. I explained that I was blogging for the festival. He smiled a grin of private schooling and told me that I was merely an aspiring writer. Through his supercilious teeth he stated that he himself was an emerging writer. I asked what the difference was. He told me that emerging writers drink free champagne at functions, whereas aspiring writers serve it to them. The denim ring guffawed in unison.

I slid my hand into my trouser pocket, fingering the round blue pills that my flatmate had given me in case my flu began to exit my body via my face again.  I smiled at the stovepipe dohnut asking if they’d all like to try a drink made famous by Hemmingway.

The last I saw of them, two of girls were licking each others face on the floor of the Atrium and the short lisper had pulled up his own chair at Steven Amsterdam’s book signing. He loudly slurred that he’d be signing copies too, as he was almost certain he’d given Amsterdam the idea for the book after sharing a pinger at a lock-in in Fitzroy.

by Frenchelbow
Festival Blogger

Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Grime and Gunishment

I opened the sleep-slicked slits that I keep my eyes in. Incredible. I had somehow miraculously dodged the hangover bullet from the preceding night. I went to my bathroom to empty the pub from my kidneys and found the water was a deep cerulean blue. I have never experienced a clean morning toilet at my house. Ordinarily the water in the bowl is hangover amber. I took this as an omen that the day would be amazing. Like some sort of giant human filth-covered cup of tea leaves, my toilet’s precognition was spot on.

I felt the urge to psych myself up for the day ahead. I did some light stretching before launching into China Mieville’s Gunnercise fitness regime for emerging writers. This involved gesturing wildly and lifting a vintage Underwood Universal typewriter over my head. After only five minutes, my biceps felt quite authorly.
I was ready.

I donned my blogging beret and sat in the darkness of the acmi theatre, awaiting the spoonfuls of knowledge to be dished into my brain bowl. As I toyed with the image of a wafer and sprinkles being pushed into my ears, an elderly lady seated next to me, leaned over and introduced herself. It turns out, that in her eighties, she followed her dream of becoming an author, penning a successful book on memory. Specifically, the fear of growing old and watching the people around you lose theirs. I asked her for the title of the book. She mentally fumbled for the name like a child trying to find the largest parcel in a lucky dip. I thought she was making a nanna joke and politely laughed. When she introduced herself a second time, my laugh crawled back into my mouth and pulled the covers over it, shuddering the whole time.

I didn’t feel up to a third introduction, so I quietly made my way to one of the other theatres. The title of the discussion was fable, fantasy and the new short story. The crowd brimmed with the grey tan of seasoned World of Warcraft players. I decided I should mingle with the audience and struck up a conversation with a redheaded man who was one part Viking and eight parts dohnut. He showed me a manuscript he had been working on. It was a fan fiction piece depicting the story of a crossover between the two universes inhabited by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Twilight books. The climactic scene involved the heroines from both worlds falling in love with a Viking king who took them both as his sexing brides, along with his current wife Hermione.

I comforted myself with the knowledge that if the older lady in the other theatre was anything to go by, this conversation would eventually fade away one day.

by Frenchelbow (aka Simon Keck)
Dead Under Fluorescent Lights

Nearly finished

Whilst Louise and her Tim-Tam-eating volunteers were spending their weekend stuffing envelopes to get Steve’s school program out in the mail today (yahoo!),  I was blockaded in my office for a marathon long weekend of plotting and planning.  And the result?  The program is stunning.  Can I say that about my own program? I think I can because the program’s strength is, of course, the writers who are taking part. And, this year more than in the past, I’ve had a gold-mine of new talent from which to choose. Fabulous young writers from Australia and elsewhere who are writing with breath-taking energy and originality. Many will be featured in this year’s festival – Steven Amsterdam, Reif Larsen, Wells Tower, Andrew Westoll, Petina Gappah and Evie Wyld are some of those bold young voices you’ll be hearing. In the last three years the MWF has seen debut authors blitz the festival’s best-seller list – Alice Pung and Nam Le both out-sold their more experienced colleagues and the festival is developing a reputation for being the best place to find new talent.

There has been a recent campaign to save Salt Publishing, a UK poetry publishing house which was started by John Kinsella and has many Australian poets on its list. The campaign “buy just one book” will save the press from its financial doom through the power of one. After you’ve bought one book from Salt turn your collective financial power to supporting debut writers. Next time you are in Readings make sure you include “just one debut author” in your take-home books. Be there at the beginning when a new career takes off. Be responsible for launching the great writers of the next generation. Get some zing into your life with the freshness of their writing. Impress your friends with your prescience and recommend a debut author as your bookclub ‘read’.  Get hooked.

Rosemary
Fesitval Director

On the go?

Hi again,

I’ll try and make sense, even though I’m sharing a ’12 things on the go’ moment with (pretty much) all my colleagues. The festival is hotting up – authors, events and ideas about the ways these two intersect are moving around us at an ungainly speed. It’s fun, but it’s all becoming a little bit of a blur (in a fun way though, pretty much like doing ‘wizzies’ when you were a kid).

Every time my eyes refocus I turn them to a new book. I’ve just started Philip Hensher’s The Northern Clemency, a Booker nominee and, at this early stage of my reading I can understand why; the language is beautiful, loaded and large, but still light and erudite (if that’s all possible). I’m only 100 pages in and I’ve met almost 20 characters … an ‘epic portrait’ indeed. I already feel like I’d be at home in any of the local pubs (in one of the corners of 1970s Sheffield).

Prior to this I’ve read Ryu Murakami’s Audition, a short book about a middle-aged man who chances upon the most unique way of finding a second wife … by creating a fake film project which a range of women audition for. I was, after much of what I’ve read about this book, expecting something far more violent. This wasn’t really the case. There is a sense of unease that’s sustained through much of the latter part of the book and it only gets a little gruesome at the end. I look forward to seeing the film version (although I’m a little concerned about the affect on me, seeing the ‘Critical response‘ section of the Wiki page).

I also read Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming (Sleepers Publishing). I’m not going to be able to do this book justice in this short blog, but I really enjoyed it. I wasn’t expecting spec-fiction and also got something that reminded me of David Mitchell, whose Cloud Atlas I loved. Amsterdam’s book follows one main character through a series of episodes in a post-Y2K world … a world that’s gone totally awry, and a world that could very possibly be ours in the too-soon future (Y2K aside). It’s believable, and there’s room in the spaces to let the reader bring their own thoughts to the table.

I’d better go now, given I’m still in the middle of a ’11 things on the go’ moment.

Regards

Steve
Associate Director