The Dark Side of Womanhood featured the Festival’s headline international act, Joyce Carol Oates. Joining her was Megan Abbott and the conversation was chaired by Sophie Cunningham.
The session was billed as a discussion about the ‘depictions of the dark, complicated interior lives of women’ but the conversation went in various other directions. Now I have to be perfectly frank – Joyce Carol Oates was rather uncooperative to begin. Sophie asked a number of questions that JCO answered with “I don’t know” or “I haven’t thought about it” which left Sophie floundering and Megan having to pick up the slack (which she did very, very well). Honestly, it was all a bit awkward.
Thankfully toward the end, the conversation moved to things that clearly sparked JCO’s interest (particularly Trump) and she said of her latest book, A Book of American Martyrs, “I finished it before Trump was a household word… Even before he was a ghastly mirage on the horizon.” She went on to say that given the prophetic element of the story, she’d “…happily take the novel back and have a sane and qualified President to run our country“, adding that she and Megan were afraid to go home and could they ask for asylum? (I’m sure if she understood Australia’s management of asylum seekers, she’d think again!).
The session ended with a quick discussion around the fact that both JCO and Abbott’s books examine women’s loss of agency over their own bodies – alas, it seemed we got to the guts of things too late. A shame.
Next up was Elizabeth Kostova and Heather Rose talking about the significance of art in their novels (and the fact that they both have novels that feature the Balkan region). Kostova and Rose have only very recently met but from the outset, it felt like a warm, generous conversation between old friends.
I was particularly interested to hear Rose talk about the very tricky process of blending fact and fiction, and for added complexity, writing about someone who is alive. The Museum of Modern Love focuses on performance artist Marina Abramovic and her piece, The Artist is Present.
Rose was visiting a Dutch Masters exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2005 when she happened across a photograph from one of Abramovic’s performance pieces. The blurb mentioned her Great Wall of China walk and Rose immediately wanted to know more. There was little available online and so for a few years, she simply made it up. But then came The Artist is Present and Rose sat with her four times (WOW!). After her first sitting she knew that she couldn’t fictionalise Abramovic, her life was too rich, so she requested permission to write about her –“I had an enormous sense of responsibility, I had to depict things accurately. As a writer, I couldn’t just give her a glossy exterior, I had to get inside…”
The fourth time Rose sat at The Artist is Present, she telepathically asked Abramovic if she could write about her. Rose reported that in response, Abramovic lent forward ever so slightly (if you watch any of the footage you’ll see that she very rarely moves) and telepathically replied “You must do it but you must be fearless!”
Of course, Rose’s final sitting could be the work of a very good storyteller (which Rose obviously is) but I’m not sure Abramovic is someone you’d pick to tell made-up stories about. Like the rest of the audience, I was absolutely enthralled.
