I’m interrupting my usual Sunday night HAPPY posts, to bring a special edition of Writer-Festival-Happiness (that’s a picture of the ceiling of one of the Festival venues, the Capitol Theatre, which never fails to thrill me).

I didn’t get to all of the events I had originally booked (work has a way of foiling plans!), however, I’ve had a terrific weekend and managed six events in total. Some highlights:

SATURDAY

Started my day with Beejay Silcox hosting a conversation with Helen Garner and Chloe Hooper. They entertained with anecdotes and confessions about chicken salt, reading or not reading Middlemarch, and the Queen (Hooper’s seven-year-old son said, on hearing the news of her death and without looking up from his porridge, “Charles did it.”).

It was an hour that felt absolutely jam-packed, but Hooper’s description of writing her memoir, Bedtime Story, and her thoughts on the importance of children’s stories were fascinating. She said that it’s in children’s stories that “…we put the source code to what we value (in society).”

Garner’s sense of humour always delights me, and her telling of how she turned down interviewing the Prime Minister (Howard) and how she got inside access to the Coroner’s Forensic Laboratory to watch autopsies, were both funny and thoughtful. Turning serious, and in reference to This House of Grief, she said that she wasn’t interested in writing about serial killers, but rather was fascinated  by someone who’s gone through the ‘membrane’ that most of us never do, to the darkest parts of themselves. After hundreds of hours sitting in court, Garner said you see this when somebody is standing in the dock, and it is that which she strives to understand.

Next up was Michael Williams hosting Christos Tsiolkas and Sarah Winman. Full disclosure: Winman was absolutely charming, and funny, and engaging. Tsiolkas is always so enthusiastic and interested, and the combination on stage was brilliant. They began with discussing the importance of cinema (Winman was an actor before becoming an author), how it provides an escape, and the intersection of art and beauty (both Winman and Tsiolkas’s latest books cover these topics). Neither advocated for beauty as a means of escape, but rather, that we need horror and beauty because then, as Winman said, “…the beauty allows us to face the horror.”

Winman spoke about Still Life‘s Florence setting, and said that the idea for the story began when she heard about the ‘Mud Angels‘ who arrived to rescue art and books after the Florence flood in 1966 (incidentally, I thought this was the best part of Still Life).

The highlight of my day was Natasha Scholl and Sian Prior discussing their grief memoirs. I haven’t written my review of Scholl’s memoir, Found, Wanting, yet but I can say that it is probably the best grief-memoir I have read, simply because she writes about the physicality of grieving, and ambiguous loss extraordinarily well. Scholl said that she wrote the book that she wished had been available to her when her partner died, and that writing it helped her ‘metabolise’ the grief. Prior agreed, noting that writing was a ‘great containment strategy’ for grief.

On the title of her memoir, Childless, Prior said that if she walked into a bookshop and saw it, she wouldn’t want to read it – “There’s that threat of deep sadness in that one word, childless…”

Both spoke about the challenges of writing memoir, and the importance of keeping the focus on themselves. In doing so, both said they were hard on themselves, Prior as a form of ‘insurance’, and Scholl in order to be authentic.

Both authors gave context to their stories – Prior’s environmental activism and the stereotypes around childlessness, and Scholl’s relationship with the Jewish tradition and the concept of faith. But it was their exploration of ambiguous loss (the ‘what if…’ questions) that I wished I could have recorded. Scholl said of her memoir, “It’s not a book about grief, it’s a book about unlived lives.” A discussion about the impossibility of ‘closure’ followed, and Scholl said of grief, “…it’s not a linear journey. It (Found, Wanting) is an anti-closure book.” Prior continued, noting that ‘closure’ is a ‘dangerous myth’ because of the inherent judgement and expectation- “It ignores how human emotion works.”

I finished the day on a lighter note with Michael Williams in conversation with Brian Cox. Honestly, the session was a little clunky in the first few minutes and I thought that Williams was going to have to work hard. But, after asking Cox whether writing his memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, was difficult, Cox replied that it was in fact “…relaxing and cathartic, like a good clean vomit.” The crowd laughed, and it was smooth sailing after that.

Cox entertained the audience, skipping from one anecdote to the next. Early in the conversation, Cox revealed that he was “…hopeless at keeping secrets.” Without missing a beat Williams replied, “Excellent, I’ll be asking about season four of Succession later.” Sure enough, at the end, Williams slips in, “So who do you leave the company to?” With a great theatrical pause, Cox mustered his Logan and replied, “Fuck off!” The audience loved it.

We concluded the day at Fancy Hanks – cocktails, corn ribs (the BEST) and brisket hit the spot.

SUNDAY

Ottessa Moshfegh was beamed into Melbourne via Zoom, and was in conversation with Michael Williams. I haven’t yet read Lapvona but I will – I enjoy Moshfegh’s work because it is always challenging, and she writes so beautifully about ugliness.

She said that the idea for Lapvona came with exploring the death of her brother – “Loss is an empty space that you fill with something.”

She went on to talk about fairy tales, faith, violence, power, and the difference between ‘entertainment’ and ‘art’ – “Entertainment carries with it a responsibility. It is saying ‘I am here to hypnotise you’. Art is saying something else. I feel when I’ve been entertained. I feel different when I’ve been moved by art.” She went on to discuss the intersection of art and moral messages, and concluded by saying of her own writing, “I want to move you but not brainwash you.”

A recent Vulture article was heavily critical of Moshfegh’s use of the body and bodily functions in her work. She said simply, “Are we still so shocked that a character uses a toilet?… I like to push it so that the uptight people think, ‘Oh, I’m being uptight’.”

My last session of the day was another with Sarah Winman, this time focused on Still Life. Thankfully it didn’t cover the same ground as the Saturday session, and instead she spoke about her time as an actor, Forster, and particular characters and elements of the book. And I got her to sign my copy of When God Was a Rabbit (my favourite of all her novels).

All in all, an ace Festival, and I was so glad that so much of it was in-person.