Bookstore panel & New mags

The Wheeler Centre have posted the following video of the Meanland event I participated in a few weeks back, on the future of the bookstore. Other guests are Michael Webster, Jo Case & Corrie Perkins, with new Meanjin editor Sally Heath at the helm. The room was packed to the gills, with lots of people standing down the back and a waiting list to get in, so it's obviously a subject that strikes a chord. It's a long video though, and I don't say an awful lot. What I do say seemed to be unpopular with the crowd, but I find it hard to imagine that bricks and mortar bookstores have got much of a long term future. Plenty to think about in any case, if you can make it through what sometimes feels like a promotional video for bookstores rather than a debate about their survival.





The latest issues of several literary mags have landed on my desk too. Zoetrope Vol.15 No.1 has been designed by film-maker Mark Romanek, who just happens to have a movie out, Never Let Me Go. It's not the best issue, with the photos from Romanek's iphone that are peppered throughout in many ways telling the best story. Brazilian author Frances de Pontes Peebles also turns in a strong tale, 'The Serrambi Case', about two teenage girls whose decomposed bodies are found in a cane field some time after their disappearance. The story is told from the perspective of everyone involved in the case, from the coroner, the old woman selling jewellery on the beach, both sets of parents, some birds flying overhead and even the cane itself. The classic reprint in this issue is Raymond Carver's 'Why Don't You Dance?', which is surprisingly introduced by Will Ferrell, who gamely admits to never having heard of Carver prior to reading the script of Everything Must Go, the film version of 'Why Don't You Dance' that comes out in May. Here's the trailer, which looks a little painful. I don't suppose making a 90 minute film from a 1000 word story can have been all that easy, and perhaps was ill-advised. I guess we'll find out soon enough.





The Paris Review continues its renaissance under Lorin Stein with a beautiful, tactile issue 196 that feels almost hand-made. Only one short story here though, by Joshua Cohen, which did my head in. One highlight is the first part of Roberto Bolano's lost novel The Third Reich, which he wrote in 1989 and which is being serialised in PR over four issues, the first such novel serialisation they've done in 42 years and a must for fans of the Chilean master. I was also stoked to read an interview with one of my favourite writers, Ann Beattie. She has had 48 stories published in The New Yorker, although the first 17 she sent them were rejected. When Gordon Lish was at Esquire he rejected one of her stories with a note that read, "All dressed up with nowhere to go." Gold. Beattie's modesty and humility shine through in this interview. Here's an excerpt:


PR: Do you know how many stories you've written altogether?


AB: Never counted. There are forty-eight in The New Yorker Stories and at least as many elsewhere. A hundred twenty-five maybe. Plus a lot that I ripped up at the last line. Or halfway through. Maybe three for every one I published.


PR: You discard that many?


AB: I have a very short fuse. I always think, This isn't the moment, another story will come along.


PR: Do you ever return to your old work, out of interest?


AB: No. I wouldn't of an evening sit around and read something I've written.


If you're looking to try Beattie out, The New Yorker Stories is definitive reading, though if you want something shorter, last year's novella Walks With Men is pretty great.

Finally, we have Dumbo Feather, the Australian mag which now has a new publisher, new editorial staff, new design and new contributors (disclosure: I am one of them, with a piece on Burmese border guards). Outgoing head honcho and one woman army Kate Bezar is finally one of the interview subjects, which fans of the mag have been requesting for years. Modesty saves the day once more here, and the interview with deputy ed Jessica Friedmann is an honest, moving feast. The launch for this was last night at Craft Victoria and was the most fun I've had at a book launch in a long time, though my recent prediliction for Jonathan Ames's Bored to Death led to white wine drunkenness and an attempted impersonation of the opening credits of cult 80s show Manimal. Much credit must go to designer Stuart Geddes for breaking lots of rules and taking risks with this mag, and to new editor Patrick Pittman, whose introduction to the Richard Skelton interview will have you tearing up. He has a knack for delivering the kind of quietly devastating sentences that are rarely seen in journalism anymore and it's going to be very hard very quickly to imagine anyone else at the helm of this mag. An inheritor to Kate Bezar's throne seemed unlikely, but publisher Berry Liberman has pulled an extraordinary ace out of her sleeve that will ensure fans of Dumbo Feather fall in love with the mag all over again, and recruit a whole new legion of readers.

And with that, I shall leave you, dear readers, with Manimal, as he transforms into a falcon to catch cavewomen and assist unconscious parachuters. French video, for extra giggles.