The queue went around the corner - I stood in the end of it and Miriam's main festival friend La Luna (that's a fake name by the way) got there early so we scooted up the line to meet her, stoically ignoring dirty looks along the way.
Wondering if The Age Book of the Year would be announced before or after ... and then we found out. Welcome to country by Aunty Di Kerr, then Premier Ted Baillieu, which is where our appreciation for the Auslan signers for deaf audience members on stage really kicked in. Those two lovely girls (Jodie and Sarah, in case you'd like to know) cut Baillieu's waffle down to a few emphatic gestures and some appropriate filler-y stuff (not that I understand sign, but you can kind of get the gist, I hope). La Luna and Miriam were quite effusive in praise of the signers, and we were all a bit grumpy that they weren't acknowledged properly - except of course by the honoured guest Mr Franzen, bless his polite American cotton socks).
So we sat through Baillieu, sighing (us, not him), then The Age Book of the Year - exciting and mercifully precise and succinct - congrats to Fiona McGregor, fiction and the biggie (Indelible Ink) Jim Davidson, non-fiction (A Three-Cornered Life) and John Tranter, poetry (Starlight: 150 Poems).Then the lovely Steve Grimwade, CEO of MWF then Ramona Koval and then, finally, Jonathan Franzen, speaking about autobiographical fiction.
Miriam loved it because it tied in with some of her own writing. The 'questions I hate being asked' thoughts that Franzen started with were good, but if Miriam had thought to get me to a microphone (she's a bit dense sometimes) I would have asked him to tell us some of the questions he did want to be asked! The four questions he took at the end were excruciating... nothing like being embarrassed for the askers and the answerer all at the same time, and luckily S. Grimwade whisked J. Franzen off the stage at the right moment, allowing the distinguished guest to keep himself intact in the face of his struggle with some of the weirdnesses that were being asked. Like 'if you were be writing your own biography posthumously, what would you have died of?' and 'if you were in a race with other writers, who would you like to pip at the post.'
Miriam took some good things away, she says. About being personally at risk when writing, about the obligation to work on yourself as a writer, to make yourself the writer you need to be to write the book you need to write (Franzen said it better, but he's better paid for it than I am)
In fact, so much food for thought that Miriam went walkies after the speech, to think about it a bit and ended up at a jazz club. Oops! I ended up making a 'tonk, tonk, tonk noise in her handbag, as she walked I was shoved in her handbag again,up against the moleskine [of course it's a moleskine] journal she writes in. Read the next post for jazz bits.
Here are some rubbish photos.Fiona McGregor in a blur. Miriam was a bit shakey, in the presence of an award winning writer, and she didn't want to offend by using flash, ergo, shakey, rubbish photo. I hope she improves.(Miriam, not Fiona. Fiona was very gracious and smiley)
Also pictured, Jody and Sarah the signers. We loved them. We loved the expression, the drama, the literalness of some of the gestures. Thank you both!Post script: Ooh! Oooh! Miriam just ran into Jonathan Franzen on the corner of a street in the city and said hello and wished him well. He was really nice and she ws grinning like an idio.
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