reeling and writhing

nothing still and small about these voices

I'm not a live blogger, and probably never will be. So here from the good folks at Spirax and Uniball, and the tiny brain cells of yours truly, is a brief report on the session rather misleadingly entitled, "The Still Small Voice" featuring Emily Ballou and Cate Kennedy (with an unexplained scratching from Dorothy Porter) at the Melbourne Writers' Festival on Thursday.

After a blistering start where she interrogated the title of the session with some brio, Ballou spoke of voice not just as polyvocal (that's my word for it, not hers), ranging across accents and idioms, but as 'a gift, or a beautiful visitor' rather than 'something you can practise or pick up at the shops'. I chuckled loudest when she asked whether said title was meant to describe the panellists' voices, or worse still, their booksales, and what male writers might have said had they been invited to present on such a topic.

She noted that perhaps true voice is a myth, that the 'rhythm of voices will shift and grow as I do - not a style, but a heartbeat.'  Reading from her latest book, Aphelion, set in the Snowy Mountains, she delivered a story from within the novel written in the voice and unerring idiom of an elderly Australian man, arguing the case for the polyvocal writer most successfully therein in a musical Milwaukee accent. (Perhaps it's only when we hear an American say 'bugger' that we realise what a peculiar expression it really is!)

Cate Kennedy described how the importance of having something to say has shaped her work, that all form and no content irritates her wherever it is found, whether in politics or the posturing of celebrities. There is 'a collision, a letting go of anxiety and letting words fall onto me', whenever authentic subjects/stories are found. As she says in her travel book, Sing and Don't Cry, from which she read a spellbinding passage about rain in the Mexican desert, "I want to record this, and let this record me."
She asked,"How can I create a voice that is doing what I want it to do?", suggesting that voice is shaped by details, by substance and content first and foremost, and noted a preoccupation with these concerns in all her work to date when she was preparing for the session.

Despite the absence of the main drawcard for me, poet Dorothy Porter, this session was nonetheless well worth the entry price, thanks to the powerful voices of the remaining speakers. There's some great reporting on MWF from Lisa Dempster of Vignette Press over at Locus, the combined blog of Vignette and Aduki Independent Press, including a pretty thorough  SWAT analysis of the festival, complete with a comment from Rosemary Cameron (the organiser) and some remarks on the independent publishing session. I may well have more to say after the weekend's sessions - Louise Swinn's interview with Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida last Saturday was superb - but do keep an eye on Lisa's site in the meantime.

*Some coverage of Cory Doctorow's session on copyright, here and here. (Google Blogsearch has turned up better results than Technorati on MWF. Fancy that.)

get around little dogies

I was unaware Portishead were (was?) this literary. (Nor that ole Tom was so dry and dusty a reader.) Must check with my daughter if she knows about this.

At Critical Mass, author Christopher Beha has been reading all 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics, and has a line to draw between self-publishing in the 18th century and today, especially with regard to blogging:

“Self-edited” doesn’t have to mean “un-edited,” and it certainly doesn’t have to mean poorly written. This volume of the Harvard Classics represents the very best of the English essay from the Elizabethan to the Romantic age, and it's worth remembering how much of this lasting work was self-published -- written, edited and printed by the same hand.

Nice one.

This is a well-made example of how to release your own writing on the web and build an audience.
Most of the content on this beautiful looking, audience-friendly site is produced by L.B. Gschwandtner,

'Artist, writer, editor, businessperson, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend …  L B Gschwandtner is all these. Women wear many hats and they all fit well. Why should we be one thing or another when we have so many possibilities, interests, talents and gifts to share? Life, as Auntie Mame said, is a banquet. So let’s eat well while the table is set.'

MTV has appointed John Ashbery its inaugural poet laureate for its broadcasts to college students on MtvU, and US poet Josh Corey is critical (of the media strategy behind the gig, not Ashbery). For those who are not US students but still require a primer in Ashbery's work, a link to Meghan O'Rourke's introduction to Ashbery at Slate is here. (Link via the NBCC blog.)

Corey also has a nice post about the 'Intro to creative writing' class he's teaching, using Thoreau as a touchstone of sorts.

From BoingBoing, something you all needed to know.

And the last pony into the enclosure is this review from issue 47 of Boldtype, which will lead you to other good readings in and on graphic novels.

we have all been here before

Richard McManus of ReadWriteWeb reviews a new rss reader which integrates comments into the reader interface. Apparently it will be possible to comment on feeds within fav.or.it when it reaches full strength. I have come across a comments aggregator before (CoComment), but this is the first application I've seen like this.

And in Wired magazine, Facebook is given a workover.(Link via Boynton, from this post at Sarsaparilla).  The Wired author sounds a bit peeved that he didn't think of it first, and I don't really understand why he wants to build a competitor from existing tools, as Facebook's biggest strength, as far as I can tell sitting on the outside and NOT looking in, is known content. People are finding the people they already know there, in a restricted space, and the crowd has voted with its fingertips. (This has led me to make the observation at Sars that it may well be a 'recognition platform'.)

Richard McManus of ReadWriteWeb has also suggested that the opening up of this essentially closed system to developers earlier this year gave it a huge advantage over its fairly staid competitor, MySpace. ReadWriteWeb did some feature articles on Facebook's shiny and powerful toys a few weeks back, and you can find links to most of them here.

The technical lowdown on how and why the system is closed can be found here ( see para 3, "Why Facebook Isn't Open"), as well as McManus's introductory remarks on the platform's rise (and rise).

As the Wired article points out, at present nothing on Facebook can be found by Google, but this could be changed at some point. I have no burning need to be part of a closed network right now other than the mailing lists I'm already on, or to play with more applications than I have names for, as I've been aware there are lots out there for quite some time now, and there's only one of me here at the keyboard (my [much slimmer] clone is cleaning the toilet today.)
But if I had gone to Facebook for quietly social times behind Internet doors and they then decided to open the platform up, I think I'd be freakin' annoyed.
And you? hypocrite bloggeur, mon semblable, mon frère?

holy smoke, it's a virtual fire escape

There is a magnificent post over at Critical Mass by Nicholas Christopher on Lowell's last writing class at Harvard, which Christopher attended in 1969 as a freshman.

And I have pinched this from Maud, because it's an absolute blast. Did anyone know there are virtual fire escapes in SL?? I didn't.

I'm sure this is fairly old news (Brit Summer start, anyhow), but this is an interesting way to promote your list, isn't it.
There is, alas, one title out of stock - Imagist Poetry, edited by Peter Jones, which I picked up secondhand a while back. Perhaps I'll be a tease and send in a review.

the great unconscious of the intertubes

The discussion list -empyre- at the Australian Network for Art and Technology is running several forums on Second Life this month, entitled The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
There will be at least one inworld event, as well as posts and discussions onlist.
-empyre- is an influential media arts practice discussion space. (Link via Arts Hub.)

Recently, Jane Ciabattari offered a refresher on book coverage and arts news reporting, including the rise of newspaper litblogs, at Critical Mass. She supplied a link in her post to this article on hyperlocal coverage in American Journalism Review, by Jennifer Dorroh. Maybe the 'mandarins' at the Melbourne Writers' Festival could have a look at these before they sit down to chew the fat at the Malthouse in early September. I have the feeling that by the time they get onto the stage, the line between hardcopy arts criticism and online arts journalism, dressed up by newspapers as a species of blogging, will have almost disappeared. I hope they enjoy trying to redraw it.

Over at Chasing Ray, Colleen Mondor has been running a One Stop World Tour with a focus on Australian YA authors, including Penni Russon, author of Undine. It's engagingly titled, "Best Reads with Vegemite", and up to a dozen books have been featured on the blogs of participants.

all our elvises have come at once

Found 'in an unguarded moment...'
investigating NoveList, a database for selecting books based on readers' preferences which is syndicated to Victorian public libraries and has some intriguing subject headings,
I found that under "Elvis Presley impersonators" there are 21 books listed!!

So for all those fans of the Elvis masqueraders, wherever you may be, here's a taste of what's out there. (Abstracts from NoveList, except where reviews are acknowledged.)

Duff, Gerald      
That's all right, Mama: a novel (1995)
Publishers Weekly Review:

'Serious literary fiction about Elvis? You bet! Duff's (Graveyard Working) transcendent prose swings and sways, whoops and moans in pulsating cadences reminiscent of the King. The hilariously pedantic introduction is a setup for the "manuscript" that follows: the wry, gritty and profoundly moving autobiography of Elvis's identical twin brother, who allegedly died at birth. Jesse Garon Presley relates how, from his earliest childhood, half-crazy mother Gladys lavished all her attention and affection on Elvis. Brought up as Elvis's "cousin" (although Mama calls on Jesse to stand in for his twin from time to time), Jesse is left to his own devices-tinkering with cars and, later, hanging out in juke joints in Memphis and nearby Alabama. Jesse tells how it was he, not Elvis, who made the first recording at Sun Studio, and how, much the better dancer, he doubled for the burned-out "Bubba" on the Ed Sullivan Show and in the performance of the title song in Jailhouse Rock. Although he hides from Elvis for years at a time, Jesse can't keep from filling in for him-even as a husband to Priscilla-when asked. The ultimate irony is that, after his famous twin dies, Jesse is still not free to be himself: he ends up as an Elvis impersonator. A rich and well-realized tale, even for readers to whom August 16 (Elvis's death date) is just another day.'
 
George, Anne   
Murder boogies with Elvis (2001)
'Enjoying their golden years, amateur sleuths Mary Alice and Patricia Anne are delighted to be invited to a benefit, but their fun turns deadly when an Elvis impersonator takes a fatal dive into the band and the sisters must find a killer before it is too late.' New York: W. Morrow, 2001, 243 p.
 
Henderson, William McCranor   
Stark raving Elvis (1997)
Byron Bluford is a down-and-out factory worker with a dream--to somehow recapture that one shining moment of his life when he debuted his Elvis impersonation at the high-school talent show
 
Douglas, Carole Nelson   
Cat in a jeweled jumpsuit (1999)
(Sounds like a suitable sequel for "That Darn Cat" - GT).
'Midnight Louie, feline detective, and his human partner, Temple Barr, take on a mysterious case involving death threats, ghosts, and the King himself--Elvis Presley.'

Christie, Amanda (Children's book)    
Lucy's angel (2001)
In which one of the protagonists ends up riding around Vegas with an EI.   
   
Levy, Elizabeth, (Children's )   
Mystery of too many Elvises, The (2003)
'When they decide to hold an Elvis impersonation act starring Fletcher, Jill's hound dog, for the school pet talent show, Gwen and Jill are shocked when Fletcher goes missing, thus beginning the search to find the culprit.'

Koslowski, Rich   
The King (2005)
'A very enigmatic Elvis impersonator takes the Vegas strip--and the world--by storm, but when a former tabloid journalist makes it his personal mission to find out The King's true identity, he discovers much more than he bargained for. Mature.'

 
Macpherson, Suzanne
She woke up married (2005)
'In Las Vegas to "celebrate" her dreaded thirtieth birthday, Paris James wakes up after an evening of overindulgence to discover herself in bed with--and married to--a sexy Elvis impersonator. Original.'

And that's not all. There's a subject heading in NoveList for 'Barbeque cooking' (of course it's listed near 'Elvis impersonators'. Of course.) Not to mention 'Women restaurateur detectives'...