even books

Who would ever ban a book? Apart from the guy who played Hitler in the final and best Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade? Heaps of people, that’s who – and Australia has a particularly sticky record of it. Elmo Keep and I talked about some of the notable bannings Australia and overseas (Jackie Collins’ 1969’s The Stud, anyone?) and the future of banned books in the world of internet free-for-all with Jesse Cox late in September.

They’ve taken down the podcast so unfortunately you can’t download and listen to our dulcet tones on repeat, so here’s some interesting tidbits to sate you…

How do books get banned?

WHO bans WHAT has been historically messy in Australia, thanks to our overlapping Federal and state legislations: it could be state, it could be federal, it could be the Attorney General, it could be the postal service, it could be the ‘dirty books detail’ of Customs.

Each state had an ‘Obscene Publications Act’, plus there was a ‘Customs Act’ monitoring national borders.

It even sometimes came down to the discretion of the printers, some old fuddies not wanting to set rude words in type.

Things commonly banned: erotica, sex outside marriage, euthanasia, birth control, illicit substances, anarchic texts, homosexuality, so-called obscenities and incitements to violence. Restrictions are usually based on the vague idea of whether it’s ‘likely to cause offence.’
It is only usually unlawful to import, sell or deliver.

Australia in the 1930s and 40s was the height of censorship, with around 5000 books on the banned list.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification in 2006 became known the Australian Classification Board. (omitting Literature from the title, however, some ‘permittable’ publications are still evaluated by the Board)

Some notable bannings:

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Written by DH Lawrence, this was first published by a porno printing press in Italy and Paris (1928/1929)

In it, Lady Chatterley has an affair with her working-class gameskeeper, Oliver Mellors. Here’s a racy bit:

“And this time the sharp ecstasy of her own passion did not overcome her; she lay with hands inert on his striving body, and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little evacuating crisis seemed farcical. Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting of the poor insignificant, moist little penis.”

Banned in Britain until 1960 when Penguin took it to court under new obscenity legislation and it was declared ‘not guilty’. Despite this, in 1961 the ban was retained by the Menzies government in Australia. Famously, a copy was smuggled into Sydney via 34 separate letters.

Finally hit the shelves in 1965 when it was published locally (thus circumventing customs).
In Oct 2009 the book escaped the Australia Post banning of three ‘challenging’ books (Nabokov’s Lolita, Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus and Foucault’s History of Sexuality, despite its liberal use of the C and F words).

Slaughterhouse 5

This 1969 time-ripper by Kurt Vonnegut was still being banned as of August 2011 – with a Missouri highschool striking it off the syllabus for creating: “false conceptions of American history and government or that teach principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth,” even though Vonnegut was a decorated war veteran.

An anonymous donor along with the Kurt Vonnegut Library offered to donate free copies to any of the 150 students who had been meant to study the text.

Even Books did a Slaughterhouse 5 musical spectacular once at TINA! It was a choose-your-own-adventure and there was a real-live Montana Wildhack living in a space zoo.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Despite the book’s use of the ‘N’ word over 200 times, this seminal American classic by Mark Twain was most often banned for its ‘coarse’ language:

“Huck not only itched but scratched, and he said sweat when he should’ve said perspiration.” (Brooklyn Public Library, 1905)

The Anarchist Cookbook

William Powell, 1971

The author of this 1971 cult classic tried to ban his own book after converting to Christianity in 2000 – unfortunately for him, he no longer owned the rights.

1984

George Orwell, 1949

Ironically, for a book sending a grim message about totalitarian censorhip, this Orwellian tour de force is frequently censored or banned, even for its supposed ‘pro-Communism.’

The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie, 1988

One of the most inflammatory novels ever written, this book resulted in a riot in Pakistan and the death of five people, a death warrant on the head of the author valued at $1 million, and the death of a Japanese translator who was ‘stabbed to death’ for his involvement. This is for its approach to the Islam faith – throughout, Rushdie refers to the Prophet Muhammad as Mahound (a medieval name for the Devil.)

So, Sunday past we hit the macaroni for our first ever segment on FBi’s Canvas, entitled, rather imaginatively, ‘Even Books on FBi.’ Our host was Jesse Cox and he was super (he was also wearing a great sweater, which those in radio land sadly missed out on). We talked about books and then Jesse interviewed Marieke Hardy for us. Here are some funny things we said:

About our ‘sting’, which is radio speak for some kind of jingle: “AIR HORNS!” *giggles*

Our parties: “Everyone in the room has at least one topic of conversation to conversate about … hence the need for lubrication.”

On pretending we are urban rappers: “We wanted to make the B Club [a literary salon in London] more street, more gutter yknow.”

On one of the smartest women in America: “Tina Fey: a rollicking ride.”

One thing you should probably never suggest on a book club segment: “If you can’t be bothered to read, watch YouTube instead.”

A phrase Virginia Woolf has probably never heard used in relation to her work: “Sensorial zest.”

And some excellent things Marieke Hardy said about her book, You’ll be Sorry When I’m Dead:

On stories like the one that takes place in a Swinger’s Club: “They’re not sexy-sex, Nikki Gemmell stories…”

On baring all: “There’s more raw honesty than dick jokes.”

On allowing those mentioned an unedited ‘right-of-reply’: “That felt like the braver part of the book. Letting go of the reins.”

On the ‘real’ Marieke: “For funny stories, there is a point where you have to be a caricature.”

On her highschool zine: “We nearly broke the photocopier in the library with Sex Bus!”

We unfortunately didn’t get to ask her about season two of her black comedy TV series Laid, which is in-production. If we did, we hope she would’ve said this: “Your box set is in the mail.”

You can listen to the on-demand stream here.

And as for some books we’d like to recommend? On air, we only touched on a few. Ok, two, to be exact. But here are a few more, in random order. Don’t like random? Just you wait till we are such mega-gods of radio and book reviews that we put them in Dewey Decimal AND alphabetical order. Then you’ll be sorry.

Bossypants (Tina Fey) - A spiky blend of humour, introspection and critical thinking from one of the most beloved comedy writers of our time. Pretty much non-stop zingers. You’d have to have been in hiding not to have noticed all the press about it a few months back.
There but for the is by Scottish writer Ali Smith, a lady who looks a little bit like a friendly goblin. It’s about a man called Miles who attends a dinner party and then halfway through, as the hostess torches the crème brulees, disappears into the spare room and refuses to come out. He leaves a note: Fine for water but will need food soon. Vegetarian, as you know. Thank you for your patience. The hosts kind of seem like assholes but still, it’s hard to know what anyone would be like in that situation. They find a random number in his phone book of a lady called Anna who he’d known, barely, twenty years before, so they call her and ask her to come help coax him out. It becomes about how one event can fuse together many stories, which is an Ali Smith trademark. Her Hotel World is about how various women – a maid, a ghost, an eccentric hostel visitor, a homeless lady – are brought together over one night. The Accidental is about one family’s very hot sticky summer spent in the country, and an accidental house guest they acquire, and how she turns all their lives upside down. Smith is a deft and beautiful writer, given to gusts of sensory perceptions and Madeline cake moments – one bite leading to pages of memories and thoughts. You can see a lot of Virginia Woolf in her style, which is very vivid. There but for the came out 2011. (AB)
The Life (Malcolm Knox) tells the story of Dennis Keith (DK), a 58 year old former surf champion who now suffers from OCD and lives with his mum in her nursing home, too fat to sit on a surfboard let alone stand on one. He’s a fictional character, but quite heavily based on real world surf champion Michael Peterson, a famously volatile surfer who was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s a story of self destructive genius, and it’s also a great snapshot of Australia at a particular time, when seaside towns changed under the hands of developers.

People can’t help but compare it to Tim Winton’s Breath, but in stark contrast to Winton’s ornate descriptions of ‘men dancing upon waves’, The Life is written in the language of the line-up: ‘I done this’, ‘yous done that’.

The story is told in the third person and then the first, jumps around between past and present, is crammed with half-sentences, broken sentences, with repetition and colloquialisms. At first everything feels a bit wrong: too choppy, too abrupt, but after a while you go with it, stop noticing, and the words take you somewhere else. A bit like when you first try reading Irvine Welsh. Highly recommended. (AF)
Revolutionary Road is a novel by Richard Yates and is thought of by many as an American classic. It follows the marital breakdown of April and Frank Wheeler, and by extension the breakdown of the American Dream. In the movie directed by Sam Mendes the pair are played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio, who are both appropriately attractive and troubled (also, Titanic 2.0!). It has been described as American Beauty circa 1955 and it certainly shares some themes: the disillusionment with the suburban idyll, a vitriolic but also somehow loving marriage, a generation of children who suffer as a by-product of their parent’s decisions. The only problem I had with it was that Yates seemed to dislike his own female character, April – she was beautiful but ultimately not understood. It was very much a man’s tale. Still, fifty years later, it remains a searing and prescient portrait of an America in decline. (AB)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) is one of the classics I’m embarrassed to have never got around to reading, and the reason I’m finally doing it now is that I can’t stand to read the book after I’ve seen the film (and I do really want to see the film). So I began with a resigned ‘this will be good for me’ sigh. But happily, I’m just loving it to death. The incorruptible Ms Eyre herself isn’t in the least bit annoying, the conversations between characters are often profound and frankly it’s making me want to be a more clean-living, virtuous person. (AF)

Curse of the Wolf Girl is the follow up to Lonely Werewolf Girl, both by Scottish writer Martin Millar, who looks more like a grumpy elf. While rather silly, it’s lots of fun. The heroine is a snarly but beautiful werewolf warrior called Kalix, and it’s all about her and her messed up royal werewolf family, plus some fire elementals obsessed with fashion, and an overweight or maladjusted human or two. Neil Gaiman rates Millar’s work and so do I. (AB)

I will also admit to this week buying the first instalment in the Game of Thrones saga by fantasy heavyweight George R.R. Martin. And so bid adieu to any spare time I may have had over the next two centuries or so. (AB)

And I’m looking forward to reading A Spectacle of Dust, Pete Postlethwaite’s autobiography, not just because he had a “face like a f-ing stone archway”. (AF)

That’s it! Tune in next time for a back-to-back recitation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in Dutch-Swahili.

+ + even books + +

Despite what the name might suggest, this is not an exhibition about donuts.

What it is, is a typically Even Books experiment in theming, collaboration and merging of disciplines that includes works from many of Sydney’s most exciting visual artists and writers.

Yes, you read that correctly – we’ve got writers involved and we’re blowing their work up big and bold and hanging it on the gallery wall next to ‘real’ art because, wel…l, why not?

To break the concept down: we asked a group of talented writers to write pieces related to the theme of TWINS/DOPPELGANGERS, and a group of equally talented artists to craft a visual response to the same theme. We then orchestrated a swap, and each creative then responded to someone else’s written or visual piece (writers to visual, artists to text), in a ku-razy loop. These pieces will be exhibited in their pairs, creating a multi-disciplinary exhibition that toys with notions of ‘same’, ‘other’, ‘mine’ and ‘yours’.

So, who are these talented twin-makers?

ARTISTS: Karl Maier (Rinzen), Cybele Malinowski, Kevin Tran, Rachel Feery, Zoe McMahon, Jacob Burge, Bryn Desmond-Jones and Sui Zhen

WRITERS: Amanda Maxwell, Lee Tran Lam, Eddie Sharp, Nadia Saccardo, Caleb Lewis (I love that he has a Wikipedia entry!), Alice Williams, Tessa Lunney and Tom Lee

On opening night (NOV 10) there will be a one-off concept event similarly themed to TWINS/DOPPELGANGERS. You can expect: mirrors, dressed-up doubles, being tied to a stranger, screenings of films and more.

We cannot promise a cameo by Arnie and Danny Devito. But we can hope.

There will also be a limited edition publication available, designed by Blood & Thunder Publishing and with an opening essay by Dimitris Vardoulakis, author of The Doppelganger: Literature’s Philosophy.

MONOZY-OMG! That all makes me DIZZY-GOTIC!

WHERE: Firstdraft Gallery, 116 Chalmers St, Surry Hills
WHEN: Launch party Nov 10, 6-8pm
Exhibition runs until Nov 28 (when there will also be artists’ talks)

Writers write, readers read. But do we ever get festivals dedicated to us? No! We do half the work, don’t we? And by work, we mean lounge about in bed with a cup of hot chocolate. Le First Ever* Sydney Readers’ Festival will put you centre stage instead of Stephen King or the guy who wrote the Bible, in a series of events dedicated to the art of reading.

*not necessarily a historical fact, what are we, Google?

FRIDAY 21 MAY: THE LIBRARY OF UNWRITTEN BOOKS – a night in honour of Richard Brautigan’s The Abortion, or, library lovers and amateur writers unite!

From 7pm-11pm, ClubHouse @ Performance Space, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh.

Don’t be put off by the title; you only need to be willing to expel stories, not babies! This swinging sixties classic is a parody of the romance genre in which a librarian falls in love with a traffic-stopping beauty. Love leads to sex, sex leads to babies, babies lead to Tijuana … but the real point is the sweet library that Brautigan invents, to which anyone can submit a story; sketched in crayon, daubed with jam, heaving with mathematical calculations. Anything goes! We’ll have a real-live librarian on hand to accept your manuscripts, along with the psychedelic strains of local shoegazers SISTER JANE, THE PRAYER CIRCLE, plus DJ SMOKEY LA BEEF and JACK SHIT a listening corner, Tijuana times, human dioramas and more.

SATURDAY 22 MAY: READ THIS SCREEN! Movies that make love to books that don’t star Harry Potter. Or Edward Cullen.

From 7pm, CuriousWorks Studio, 402/11 Randle St, Surry Hills.

A gentle night-time soiree of celluloid curated by the lady who knows Too Much about movies, Saturday morning FBi host Kate Jinx. Think soft cushions, strange visions and a Saturday night you can actually tell your Nana about (maybe). Think also Parker Posey and some threesomes. Need something more to look at? And potentially touch? We’ll be joined by New Planes, a venture promising to fill neglected spaces and open minds with native ideas and independent businesses - everything from art periodicals and cult pamphlets to punk recipe books and vinyl. Plus, there will be some delicious food aromas - can’t say any more. Donation entry, for CuriousWorks fundraising efforts.

SUNDAY 23 MAY: READING RECLAIMS REDFERN – a roving readathon with prizes per station around the streets of Redfern.

Meet at 2pm @ the big red letters in Redfern Park.

Hey, you, sport-lovers! Look at us read! What up, beer swillers! Watch me skol this Sartre! BYO butt-pillows, blankets and of course books, as we move en masse around various venues in Redfern, reading as we go. We will be accompanied by an acoustic set by THE UNDERSTUDY, some impromptu readings, and hopefully visited by pastry-makers, latte trucks and kindly beer eskies.

ONGOING: READ THIS ZINE! A special one-off publication with reader profiles, how-tos, best places to read in Sydney, lofty excerpts and ruminations on readings. Have your Reader Profile included by sending these questions and answers + JPEG of you to sydneyreadersfestival@gmail.com

NAME & LOCATION:
FAST OR SLOW:
ONE BOOK AT A TIME, OR MANY:
FIRST BOOK YOU EVER READ:
LAST BOOK YOU READ:
WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY SPILL ON YOUR BOOKS:
WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE UP (a date? a rugby match?) IF YOU WERE NECK-DEEP IN A GOOD BOOK:
WHY DO YOU READ (cos your mamma made you?):
WAIT A SECOND, THIS IS BOOKSIST! TELL US WHAT ELSE YOU READ:

ONGOING: READER INSTALLATIONS – find yourself reading somewhere? Of course you do, it’s an excellent pastime. Send a picture + brief description to sydneyreadersfestival@gmail.com and we’ll include it on our blog, where people can read about it. Geddit?