Fantasy is for kids unless it involves gold medals or, I dunno, V-8 interceptors, maybe. I am a Melbourne girl, but I prefer to live in Bangkok where people believe in ghosts and fairies and it's never cold and I can go to bars where beautiful young men in glittery masks fuck every which way on the seat next to me. I am not sure whether this counts as avoiding or confronting reality.
Melbourne is snobbish about everything. My poor city, besieged by its own immense crinoline of bogan suburbia. I suspect the Writers Festival types feel rather devant les barricades, and don't want to spoil the fun of being in a mob of one's own by letting in anyone who might be tainted even a little with the ordure of the Other Side.
But have you met Kris Hemensley at Collected Works? He's quite enthusiastic about the munging of "lit" & "genre".
Lizz - I want to get back into blogging more regularly and certainly with a touch more verbosity. The problem is, I keep thinking that if I do that, I should really fix my archive problems, and that fills me with ennui. Hopefully this time will be the charm!
And Kirsten - ...wow. I made a variety of interpretations upon the theme of "oh my gosh!", since when I referenced your delightful book I was not at all expecting a visit, let alone a comment. I hadn't, in fact, been to Collected Works in years, but I went past today (after Margo Lanagan's session, actually) and got reacquainted, as well as having a giggle with Kris about the strange congruence that had brought me there.
Oh, and I'm not sure either whether that counts as avoiding or confronting reality, but the way you paint it does rather make one want to pack up and give it a go. Continue enjoying Bangkok! I haven't quite given up on Melbourne yet.
My blog software tracks links, so it led me here. I've been back to Melbourne a couple of times, and feel that the old girl ain't what she used to be. Poor or no planning has done a lot of damage. Our state politicians of the last 10-15 years should be defenestrated. And the prices, and the horrible driving...
Glad you got reacquainted with Kris. I think of him as the resident saint of Melbourne, almost a tutelary spirit.
The year that really made me rant and wave my hands was the year (I think last year, but don't quote me on that) they had Kate Forsyth, internationally published author of something like 8 huge-selling fantasy novels. And what did they have her talking about? Her new, first YA fantasy novel. (I'm sure it's a great little book. Just... for fuck's sake, people.)
This year, they have Margo Lanagan, who is - fair enough - a YA author (though the borders are blurring more than ever between "adult" and "YA"... for everyone but the organisers of the MWF). She's involved in the first panel at the MWF that I've actually wanted to attend in all the years I've been perusing and bitterly spitting upon the program - Myths with a Twist, possessing the bold appellation: "Do fantasy writers avoid reality, or confront it more directly?" Oh glory! Oh frabjous day! Oh bollocks, it is - of course - on the Schools Program.
Because fantasy is for kids.
(To back this up, another panel Ms Lanagan is on is actually for growed-ups, but is charmingly entitled: "Other worlds: Worlds in which young readers can lose themselves." Gee, thanks.)
When I first came down to Melbourne, it was to attend the RMIT's celebrated Professional Writing and Editing program. I was a little bit nervous, because I am (just in case anyone didn't know) a genre writer. I read and write (and breathe and dream) fantasy. And I was worried that a snooty Melbourne writing course would turn up its literary nose at what I had to bring to the table. But it wasn't so. Everyone in the course - teachers and fellow students - was really interested in engaging with my work, and learning what my point of view could show in their own work. There was a hefty handful of other genre/speculative authors as well, to the point there my dozen-strong advanced novel course had another fantasy author in it as well.
If I was in any danger of considering that perhaps I'd been wrong about Melbourne, however, the Writers Festival reassures me every year that Melbourne is, actually, still completely snobbish about "literature". (To a certain extent, the same bias can be witnessed in The Age's coverage of books every weekend, though they are considerably more enlightened on the topic.)
It's not just fantasy (and sci-fi and horror) that get the shaft. Romance is another bastard cousin best not talked about. Which also makes me flail, because there's an incredible depth of talent (not to mention experience and publishing dollars) in Melbourne in speculative and romantic fiction. Crime gets a look-in - apparently it's acceptable, and we can possibly thank Text Publishing for that. And historical fiction has always been happy to tag along as literary fiction's more scholarly sibling.
Now, I freely, fully and brazenly admit that a lot of the stuff being merrily churned out upon the hamster wheel of Australia's lone spec-fic imprint - Harper Collins' Voyager - is mediocre and simplistic realist-storytelling pap (for which I'm absolutely certain we can all blame Sara Douglass). But there are Australian authors doing inventive, innovative, decidedly literary things with the fantasy genre (the mind springs immediately to KJ Bishop here - someone told me once she was a Melbourne girl, but I don't know whether that's true).
Despite that, at least as far as the Melbourne Writers Festival is concerned, fantasy remains just for kids. (It's enough to make me want to send them all a copy of KJ Parker's Shadow, because if that doesn't blow their minds out their ears, they're possibly too stuffy to live.)
4 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formHey! You wrote more than two paragraphs. You should find stuff to piss you off more often ;)
10:02 PM
Fantasy is for kids unless it involves gold medals or, I dunno, V-8 interceptors, maybe. I am a Melbourne girl, but I prefer to live in Bangkok where people believe in ghosts and fairies and it's never cold and I can go to bars where beautiful young men in glittery masks fuck every which way on the seat next to me. I am not sure whether this counts as avoiding or confronting reality.
Melbourne is snobbish about everything. My poor city, besieged by its own immense crinoline of bogan suburbia. I suspect the Writers Festival types feel rather devant les barricades, and don't want to spoil the fun of being in a mob of one's own by letting in anyone who might be tainted even a little with the ordure of the Other Side.
But have you met Kris Hemensley at Collected Works? He's quite enthusiastic about the munging of "lit" & "genre".
Kirsten (KJ) Bishop
11:07 PM
Lizz - I want to get back into blogging more regularly and certainly with a touch more verbosity. The problem is, I keep thinking that if I do that, I should really fix my archive problems, and that fills me with ennui. Hopefully this time will be the charm!
And Kirsten - ...wow. I made a variety of interpretations upon the theme of "oh my gosh!", since when I referenced your delightful book I was not at all expecting a visit, let alone a comment. I hadn't, in fact, been to Collected Works in years, but I went past today (after Margo Lanagan's session, actually) and got reacquainted, as well as having a giggle with Kris about the strange congruence that had brought me there.
Oh, and I'm not sure either whether that counts as avoiding or confronting reality, but the way you paint it does rather make one want to pack up and give it a go. Continue enjoying Bangkok! I haven't quite given up on Melbourne yet.
5:07 PM
My blog software tracks links, so it led me here. I've been back to Melbourne a couple of times, and feel that the old girl ain't what she used to be. Poor or no planning has done a lot of damage. Our state politicians of the last 10-15 years should be defenestrated. And the prices, and the horrible driving...
Glad you got reacquainted with Kris. I think of him as the resident saint of Melbourne, almost a tutelary spirit.
11:12 AM