Monday night was the festival reception. Sadly it fell on vote night for a new Toronto Mayor. I don't know if that was why it wasn't as packed as normal but it wasn't as packed as normal.
The wine was tasty. I got to see four of my favourite current and past Harbourfront employee friends who I generally only see once a year. Did I mention? The wine was tasty. Heh-heh!
I, of course, brought up the fact that I was slightly disappointed that Karl Ove Knausgard wasn't at the reception and us women got into the nitty gritty of describing him to the other women who hadn't seen that God of a man! Ha! It was probably for the best that he wasn't there.
Tuesday night was the Penguin 40th Anniversary round table. with Authors Joseph Boyden; John Ralston Saul; Johanna Skibsrud and Lee Henderson. Each author discussed penguin book that had a lasting effect on them. It was so much fun and filled with lots of laughter and I didn't write many notes.
Joseph Boyden is such a pleasure to listen to, and look at for that matter. He's funny and interesting. The take away quote I got from him was, "There's no better way to see the world than as a writer."
And Johanna Skibsrud's was "Writing and reading both are acts of translation."
At the end of the Penguin event we got a Penguin tote bad that had a gorgeous Penguin key chain and a tiny blank note book titled "On the Road - Jack Kerouac" so you can be your own Jack Kerouac. And we had champagne in the event and after the event. Nods head and smiles.
Wednesday Night was the Humber School for Writers Program Round Table. With School teacher/ writers Kevin Barry; Wayson Choy; Karen Connelly; Valerie Martin and Nino Ricci. Antanas Sileika was the moderator.
They discussed most important advice to beginning or young writers.
Kevin Barry's advice - relax about success. Our books/ stories come out of our anxieties. Finis
everything that you start. If you know how to finish the bad ones, you can finish the good ones. Develop Patience - so many writers are so focused on sending out their writing that they send it out too soon.
Keep your overhead low. The place you live has to settle in to your writing (before you write about it).
Karen Connelly's advice. - I encourage you to be atypical. Hunker down and be protective of the self. Be brave, have courage. You take your life and return it to the world. Be Daring.
Valerie Martin's advice - Don't write sex scenes. (There was much laughter.) Be patient, be dogged, don't be afraid.
Wayson Choy's advice - if you are writing, you are a writer. (THANK YOU!!!) Investigate/ study/ figure out, how did someone begin a story that you can't let go of. And How did someone end the novel that way?
Nino Ricci's advice - You want to tell a writer to keep going and you don't want to tell them the truth. (The truth that writing is hard, that few writer's make a decent living from it etc, etc) Nino told the story of having W. Mitchell as his writing teacher and W. Mitchell telling Nino he wasn't a writer and that may have galvanized Nino to become a writer because he did every thing possible to learn the craft and to get better.
You need to be reinforced because so many things in life will tell you that you can't do it. You need a healthy amount of delusion. Just write, do as much as possible for as long as possible, everyday if possible.
And random comments I wrote down from the discussion:
What does it mean to be human in different places?
The sense of feeling born in the wrong place.
Be with your family, then leave your family
Carol Shields told Wayson, "Why don't you write about Chinatown. No body knows about Chinatown." And he did.
Not a historical novel, a retro-future.
Audience member asked about each Authors process
Kevin Barry writes first thing in the morning, half asleep, before coffee or anything. He says for him it's his time to get the first draft down. He writes longhand.
Karen Connelly said that procrastination is a very, important part of the process. She needs to make time in her day to read.
Valerie Martin writes longhand on looseleaf paper. Types up a section only after the section is done. So she is always behind on her typing and always writing more.
She believes in doing another art to loosen things up. Drawing, whatever...
Wayson Choy who is 75 years old plays with his fountain pens. I work on writing when I can and writing when I'm well.
Nino Ricci works on a computer but used to write longhand.
7:30pm Round table with Author's Nick Cutter, Charles Foran, CC Humphreys, Louise Welch. Hosted by Andrew Pyper. Their discussion was on our obsession with contagion and mass infection.
Charles Foran did a good riff on the cell phone as a scary device that can be used against us in so many ways. It can be used to track us. The cameras can be used to expose us.
I didn't write many notes again. Sometimes the talks are so interesting, it's just hard to write anything down. I know I suck!
One question was asked, How do we respond to danger? We don't really know until we're faced with it.
Thursday Night Louise Welch had an Artist Talk.
She said, "everything we write is affected by our childhood.
You have to write the book you want to write.
Very few of us feel that we're totally bad.
You know the way of the world when you come from a working class family
7:30pm was a round table on Writing in the Digital Age. Author's were Emily Lindin; Sina Queryas and Anna Todd.
Sina started the Blog Lemonhound in 2005. She started it primarily because she was a Canadian in New York and she both wanted Americans to know about Canadian poetry/ writing and she wanted to be a voice for poetry and there really weren't women bloggers so she wanted to be a woman's voice out there.
Emily Lindin started the Unslut Project. It was in response to the the deaths of Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd who both took their own lives after being shamed for what happened to them.
Anna Todd who found wattpad started writing on it and getting encouragement through comments and ended up with a trilogy called After.
One of the things that all the women marvelled at was that wattpad is a safe place. It's more like what people were probably hoping for when they first added the ability to comment on articles. That it wouldn't be where trolls go all half-cocked and full-cocked with horrible, often bullying comments. Wattpad's comments are supportive and encouraging.
Anna Todd admits wholeheartedly that she wasn't a writer, didn't know how to write and that her followers helped her to become a writer.
They were beautiful women, all three who are doing something on the internet and carving out safe spaces, offering different voices to the otherwise wide open virtual space that can seem dangerous and mean.
And tonight Friday I attended the Ann Marie MacDonald reading/interview. Susan G Cole of Now Magazine interviewed her.
Ann Marie MacDonald was wonderful and Susan Cole was the right kind of enthusiastic and appreciative of Ann Marie.
Susan said something that is so true, "You gotta love when an actor turns into a writer because they give the BEST readings of their work!"
Ann Marie tidbits that I wrote down:
If you love somebody write as if they are dead already.
She said she wrote this book, Adult Onset, because she needed to be able to work on it anywhere. Whereas doing deep research and having two small children at the time couldn't work together. She couldn't be as she was before as a writer where she could be all absorbed in her writing process. Stay up late and sleep in as long as she wanted to. So it left her with writing from within herself, in a sense. Writing something autobiographical.
She talked about intergenerational transference of trauma (I like that each year at the festival different author's will touch on similar subjects). When your child is the age that you were when a trauma happened... (my words here, this other self, within yourself reacts to your child maybe with anger, maybe from a place of pain, maybe with resentment. For me, I know this is important and it came to me as I walked home from the festival. When I asked my mother about myself, about my origins, when I was 7 years old it was the age that she found out about her origins in a jarring harsh way. My mother's reaction to my question was suspiciously overly angry for such an innocent question.)
Ann Marie feels that despite how different her novels are she is only ever writing about the same thing.
She said it's difficult to write every book.
An audience member asked about how you deal with self-doubt as a writer and how to continue on when yo feel stuck. Ann Marie said, "cultivate stamina. I have self doubt all the time. Soldier through it. It's always easier, better to give up and stop writing. So finish your work instead."
It's been a great week! :)
EY
Friday, October 31, 2014
Monday, October 27, 2014
IFOA 35 Sunday Oct 26, 2014
I attended the Round Table discussion with Adam Foulds; Karl Ove Knausgard and Tim Winton.
I just have to say when Karl Ove Knausgard walked onto the stage in my head was a very loud WOOF! Oh my goodness, a tall drink of a smooth liqueur! ha-ha! It's always nice to see a good looking author! :)
Anyway, The suggested topic was 'Boys to Men'.
Karl Ove said that writing for him was a way of reminding him of a place where he was as a boy reading.
Tim Winton said that the number of books you've written doesn't make you better equipped to write a novel.
Age range
Karl Ove was writing when he was ten. Adam was an adolescent poet who didn't read poetry. And Tim Winton wrote his first novel at 19.
They discussed the age ranges in life. Karl is writing about his childhood primarily because he likes that a child feels the world so intensely.
Adam, I think, chimed in about the lack of self consciousness as a child. As a teen or young adult or adult, "It's not just about the joy of riding a bike, it becomes about riding a bike and looking cool." As a child you're not second guessing yourself. You're not self-conscious about your confusion. In your adult you're at the mercy of what your childhood life was like.
Yes, being at the mercy of your childhood is for some of us why we write. ;)
Tim sees midlife as a second childhood.
The men discussed the self and how we still feel young even in our older bodies. That feeling of not feeling like an adult. Karl Ove talked about looking at pictures of his father at 22 and how his father always looked like a man. He made me think of my mom and me seeing and feeling the same thing. She always looked like a woman, an adult and I still feel like I'm 19 years old at 50.
They discussed the realization that everyone before you looked like an adult but they were only acting like adults. "Kids look to you to know what to do and the kind thing is to pretend you know what to do."
I love these topics. I can remember sitting with my sister discussing some of the drama we witnessed growing up, our feelings about certain memories etc. The big thing for us was discussing the moment we separately reached the realization that these adults (my mom, her dad) were only 33 years old, how young we both felt when we reached that age. How ill equipped we were to walk in their path of being in love with each other and combining their children from other relationships. It's messy and difficult, and they were so young, how could they not screw up? That's why I love attending interviews and round table discussions, the ideas!
The interviewer asked, "is the moment we lose our parent the moment we become a man?"
Karl Ove said that death didn't change anything, we could still feel his presence."
For me, it was always about my mother's rings. I would try on her rings every year as a child and teenager and I'd pick one that I would spend the year asking her for. There were many rings though that didn't look right on my hands. They were rings for a woman. I remember after my Mom passed away and I put on her big diamond tulip ring and it was the first time ever that it looked right on my hand. I was 32 years old and it was the first time that I FELT any sort of a change or growth.
at 1pm I attended China at IFOA a round table discussion about translations in China
I wrote down the Authors names based on what the interviewer said, not knowing the spelling, and then had the brainwave, oh how's about I look them up in the IFOA brochure. My dizzy Pisces moment. So I've got to write both because I'm an idiot and I crack myself up. I'll put my idiocy in brackets. :)
Tashi Dawa (Joshi Daway)
Yan Li (Young Lee)
Yucheng Jin (Yu chuc Ji)
Zhanjun Shi (Sho Chan Choo)
For most of the panel, translation of their books was like reading someone else's book. Yan Li translates her own work. She doesn't wants her work in other peoples hands to translate. She talked about what can be lost in translation because Chinese characters have a picture in each letter (I guess) whereas the A,B,C, language can't quite cover it. Shere prefers her writing in Chinese because of that. The A,B,C, language can't encompass the fullness of the Chinese characters.
Tashi Dawa said that translation from Tibetan to Chinese - there's a transformation of his work.
One of the gents was an editor and he said that for the Chinese magazine they have 6 people go through the full magazine to translate into English before it goes to him for the final edit.
An interesting note for Novelists is that the Chinese market translates 2000 foreign (Non Chinese) bookes every year.
Canadian writers who are famous or well known in China are Alice Monro and Dennis Bock. Dennis Bock won best foreign novel translated into Chinese.
2pm was Koffler @ IFOA
Shelly Oria and Alison Pick
Both read about 5 minutes of their books.
I didn't get much in the way of notes as I fell asleep for a bit. They weren't boring or anything. I simply fall asleep at some point. I fall asleep in movies, I fall asleep in plays. I fall asleep...
They did talk about renegotiating your relationship with religion. Alison Pick's father didn't know he was Jewish and found out, I think while Alison was a child. So there was some practice of the Jewish faith at some point in her life. And now she practices some with her daughter (two sabbaths a month). Alison brought up the transmission of trauma, how its in the genes. The secrecy, the not knowing of their religion or culture and how it plays out and how depression can develop.
Shelly talked about how she still practices but in a way that feels right to her. For Yom Kippur she doesn't observe it in the same way. She does make a list of all the people in her life and writes about them, asks for forgiveness and forgives. She said the one thing she 'shouldn't' be doing (writing) is the one thing that brings her closer to her faith/practice.
I'll take the quote from the brochure, Alison Pick - Pick presents her moving and unforgettable memoir, Between Gods, which explores family secrets and the rediscovered past.
I have a belief in the transmission of trauma energetically speaking. You know that you don't know. I remember John Bradshaw talking about Family Secrets when he used to do his seminars on PBS and how everybody knows (specifically children) that there is something wrong, or something unspoken and it affects the family system. It causes a lot of problems. There was a secret about me growing up and I always felt out of place because of it. It was a relief when I was finally told the truth at 18 years old. And there was the upset that I set up to fail, in a sense, because I needed that knowledge. It would have changed the way I viewed everything. I wouldn't have felt like I was a mistake or the unlucky one.
Shelly Oria has a short story collection called New York 1, Tel Aviv 0. She has 1st person stories, 1st person plural, 2nd person and 3rd person. It sounds like a good learning aid for writers.
3pm was a round table discussion on humour.
Elyse Friedman; Robert Glancy and Simon Rich.
As you would expect there was a lot of laughter in that one.
Simon Rich said that getting the reader to keep reading is the most important which includes humour but doesn't try to be funny.
Elyse Friedman talked about the type of stories she writes which lend them selves to humour : a family reunion where the family hires actors to play their deceased parents. An ugly woman who wakes up beautiful and discovers that it's what is on the outside that counts.
Simon Rich used to be a writer for SNL. He was smart and funny and looks like he's 19 years old.
Humour has to have emotional heart. Catch 22 laugh one page and then cry the next.
The best jokes are short cuts into the human heart.
Even serious events in life have humour.
Robert Glancy said the best email he received about his novel was from a friend who wrote, "You managed to get out of your shit job by writing a book about a guy working in a shit job."
There was a good discussion about books that are humourous that are considered serious today. Jane Austen's books are romantic comedies etc.
4pm was Ann Eriksson; Damon Galgut and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
The topic was the Construction of the Novel.
advice was to let yourself loose on the first draft. Write the first draft as quickly as possible.
all three tend to plot after the fact or they create timelines for characters.
Damon - get it down in some shape or form and the rework it.
There was some talk about being too busy to write so Kathryn, I think, wrote in her head and when she was able to write she just wrote it.
It reminds me of the ways that I made writing work in my life in the past. And the skills I need to pull out of the vault.
EY
I just have to say when Karl Ove Knausgard walked onto the stage in my head was a very loud WOOF! Oh my goodness, a tall drink of a smooth liqueur! ha-ha! It's always nice to see a good looking author! :)
Anyway, The suggested topic was 'Boys to Men'.
Karl Ove said that writing for him was a way of reminding him of a place where he was as a boy reading.
Tim Winton said that the number of books you've written doesn't make you better equipped to write a novel.
Age range
Karl Ove was writing when he was ten. Adam was an adolescent poet who didn't read poetry. And Tim Winton wrote his first novel at 19.
They discussed the age ranges in life. Karl is writing about his childhood primarily because he likes that a child feels the world so intensely.
Adam, I think, chimed in about the lack of self consciousness as a child. As a teen or young adult or adult, "It's not just about the joy of riding a bike, it becomes about riding a bike and looking cool." As a child you're not second guessing yourself. You're not self-conscious about your confusion. In your adult you're at the mercy of what your childhood life was like.
Yes, being at the mercy of your childhood is for some of us why we write. ;)
Tim sees midlife as a second childhood.
The men discussed the self and how we still feel young even in our older bodies. That feeling of not feeling like an adult. Karl Ove talked about looking at pictures of his father at 22 and how his father always looked like a man. He made me think of my mom and me seeing and feeling the same thing. She always looked like a woman, an adult and I still feel like I'm 19 years old at 50.
They discussed the realization that everyone before you looked like an adult but they were only acting like adults. "Kids look to you to know what to do and the kind thing is to pretend you know what to do."
I love these topics. I can remember sitting with my sister discussing some of the drama we witnessed growing up, our feelings about certain memories etc. The big thing for us was discussing the moment we separately reached the realization that these adults (my mom, her dad) were only 33 years old, how young we both felt when we reached that age. How ill equipped we were to walk in their path of being in love with each other and combining their children from other relationships. It's messy and difficult, and they were so young, how could they not screw up? That's why I love attending interviews and round table discussions, the ideas!
The interviewer asked, "is the moment we lose our parent the moment we become a man?"
Karl Ove said that death didn't change anything, we could still feel his presence."
For me, it was always about my mother's rings. I would try on her rings every year as a child and teenager and I'd pick one that I would spend the year asking her for. There were many rings though that didn't look right on my hands. They were rings for a woman. I remember after my Mom passed away and I put on her big diamond tulip ring and it was the first time ever that it looked right on my hand. I was 32 years old and it was the first time that I FELT any sort of a change or growth.
at 1pm I attended China at IFOA a round table discussion about translations in China
I wrote down the Authors names based on what the interviewer said, not knowing the spelling, and then had the brainwave, oh how's about I look them up in the IFOA brochure. My dizzy Pisces moment. So I've got to write both because I'm an idiot and I crack myself up. I'll put my idiocy in brackets. :)
Tashi Dawa (Joshi Daway)
Yan Li (Young Lee)
Yucheng Jin (Yu chuc Ji)
Zhanjun Shi (Sho Chan Choo)
For most of the panel, translation of their books was like reading someone else's book. Yan Li translates her own work. She doesn't wants her work in other peoples hands to translate. She talked about what can be lost in translation because Chinese characters have a picture in each letter (I guess) whereas the A,B,C, language can't quite cover it. Shere prefers her writing in Chinese because of that. The A,B,C, language can't encompass the fullness of the Chinese characters.
Tashi Dawa said that translation from Tibetan to Chinese - there's a transformation of his work.
One of the gents was an editor and he said that for the Chinese magazine they have 6 people go through the full magazine to translate into English before it goes to him for the final edit.
An interesting note for Novelists is that the Chinese market translates 2000 foreign (Non Chinese) bookes every year.
Canadian writers who are famous or well known in China are Alice Monro and Dennis Bock. Dennis Bock won best foreign novel translated into Chinese.
2pm was Koffler @ IFOA
Shelly Oria and Alison Pick
Both read about 5 minutes of their books.
I didn't get much in the way of notes as I fell asleep for a bit. They weren't boring or anything. I simply fall asleep at some point. I fall asleep in movies, I fall asleep in plays. I fall asleep...
They did talk about renegotiating your relationship with religion. Alison Pick's father didn't know he was Jewish and found out, I think while Alison was a child. So there was some practice of the Jewish faith at some point in her life. And now she practices some with her daughter (two sabbaths a month). Alison brought up the transmission of trauma, how its in the genes. The secrecy, the not knowing of their religion or culture and how it plays out and how depression can develop.
Shelly talked about how she still practices but in a way that feels right to her. For Yom Kippur she doesn't observe it in the same way. She does make a list of all the people in her life and writes about them, asks for forgiveness and forgives. She said the one thing she 'shouldn't' be doing (writing) is the one thing that brings her closer to her faith/practice.
I'll take the quote from the brochure, Alison Pick - Pick presents her moving and unforgettable memoir, Between Gods, which explores family secrets and the rediscovered past.
I have a belief in the transmission of trauma energetically speaking. You know that you don't know. I remember John Bradshaw talking about Family Secrets when he used to do his seminars on PBS and how everybody knows (specifically children) that there is something wrong, or something unspoken and it affects the family system. It causes a lot of problems. There was a secret about me growing up and I always felt out of place because of it. It was a relief when I was finally told the truth at 18 years old. And there was the upset that I set up to fail, in a sense, because I needed that knowledge. It would have changed the way I viewed everything. I wouldn't have felt like I was a mistake or the unlucky one.
Shelly Oria has a short story collection called New York 1, Tel Aviv 0. She has 1st person stories, 1st person plural, 2nd person and 3rd person. It sounds like a good learning aid for writers.
3pm was a round table discussion on humour.
Elyse Friedman; Robert Glancy and Simon Rich.
As you would expect there was a lot of laughter in that one.
Simon Rich said that getting the reader to keep reading is the most important which includes humour but doesn't try to be funny.
Elyse Friedman talked about the type of stories she writes which lend them selves to humour : a family reunion where the family hires actors to play their deceased parents. An ugly woman who wakes up beautiful and discovers that it's what is on the outside that counts.
Simon Rich used to be a writer for SNL. He was smart and funny and looks like he's 19 years old.
Humour has to have emotional heart. Catch 22 laugh one page and then cry the next.
The best jokes are short cuts into the human heart.
Even serious events in life have humour.
Robert Glancy said the best email he received about his novel was from a friend who wrote, "You managed to get out of your shit job by writing a book about a guy working in a shit job."
There was a good discussion about books that are humourous that are considered serious today. Jane Austen's books are romantic comedies etc.
4pm was Ann Eriksson; Damon Galgut and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
The topic was the Construction of the Novel.
advice was to let yourself loose on the first draft. Write the first draft as quickly as possible.
all three tend to plot after the fact or they create timelines for characters.
Damon - get it down in some shape or form and the rework it.
There was some talk about being too busy to write so Kathryn, I think, wrote in her head and when she was able to write she just wrote it.
It reminds me of the ways that I made writing work in my life in the past. And the skills I need to pull out of the vault.
EY
Saturday, October 25, 2014
IFOA 35 Saturday Oct 25th So Long Marianne
I attended the International Festival of Author's today.
I saw Roch Carrier discussing his book Montcalm and Wolfe. He told a funny story about being a French Canadian boy growing up steeped in the belief that the English were bad and that they stole the land from the French. He cracked me up when he talked about growing up on the border of Quebec and Maine , "When we fished on our side the fish were French and when the English fished on the other side the fish were English."
I went to a round table discussion on the translation of ones work. I actually only attended because Nancy Huston was supposed to be on the panel but sadly she cancelled. Two of the people on the panel were Maylis de Kerangal, and Jessica Moore (a translator, poet/ musician), and another female writer who is both a writer and translator for Quebec French writers. I couldn't even pretend to spell her name. lol
Maylis talked about the differentiation between a translator vs a writer who translates. That a writer who translates will get into a different depth because they are trying to maintain an essence of what you've written in your original language.
Jessica Moore talked about the challenges of translating a novel peppered with another language. For example, Maylis's book is written in Parisienne French and peppered with the English expressions that they use there but how do you keep that integrity? You wouldn't necessarily flip the languages in the translation because it doesn't have the same feel or meaning. The English don't necessarily pepper their language with French or if they do it wouldn't be in the same instances. We might say, 'C'est la vie' but we wouldn't count in French. She said some would translate the book and keep it all in English but then it would lose the integrity of the original.
In Quebec we would call it speaking Franglais. French and English within the same paragraph and sometimes within the same sentence. How do you translate that? Americans would know it as Spanglish. The same concept.
It was fascinating because so many more of us travel now and have access to other languages and to learn other languages that the probability of a novel being written with many different expressions in other languages is higher than ever. How do you translate that and keep the integrity? It's the feel, how do you keep that?
I went to the poetry reading and heard:
Gary Geddes - his poem about a cow giving birth to a stillborn calf and the line 'I could have drowned in the liquid eye'
Catherine Graham's stand out poem for me was Peas and Barbies. a piece about naked Barbies with always the same plastic smiles and breasts with no nipples. Being fascinated with the word nipple and creating nipples with peas in her mashed potatoes. :-D
Julie Joosten's line 'the valley carries cemeteries in its mouth.'
David Martin's line 'broken teeth roads.'
Adam Sol
and Jacob Scheier. His poem, My Mother dies in Reverse is really beautiful in it's simplicity and lack of emotion. And yet you know it was painful when he lost his mom. It was the second time I'd heard him recite this poem and I was thrilled that he'd pulled it out for this reading. It really could become his signature poem.
I used to see Jacob at his house when he was a child because his mom Libby was one of my writing teachers back in the 1980's. Libby was a formidable smart woman who made a living as a writer, a poet, a teacher and she loved my writing. She loved my writing. Every time I see Jacob now as an adult and hear him recite his work he reminds me that despite the negative voices who told me I couldn't choose writing. The voices who told me I couldn't trust the people who wanted to help me (they'd steal my work). Jacob reminds me that there were a couple of voices who proclaimed that I had that something, that I had talent. Libby Scheier, Michael Zizis and Lesley Krueger were three of the main supportive voices.
I promised myself that I would not, could not buy any books this festival because, um, you know, I have a zillion in my apartment. But I easily strolled into the makeshift bookstore and bought two. It was funny because the bookstore owner, Ben McNally looked over at me and smiled the moment I walked in. I walked right up to him and said, "I know Nancy Huston cancelled but would you happen to have her book here anyway?"
"Well, I happen to have one copy!" Woo hoo!
I bought Jacob's book of poetry and went over to chat with him to ask him to sign, to tell him that I was happy he recited that poem and to tell him that I was one of his mother's students. We had a nice moment together.
And I bought Nancy Huston's latest book, Black Dance. I had no choice. I have all of her books. She is one of my favourite writers. She is Canadian born and now lives in France. She writes in both French and English and will write her book in one language and translate it into the other. I'm fascinated by how she writes about her themes. One of her themes is about motherhood. Her mom and dad broke up and her mom left her to be raised by her dad. It's interesting to read how she writes about mothers from every angle within all the other topics she covers in her writing.
And my final event for the day was with Marianne Ihlen (the muse); Kari Hesthamar (the radio documentarian and author of the book So Long, Marianne); and Helle V. Goldman (the translator).
I finally can say I saw someone who was a muse. lol
I'll take the description right out of the IFOA brochure:
At 22, Marianne Ihlen (Norway) travelled to the Greek island of hydra with Norwegian writer Axel Jensen. While Axel wrote, Marianne kept house. One day while Marianne was shopping in a grocery store, a man asked her to join him and some friends at their table. He introduced himself as Leonard Cohen, the a little-known Canadian poet. When the erratic and explosive Axel abandoned Marianne and their newborn son for another woman, Leonard stepped in and a new, tender love affair began.
The book So Long, Marianne documents her story.
Kari Hesthamer wondered whatever happened to Marianne and went looking for her. She found her and asked if she could do a radio documentary on her and the song and Leonard Cohen and originally Marianne said no. Kari asked her to think about it and recommended some of her documentaries for Marianne to listen to and Marianne ultimately agreed. Marianne said, "I was waiting for her to call back, she had such a lovely voice."
Kari got the gift of finding out that Marianne kept boxes from 50 years ago of letters from Leonard, napkins with lyrics etc.
Helle Goldman was a child at the time and was also living the same Greek island. She lived there from 3 months to about 7 years old. Then her parents moved the family to the States. She still visited regularly. Once the documentary was done and another version was done where Kari approached Leonard Cohen about his side of the story, Kari then wrote the book. Wanting to translate it into English, Marianne thought she might know a person who could do it because she would have an understanding of what it was like to live on this island. It was primarily an island of artists but it was egalitarian in that the poorest could be sitting at a table beside Aristotle Onassis in a restaurant at dinner.
Helle as a woman has been living in Norway for 15 or so years. Speaks the language that the book is written in, does translation work (scientific translations), knows the island, and remembers Marianne. It was so fascinating to hear how things come together.
When asked if it was love at first sight between she and Leonard, Marianne said, "there was some sort of recognition."
I wrote in my notes, MUST READ THIS BOOK! ha ha. I'll see about getting it on my Kobo the next time they are offering a discount code. ;)
She said that So long, Marianne wasn't her favourite song. Bird on a Wire was. She said that Leonard had returned sick after touring with poet Irving Layton and once he was starting to feel better they were sitting inside. She pulled down a guitar and they watched the birds sitting on the telephone wires outside the window and the song started.
the link to the transcript of the original radio doc. The radio doc was in Norwegian.
And the link about the book.
It was a good day.
EY
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