Category Archives: Praising

Scott’s Listing

I am now the wife of a New York Times bestselling author! Oh my Elvis! Specials is number six and we here in the Larbalestier/Westerfeld household are over the moon. The congrats are flooding in from all over and champagne will be drunk in large quantities tonight. Woo hoo!

But what does this actually mean? Don’t worry you’re not alone asking. Several of my non-publishing friends—yes, I do have them—have also asked why it’s such a big deal.

The New York Times bestsellers list is one of the oldest lists going and definitely the most prestigious. It doesn’t matter that there’s a whiff of dodginess about how it’s compiled. As Scott points out, there ain’t a bestseller list in the world that reflects the true number of books sales out there in the real world. The real world is too messy, too big, and too unquantifiable. Bless the real world! In the meantime what we have is the New York Times list.

Whatever the reality of actual numbers, being on that list mean a book is selling more than somewhat and it is doing that in the shops that report to the New York Times.

Becoming a New York Times bestselling author means having those words appear on the front cover of all that writer’s books for the rest of their life. From now on it won’t be Scott Westerfeld making appearances—it’ll be New York Times bestselling author Scott Westerfeld visiting your library or school.

In most publishing houses the amount of money spent promoting the New York Times bestselling author’s books will escalate. Some writers have contracts with a clause giving them a bonus should their book make the NYT list. Many are convinced it also increases the chances of actually being reviewed in the New York Times.

Rumours abound that Hollywood executives (or at least their scouts) automatically option every book that makes it on to the NYT list no matter how unfilmable. I know the Jane Austen Book Club was so optioned and while it’s one of my favourite books of all time I really can’t imagine it making a good film. But then I thought The Hours was unfilmable. (The Uglies trilogy on the other hand . . . )

It also means that the agent of the NYT bestselling author (NYTBA) gets to ask for more money for their next book and a better contract with less joint accounting and more rights retained. I believe they can also insist that gold petals descend from the ceiling whenever the NYTBA visits their publisher’s offices and that they only take the NYTBA (+ spouse!) to the very best restaurants and ply them with Krug champagne.

But way better than all of that is knowing that lots and lots of people are reading and loving Scott’s books. We’ve known that for awhile from the quantity of fanmail he gets and all the effusive comments on his blog. Listing in the Times is a big ole confirmation of that love.

I know exactly how all those Scott Westerfeld fans feel because I’m one, too. Go Specials!

Plagiarism

I adore Meg Cabot, not only is she a fine writer who’s as witty and brilliant as Dorothy Parker, but she also has a heart as big as the ocean, and is wiser than any owl you care to name. I only read her books for the first time last year. I confess that I’d thought she wouldn’t be much chop because I was underwhelmed by the Princess Diaries movie. How stupid was I?

Anyway, on Lili‘s advice, I read her two All-American Girl books and loved them! Very smart, wryly funny, and subversive. My three favourite things. Then I discovered her blog and became even more obsessed. Meg Cabot is a genius. Case in point is a recent post that has been linked to all over the place because it is such a sensible response to some of the insanity that has been written about the recent plagiarism case.

All you need to know is that Meg Cabot is one of the writers that the author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life has been accused of stealing from.

Here’s my favourite bit:

    After I got over being mad at Carol—and her parents, and the art show committee, and the art teacher, and all the other Carol types and THEIR parents and promoters that I’ve encountered since—all I felt (and still feel, to this day) was sad.

    Not just because I’d lost a friend (which, of course, I had. When I got back to Bloomington, even though I felt super, duper sorry for Carol, on account of her being such a lost soul, I found I just couldn’t be friends with her anymore).

    No, I felt sad because none of those people—but most importantly, Carol–were ever going to understand that the coolest part of creating something–like a picture, or a story, or a song–isn’t how fast you do it, or how young you are when you created it, or how many art shows it’s put into, or how much money someone eventually pays for it.

    Because the truth is, if you’re patient, all of that–the art shows, and the money, and everything else–will come along eventually. Those things aren’t really what’s important.

    What’s important is that when you create something original (i.e. NOT TRACED), it’s something YOU made, that speaks from YOUR heart, and no one else’s. Even if it’s just a dumb drawing of a princess, it’s YOUR dumb drawing of a princess, NOT ANYONE ELSE’S.

    And there’s something totally great about that—way better than art shows. Even better than money.

    And what makes me sad is that that’s something Carol and everyone like her will never, ever understand.

How classy is that?

A couple of my writer friends (one in Australia and one in the US) have been deeply freaked by the plagiarism scandal because the writer’s defence is that she has a photographic memory and both of them have photographic memories. I don’t think either of them has a thing to worry about simply because

    1) they’re both really good writers who work at their craft
    2) they’re aware of the issue

Number one is key. As Meg Cabot says the way you get good at drawing princesses is by drawing lots and lots of princesses. Unsurprisingly that’s the way you get good at anything. You do it over and over and over again. When you’re a beginning writer your influences are right there on the surface; as you mature they sink deeper down and become harder to identify.

Any writer who is working at their craft is not going to wind up plagiarising. Only a small percentage of any good published book remains the same as the first draft. Any unconscious borrowings by those photographic memories will have been reworked so much that very little resemblance remains in the final product. She’ll be right. Honest.

In my experience the folks who are most worried about committing a writing and/or publishing sin are the ones least likely to do so. Whenever there’s a discussion about the need to discourage bad writers a whole slew of really good ones get discouraged.

The plagiarisers of this world, like the princess drawing tracers, are going to continue blithely on their path creating nothing new and so getting none of the rewards of creativity. My two friends may needlessly worry about plagiarism, but you know what? They create something new and delicious almost every day. I’m with Meg Cabot on who we should be feeling sorry for.

Aaargh!!! (updated)

Sometimes I read an article so relentlessly stupid that the only thing I can do is rant.

Today Cassandra Clare sent me a link to such an article. Let me quote the most enraging part:

    What this unfortunately driven young woman’s rather sad little story suggests is that one of the major reasons other young people don’t read books is that most of the stuff published for children and adolescents is abysmal, self-regarding trash. Part of the fault rests with the packagers such as Alloy and in the way they do business. A larger part of the problem stems from publishers’ misguided belief that kids want to read about people just like themselves, living lives just like their lives. Dead wrong.

    If these publishers looked to their own childhood memories rather than a spreadsheet, they’d recall that young readers, more than any others, want to be transported and shown not just other lives but whole worlds utterly different from their own. Witness the wild popularity of fantasy and science fiction among the very same kids who display the very same sensibility in their choice of video games. What could be more dispiriting than going into your room in search of escape, solace or pleasure, opening a book and reading a story about someone just like you hemmed in by the same four walls?

    The conditions that have alienated so many young people from reading are hardly unique to publishing. They’re common to other forms of entertainment and news media, where the creativity and idealism of the founding personalities have been subsumed by corporate ownership. It happened long ago in the film industry, and the tormented director or abused screenwriter is now virtually a cultural archetype. It has happened to all but a handful of the country’s broadcasters and newspapers.

I call bullshit. Lots of teenagers want to read about people like them, lots don’t, and some of them want to be transported as well as read about teenagers like them. It”s not an either/or. Very few things are. Some of those transporting books also happen to be about teenagers like them. And for your information, Mr LA Times know-nothing-about-YA reporter man, many of the bestselling books (and manga and graphic novels) for teens are fantasy or science fiction. The very genres whose reason for existing is to impart that good ole sense of wonder.

There are many, many, many wonderful books of all sorts being published for, and read by, teenagers. Cassandra, who sent me the article, writes some of it, so does Margaret Mahy, Ursula K. Le Guin,, Diana Wynne Jones, Holly Black, Scott Westerfeld, Elizabeth Knox, John Green, Libba Bray, Cecil Castellucci, Jonathan Stroud, Sonya Hartnett, E. Lockhart, Audrey Couloumbis, Laura Whitcomb and too many more to name. I cannot keep up with all the amazing YA being published each year.

And this may surprise you, Mr LA Times reporter man, but some of the books published through packaging houses are really good. Scott Westerfeld’s Midnighters series is a good example, as is pretty much anything written by Maureen Johnson, not to mention the very amusing Raisin Rodriquez books by Judy Goldschmidt.

When I compare the quality of the adult bestselling fiction to the kids and teen bestselling fiction it’s the adult fiction that loses out. I feel sorry for the adults who are still reading some of the dreck on that list when they could be reading bestselling books by Libba Bray or Jonathan Stroud.

Okay, I’m going to go read a Jaclyn Moriarty book to remove the stain on my eyeballs from that stupid article.

P.S. Yes, I have conflated YA and children’s, but so did Mr Smelly Reporter Man.

Update: Of course, Cassandra said it all more succinctly and way more wittily here. If only I’d noticed that first I coulda just directed you there. And somehow I managed to miss Cecil’s post as well. Gah.

Dans Les Griffes reviewed + what I’ve been reading & seeing

Blandine Longre, the editor of the French literary magazine, sitartmag.com, just sent me the link to a lovely review of Dans les griffes de la sorcière, the French version of Magic or Madness. From what I can tell from babelfish it looks like Anne-Judith Descombey’s translation is a very good one indeed. Thank you! This is the first review of any of the translated versions of MorM. Colour me excited!

To reward myself for sending off the first rewrites of MorM 3 on Friday I’ve been reading whatever I want to read! Woo hoo! And seeing some movies. Namely V for Vendetta—most entertaining, though what accent was Natalie Portman doing?—and last night Night Watch. Wow. Oh my Elvis. It’s gotta be one of the coolest looking films I’ve seen in ages. (Well, aside from this more-beautiful-than-a-mangosteen Hong Kong film I saw chunks of on Singapore Airlines: The Promise. That was brain breakingly gorgeous—can’t wait to see the whole thing.) Not only is Night Watch beautiful it’s also fabulous. A kind of grungy, well-acted and written Russian Ghostbusters crossed with Ludmilla & Russalka and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It made me so very happy.

I also finished reading the first volume of Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy. Loved it. I especially loved that it’s completely standalone. That’s right: first volume of a trilogy and yet the story comes to a conclusion. There are no loose ends, no cliffhanger, just lots of story conclusioney goodness. Good on ya, Mr Stroud. (And, yes, I know I left the first volume of my own trilogy a bit up in the air. I’m writing about Stroud as a reader, not a writer, okay? In other words: do as I say, not as I do.)

I also love the ethical wobbliness of the two protags, Batrimaeus and Nathaniel. And the excellently done world building, especially the footnotes. Have I mentioned that I love footnotes? And it’s a cracking, hard-to-put-down read. My only complaint is that there coulda been a few more explosions. Wouldn’t have to be heaps more, just two or three . . .

Yesterday I read five novels. Graphic ones. Y’know what I like most about ’em? That I can read five in a day without breaking into a sweat. Blissful. I’m kind of new to graphic novels and manga and shall report in a later post. But so far I’m having fun. Feel free to hit me with more recommendations. So far I’ve liked Fables and Scott Pilgrim best. But The Runaways is fun, too. More to the point I haven’t disliked anything yet, though I confess I haven’t started on the manga yet. But I will! (Thank you Holly, Rachel, Mely, and Will.)

Newtown is, indeed, twelve kinds of awesome

Came across this completely randomly *cough* *cough*. (I mean would I waste time with the likes of google, blogpulse, technorati, ljseek, icerocket or feedster? Please!) It gave me twelve kinds of pleasure.

First up someone getting into the Magic or Madness trilogy enough to want to figure out their Sydney setting—Newtown—and look at maps and photos. How cool is that? And then linking me to the Whitlams, who are an ace Sydney band. Even cooler. (Though I don’t know them and I very much doubt whether they know me. So no cahoots at all.) The Newtown photos Purple Primate links to are fabulous. If I wasn’t already home I’d be so homesick. And they’re making me regret having shifted from Newtown to Surry Hills. What was I thinking?

Here are some of my faves:

    The cemetery as taken from the park that Tom piggybacks Reason across in the first book. The trees are in the cemetery. By the way that’s not an evil tower: it’s the spire of St Stephen’s Church.Here’s another view of the Moreton Bay fig tree on the front cover of Magic Lessons. It’s taken from the street so you can see the wrought iron gate and fencing.

    When we lived on Chelmsford St we used to walk through this tunnel all the time. Sadly, “Piss Tunnel” is a pretty accurate name. It’s very eerie and every time I walk through I’m not entirely sure what I’ll find on the other side.

I couldn’t find any photos that gave a sense of how narrow the streets are or of what Esmeralda’s house looks like. Maybe I’ll have to take ’em myself.

The other pleasure of this post was the speculation in the comments about who would wind up with Tom, Reason and Jay-Tee. That’s right they were shipping my book! Colour me very happy. But I’m not saying a word about what happens, except that one of those comments might possibly be right. Or not. I’ll never tell!

Magic Lessons has landed! (Updated)

Today is the day! The official publication date of my second novel: Magic Lessons the sequel to Magic or Madness! Yay!

And if that wasn’t enough it’s also the pub date for the paperback version of Magic or Madness. That’s right, MorM is now affordable.

Aren’t the covers of both books gorgeous? They were designed by Marc J. Cohen. Bless him.

I’ve mentioned before that both me and Scott have photo credits for the cover of Magic Lessons. The original photos we took are here. Scott talks about it here. Our first photo credits. Yay us!

Oh, and because people keep asking, here’s how I pronounce my surname: Lar-bal-est-ee-er. It can also be pronounced Lar-bal-est-ee-ay. Either way is fine by me. Friends at school used to pronounce it: Lavaworm. I have to really like you to let you get away with that one, but. I’ll be adding this to the faq.

Hope you all enjoy Magic Lessons. I had fun (mostly) writing it.

Update: Gwenda has some very kind words to say about it here. And, now, Mr Scalzi.

Posted: NYC 12:46PM, 16 March

Apologies & Updates

Sorry for the silence. My excuses are many and covered in mucus and jetlag. Which led to my inadvertantly consigning a number of thoughtful posts to spam purgatory. My apologies. Please comment again. I hope to be non-mucus laden and competent any day now and am much less likely to nuke future comments.

While I lay sweating, coughing, swelling and dripping mucus, the wonderful Deborah Biancotti was making additons to my website to accommodate the imminent (and in San Francisco, at least, actual) arrival of my second novel, Magic Lessons the sequel to Magic or Madness. Feast your eyes here and here. You can even read the first two chapters. She’s also created a new section for the soon-to-arrive anthology, Daughters of Earth. Thank you, Deb! And thank you, Cat, for designing such a beautiful cover.

Do take a squiz at both and let me know what you think. The Daughters site still has some content to come, but all the design work is done.

The events in San Francisco at Borderlands and Books Inc went very well. Scott was a star (he even read for me!) and I coughed a lot. And Jude (Borderlands) and Jennifer (Books Inc) took wondrous care of us. Thank you! Thanks so much to everyone who came. I hope I didn’t give any of you my dread lurgy.

I go sleep now.

Posted: NYC, 2:30AM

Ideas, like butterflies, are free

I was out doing errands t’other day (including a visit to the Tax Office to get my German contracts stamped—thank you, Niki). At one of my stops the fact of my being a writer came up and the bloke behind the counter said, “Really? You know, I have this great idea. If I give it to you, and you write the book, you can keep half the profits.”

My mouth opened. My mouth closed. See, I’ve heard other writers talk about non-writers making that offer, but I’ve never actually had it made to me so I didn’t have an answered prepared. I stammered something about being grateful for the offer, but that I have a tonne of ideas of my own, thanks all the same.

Ideas are no big deal. I have a gazillion ideas every day. Oodles of the little buggers. But without labour an idea is nothing. Unless I sit down and type for several months and turn a bunch of ideas into a book, those ideas are worthless. Their only value is in what’s done with them. Lots of people have ideas for books; not that many write them.

Scott and me were talking about the inflated value many people give ideas. And Scott wondered if that was partly behind the ever-growing insane obsession with copyright (like the Canadian Red Cross trying to copyright the Red Cross symbol). And the notion so many people have that ideas can be stolen. That rewriting an earlier story is somehow plagiarism (that’s right, Shakespeare was a plaigarist, and James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and just about any other writer you care to name).

Some are unable to make a distinction between riffing on something and stealing. If someone were to write a book about a girl who a finds a door that leads from Sydney and New York City and has adventures. I would not be bothered. Not unless the characters bore an uncanny resemblance to Magic or Madness and large chunks of the book were word-for-word the same as mine. Plagiarising means to take some one else’s work and pass it off as your own. Taking credit for someone else’s labour is wrong; riffing on someone else’s ideas is what writers/comedians/artists/musicians etc. etc. do. That’s their job.

Which leads me to Cory Doctorow’s fabulous post on BoingBoing about the publishing industries ludicrous efforts to stop Google’s fabulous Book Search which would make said riffing so much easier. What he said.

French cover of Magic or Madness

This is my first foreign language edition, published by Editions du Panama. I’m stoked! And don’t you think it looks like my name belongs there? With all those other French words? I’ve returned to my motherland! Or, okay, my great great great grandmother’s land (give or take a few greats).

Very different to the US cover, eh? I imagine the woman is meant to be Esmeralda, which fits with the title: In the Witch’s Claws.

All Around the World . . .

Looks like 2006 is going to be the year of jetlag travelling for me and Mr Westerfeld. I just updated our appearances pages and it was quite a shock. Brisbane! Bologna! New Orleans! Barely two weeks goes by without us chooffing off somewhere and that’s with only the rock-solid confirmed events listed.

Not that I’m complaining, it’s fantabuloso being asked to do so many different events. And I’ve never been to New Orleans before. How fascinating is that going to be? Very.

In other news: I continue to be very very glad that I am in Sydney, not New York City.


Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

And Australia thrashes Sri Lanka in the second final. Andrew Symonds gets his first ODI century in Australia and put a lock on his status as biggest Australian yob hero since Boonie. Well, except for Shane Warne, and, oh, never mind. We loves you, Symonds!

Here’s hoping the third final will be a lot closer and not merely a matter of who wins the toss and elects to bat. Oh, how I miss the test cricket . . .

YA Author Cafe

Next Tuesday at 8:30PM if you’re on the East Coast of the USA, or 3:30PM if you’re on the West Coast, or 12:30PM Wednesday if you’re in Sydney, or 2:30AM if you’re in Madrid, I’ll be doing the YA Author Cafe chat with Holly Black and Cassandra Claire. Our host will be the lovely Marlene Perez.

For those if you who don’t know—and I can’t imagine there are many of you—Holly Black is the author of the wonderful YA urban fantasies, Tithe and Valiant, not to mention the mega-selling Spiderwick books. Valiant, is one of the best reworkings of Beauty and the Beast I’ve ever read. It only came out last year yet I’ve already read it twice. If you haven’t read it then you really, really, really must.

And Cassandra Claire is the queen of Harry Potter fandom and the author of the very very funny Lord of the Rings Secret Diaries that went zooming around the internet a while back:“Still not king . . . “. She’s also just written a really fabby original YA novel, City of Bones, which, sad for you, doesn’t come out from Simon and Schuster until March 2007. Trust me, you have to read it! And when you do you’ll be screaming for the sequel. Not because it doesn’t standalone—it does—but because you’ll want more more more!

Anyways, to follow our chat and join in head here on Tuesday/Wednesday (don’t you all love timezones?).

I want a dragon!

I haven’t felt this way since I was a kid gobbling up the Anne McCaffrey books, but Naomi Novik’s Temeraire (His Majesty’s Dragon in North America) has led to a desperate longing for my very own dragon. It doesn’t even have to be a Chinese one. Honest. But I want one! Now!

I’ve been stuttering around, unable to settle on any particular book for a while, and those I have finished lately, I haven’t much cared for. Though it could well be me and not the book, cause the last such book is acclaimed up hill and down dale and those in the know say it’s a likely Printz award shortlister. Left me cold. Worse than cold: I was bored. And the ending made me want to throw the book across the room. Bleach! I’ve been trying to get purchase with Tale of Genji and keep failing miserably. I haven’t even been able to finish the Gideon Haigh I started and I know I like his books.

So it was with great relief that I started Temeraire and found myself immediately sucked into the story. The first time I looked up I was more than a hundred pages in. It’s a cracker. Rips along. It has battles and honour and (discreet) sex and dragons! Lots and lots of dragons! It’s set during the Napoleonic wars and it’s fabulous. The protag, Laurence, is the best stick-up-his bum hero ever. And I won’t tell you anything more, except to say that you should really, really, really not read the cover copy because it gave away a couple of key plot points I’d’ve been much happier not knowing. It’s the first in the series, but who knows when the next two books are going to be published here (her website doesn’t say) and there’s no way I can be expected to wait. I want more. Now!

Bookshops and the Signing thing

Wow, thanks to everyone for sharing all their writers’ humiliations. Apparently I’m not alone!

This post is for the bookseller who wrote to tell me that if I went to her bookshop I could sign whatever books I wanted.

On the same day I had my less than stellar experience at a chain I also visited Galaxy, Kinokuniya, Gleebooks and Better Read than Dead. All of them had many copies of Scott’s books and all told me that Uglies in particular is flying off the shelves. And they all had the Oz version of Magic or Madness and were very keen on me signing them. At Galaxy I didn’t even have to ask. Bless Galaxy. They rolled out the books, handed me a pen, and told me how well MorM‘d been doing for them. There was also mention of the possibility of Scott and me doing events for all of these shops. Way to make you feel wanted. Lovely!

I also figured out that I’ve been shopping at Galaxy for at least fourteen years! Oh my Elvis! That’s longer than some of my readers have been alive! And I’ve been a regular customer at Gleebooks for even longer . . . They’re two of my fave bookshops in all the world and have been incredibly good to me as both customer and now as author.

I have to admit though, that the whole signing thing is weird. I always feel like a loon asking people in bookshops if they want me to scribble on their books. It seems such an odd thing to do: “Deface your stock, Ma’am?” Though, of course, I’m very happy to have books by my favourite writers defaced, and treasure my two signed Dorothy Dunnett’s (Caprice and Rondo and Gemini).

Other than that initial awkwardness—“Hi, I’m Justine Larbalestier and, er, you seem to have some of my books. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind if I, um, signed them for you”—other than that I really like going into bookshops and chatting with the staff. For one thing, they’re mostly really into books. Surprising that, eh? And once I’ve gotten the self-promotery thing over and done with (quick as poss) I can ask about their favourite YAs and rave about mine (I talked up Haitani’s A Rabbit’s Eyes big time at Kinokuniya). Alliyx at Kinokuniya is a huge Scott Westerfeld and Holly Black fan so it was quite a treat to goss about their books. Interesting how much easier it is to push someone else’s work than it is your own.

I’d never been to Kinokuniya before. It’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve seen that much manga in one place. And the design and architecture section is huge! So’s the young adult section. In fact the whole bookstore is vast and full of bubbly helpful staff and way too many books that I lust after. And, yeah, they had my book, too. I wonder if I’ll ever stop being thrilled by seeing my book in shops? I hope not.

So, yes, Ms Bookseller-who-wrote-me, my chain bookshop experience was an anomaly.

Happy New Year!!!

How about this for a good omen on which to start the new year? My friend Shana noticed Magic or Madness in the window of one of the best children’s bookshops in the world, Books of Wonder in New York City:

And what’s more—it’s right next to The Very Hungry Caterpillar! This is going to be a very good year, indeed. (Well, for me, anyway, here’s hoping it will be for the rest of the world, too. And, yeah, I’d swap for the world to be better off, but, you know, I don’t think it works like that.)

Oh, and one last thing: Scott Lynch (whose lj I just discovered via matociquala) also had a good year—he became a firey.

Happy new year!

Last Day of 2005

Woo hoo! Another year gone! A fridge full of champagne and yummy food! Who could ask for anything more? (Well, it would be nice if we didn’t both have books due 3 Jan . . . )

I see that many in blogland (and elsewhere) are summing up their year, taking stock, making resolutions for 2006 and etc. I’ve already skited enough about my achievements this year. It’s been a bloody brilliant year personally. I just want it all to keep on keeping on.

I’m aiming to write two books (both of which I’ve already started) in 2006 and sell one (two would be nice, but I don’t want to jinx myself). I also plan to spend the majority of the year in Sydney, cause now that I’m home I just want to stay. And I really, really, really want to get tickets for the Sydney Ashes test. Ideally for every day of play. If anyone has a cunning method of getting said tickets, or is a member of the SCG—I’m am so up for offering you huge bribes! Whatever you want you got it!

Best book I read this year: Walter Mosley’s The Man in My Basement. I just made my parents read it too and they were also blown away. It’s the most powerful, moving examination of evil, of race and gender, and what it is to be human I’ve ever read. But rest assured this ain’t just philosophy and ethics; it’s a scary arse story that’s completely unputtdownable.

Books I’m most looking forward to: The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and Elizabeth Knox’s Dreamquake the sequel to Dreamhunter, and frankly it just can’t get into my hands soon enough!

Hope you lot have a fabby new year, too. And achieve everything you want to achieve. I’m going to get started on the champers now. Happy new year!

Merry, Merry, Happy, Happy

I hope everyone who celebrates today or any of the cluster of days around it—or who’s just enjoying the days off work or school—has a most excellent end of the year. I plan to.

I’d like to adopt the USian custom of giving thanks (yeah, yeah, I know they do it on a different day—whatever!). Here’s what I’m thankful for:

    That I’m home in Sydney living in the best place ever: Flying foxes at dusk! Huge decks! Huge bath tub! Views! Amazing pubs, cafes & restaurants within spitting distance! Southerly breezes!

    That I’m home in the land of continuous cricket coverage! Of beautiful beaches! And the best avocadoes (yes, Mely, you need to move here, not smelly California) and mangosteens and mangoes and all the other yummy fruit and veg my heart pines for!

    Rediscovering all my CDs what have been in storage since forever. Most especially Sepharad: Songs of the Spanish Jews by Sarband. Best CD ever!

    The books beside my bed: The Tale of Genji—started it, but am intimidated by its enormousness, though I really want to take part in this amazing discussion; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—started it; Shaman’s Crossing by Robin Hobb; The Fencing Master by Arturo Pérez-Reverte—finished it, loved it!; The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket by Gideon Haigh—started it; Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm—started it.

    My writing career, and that I can type those words without cacking myself. Yes, I really do have a writing career!

    My family and friends. Especially my family: Jan, John, Niki and Scott, with whom I’m about to do the whole yummy food and wine, pressies, playing-lots-of-games thing! Bring it on!

Hope most everything is wonderful with you lot as well.

Beautiful Clothes

All this talk of fashion and clothes and why some of us love ’em compelled me to head to Lisa Stack’s shop, Helix (conveniently located in Surry Hills where me and Scott now live). The shop is on Bourke St in what once would have been a corner shop dispensing lollies and milk and newspapers. Now it is filled with gorgeous dresses, skirts, trousers, tops in the most fabulous colours, with luscious prints. No vile pastels or lollipop colours, none of the hippy dippy crap that’s filling most of the shops hereabouts. I wound up buying two of Lisa’s tops and a pair of her silk japanese fisherman’s pants (so very very comfortable—I don’t think I’ll ever take them off again). And a circle skirt by Theresa Jackson made of embossed cotton. It’s shiny and makes me feel like a 1950s goth African fairy princess. Sigh. Much clothes happiness.

Here’s what I love most about Lisa’s shop, not just that her clothes are inventive and beautiful and comfortable, but that I don’t feel like a fool for walking in. In many botique shops I only fit into the largest sizes, and—you’re just going to have to trust me on this—I’m not that big. I’m not particularly tall or fat, and yet in cool shop after cool shop I barely squeeze into the largest sizes. Huh? And the shop assistants make out like this is somehow my fault. Does that make for shopping pleasure? No, it does not.

While I was at Helix three other women tried on clothes. Two of them much older than me, one much younger. One larger than me, two smaller. And here’s the thing: we all looked really good in her clothes. We had fun trying them on. We gossiped and offered opinions on what looked best on each other. It was a gas. I don’t remember the last time I had such a good time in a clothes shop.

And even better, Lisa’s clothes aren’t insanely expensive, are very well made, and last a very long time. What could be better?

Best Quote Ever

Fossicking through my many, many, many boxes of books I found this quote marked:

I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.

—Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing

Those words bring back my years of PhD thesis research, writing, turning it into a book, and the postdoctoral fellowship that followed it. Not to mention the mighty labours on Daughters of Earth. Footnotes, bloody, buggery footnotes! A pleasure to read and chase amongst; a total pain in the arse to get right. And don’t get me started on bibliographies and indexing. Aaarggh!

So very, very glad I never have to do any of that stuff ever again!

And, yes, I did go prematurely grey.

Fashion = good, complex, interesting

Lauren McLaughlin in praise of fashion. Sing it, Lauren!

Regarding fashion being shallow. This is a prejudice I find maddeningly overrepresented in the spec fic community. Fashion is an art form and the wearing of fashion is something everyone does every day (unless you’re a nudist). Even people who think they don’t care about fashion make choices about what they wear. Fashionistas (a term often used derogatorily) are merely people who take pleasure in the clothing choices that others skim over, much as foodies take a greater interest in what they eat.

This reminds me of a friend of mine being (verbally) attacked by an earnest young man (e.y.m.) at a party. She was (and is) gorgeous and has always enjoyed playing with fashion, is always well attired, with fabulous make-up and hair. He accused her of dressing to please men. How long, he wanted to know did she spend on such a high-maintenance look? Shouldn’t she be doing better things with her time? Why was it so important to her to have men admire her? Weren’t there more important things in life?

Reader, my friend demolished him. She smiled and pointed out to the e.y.m. that his look wasn’t exactly low maintenance. How long did it take him to shave his head? He opened his mouth, goggled, closed it again. If he cared so little about fashion, she continued, why was he wearing fashionable jeans and a black T-shirt? And trendy workman’s boots? Clearly he was dressing to pick up inner-city chicks. He stammered some more, claimed he chose them because they were comfortable. She countered that if he truly gave no thought to clothes or his appearance he would simply buy whatever was closest and cheapest. She happened to know the jeans he was wearing were only availlable at two different shops and were not exactly cheap. Why not wear no-name brand jeans?

As Lauren says most everyone thinks about clothes and what they’re wearing and what other people will think of them because of their choices. Fashion is a very big deal. Often people can tell how rich or poor you are from what you wear, they form an opinion of your education and politics (though they can be very very wrong), they can decide not to let you into a club, or talk to you, or give you a job because of what you’re wearing. Fashion is a deadly serious (and excellently entertaining) and far-reaching part of all our lives. It is definitely not a trivial matter to write or think about.

This has been a great year

I just found out that both Scott and me made School Library Journal‘s best books of 2005 list. Scott for Peeps and me (obviously) for Magic or Madness. We is most happy. For me it’s more icing on an already well-iced cake.

I’d like to take a moment to (incoherently and jetlaggedly) say how amazed I am by how Morm has been doing. It’s my first novel. I’ve seen lots of first novels published, so I knew what to expect. The reviews have been amazing, the placement in bookshops, and the response from readers. After we hooked up with our foreign rights agent, Whitney Lee, I had hopes of selling into countries other than the US and Australia (where the book is set), but I wasn’t really expecting it to happen. But it’s now sold in Thailand, Taiwan, France and Germany. I keep having to pinch myself.

As long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a writer, to make a living writing stories. And now I am.

In Praise of the US Postal Service

I hear many USians complain about going to the post office and about the US postal system generally. I’m here to say you’re wrong. You lot have one of the best postal services in the world. It’s way cheaper, faster and better than the postal service of any other country I’ve been in.

I enjoy going to the post office on Fourth Avenue and Eleventh St. Most of the people who work there are lovely, have a sense of humour, and go out of their way to tell you the cheapest and/or fastest way to send things. And the woman who delivers our mail? A goddess. I’ve never ever seen her in a bad mood. She calls everybody “boopy” or “booboo” and is always smiling and cracking jokes. Whenever I run into her I know I’m going to have a really good day.

So stop your whingeing people. The rest of the world doesn’t have it so good as you lot. All hail the USPS!

Definitions (updated)

In an excellent essay on fantasy Teresa Nielsen Hayden elegantly points out the problem with trying to define fantasy literature:

It’s hard to come up with a good definition of fantasy literature. It’s easy to come up with a definition that includes fantasy, but most such definitions also take in a lot of other kinds of storytelling. For instance, it has been observed that, in a sense, all fiction is fantasy. This is true, but it isn’t useful.

That’s why my favourite definition of science fiction is Damon Knight’s: “science fiction is what I point to when I say science fiction” (or something like that). Most of us know what we mean when we talk about a certain genre, trying to narrow it down absolutely, and get other people to agree with you is futile—way more trouble than it’s worth.

Update: What Knight said was something like this: “Science fiction is what we mean when we point to it”.

First Novel Delirium

For the last few months there’s been just one topic of conversation on John Scalzi’s blog: the publication of his first novel, Old Man’s War. He’s asked his readers to send in photos of it in the wild, he’s posted and discussed every single review that’s appeared, made his blog over so it looks just like the book (how tacky is that?), theorised about every slight movement the book has made up and down Amazon.com’s rankings. It’s been all Old Man’s War, all the time.

And you know what? Good on him. Go, Scalzi! When your very first novel is finally, finally (!) available in real shops and libraries for actual people who don’t even know you to purchase, borrow and maybe even read (!) then damned if you aren’t compelled to shout it from the rooftops. It’s a very big deal.

My first novel, Magic or Madness will be officially released into the wild in the USA on the 17th of March (the Australia edition comes out in September). That’s 13 days away (well, okay, fourteen on account of the whole time-difference thing). Less than two weeks! So soon!

My novel is going to be real. Not just an electronic file, or a pile of papers, or an ARC, but an actual finished book with a dust jacket and that fresh paper, fresh glue smell, and it’s going to find its way into the hands of folks who don’t know me! How about that?

I’m excited. I’m nervous. I’m happy. My stomach’s in knots. I keep giggling at inappropriate moments. Like while watching this TV show about parasites, Body Snatchers (best show ever), this man was lying on the grass beside the more than 2 metre long tapeworm that had been living in his bowels and I thought, eww!, and then I remembered that my novel was coming out and clapped my hands and laughed. Yay tapeworm! Yay Magic or Madness!

The only sad thing is that I’ll be here in Sydney not there in the US when vast quantities of my novel are unloaded from huge crates and arrayed on shelves (or, you know, the lone copy is slotted in between Madeleine L’Engle and Ursula Le Guin, either way). So I won’t be able to go to bookshops and gaze at MY novel for sale. This is where Scalzi’s genius idea comes in: if anyone out there happens to be in a real live bookshop that happens to stock my novel, and happen to have their camera with them, and just happens to take a photo of Magic or Madness in said bookshop, well, I’d just adore it if you sent it to me.

To further heighten my already fever-pitch excitement and make it impossible to think about anything other than Magic or Madness, reviews have started to appear. A friend of mine, an established novelist, who’s published many books and received many reviews, told me I should pay no attention to reviews. Good or bad, she says it’s unwise to let them affect how you feel about yourself or your work. This is especially true of good reviews. You must not let praise go to your head. I’m sure she’s very wise. Sadly I have not a skerrick of wisdom and I’m revelling in the good reviews, learning them off by heart. I just got a starred one (which even tops getting a gold koala bear stamp from your kindergarten teacher) in School Library Journal:

Australian author Larbalestier has wrought beautiful and fearsome magic in this novel, the first in a proposed trilogy. Reason Cansino has spent her life with her unusual mother in the bush, moving frequently, keeping to herself, and learning how to guard against her bizarre grandmother, Esmeralda. When her mother goes insane and 15-year-old Reason is sent to live with Esmeralda, she starts to question all the stories her mother has told her. Is Mere practicing magic, which Reason’s mother insisted was not real? Why have nearly all her ancestors died young? When Reason digs up a dead cat in the cellar and finds the key to a locked (magic) door, she escapes her increasingly frightening grandmother only to find herself halfway around the world in New York City, weak, in danger, and befriended by the mysterious Jay-Tee. Authentic teen voices from two continents reveal the fast-paced events and the conflicts faced by youth when powerful (and predatory) adults seek to take advantage of their ignorance. Readers will especially identify with Reason as she struggles to accept her identity and establish autonomy. Larbalestier’s sense of place and refreshing exploration of magic as a force for both good and evil make this novel unusual. By turns a fantasy adventure and a thoughtful examination of relationships, this radiant gem stands alone, but expect readers to be impatient for the rest of the trilogy.-Melissa Moore, Union University Library, Jackson, TN.

I plan to have a T-shirt made that says "radiant gem". Sigh. This review will sustain me through every bad one. Hell, I’ll be remembering this review when I’ve got one foot in the grave, my books are long forgotten, and I’m living on charity. "I was a radiant gem!" I’ll tell them. "A radiant gem!" I love School Library Journal. I love Melissa Moore. I love her library and the whole city of Jackson, Tennessee.

I don’t want you to think I’m naïve though. Well, okay, I can be naïve (when I watch Entourage I’m forever asking Scott if men really talk that way about women) but I’m not naïve about publishing in the USA. Having your first novel published does not guarantee anything very much. Having a sheaf of wonderful starred reviews doesn’t either. Many highly lauded novels have sunk without a trace. Many first novels sell poorly, rarely earning out their advance, and boy do I know just how small those unearned-out advances usually are. Though a recent survey by Tobias Buckell (who’s also soon to have his first novel published) did point to higher advances as your career continues. That is, if you’re career continues . . .

Many first novelists never sell a second novel. This is where I’m a teeny bit ahead of the game: I sold a trilogy. Whatever happens, I’ll have had three novels published. Cunning, eh? That is, if the first one doesn’t tank and the next two don’t wind up cancelled. But, I’m not worried, honest. My editors like the sequel and, hey, it already has a beautiful cover design! It’s got a scheduled publication date!

Besides, I’m a radiant gem. School Library Journal said so.

Sydney, 4 March 2005

Miss Havisham Restored

Eliza Emily Donnithorne, the model for Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, has had her vandalised gravestone repaired. A report on the current affairs show, The 7:30 Report, tonight showed the gravestone being repaired by TAFE students and stonemasons. It looks almost good as new. Donations from The Dickens Society and the Rookwood Anglican Cemetery made it possible.

The Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC also have the story.

Isn’t that grand?

Sydney, 25 November 2004

Ray Charles, Democracy and the US of A

I watched Scott vote today. Went into the polling booth with him, pulled the curtain behind us, and watched him pull the big lever at the bottom from right to left, which turns on a light outside the booth to say there’s a-votin’ going on. Then he flipped little levers in a long column to indicate his choices for president, senator, and a whole raft of other stuff. When he was done and had checked it and doublechecked it and then checked it again, he pulled the big lever down the bottom all the way back to the left to make his vote good and turn the light off, clearing the way for the next voter.

It was nothing like how we vote back home. We Australians are a primitive people who rely on paper ballots and pencils; not polling booths that look like a cross between the Tardis and some kind of high-faluting time machine from the 1930s.

The polling station was doing a steady business. There wasn’t much of the crying and laughing and general high spirited this-is-the-most-important-election-of-modern-US-history vibe I’ve been hearing about from my friends in other parts of the country and reading about all over the web. I mean this is the East Village in New York City where everything is a foregone conclusion, but, hey it was still pretty nice. One of the women working there—her job was to take your voter card thingie just before you go in the booth—she couldn’t stop smiling. She asked me if I was feeling it. I said sure, but I’m foreign and not voting so I’m feeling it for you. She laughed out loud. I wished her and her country luck. She grinned and said it was going to be just fine and luck had nothing to do with it.

Out on the street, Scott yelled, and I yelled too cause his exultation was contagious. I’ve never felt exultant about voting back home where it’s compulsory and if you don’t vote you get fined. But Scott voted and we both got tears in our eyes. How about that?

Then we went home and obsessively surfed and read hundreds of fabulous voter stories from all over the country. Of people who always get to the polls early so they can be first to vote and suddenly found themselves behind a queue of fifty people. Everywhere people were turning out in record numbers and dancing when they voted, declaring that voting had never felt so good.

It wasn’t all good news: I got an email from a friend who’d had their right to vote challenged in New Jersey and had to vote provisionally (provisional votes very often get thrown out on technicalities). This makes my head spin. Like I said, back home you have to vote.

Today all anyone can talk about is voting, the unprecedented turnout, the election, what it all means. No one can sit still. I sure as hell can’t. I didn’t even try. Instead I left my diligent hard-working husband and went to the movies.

I saw Ray the new biopic about Ray Charles. Unbelieveable. I cried pretty much the whole way through. It’s extraordinary. The movie summed up everything I adore about this country. There I said it: I love the US of A. It also hit everything I hate about it too. The racism, the myopia, the—well, you all know the list. Who cares? Today I’m seeing the creativity, the music, the strength, the blind black man refusing to play in front of a segregated audience and getting banned from ever playing in Georgia again (a ban not lifted until 1979!). I just see the people getting out and voting despite all the obstacles placed in their way, despite the fact that it’s raining, or that some other folks are trying to stop them. They’re just going about their business of getting out the vote.

I love this place.

New York City, 2 November 2004

Two Weeks in Buenos Aires

In Buenos Aires almost everyone I met eventually talked about La Crisis, about waking up one morning and finding that they had two thirds less money than they had had the day before, about having to drop out of university, about losing their jobs, their apartment, their house.

One woman was in Germany in 2001 at the time of La Crisis. She rushed to the bank to get out what money she could, but from the time she joined the queue to the time she got to the bank teller, the Argentinian peso had dropped even more. Her life savings were no longer enough to pay for a ticket home.

A taxi driver told me that he was part of the largest social class in Argentina—those who once were middle class, but no longer. "I still think that way," he told me, "but what does middle class mean when you are in your forties and you and your wife and children live with your widowed mother in her one-bedroom apartment?"

He wanted to know about the cost of living in Australia. How much is a cup of coffee? What is the average wage? How concentrated is ownership of Australia’s wealth? How widespread is poverty? He was able to reel off statistics about Argentina. To my shame I could not match him. What did I think about Chavez in Venezuela? he asked me. What did Australians think about him? I didn’t want to tell him that most Australians had not heard of Chavez.

I told the story several times of how, but for a bureaucratic decision, I could have been Argentinian: In 1938 when my grandfather had to get out of Poland in a hurry, he applied to migrate to both Argentina and Australia. Argentina was his first choice, it seemed more European, less far away. The Argentinian consulate turned him down, the Australian didn’t. (Of course, if my grandfather hadn’t wound up in Australia and adopted my father, there’s every possibility I wouldn’t be the me that I am. I didn’t mention any of that. It ruins a good story.)

I had the similarities-between-Argentina-and-Australia conversation many times. Sheep, cattle, wine, immigrants, colonialism. The conversation always ended in a moment of silence as we contemplated the differences between the two countries. There has (so far) been no La Crisis in Australia. While poverty back home is disgraceful, it is not on the scale of Argentina, where more than fifty per cent of the population now lives below the poverty line. There has never been a military coup in Australia.

Back in New York City, I told an Argentinian friend how impressed I was by the book culture of Buenos Aires. How many bookstores there were, how incredibly well stocked, how beautiful. How many streets were named for writers. How everywhere I went I saw people reading. I had experienced none of the anti-intellectualism that is so common back home. When I told people I was a writer they were not bemused, they did not ask if I was published or not, they understood and appreciated what it means to be a writer. "Ah yes," he said. "Books. But that’s about all that’s left. All the major publishing houses have closed or been bought up by Spanish companies. The universities are crumbling. Twenty years ago they were the best in Latin America, now the students don’t know whether their professors will turn up or not."

He sighed. The same sigh I heard many times during my two weeks in Buenos Aires. The sigh of the waitress who told me that, "Of course, I can’t ever travel. Not to Australia or Europe or Asia or North America or Africa. Those doors are shut for us now. Airplanes are too expensive and when we arrive our money is not worth as much as the paper it is printed on. We have to do whatever we can here." She waved her arm to take in the bar, and beyond that Palermo, the rest of Buenos Aires, of Argentina. "And if I want to know what those places are like, I talk to tourists like you."

"Doing whatever we can here" is in evidence in all the trendier parts of Buenos Aires. Fabulous new restaurants and bars, gorgeous clothing and design shops are everywhere. The street markets are overflowing with really wonderful clothes, pottery, jewellery, toys, art, books—all made by the person selling them to you for embarrassingly low prices. We bought more than we could afford, because everything was so beautiful and so cheap, and because we were trying to salve some of our yanqui-dollar guilt by contributing to the fragile economy.

New York City, 4 October 2004

O Happy Day!

I have discovered the cure for homesickness: watch the New York Liberty live at Madison Square Garden come back from nowhere to beat the Detroit Shock (last year’s WNBA champions) and win the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Apologies to my Texas relatives, but: we BLOODY won!!!!!

I cannot tell you how badly we played in the first half. We sucked. Almost none of our shots went in, we developed a deep seated fear of going into the paint. We were beyond timid and into cowardly in defence. Nobody was hot, nobody was defending well, or making shots. They out scored us, out rebounded us, out pretty much everythinged us and the only reason they were only 13 up at the end of the half was because they also turned over the ball way more than we did. That first half was truly horrible.

And for most of the second half things weren’t looking that great. We were better than the first half, but we were still missing shots, our defence was still wobbly, but Detroit started to crumble—by the last five minutes they could not bribe their way into making free throws. Our field goal percentage started to inch its way up from an abysmal sub thirty per cent. We started to look decent, Crystal Robinson and Becky Hammon started making shots when we really, really needed them, helping to claw our way within four points of Detroit. And then in the last few minutes tie it, and then lead. And then it was tied again . . .

The final miracle, Bethany Donaphin, who had buggered up a whole series of plays for most of the game and missed ridiculously easy shots made a turnaround jumper in the last 0.5 seconds to put us two points ahead. Unbelieveable. We won!!!

Here’s what really made the difference: we, the crowd, screamed ourselves hoarse. I’ve never ever seen us go nuts like that. Everyone was leaping up, yelling, applauding, screaming, singing, stamping our feet. It was unbelievable. My ears are still ringing, my hands hurt and my heart is beating way too fast. If it hadn’t been a home game the Liberty would’ve lost, for definite. But it was and we didn’t.

We were home in time to watch the end of the LA Sparks v Sacramento Monarchs game. The Monarchs slaughtered them and are now through to the Western Conference Finals against my favourite West Coast team, the Seattle Storm, starring the divine Lauren Jackson. I am not fond of LA, not as an idea, not as a place, and definitely not as a women’s basketball team. Seeing Sacramento beat LA made a perfect night even perfecter. Here’s to a WNBA final between Seattle and New York.

Right now, I’m not feeling homesick at all, me.

New York City, 29 September 2004

Good Weekend

I am in the middle of writing a new novel and rewriting an old one. My mornings are spent in the Magic or Madness universe; my afternoons in 12th-century Cambodia; the rest of the time I sleep. Both books must be finished scarily soon. So musings here? Not so much.

For those complaining about their lack, and my shocking tardiness in responding to emails, here’s what I did on the weekend:

I helped Scott put together this very cool site: the first three chapters of So Yesterday with New York City photos. If you like any of them, those are most likely the ones by the very talented Robin & Trish Cave. All hail Simpleviewer!

A recommendation of So Yesterday was posted on boingboing.net causing a HUGE improvement in the book’s amazon.com ranking. All hail boingboing!

I wrote a vast deal, read large chunks of it out loud to Scott for critique, and there was much praise, and much happiness.

Scott cooked me a dinner of angel hair pasta and black truffles with a salad of farmer’s market greens and heirloom tomatoes. Decadent and delicious. I do adore autumn here. I’ve never eaten better tomatoes in all my life.

I saw the New York Liberty vanquish the Washington Mystics at Madison Square Garden (so, so, so good to be back there!) and vault into second place in the Eastern conference, securing them homecourt advantage, and cementing their place in the playoffs. Shamika Christon, our incredibly promising rookie, finally got beyond promise and did, did, did. My happiness is beyond measure: Let’s Go Liberty!

New York City, 20 September 2004

So Yesterday

Scott’s latest book, So Yesterday, came out this week. Among other things, it’s a love letter to New York City. He started writing it not long after we arrived back here last summer after almost two years of living in Sydney. He was supposed to be writing the second Midnighters book, but instead So Yesterday came rushing out.

Scott had to write it. He was so happy to be back in his city to stay for awhile. He hadn’t been here for more than a couple of weeks since December 2001 and he was hurting. We had to visit all his old haunts, coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, bars, bookshops, movie theatres, and make sure they were still there, still with his favourite wait staff and bartenders. We had to mourn the closing of a favourite coffee shop across the street and a used book store around the corner, and sit in Tompkins Square Park to chuckle at the NYU students walking by.

Our first few weeks here were one long sustained sigh of relief for Scott. Writing So Yesterday was another one. He poured all his love and irritation and fears and delight in New York City onto the page, writing about a seventeen-year-old kid, Hunter Braque. The kind of kid Scott might have been at the same age if he’d been living in Manhattan, rather than Dallas, and had been a little savvier and, well, cooler. Hunter’s a cool-spotter, living in New York City, loving it, and working hard to pass as one of its hip inhabitants even though a part of him will always be convinced he’s a daggy kid from Minnesota. Which he isn’t. (I kind of have a crush on Hunter.)

So Yesterday is the first book Scott has written since we got together that I’ve seen move from conception to sitting on the shelves of a bookshop. I was with him when he was rewriting Succession (The Risen Empire + Killing of Worlds), and I was there for the first draft of Midnighters, but its outlining stage had been a long one, starting way back before we’d even met. I saw the entire gestation of So Yesterday—all ten minutes of it. Scott over the breakfast table, sipping his coffee, saying, “You know what would be fun to write? A novel about a cool-hunter in New York City.” After breakfast he started writing it. Several weeks later (told you it just poured out of him) I read an extremely polished first draft. And a year and some later there it is, prominently displayed at Books of Wonder and Barnes & Noble.

So I’m stoked, and not just because I was there from woe to go, not just because it’s fabulous, not just because my book will be published by the same imprint, Razorbill, next March, but also because it’s Scott’s first book to be published in Australia. It comes out back home next month. I can’t help feeling that being published in Australia cements his relationship with my homeland just a little bit more. First he married an Australian, then he became a permanent resident, and now he has an Australian editon of one of his books. Here’s hoping it’ll be the first of many.

New York City, 14 September 2004

A Night at the Oak Room

I’ve never been in a room with so many face lifts. Terrifying. The air was heavy with perfume. They wore diamonds dangling from fingers, wrists, ears, throats, or glittering in their hair. The men wore suits, enhanced with ties, cravats, and handkerchiefs daringly sticking up from breast pockets. These were the kind of people who own more than one house, car, boat. These were not people like me and Scott.

Here we were jammed cheek by jowl into the Oak Room with people who didn’t live in the East Village or Park Slope or Harlem or Chelsea or any of the other places our friends reside. We were the youngest in the room. I was the only woman not wearing make up; Scott the only man whose shirt was not cinched with a tie. We overheard them subtly pointing out the celebs. Only one of which we’d heard of—Helen Gurly Brown—seated at a table just near us (the Oak Room ain’t big; everyone was seated at a table just near us) and we weren’t a hundred per cent sure which one was her.

What the hell were we doing there? Scott’s fault. He knows that I was brought up on the songbooks of Duke Ellington, Gershwin, Cole Porter. That my head is jammed full of the lyrics of hundreds and hundreds of standards from the twenties, thirties and forties. He was shocked to learn that I had never seen any of that music performed live, had never been to any cabaret. We were going to celebrate two years living together by doing just that.

This was opening night. Before the show even started Andrea Marcovicci, looking divine and very much the diva with her short silvery hair, high cheekbones, and black and silver shell top and skirt ensemble, was circling the room greeting people with a theatrical "Hello, darling!" and air kisses. She seemed to know almost everyone. The couple seated opposite us from Bay Ridge (Sydneysiders, think Sylvania Waters) made sure they attended all her shows, owned all her cds, and were shocked that I’d never heard of Andrea before.

By the time the show was about to start my expectations were through the roof. Scott had waxed over-the-top enthusiastic about her Gershwin show. It wasn’t just me expecting something earth-shatteringly good: even before the lights had gone down the room quieted, all you could hear were diamonds clinking. The expectations made the air almost as thick as if people were still allowed to smoke. Then the lights went down, everyone held their breaths. Andrea lit so beautifully that she glowed, strolled out smiling, blowing kisses, took up the microphone and sang.

Vibrato. Lots of vibrato. I hate vibrato. Her voice was not the jazzy contralto I’d been expecting. She’s more in the Mary Martin Broadway singer mold. I hate Mary Martin’s voice. The song ended, everyone applauded. Scott leaned forward, "What do you think?" I turned, gave him a frozen smile, and squeezed his knee. Fortunately she started singing "If I Were a Bell" almost at once, making it impossible for me to say anything.

Andrea didn’t destroy "If I Were a Bell" as Jean Simmons had in the movie version. Her diction was perfect, and there was considerably less vibrato. Better, I thought, nervously, but she’s not exactly Sarah Vaughan or Ute Lemper. I may be able to endure this evening. The song ended, Andrea started talking, started charming, she introduced her two accompanists, one on piano and the other on bass, both superb musicians. She began to tell the story of upper-class Jewish lyricist Frank Loesser who was never quite what his mother wanted. Tin Pan Alley so declasse. Andrea described mother and son and I could see them vividly.

Something magical happened. Andrea was wonderful, her voice suddenly the best voice I have ever heard. She sang and I was grinning. I looked around: everyone in the room was grinning. Every single person, from audience to waiters, had their eyes on her. Riveted. I hugged Scott, said, "Thank you."

She told more stories, mostly about Loesser and his first wife, who was known as the evil of two Loessers. His second wife, his widow, was in the audience, as were his two daughters, one of whom had just published a book about her father, to which Andrea referred often. I wanted to buy the book, I wanted to buy Andrea, or perhaps, be Andrea, or have this show never end, or something.

She was warm, witty, funny. An incredible story-teller. Her show is not a series of songs so much as a two-hour long opera, each song following naturally, almost, inevitably, from the next—those we all knew and could mouth the words to as well as the known-only-to-musicologists, not-sung-since-the-thirties ditties. Each story Andrea shared with us built on her previous stories. The more stories and songs Andrea sang, the more immersed in this world we became. Andrea asked us questions, laughed at the shouted answers, admitted her occasional ignorance and hoped the experts in the audience would forgive her.

She sang to each and every one of us: shaming us for breaking her heart, begging our permission to go out and play, exhorting us to go buy war bonds, flirting with us.

When it ended we were left dizzy, instantly pleading for encores, not because that’s what you do, but because we weren’t ready for the real world. The thought of leaving the hot, over-crowded Oak Room, full of all these people who had become our best friends in all the world. We applauded till our hands tingled, smiling at each other warmly, knowing that no one else could understand what we’d just experienced.

The last encore was, "Baby, It’s Cold Outside", sung with her brilliant pianist. Andrea tempted him to stay, his resistance was futile. It was hilarious. Funnier than I’ve ever heard that song be before. She invited everyone to sing along; we all did.

The show ended with Andrea being swamped with many gorgeous bouquets. It was her birthday, as well as the anniversary of her first appearance at the Oak Room some twenty years earlier. She thanked everyone, from Loesser’s family to her other friends and supporters and the music experts in the audience. She got teary; we got teary.

Neither Scott nor I were in any mood to go home. We sat in the Algonquin bar drinking cocktails. Me, one appropriately called an Andrea Marcovicci, Scott a Dorothy Parker. The diva herself held court at a table nearby, talking to everyone, shining as brightly as she had while performing. Looking not remotely tired.

I ran into her (literally) on the way back from the bathroom. Hot-cheeked and stammering I gushed about how much I’d enjoyed the show, how I’d never heard those songs performed live before. I babbled on about it being Scott’s present to me on our anniversary. She put her arm around me, beckoned to Scott to come over, hugged him too, told us that the second anniversary was special, and several other things I didn’t hear because I was in touched-by-a-goddess mode. Gormless fan, that’s me.

On our way out we passed another couple, in their seventies or early eighties. Both dressed up to the nines with beatific expressions on their faces.

"Wasn’t the show wonderful?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," the woman said. "You were there?" She sounded surprised.

We nodded, both grinning.

"So wonderful to see young people!" the man said, as though he’d never seen anyone below fifty before.

"She’s glorious, isn’t she?" Scott said.

They agreed that she was, delighted by our (in context) youthful presence, as if our sole purpose in attending the show had been to reassure them that the music of Frank Loesser would not be forgotten.

We walked home in the cold autumn night, past the over-the-top gaudiness of Times Square, tipsy, giggling and enchanted.

New York City, 19 November 2003

Why I Use the Term USian

Because everytime I forget and call them “Americans”, I get in trouble from my Mexican and Canadian friends. I hate being in trouble.

The Mexicans tell me I should call them “gringos” or “yanquis”, but then it turns out that they’d also call Canadians or English people or me a gringo (okay, gringa, whatever), thus limiting the usefulness of the term. I have a Texan husband who points out that yankee does not apply to the people of the southern states of the USA. (Though from my brief sojourns in the south I noted that Southerners more commonly use the term “damnyankee” to refer to USians from the northern states.)

I’d love to call them sepos, but sadly the word derives from yankee: septic tank rhymes with yank. Apparently this was first used during World War II when there were too many sepo soldiers (overpaid and over here) polluting the streets of Sydney and Brisbane, luring away “our” women with their nylon stockings and chocolate (those bastards). The straight Aussie boys were not well pleased. (I don’t really care whether this is the true derivation. I like it and will continue to quote it no matter what convincing contrary evidence the gentle readers choose to send in my direction.)

My Canadian friends use “USian”. It’s ugly, looks foul on the page, trips awkwardly from the tongue, but perversely I kind of like it.

New York City, 22 October 2003

Ten Things Australians should know about the USA

1. Yes, Virginia, there are USians with a sense of irony. The streets of NYC are paved with it. A few weeks ago I saw a gorgeous caricature of a woman with lots of makeup, high heels, big hair, in tight capris, flimsy T-shirt emblazoned in sparkling gold lettering with the word "darling", walking along with her tiny pet chihuahua and her enormous body-builder boyfriend. The dog, who was slightly bigger than my hand, fell into a hole in the footpath and got stuck, taking some coaxing and tugging to set it free. "See, honey?" she said to her man. "I told you this dog was too big." Try reading the stories of Terry Bisson, Kelly Link, or Howard Waldrop, or pretty much any good writing from the South (Flannery O’Conner, Kate Chopin, Florence King, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote). I appear to be implying that irony is a largely south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line thing. Au contraire. Read the sex advice columns of Dan Savage, check out the Onion, the Julia/Julie project, Bellona Times, or Izzle Pfaff. And, yes, sarcasm does count. I love sarcasm.

2. Very few USians are blonde. Even in California. Hell, especially in California.

3. USians are not all the same. Come on people, the USA has a population creeping up on 300 million and every last one of them is the same? You want diversity? Come to the United States of America. In NYC just walking a block you hear more accents then I’ve ever heard in Sydney, and I’m not simply talking about the Russians and Dominicans and French and Italians and Chinese, but the folk who hail from Kentucky and Minnesota and Rhode Island and Alabama and New Jersey. Unlike Australia, the USA has three strong colonial influences: the English, the Spanish and the French. It shows. For instance, Texas has been under six different flags: the Spanish, the French, the Mexican, the Texan, the Confederate and now, of course, the US flag. Texans will never forget those glorious five seconds when it was the nation of Texas. It’s the only state where the school kids have a clearer idea of what the state flag looks like than the national one. All the cities I’ve visited are markedly different: Austin is nothing like New York City which bares no resemblance to San Francisco which could not be more different from Los Angeles which sure as hell ain’t Chicago which can’t possibly be in the same country as Miami. And I’ve never been to New Orleans, the one everyone says is a whole other world.

4. USians do not uniformally dress badly. But I may not be the person to judge. Me, I like Hawaiian shirts.

5. They’re not all ignorant. Try telling that to any number of the world-class scholars here. Or to the bartender who told me in great detail about the war with Canada. "The USA went to war with Canada?" I repeated, ignorantly. I thought he was having a lend, apparently not. There’s not a country in the world, including Australia, that isn’t full of people who know only about their immediate (and I mean immediate) local area. I’ve met Australians who don’t know who the premier of their state is or, more shockingly, the prime minister (oh, okay, it was a five-year-old kid, but still!) Many non-Sydney-siders seem to be under the impression that every suburb of that fair city is on the beach, and that all the cops are corrupt. Such sad ignorance.

6. USians only rarely have names like Gidget or Rock. Disappointingly that turns out to have been a fifties thing. I have, however, met several Randys, a Sue-Ellen and a Cory (but he’s Canadian).

7. It may comes as a shock to some, but there are many USians who dislike the current adminstration. I’ve met many people here who do not suffer from the delusion that Iraq had anything to do with the attacks of 11 September, or that giving incredibly rich people massive tax breaks will help the poor. Not just people from predominantly liberal cities like Austin, NYC, Seattle, Madison, or San Francisco, but from Crawford, Texas (supposedly Bush country) and Lexington, Kentucky, from Maine, New Hampshire, Missouri, Alaska and Nebraska, from all over the USA. Yes, this is the country that produced Ronald Reagan and Ann Coulter, but it also produced Woody Guthrie and Paul Robeson.

8. Some of the most annoying USians are actually Canadian: William Shatner, Jim Carrey and Celine Dion are not their fault.

9. Yes, you really do have to tip everyone for everything: you should tip waiters; everyone at a petrol station; tattooists (though possibly not if they’ve botched it by etching "LIGHTING" on your forearm when you asked for "LIGHTNING"); maids and bellboys; the hairdresser, hairwasher and receptionist; your friends; anyone who smiles at you in any service situation ever (or snarls for that matter). The amount varies radically, not just from state to state, and city to city, but from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. The richer the area, the bigger the tip. Try to relax about it. Tipping only becomes an issue if you don’t tip or you tip too little. When that happens they will sure as hell let you know by threatening violence to your person (cab drivers are particularly touchy about tips) to avert disaster thrust $20 in their hands and run. Fortunately, unlike in socialist countries, tipping too much seems not to bother them.

10. Anything you can say about the USA is most likely true. It’s a big place; there are bound to be aliens landing in flying saucers somewhere.

In answer to the query: I use the term "USian" because all my Canadian and Mexican friends get cranky when I use the term "American" if I don’t mean them as well. Canadians are very scary.

New York City, 7 September 2003

Blackout in New York City

Thursday 14 August 2003: Scott was not having the best day and he was beginning to feel conspired against. We got home just after 4pm feeling hot and tired. Scott turned the fan on. It sputtered pathetically into action, slow and half-arsed.

"Great, now the fan’s broken too."

In the bathroom the lights were so dim the filaments were visible.

"Brown out," said Scott.

I was sitting with my laptop watching every mail browser spin looking for a signal. At the same time we both had the genius idea of looking out the window. No traffic lights. No power on anywhere. People were starting to leave the restaurants and stores nearby. Sirens blared (though, this being NYC, not noticeably more than usual).

The revelation that it wasn’t just us transformed Scott’s mood instantly. He went into action, finding his battery-operated short-wave radio:

WNYC reports that the power’s out in all five boroughs and parts of New Jersey and Westchester county. A million people—foot traffic—are on the Brooklyn Bridge. I try to imagine this. Apparently if everyone leaves all the buildings in Midtown and downtown during the day, there isn’t enough room for them all on the streets. It doesn’t look very busy here in the East Village.

4:40PM: I have enough battery for an hour on my computer. Enough time to start this musing, but not really enough to do any of my paid writing work.

Scott says we have to go get supplies in case the blackout lasts for a while. I think that’s silly, but don’t say so. It’s true that there’s very little food in the house. We just got back from a week in Dallas. The day before we left our fridge died. So it stands unplugged and completely empty in our kitchen.

On the way down we check the (tiny as a matchbox, built in 1912) lift. No-one is trapped in it. I very rarely ride in it myself on account of it being tiny as a matchbox and built in 1912.

The girls who were moving in on the 3rd floor are grateful to be told what’s going on.

"Does this happen a lot?" they ask. They are sweet and southern and brand new to the city.

"No," we assure them.

"Last one was 1977," says Scott. This is news to me. Though by the end of the day I know all about the great blackouts of 1965 and 1977.

They don’t look very convinced.

There isn’t an unusual amount of people on the streets. The supermarket across the way is dark and shut up. But most of the small shops have stayed open. The organic food store on our block is open. There’s only one other customer. It’s incredible how dark it is, even in broad daylight. We stumble around, wishing we’d brought a torch, and eventually find water and food.

By the time we get to the counter, there’s a line and more people are coming in. The woman behind the counter has to add up the totals by hand. It takes time. We learn that the power is out in Detroit and parts of Canada too.

Everyone who comes in asks about water, matches, candles, torches, batteries. Being a health food store they have no matches, torches, batteries.

On the way back up the stairs the woman from the floor above tells us that the Niagara power grid went out and that they’re sure it wasn’t terrorists. She seems very relieved. Terrorism hadn’t occurred to me. Probably because I wasn’t here for 11 September 2001 (though my mother later suggests that maybe it’s because I’ve been through blackouts in Sydney and elsewhere, but then who the hell hasn’t?).

5:15pm: After an hour of blackout the traffic is backed up along Second Avenue. There’s music playing and more people out on the street than on a Saturday night. Civilian volunteers have declared themselves traffic conductors and stand at most of the big intersections, trying to keep the box clear, and the traffic moving as much as it can. Scott realises we don’t have C batteries for our Maglite torch and runs out to get them while I fill every container in the house, which sadly is not many, with water. It occurs to me that the Liberty game against Houston might not be on. (Later I discover it had been cancelled at 5pm.)

Scott returns with apples and batteries. There are now queues out on to the footpath. Scott got the last C batteries in the store. When he asked for matches or a lighter the guy behind the counter shook his head, then simply gave Scott his own lighter. A woman came in asking for matches or a lighter just after this transaction. She had an unlit cigarette in her hand and looked quite desperate. Scott played gentleman and lit it for her.

There’s gridlock on Second Ave as far as I can see from the roof. Some of the vehicles are overflowing with passengers, the back of pickup trucks are full. It looks like the end of the world with people fleeing the city however they can. A very slow exodus: it takes about forty minutes for a vehicle to get from Sixth Street to Houston. Normally this would take no longer than forty seconds.

Every two blocks or so you can see the glitter of lights from emergency vehicles. Up above dozens of helicopters hover like dragonflies over Manhattan.

The stream of pedestrian traffic is so swollen that people are walking on the street as well as the footpath. Many are walking in suits, their ties pulled loose, jackets draped over arms. Several of the women hobble along in high heels.

The people who work at Global 33, one of the bars on Second, have put out a table and are handing out free water in plastic cups to passersby. They seem to be letting people use their bathroom too. They do this for several hours.

7:30PM: (when the Liberty versus Houston game would’ve started) we’re still up on the roof watching and talking to neighbours who work up in Midtown. They tell us about the incredible crush on the street once they’d made it down the stairs of their tall office buildings.

Now I’m thinking about all the people trapped in the subway system, and in elevators. I hope all the hospitals have generators.

We’ve been able to phone Sydney and Dallas to leave messages and talk to our families, letting them know we’re fine and all stocked up and ready for the duration. I narrowly stopped myself from putting on a Winston Churchill voice as I said this. When we try again later, we can’t phone anyone outside the city.

We go out on to the streets to check out three regular haunts: Counter, Veloce and Ike’s. First Avenue is much much quieter than Second. Hardly any cars. The people all seem to be locals. No-one looks frazzled or desperate to get home. At Counter they let us in, but only because they know us. They’re operating by candlelight, trying to close before dark. The place looks eerily beautiful.

The bartender points out that his Maglight is bigger than mine. I am plunged into a soul-crushing sadness for about .0004 of a second. We wish them luck closing before the sun sets completely (at this point they have maybe twenty minutes) and reject their offer of a free drink. They look exhausted.

All the cross streets are full of locals who, like us, are finding this more of an adventure than a trial. Getting across Second Ave, despite the crush of pedestrians, is not too bad. The vehicle traffic is not moving at all.

Veloce has burst out onto the street. People have dragged their stools onto the footpath and are chatting with the weary passsersby struggling to get home, many of whom momentarily give up the struggle and join the Veloce crowd, drinking the still-cold drinks while they last.

Veloce is long and narrow. Stools on one side face the bar and on the other side face a ledge wide enough for drinks and plates. There are mirrors on both walls that somehow manage to make the place look bigger than it is.

Without fans or aircon it’s hot, so most people are drinking on the street. Like Counter the place is transformed by candle light into something almost magical. Everyone looks young and happy. Though I don’t think the normally calm, cool bartender appreciates the magic. He has stripped down from his usual attire of natty Italian suit and is without jacket or tie. He looks hot and frazzled and as more and more people come in his frazzlement grows. I wish there was something I could do to help.

We pull up two stools at the bar, not too far from the entrance and the bartender gives us the coldest drinks he has. It’s the best beer I’ve ever tasted although normally I only like much heavier beers. It’s SO icy cold that momentarily my mouth is numb but happy. Very happy.

I thank the owner for staying open and he grins. "What else are you going to do?"

He tells us that they’d just gotten their supplies for the weekend. Thursday is the typical supply day for restaurants. The sushi places are doing it bad, he says. All that fish. They’re coping by staying open and slashing their prices, desperately trying to get rid of as much seafood as they can. The only fish Veloce serves is preserved anchovies. They do have a lot of meat and cheese. The cheese he’s not too worried about, but the meat . . . "This better not last more than a day or two."

Even better than the cold cold beer: Veloce is serving food. We’re starving. We devour two eggplant tramezini in seconds. Superb. (At least I think they are—there’s only momentary contact with my tastebuds.)

A woman next to us looks lonely and annoyed. Scott asks her what her story is. She’s been trying to contact her friend who lives round the corner, but her mobile isn’t working, and the buzzer to his apartment uses electricity. Scott’s mobile still has a signal, so she uses that, and her friend joins us at Veloce. Another happy story in the dark city.

Second Ave is still ridiculously packed, so instead of heading south to Ike’s we head east.

Tompkin Square Park is overflowing with people. The party is in full swing. The park is so unbelievably dark we can’t see each other. We hold hands to avoid being separated. About 10 metres from us Scott recognises an Aussie accent.

"Are you Australian?" I call out.

"Too right," comes the reply.

"Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!" I start the chant.

"Oi! Oi! Oi!" They complete it. We all laugh. Sounds like there are at least six of them.

Further into the park a bonfire blazes in a metal trash can, surrounded by a big crowd. We move closer to see what’s going on. Tompkin Square Park Olympics: the trash-can-with-bonfire leaping event. One boy sails over with half a metre to spare. His shirt flies up revealing a very cut stomach. Everyone screams and claps and stomps.

Elsewhere in the park there’s a percussion band. I’m pretty sure I hear glockenspeils. Lots of people are sitting on blankets, laughing, talking and only occasionally making out. In the distance you can hear fireworks. New York City in a blackout is fabulous. (But then I wasn’t stuck at the top of a ferris wheel in Toys R Us, or in a lift, or down in the subway.)

People are promenading with glow sticks, kerosene lamps, high-tech glowing lamps and torches. I start saying, "Happy Black-out" to people we pass. They all laugh.

Most of the bars in the area are open and candle lit. At Vazak’s we get carded. The lighting is pretty bad. We don’t have ID so the bouncer won’t let us in. We point out that in addition to us being a million years older than twenty-one, they’re unlikely to be busted on a blackout night. After all, people everywhere are flouting the no-smoking-in-bars law. He points to the cop car parked outside. The cops are standing around having friendly chats with people holding beer bottles. Drinking alcohol on the streets of NYC is illegal. These cops do not look like they’re going to bust the law-breakers or come into Vazak’s demanding to see everyone’s ID. But the bouncer at Vazak’s remains adamant.

On the way to Ike’s we come across people sitting on their stoop dripping glow sticks from every limb. The sticks are left over from a huge party. They immediately hand us each a glow stick of our very own. We wear them on our wrists. We wish them a happy blackout too.

The glow sticks are excellently bright and we feel less vulnerable to being hit by a car. Not that it’s that likely, everyone is driving amazingly slow and cautious.

Ike’s is full. One of the owners treats us to beers and vodka shots. They’re not serving food. When the blackout hit they packed all the meats with lots of ice into the freezers and then locked them. "Should keep them for a few days," he says. "I can’t imagine we’ll have power out for longer than that."

Back home those glow sticks continue to earn their way. We only have the one torch, but we can see well enough by the glow sticks for most things. Still can’t phone anyone outside New York City. Nor can we contact any of our friends in NYC. Phones ring out (answering machines not working) and we’ve lost mobile phone coverage.

We go back up on to the roof. Mars is up and glowing orange. It’s just as bright as when we saw it outside Dallas a few days ago. Quite a few of our neighbours are up there too. Some with friends staying the night who’ve given up the fight to get back to Brooklyn or New Jersey or where ever. Nobody believes the blackout will last much longer. At the very least we expect the power to be back on in the morning.

In two different places fireworks go off. Apparently there are firework caches all over the city. And a good thing too. What a waste of a blackout night if there’d been no fireworks.

Seeing only dark silhouettes of the Empire and Chrysler buildings is so bizarre, though the scene is not as end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it as I had expected. There’s a glow to the west, clearly New Jersey is back on and there’s a sprinkling of buildings in Manhattan with some lights on. Mostly down in the Financial District, but hospitals as well. There are more stars than usual but not so many that we can’t count them. This is disappointing and blows Scott’s theory that the whole blackout was a scheme of amateur astronomers determined to see the full glory of Mars while it’s at its closest to the Earth for the next zillion years.

Friday 15 August 2003, 8:30AM: I had expected the power to be on. It’s not. Still can’t phone anywhere other than New York City. The traffic outside is like on a slow Sunday. Almost everything’s closed.

When Scott wakes we’ll go for a wander, hoping to get breakfast somewhere. Last night most restaurants were doing good business. I guess we’re not the only ones with not a lot of food at home. Surely some cafes and restaurants will take pity on us poorly-stocked Manhattanites and provide us with breakfast too?

Right now I’m annoyed neither of us is a survivalist. What were we thinking not having a pantry bursting with enormous supplies of water and plenty of bottled, tinned and dried food?

While Scott sleeps I do an inventory:

Dried lentils, brown & jasmine rice, a head of garlic, raw peanuts, pecans, almonds, cashews, soy sauce, fish sauce, salted duck egggs, tin of pineapple, Carr’s Water Biscuits, Vegemite, apples, dried pasta, jar of pasta sauce.

There’s enough for the two of us for a couple of days. I guess I could also make a pineapple and garlic stir fry. I feel very resourceful and virtuous just planning the meals that I may not cook.

WNYC says there’s power above 52nd street. It’s slowly coming on all over the city. They say it will all be on by Monday morning. Hmmmm. It’ll be in the 30s today. This is going to be less fun, I suspect, than last night. At least we’re not in Cleveland where they don’t have water.

I have maybe twenty minutes battery left on my computer, which I use up with the crucially important task of writing this musing. I contemplate continuing with paper and pen. Shudder! Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Scott wakes up and we go foraging for the drug to which Scott is shakingly addicted: coffee. He asks a girl clutching a disposable coffee cup where she got it. Place up the street has a generator. The queue goes out the front door. An MTV camera crew interviews the manager; a print media journalist interviews the customers. I think about all the places around the world that never have a regular supply of electricity. Scott says the coffee is terrible.

We run into a couple of people we know, neither of whom has water in their building. Not just Cleveland then. Other than that they seem to be doing fine. Everyone’s Thursday was a blast, but today is getting wearing.

The farmers’ market at Union Square is up and running. The crowds are much bigger than usual. I get everything I need for several stir-frys. When we get home we feast on a tinned pineapple, onion, green & yellow capsicum, yellow wax beans and peanut stir-fry, accompanied by rice and steamed salted duck egg. It’s better than it sounds.

Walking around the East Village there are open fire hydrants on almost every cross streeet. Dozens of kids run in and out of the water getting drenched and spraying their less-anxious-to-get-wet friends. They cack themselves as cars drive past and get an unexpected wash.

The parks are full of people reading, hanging out, being very chill. One woman gives us her copy of The New York Times which was sold out everywhere we tried. It’s full of stories of how people survived (or in two cases, didn’t) the blackout. All about how well NYC has behaved, particularly compared to 1977. I wonder if other blackout cities are congratulating themselves on not being populated by arseholes.

Our friend Mike, we found out later, spent the day roller-blading around the city. Deb went in to help at the hospital where she normally works, though she had time off to study for her boards next week. For twenty minutes the hospital lost their generator and had to do everything by hand. There were no casualties. Kathleen saw people emerging from subway grates looking utterly miserable. Other friends cheated and went to stay with friends and relatives with power in Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

I finally get through on the phone to friends, but they are all above 52nd Street and have power. Have a lovely long conversation with Chip, catching up and generally killing time. He observes several times that other than having no email access it isn’t too bad. "At least the fans are working now."

"Mine aren’t!"

"Oh, right," says Chip. "I forgot."

6PM: The lights come on above 14th Street. Gazing up First Avenue we see the green, red, and yellow of traffic lights, the distinctly different yellow glow of the mercury vapour street lights. At 14th Street the south side is dark, the north brilliantly lit, with garish advertising. It is an assault to the eyes. Very glary and scary.

We cross back to the dark zone, not wanting to eat a meal in electric land. We buy a slice of pizza from Stromboli’s and eat it walking along the unlit glory of Seventh Street. We decide to go back up on the roof and see the spectacle of the East Village in the dark while the rest of the city shines.

9PM: While we are still in our apartment, Scott says, "What the hell is that?"

Our cable modem is flickering. Outside people start screaming. Cars honk their horns. It’s like New Year’s Eve. Scott and I whoop, though moments before we’d been rabbiting on about how much we enjoyed the darkness and how everything above 14th Street was vile.

The mobile has a signal again. We meet Mike and Kathleen at Ike’s and talk about our 29 hours without power. Mostly good experiences, even those without water, but we wouldn’t have been thrilled had it gone on too much longer.

"What would this have been like," Kathleen wonders, "if it had happened before September 11?"

New York City, 17 August 2003

People in NYC are Very Polite

As a non-resident, non-Usian, it felt very weird to be standing on the corner of Second Ave and 10th Street handing out voter registration cards. One of the first people I asked, "Are you registered to vote in New York City?" answered in a strong London accent, "Nope, I’m disenfranchised here."

"Me too," I said. (Not that I think I should have the vote, given my non-resident status.)

He cracked up.

It was a breezy warm Sunday afternoon. Breezy is probably an understatement, there were gusts big enough to send all the flyers, voter rego cards and the rocks holding them down, soaring off our table. Every time it happened people helped the four of us—Daniel, Elena, Scott and me—on our brief scavenger hunts, handing them back, or if they wanted to register, keeping them.

No-one was rude to any of us. Not one person. The worst I got was a few folk walking past without responding (and since I’ve marched past people handing out bits of paper it was hard to be offended).

I’ve never done anything like this before. I confess I did have several moments of feeling like the heroine of Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are Not the Only Fruit handing out religious tracts and saying, "Excuse me, but can I interest you in the love of Jesus?" But I got over it pretty quickly because people were so darn polite and enthusiastic about what I was doing.

Mostly people proudly declared that they were registered to vote, or that they were foreigners and couldn’t, or smiled and said no thanks before they’d even heard the question.

One woman I asked, dressed expensively (lots of gold jewellery and crisp white linen) with a deep tan, leading two beautifully groomed german shepherds, gave me a broad smile and said, "Nope, I’m not registered."

"Would you like to be?" I said, smiling winningly and proffering a registration card.

"Nope," she said with an even bigger smile. "I wouldn’t."

There were quite a few people who wanted to talk. One young man expressed interest in my Freddie Baer James Tiptree Jr. 12th Annual Award T-shirt. Claiming it was the best T-shirt he’d ever seen and that he really had to have one. He made me spell Freddie’s name several times, clearly determined to commit it to memory. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that they were all sold out this year—as they are every year—had been within hours of becoming available at this year’s WisCon.

One woman from the Dominican Republic told me proudly that the first thing she’d done when she got her US citizenship was register to vote. She’d voted in every single election, always Democrat. She would never, ever, ever vote Republican because they were bad people and George W. Bush was the baddest of them all. She took two cards from me for her sister’s children and told me that I was a very good person.

Two old men were very keen on having the "George W. Bush is a very bad man" conversation. One of them patted me on the shoulder and gave me a big thumbs up. "Good job, girl, good job." They both walked off, turning back once to smile and wave.

One man walking by, wheeling his beat-up bicycle, looked me up and down and declaimed: "I’d eat dolphin if I could. I love sushi." And kept right on going. Talk about your single-issue voters.

Elena got a very middle-of-the-road looking guy dressed in a going-to-work-middle-management kind of a suit (on a Sunday?) who talked to her for ten minutes, earnestly explaining how the government is controlling everyone electronically and that it all starts with the electronic voting booths. Neither Scott nor Daniel attracted any nutters.

Another woman (proudly registered) was looking for her friend who she described as tall, thin, dark and beautiful who was the choir mistress for St Mark’s Church (the church I was standing in front of). It was also a pretty good description of the woman herself (except for the tall bit). Though saying, "You mean, like you?" seemed somehow sleazy so I refrained. I did say I’d keep an eye out on account of I was already doing that. The woman ended up walking around the block several times, each time stopping to chat and commend us on our efforts, searching for her friend or an entrance to the church, and finding neither.

I learned pretty quickly that I would be a shithouse profiler. As people approached I’d check out what they were wearing, how they were dressed, how old they were, and have a little bet with myself about whether they’d talk to me or not. I was mostly wrong. I figured well-dressed young nightclubber types would just zip past. Wrong. They took more voter regos than any other group. Almost all of them saying, "Oh yeah, just moved here. I’ve been meaning to do that. Thanks." They also seemed to be the group most excited by the postage-paid aspect of the card. "You mean I just fill it out and pop it in the mail box? Cool."

The only groups that consistently ignored me were headphone wearers and those heavily burdened with shopping bags. Though one man weighed down with several bags and walking very tentatively, said that yes he was registered and he’d like to pick up a couple of cards for some friends of his but he couldn’t take them now cause he was on the way to the hospital where his niece had been born (Maria Lilly) and that he had a big boil on his you-know-where but he’d be back to collect the cards after he’d made the visit. He also said that I was doing a fabulous thing. "Everyone should be registered to vote."

By the end of the three hours I was feeling very saintly. I got many thumbs ups and "well-dones". I’d been told by lots of registered voters to keep up the good work, and that people like me were what made America great (okay, only one person said that—didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t actually a US citizen).

I was saddest when I asked a young man dressed in a Jason Kidd jersey with an anchor tattoo on his forearm if he was registered. "I’ve got three felony convictions," he told me. "I’m not allowed to vote."

I was proudest of the cards I handed to two people who said they’d never voted before but had decided they really had to in the next election. One of them, a young woman, said that my being there to give her the card was a sign.

I enjoyed handing out the cards far more than I had imagined and walked home in an excellent mood, feeling like I had achieved something important. Even if we end up with the same people in power for the next four years, at least I’d done something.

New York City, 27 July 2003

Sydney versus New York City

Okay, people endlessly ask me about the differences between these two cities and which one I like best. Up front I have to say, hello? Born and bred in Sydney! What do you think I’m going to say? But I’m a reasonable person, I can give an actual opinion unswayed by the fact that me, my mother, my father, and my sister were all born in the one hospital (which no longer exists, alas) in inner-city Sydney. I can forget the fact that my whole family and many of my friends are there, that I tasted good whisky for the first time there, read the majority of my favourite books, my favourite movies, did the majority of my schooling there, including high school, my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and that there is no city in the world that I know as well as I know Sydney, I can overlook all of that, and give a fair assessment of the differences between the two cities.

The Weather

In Sydney the weather is pretty much perfect. I am a total wimp. Can’t stand the cold. One time I looked up the cities around the world that rarely drop below 10C (55F) in winter and rarely get above 35C (95F) in summer. And guess what? Sydney was bang on. The winters are mild and gorgeous with a tonne of sunlight. The summers are deliciously hot with a fabulous fresh southerly wind to cool you down at the end of the day. There really isn’t an autumn or a spring in Sydney (cause why bother?). The flowers are in bloom all year round.

In NYC the weather is almost total crap. Winters are foul and involve snow (uggh). It NEVER snows in Sydney. Summers are vile. Intense heat with no relief at all (except for when the winter just keeps going, until one day it is suddenly replaced by vile hot humid summer). NYC has no cooling winds. Spring is damp and chilly. Autumn on the other hand is the only reliably excellent season. It’s cool, but by September everyone’s dying for things to get cool. And it’s crisp cool not freeze-your-tits-off cool. The farmer’s market is full of the most amazing apples and tomatoes you ever tasted. The trees all change colour. Spectacular. Beautiful. Compensates for the vilely cold days and the stinky hot ones. A NYC autumn is great for wearing (Sydney) winter coats.

The Food

Sydney’s food is superb. (Except for Mexican, NEVER eat Mexican in Sydney.) Tetsuya’s, Rockpool, Boathouse. I could go on and on. But the fabulous thing about Sydney is that it’s not just the over-the-top high end places that are amazing. There’s places like Singapore Gourmet too. Where two of you can stuff your face for less than AU$15 (US$10). There are noodle joints in chinatown where you can stuff yourselves for less than AU$10 (US$7). (And you don’t have to tip.) The Thai food is so good it will make you weep and I’m not just talking about Sailor’s Thai. The fruits. Oh my God! In summer there’s rambutans and mangosteens and pineapples and mangoes and longans and lychees and everything that makes a person smile. In winter there’s custard apples. All year round you can get sugar bananas. The fruit and veg in Sydney is just amazing. I could go on and on and on.

NYC food is also superb. (Except for Thai, NEVER eat Thai in NYC.) I’m just a block from Frank’s, and Supper, Prune, and The Tasting Room are pretty damn close too. There are more excellent vegetarian restaurants than anywhere else on the planet (my current favourite is Counter). Had my first raw food restaurant experience here, way richer than I expected. Then there’s the joys of cheap Mexican. Cheap Ukrainian. There’s fabulous Ethiopian, Venezuelan, Indian and Korean. There’s organic produce everywhere you look. A wonderful farmers’ market at Union Square five times a week. You can get almost anything you want (if you’ve got the money for it) from caviar to arugula to Belgian fries (something you can’t easily find in Sydney). There’s even a peanut butter restaurant.

The Bars

Sydney has more of a pub culture than a bar one. There are lots of fab pubs that I like a lot, but none of them makes me as happy as my favourite bars in NYC. I know, I know, I’m a hideous traitor. Would it make things better if I say that James Squire Amber Ale is way way way better than any American beer? Comparisons are so invidious. Okay, how about: There’s no NYC equivalent of the humble RSL or Lawn Bowls Club where you can buy four drinks with a ten dollar (Aussie) note and be given change that you’re not expected to hand straight back as a tip (and you have the added pleasure, if you’re a bloke, of having the old codgers hiss at you to take your hat off, Show some respect, son!). Plus you get to play lawn bowls. There’s no where to play lawn bowls in NYC.

I can admit it when NYC is way ahead. And when it comes to bars NYC wins hands down. Not really a contest. Though it makes me sad to say it, the bars in NYC piss all over those in Sydney. The majority of bartenders know how to make every cocktail under the sun. There are bars with superb food. There is no Sydney equivalent to Veloce (great Italian wine and fabulous panini), to Decibel (an unbelievable number of different sakes, not to mention great dumplings, edamame and any other Japanese snack food you can think of), to any of the hundreds of other bars I could name.

Wildlife

Sydney wins. Our birds are more beautiful: rainbow lorikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos, the unbelievably beautiful black cockatoos. Hell, even pesky myena birds are better looking than any NYC bird. Flying foxes, possums, penguins, lizards, skinks, foxes (okay they’re evil and bad, but they don’t have them in NYC). Sharks. Tropical fish. We win! We win!

The birds of NYC: seagulls, sparrows, pigeons, starlings, robins and the occasional raptor which invariably dies horribly. That’s right, NYC only has the crap beige or grey birds. There are squirrels, but who cares? They’re just rats in drag. They have rats out of drag too. But we’ve got those in Sydney too. Tougher and bigger. NYC is very animally deprived. Their cockroaches are small and can’t even fly.

Regionalism

I could crap on about how foul certain areas of Sydney are, S such as the Eastern Suburbs, the North Shore, Sutherland Shire, but it would be sheer prejudice. I’m a firm believer you have to live in a place for a while before you have the right to say it sucks. I don’t always follow that precept, but, hey, this is written down, not bitching with my mates. I’ve only ever lived in the inner-city. Places like Annandale, Camperdown, Chippendale, Newtown, Stanmore. There are differences between them but they’re not huge. What would I know about Chatswood or Vaucluse or Sylvania Waters? I’m sure they’re all lovely.

I’ve covered a much bigger area of New York City. Two boroughs: Manhattan and Brooklyn. Six different neighbourhoods: Hell’s Kitchen, Upper West Side, Cobble Hill, Lower East Side, East Village and Washington Heights. In Manhattan I’ve lived all the way down on Houston and as far up as 188th Street. The only one I didn’t enjoy was Hell’s Kitchen and with such an excellent name I really tried to like it.

Parochialism

Sydney might well be the most parochial city in Australia. She’s definitely the most hated. There’s way more to Australia than just Sydney. But neither is it the seat of all corruption, vice, crassness and self-infatuation. It is true though that Sydneysiders frequently forget there are other cities in Australia.

NYC might well be the most parochial city in the USA. She’s definitely the most hated. There’s way more to the USA than just New York City. But neither is it the seat of all corruption, vice, crassness and self-infatuation. (I’ve many friends in the USA who live outside NYC, I’m sure they would agree that the big apple totally forgets the rest of the country exists.)

Roof tops

When I was twelve or thirteen, me and my friend Michal climbed up onto the roof of my parents’ house in Annandale. I think we had recently seen To Catch a Thief and had visions of fleet-footed running from roof top to roof top. We ran and leapt, all the time talking a million miles an hour, gossiping about school, exclaiming about the view, and how cool it was to be running around like Cary Grant’s body doubles. We didn’t come across anyone else up there. Just birds. Later that day while Michal and I were at the movies, my parents answered the door many times to complaining neighbours who had not only had to deal with elephant thuds on their roof but could relate loud snatches of twelve-year-olds scintillating conversation which my parents gleefully quoted back at me when I got home. Apparently in the south of France (or on that Hollywood backlot) the noise doesn’t carry quite as much as it does in Sydney.

I had a lot more success up on the roof of various buildings at the University of Sydney (sadly, the access to almost all of them has now been blocked). Up on those roofs the only other people you’d see would be workers toiling endlessly to stop the Main Quad from falling to pieces. There’d always be signs that other non-workers had been there before you: empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, grafitti, yet we never ran into them. The views up there! 360 degrees. The city, Glebe Point Island Bridge, the Harbour Bridge, the harbour. On one of those crystalline, perfect days when the air is so clear everything stands out in sharp relief you could see all the way to the Blue Mountains. So beautiful. I miss home. Sometimes October seems a very long way away.

New York rooftops are a whole other world. You can live in an apartment block right smack dab in the middle of town and find escape by climbing the stairs and going out onto the roof. This year we watched the Fourth of July fireworks from a friend’s rooftop in Brooklyn (I love Brooklyn). We sat up there drinking champagne, oohing and ahing the fireworks from the four barges in the East River with their Manhattan skyline backdrop, the Empire State Building, the Chrsyler. There was a crescent moon. It was spectacular. Though confusing: I kept wanting to yell Happy New Year! I mean, hot weather, champagne, fireworks, what else could it mean? (Though, naturally, Sydney New Year’s Eve fireworks are better.)

Up on the roof of our eight-story building you can see the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges, the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings (My verdict? Chrysler prettier by day, Empire State by night). We’re taller than most of the buildings close by. So we can look down at all the other people on the surrounding roofs, sunbaking, escaping the heat, reading, hanging out with their mates, drinking a beer or two at the end of the day. You can see water towers, and rooftop gardens stretching in all directions. Some looking like minature rain forests, elaborate and expensive, and clearly employing several gardeners, others simply a matter of a few plants in pots. The light, the breeze, everything is different up there. There’s so much sky. Down on the ground in Manhattan you can be forgiven for forgetting there’s a sky at all. For having no idea about the spectacular sunsets. Up on the roof everything’s glorious.

Anti-Intellectualism

I was lucky enough to receive a government-funded Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Fellowship which meant that for three years (think of it!) I had funding to research and write full-time about science fiction in New York City in the forties and fifties. When that fellowship ended the University of Sydney stepped in and continued my funding for another nine months. Both institutions thought my work was important enough to support it. Without that funding I would not have published my first book or have a contract for my second or be very nearly finished a third. It transformed my life and turned me into a real scholar and writer. I could not be more grateful. There are very few countries in the world that have such long-term research fellowships available.

However, when in Sydney, whenever I was at a party or in a situation where the what-do-you-do question came up I would tell the person and once they had grasped the concept of a research fellowship I would get the following response: “Geeze, nice work if you can get it! So you’re telling me the Australian government pays you to sit around and read science fiction novels? Must be nice. I’m so glad my tax money’s being well spent.” I’ve never encountered this response anywhere else in the world.

When I first went to university I was so jazzed at the prospect of finally getting to sit in a room full of my peers who were all excited about ideas and writing. At last! I thought. The shock of that first English tutorial. There they were the same people I’d been in high school with. They still couldn’t be arsed doing the readings, they still rolled their eyes when anyone ventured an opinion. There was still only one or, at most, two students in the room (other than me) who’d not only done the reading, but were itching to talk about it. It was pretty much the same throughout my undergraduate degree.

Sydney is full of smart women and men pretending to be dumb, affecting to be more interested in sports than in anything intellectual (as if the two are somehow antithetical. Where did that ridiculous idea come from?) I’ve never heard anyone in Sydney describe themselves as an intellectual without then apologising for it. Sometimes I don’t miss Sydney at all.

I know very few people in New York City who are full-time researchers working on their own projects. The PhD students are mostly funded from year to year (though I know some who are funded for only a semester at a time) and that year’s funding does not include the summer months. Australia has a postgraduate allowance that is an untaxed stipend that runs for three years with the option, if you need it, of a six month extension (in Australia PhD programs are thesis only, no course work, so it doesn’t take ten years. The [to my ears] ludicrous notion of All But Dissertation does not exist). You never have to line up summer work. Once you finish your PhD at an American university, there are fellowships available (the majority of them privately endowed). As far as I can tell very very few of them run for more than a year. Let alone the three years of a postdoc, or the five years of the senior ARC fellowships.

However, when in New York City, whenever I was at a party or in a situation where the what-do-you-do question came up I would tell the person and once they had grasped the concept of a research fellowship I would get the following response: “Wow. The Australian government is fully funding your research here? That’s amazing. You must be a hell of a scholar. What an incredible opportunity for you. Can you tell me more about it?”

My friends who went to NYU, Columbia, the New School, Vassar, and other New York universities I’ve forgotten the name of tell tales of all-night phisophical and literary debates amongst ten or twenty of their peers. They talk like these were a regular thing. I have friends in NYC who never went to (or didn’t finish) uni who tell tales of similar evenings. I’ve never met so many interesting and interested autodidacts as I have here. People who’ve read (and understood) Gramsci and Foucault and Judith Butler and Donna Haraway without having been made to. How incredible is that?

I’ve never met anyone in NYC who tried to hide their intelligence. Though I’ve met a tonne who are under the delusion that they’re way, way, way smarter than they actually are. There are lots of intellectuals here who enjoy sports but they don’t feel they have to make a big deal out of it to somehow make up for their being an intellectual.

Swimming Pools

In Sydney there are more swimming pools than there are people. Every person has their own Olympic fifty metre pool. Okay, not really, but everywhere I’ve lived in the city I’ve been an easy walk from at least one swimming pool and often two or three. All of them fifty metre. Proper swimming pools.

We also have a tonne of beachside salt water pools. They’re not chlorinated and the water is from the sea: flowing in at high tide and flowing out at low. (Though never so much that you can’t swim.) They’re completely excellent.

Everyone in Sydney can swim.

There are no Olympic swimming pools in New York City. Or those that exist are well hidden on the top of the Trump Tower or underground and only really rich people can go to them. The public swimming pools are crap. You start your lap and after two strokes you’re at the end of the pool, that is if you can get past the thousands of other people, and actually swim a lap.

I’ve met lots of people my own age in New York City who have never learned how to swim. How is that possible? How do they cope? What kind of a no-diving-in-at-the-deep-end, no-middle-of-the-pool-tickle-fights, no-contests-to-see-who-can-dive-the-deepest-longest-bestest, pathetic, miserable life is that?

Pedestrian Traffic Lights

In Sydney the little green man signalling that you can walk is on for approximately 10.4 seconds. If you are less than hale and hearty you will not make it across before the little red man appears and starts flashing. If you are hale and hearty the flashing red light means sprint for your life: the cars are about to mow you down.

I have seen the less than hale and hearty stuck at the lights for hours cause 10.4 seconds isn’t even enough time for them to step off the curb. Many of the them stick to driving or simply walk round and round the one block, gazing wistfully across at the other side of the road, so near, yet so so far.

In NYC the signal for walk means that you have time to buy a bagel and pick up a copy of The Village Voice before you begin your leisurely crossing. The flashing light means that perhaps you should skip the bagel, but you can still grab The Voice before crossing. In New York City, well, okay, mostly in Manhattan, the pedestrian is ruler of them all.

Except for the insane bastards car drivers who seem to think they can turn a corner mowing down any pedestrians who happen to be legally crossing on account of that four-hour long walk signal. In Sydney there are arrow signals to prevent such a manoeuvere during the 10.4 seconds pedestrians can legally cross the road. If only there could be some kind of trade-off between the two systems . . .

Sexual Harassment on the Street

This is always a difficult one to talk about. There’s still this weird idea that if you mention guys calling out to you in the street, you’re somehow boasting about it. “Hey, I am so damn hot, that this paralytically drunk guy with no teeth lurched across the street, vomited in front of me, and said: ‘Show us your tits, love’.” Boy, was I thrilled. Someone out there finds little old me attractive. My day, no, my life, is now complete.

So let’s just skip that crap, eh? You know and I know that most of the time men you’ve never met before in your life feeling free to comment on your appearance (negatively or positively: I’ve had several blokes in Sydney feel moved to tell me how ugly I am) is a pain in the arse. You’ve just lost your favourite jacket, your job, your best friend, and some charming bloke thinks it’s his duty to say, Give us a smile, darls. Now there’s a killing offence. And even when they don’t say anything there’s that horrible prickling feeling along your skin that you are being looked at, and at any moment someone may be moved to demand you show off your mammaries or perform sexual favours for them.

I hate to say this about my beloved home city but the harassment there is world class. I and my friends have heard more choice misogynist nastinessess in the glowing Emerald City than we’ve ever heard anywhere else in the world. Gross, scary things. Now it could be that that’s because we couldn’t understand what was being yelled in Tel Aviv or Bangkok, or because we lived in Sydney during the peak period of a girl’s life for copping this crap. It’s possible. Let’s just say that none of us, despite being told that one day we would miss the catcalls and invitations to suck a total stranger’s bed flute, are experiencing said sadness as we get older and hear fewer and fewer of those oh-so-flattering invitations.

In the parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan I and my friends live the harassment is much less nasty than Sydney. Like I said this could be because me and my peer group are longer in the tooth than we once were. Maybe the seventeen year olds are copping it every bit as bad as me and my mates did at that age. I hope not. Or maybe we’re more sure of ourselves and less intimidated. I hope so.

That said, there’s a lot more of it. A woman on her own walking down those beautiful New York City footpaths is hit with dazzling smiles, lots of hellos, how’re you doings (yeah, yeah, I know, that’s just friendly), and hears a lot of the kinds of noises people make to attract the attention of their cat. If she responds in any way, the guy will elaborate further with comments on her hair, skin and clothing. (Including the dreaded, Show us a smile, sweetheart.) Or possibly a suggestion that they indulge in some form of love making together.

New Yorkers altogether seem more inclined to talk to people they don’t know. Especially on the subway, at Madison Square Garden, on the street, in lines for the toilet anywhere at all, and in bars. Women in NYC often comment on the clothing of strangers. Always positively, sometimes a little too positively. One woman on the subway, after telling me that she loved my coat, offered to buy it from me. “Er, no,” said I. “Thanks though, quite happy with coat.” I have even been so bold as to tell the occasional resplendent stranger in this fine and well-dressed city how fab their coat/hair/tattoo is, though I always keep walking to make it clear it’s a strings-free compliment.

I’ve got nothing against compliments, me. Just, you know, as long as a fella doesn’t think it entitles them to anything. Begad! Did I write that? Could have leapt from the pages of a Georgette Heyer novel. (Not that that would be a bad thing, given that she was one of the twentieth century’s most talented humorists. And invented a whole new genre. I’d love to invent a new genre. Who wouldn’t?)

List subject to growth. Stay tuned.

New York City, 22, 28 June and 6, 24, 25 July 2003

Season Tickets to the New York Liberty

Since 18 May 2003 I’ve been to nine basketball games, which is about as many professional sporting events as I’ve been to in my entire life. Back home on the rare occasions I’d go it was mostly to see the cricket: test cricket.

Going to Madison Square Garden up to three times a week to see the New York Liberty play is a very strange cultural experience for this non-USian. All sport everywhere in the world is about rituals, but I’ve never encountered a sporting event with quite this many.

There’s the orchestrated chants. The most complicated of which goes: "Let’s Go Liberty!" (Might be worth it to employ the Barmy Army to come up with some better ones. Those boys know their chants.)

Then there’s Maddie the Liberty mascot (who I discovered only recently is meant to be a dog). Everyone wants to dance with Maddie (he’s not a bad dancer) or at the very least get a hug or shake hands. So far I’ve not had the honour. Though at the Connecticut game (1 July 2003: the Liberty destroyed them 90 to 64) we brought along a friend, and while I was in the bathroom, Maddie came up, hugged and practically sat in the lap of Scott and George and left just as I returned. No fair.

I’m thinking of writing the ACB to suggest the adoption of a mascot. On second thoughts the 2000 Olympic mascots were pretty dire. Maybe not. Be cool if they could have a Keith Miller cool-dude fifties-guy mascot. (Would love to have a link to show you all how gorgeous Miller was in his day, but couldn’t find one good photo of him online. Not one. Nor could I find a link to the excellent-anecdotes-about-Miller-the-archetypal-larrikin site. What’s the point of the WWW, people? Why do these sites not exist?)

The Liberty have not one, but two, cheerleading squads. The grown-up Torch Patrol who do all sorts of dance routines adorned in fabulous you-must-rush-to-buy-it-for-yourself Liberty gear. On the weekends there’s the Li’l Torches who are really really wee. One is so very tiny you could easily hold her in the palm of your hand. Very cute. Very disturbing.

I like to get to the Garden early to make sure I get my free giveaway (best one so far: a New York Liberty oven mitt. Worst one: a crappy promotional poster for Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle—uggh) and so I can start screaming when the Liberty come running out of the tunnel. I love to scream (happy screams). But, hey, who doesn’t? I bet there are heaps of people at sporting events who go solely cause it gives them an excuse to scream their lungs out.

The next highlight is the singing of the "Star Spangled Banner". Singing the national anthem is not de rigeur at sporting events in Australia. Practically the only time you hear it is during medal presentations at the Commonwealth (where you hear it a lot) and the Olympic Games (not so much). I can’t say as how I’ve ever looked forward to hearing "Advance Australia Fair" sung. It’s a funeral dirge with less-than-captivating lyrics that I and most of my fellow Australians seem incapable of remembering beyond the second line. Many have tried to arrange "Advance Australia Fair" to make it more appealing. All attempts have failed.

We Australians made a grave error with our choice of anthem (and, no, "Waltzing Matilda" wouldn’t’ve cut it either). We should have chosen a song that’s full of unbelievably tricky bits only a trained professional can sing without breaking their vocal chords.

It turns out that the performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" is not just about patriotism. There’s way more to it than that. Singing the US national anthem is a sometimes uncomfortable spectacle (like watching a tight-rope walker). Will the soloist reach the high notes? Will they reach those notes without sounding like crap?

American crowds whistle and stomp for those who hit the scary notes with clarity (often while they’re hitting those notes—just like at a jazz concert). They even applaud those who don’t quite hit them but make a decent effort. Encouragement applause. Failure is indicated by embarrassed silence. No-one says a word. It’s like the audience has decided to forget the whole thing instantly.

After the singing contest the baddies are introduced. And they really are the baddies. There’s hardly ever any polite applause for the visiting team. None of that humbug for your New York crowd. Nope, they boo. Particularly if it’s Lisa Leslie or, even worse, Debbie Black (awesome players both of them). I have to confess that I booed Lisa Leslie too, but in a mellow I-don’t-really-mean-it kind of way. She’s the US Olympic basketballer who was mean to our Lauren Jackson in 2000. All because nice Lauren accidentally pulled one of Lisa’s hair pieces out during a game. An innocent mistake! And, honestly, what’s with wearing hair pieces during a pro basketball match?

Not only do they boo the opposing players but they don’t applaud the good plays they make. This sits oddly with me. I’m used to cricket. If an opposing player does something cool you clap. Maybe not as loud as you would if it were one of your guys, but you still clap because, well, it was a cool shot and coolness must always be applauded. Not in New York City you don’t. Not unless you’re actually supporting the baddies in which case it’s okay. You can expect to be joshed about it, but gently (unless, of course, your side has the audacity to win, then the kidding gets a little less gentle).

My compromise is that I applaud all the Australian players (sadly there aren’t any on the Liberty). I’ve cleared this with the other season ticket holders nearby, who’ve agreed that as long as I’m not busted applauding non-Australian baddies that’s okay. This is a bit tricky when Janeth Arcain is playing. She’s a fabulous Brazilian player who I can’t help but applaud. So I lied. I told them that she used to play in Australia, making her practically Australian, and they’ve agreed I can cheer her too.

Then they introduce the goodies: the NEW YORK LIBERTY!!! (The announcer has an all-caps, many exclamation marks, kind of announcing style.) Lots of screaming at this point and by now almost all of the crowd has filed in, which could be 12,000 or more. That’s a lot of noise. The crowd is very mixed. Black, white, brown. Predominately female, though in a 60/40, not 90/10 kind of a way. Many dykes, and handfuls of old blokes who can’t afford Knicks tickets. There’s lots of dyke and straight families, so you get to see wee little boys and girls running around in Teresa Weatherspoon and Becky Hammon jerseys. A few too many celebrities: Joan Jett, Rosie O’Donnell, Judge Hackett, Matthew Modine, famous retired Liberty (yay Kym Hampton! Sue Wicks!) and Knicks players (nice to see the boys supporting the girls).

We scream ourselves hoarse for the starting line up: Vickie Johnson (shooting guard), Tari Phillips (centre), Crystal Robinson (forward), Teresa Weatherspoon (point guard), and Tamika Whitmore (forward). I scream loudest for my favourite, Tamika Whitmore. She’s kind of a heart-breaking player to love cause she’s so hot and cold. But when she’s good, damn, but she’s good. Plus she looks unbelievably great in her civvies. When other team members are injured they show up resplendent in pastels. Uggh. Tamika’s all black and olive and cool as hell. I love that she always looks serious. If some jerk-off bloke on the street told her to, "Smile, sweetie", I like to think she’d deck him. The rareness of Tamika’s smiles makes them even more excellent.

Everyone cheers Theresa Weatherspoon cause, well, she’s T-Spoon and everyone (who isn’t insane) loves her. Crafty as a fox, leads the league in assists, sets up plays like you wouldn’t believe, and when you least expect it—scores! A legend. (I also like that she’s older than I am.)

After the introductions, all eleven players on the roster throw free T-shirts into the crowd. Including my other favourite, Elena Baranova. Elena is superb and has a very complete game. She’s 196cm (6ft 5in) so naturally she blocks and rebounds, but she can shoot jump shots, even threes! Elena’s been a pro since she was sixteen and has been on the Russian (or Soviet or whatever it was called in any given year) National Team like a gazillion times.

Cause she’s so fab I started wearing my Russian T-shirt (it’s actually a Nom D T-shirt from Dunedin, NZ) with the word RED (KRASNY) printed on it in Russian (pardon the no cyrillic alphabet). One of my Russian friends, Valeria, taught me how to say Elena so I sound Russian. Every game I’d wave my arms and yell "Elena!" and generally try to attract her attention in hopes of scoring a T-shirt from her.

Sadly, the first few times she didn’t hear me and was intent on setting some kind of distance record with her throws. Then, and this is another very cool thing about Madison Square Garden, on the one hand, it’s vast and you’re sitting there as part of a crowd of 15,000, and on the other hand, there’s a strange kind of intimacy. One glorious day Elena heard me, she saw my Russian/NZ T-shirt, and threw a Liberty T in my direction. It arced through the air, headed straight for me. I reached for it, felt it brush my hands, thought I had it, then watched in despair as it sailed through my stupid traitor hands to the people several rows behind. Oh the agony! Oh the unco-ness of me.

Two days later, at the next home game, I tried again. I yelled, I hollered. Elena smiled and threw the T-shirt. A little softer this time. Too soft. It was snagged by a bratty boy two rows in front of me. Elena shrugged and kind of half-smiled.

I had to wait five days for our next attempt. This time Elena came straight up to my end of the court. She gave me a broad smile and made no mistake about throwing it directly to me. At last! I didn’t flub it and no brat leapt up to snatch it from me. Elena grinned and gave me the thumbs up. Third time’s a charm. My new mission (gotta have a mission) is to get her to sign my brand-new courtesy-of-her-fine-throwing-arm fetching green Liberty T-shirt. Then my life will be complete.

Then of course there’s the actual game. Liberty are a heartbreak team. They win most of their games at home (so far this season they’re 6-2). But individually they’re erratic and injury-prone. You never know who (if anyone) is going to be on song. By far the worst moment this year was in the game against Detroit on 27 June 2003. They were on a winning streak; we were not. Becky Hammon, our top scorer this season, came on a few minutes into the first half. She’d barely been in the game a minute, when she made a routine pass that went shockingly wild. I turned to look and she was clutching her right knee and then she was on the ground. It looked really bad. (Tamika helped carry her off.) And, naturally, it was her ACL, so no more Hammon for the rest of the season. I’d love to say we rallied and took that game, but Detroit won by five. It was agonising.

I am less destroyed by our losses than Scott. I guess it’s because I’m still revelling in seeing so many unbelievably strong and amazing women week after week. I know it smacks of hokey seventies feminism (I’m sure you can hear Helen Reddy’s "I am Woman" swelling up in the background) but seeing all those players (the baddies as well as the Liberty), who come in a vast array of sizes: tall, short, really really tall, skinny, strong, big, and even bigger, with their tiny tits, big tits, huge arses, no arses, it really gets to me. It’s so wonderful.

Their ball skills are incredible. Not just on the court, but when they’re standing around during timeouts, twirling the ball idly in their hands, behind their backs, bouncing it off their knees. They walk like women who’ve never been hamstrung by high heels. They stride, they don’t mince. They make me so happy.

When I was growing up my relatives (never my parents) were always telling me that there were operations available to slow my growth. If I was too tall I’d never get a husband (uggh, who the hell would want one?). I was 172.5cm (just under 5ft 8in) when I was twelve. Sadly I’m still 172.5cm. Tamika Whitmore is 188cm (6ft 2in). The tallest woman in the WNBA is Margo Dydek at 218cm (7ft 2in). One of the shortest is Debbie Black at 160cm (5ft 3in). They’re all fabulous players.

I spent most of high school avoiding PE, particularly organised sports. We girls were not much encouraged in sporting pursuits. I didn’t find out until much later that there are quite a few sports that are fun (fencing, climbing, tennis) and that I’m not too foul at them.

I love being part of a huge crowd that loudly and overwhelmingly values these women, that thinks they’re beyond-words awesome, and worth supporting, worth paying money to watch, worth getting obsessed about (in a non-stalkery way).

It’s sublime when the Liberty actually get their shit together like they did against Connecticut on 1 July 2003. For the first time all season, everyone played great, from the lowliest rookie who’s barely had ten minutes all year, through to the stars like Tari Phillips and Crystal Robinson (who, still nursing an ankle sprain, was only allowed to play cause she begged and begged the coach, and ended up being most valuable player). We won by 26. It were poetry, I tell you.

Scott and me, we’ve developed our own Liberty viewing rituals. We’ve gotten to know the other season ticket holders near us. Before each game the folks in our row all discuss how the away games went (mostly badly, the Liberty don’t thrive away from the Garden), who’s injured, who’s back from injury, and who the danger players are on the other side. When the game starts, if there are free seats in our row, we shift across so that we can sit closer to the centre line, and then we all grin sheepishly, and shift back, when people actually show up for those seats.

Even if it’s raining Scott and I walk to and from the game. Full of anticipation on the way there: what will our lucky surprise be? Another bottle jersey? Will the Liberty explode or implode? And on the way back we relive the entire game (though Scott never dwells enough on my T-shirt saga with Elena).

The last ritual of the night is dinner at Counter. Not only does it have fab food and wine and the most comfortable, inviting bar in Manhattan, but the owners, Donna and Deborah, are Liberty fans always eager to be told about the game.

New York City, 8 July 2003

Most Life Changing Reading

Seeing Angela Carter read her story “Peter and the Wolf” on the eve of my twenty-first birthday at the now-destroyed Harold Park Hotel in Glebe, Sydney. In one of the noisiest pubs in the world, you could’ve heard a pin drop. My favourite writer in all the world turned out to be the most wonderful reader in all the world. She was jaw-droppingly extraordinary.

A Reading at KGB

I have ambivalent feelings about attending readings. Don’t get me wrong, I love being read to. Particularly when I’m feeling miserable (say, with the flu, or women’s troubles, or the state of the nation). Listening to someone I care about’s voice transporting me away from my runny nose, my cramps, and little Johnnie Howard, is one of life’s great pleasures. Friends and lovers and, in the olden days, my parents, have indulged me on many occasions and read till their throats went hoarse (a heartfelt thanks to you all).

But readings as public performance, as sales pitch for a writer’s published work, are a different matter. I’ve been to many, many excellent, fabulous, life-changing readings but, still, the thought of attending a reading fills my heart with dread.

Public readings do not involve a comfy bed or sofa, and rarely include pillows or blankets. You cannot call for toilet breaks, or more wine, and you can’t ask for a reread because you really liked that bit, or were (momentarily) distracted. You cannot ask for an ending to be changed if it upset you (to this day I’m happy in the knowledge that Ivanhoe and Rebecca rode off into the sunset together).

Public readings also have the uncomfortable habit of revealing that a writer you have worshipped all your life has an unpleasant voice, or one that sounds just like that jerk Richard, who beat you up every day for a year in fourth grade, or worst of all has a perfectly pleasant voice, but can’t read out loud to save themselves.

They rush past the tragic moments, laugh at their own jokes, pause for applause that isn’t ever going to come, and mispronounce all the words with more than two syllables. They put on different accents for each character, all of them cringingly bad, particularly the Australian accent (note to all North Americans: don’t do it, don’t even try. Meryl Streep couldn’t do an Aussie accent, and neither can you).

No matter how brilliant a writer, you know you will never open one of their books, or hunt down one of their stories again for fear of having their dread voice in your head as you read. They kill their writing stone-cold dead.

That is what fills my heart with horror at the prospect of attending a reading. And there is no reading series I dread more than the KGB Science Fiction Reading Series.

KGB is not a large bar. More than twenty people and you start to find breathing an issue. The seats, if you can get one, are uncomfortable. There is a theatre upstairs that seems to specialise in loud thumping, yelling, running-up-and-down-the-stairs plays on Wednesday nights. Fortunately, the amplification has improved a lot since my first KGB in 2000.

Prior to April 2003 (and halelujah for April 2003!) KGB had smoke from floor to ceiling, even if it was just one person smoking a practically no-tar, no-nicotine menthol cigarette. Even now someone coming in from smoking outside is liable to smoke up the place just by exhaling.

An astute peruser of my website might have noted that I attend every KGB reading I can. Too true. Well spotted. Why attend, you might ask, if it’s so dreadful?

Because the bartender’s a sweetie who’s as quiet as a mouse during the readings, it’s just round the corner from where I live, and, well, okay, I’ve yet to go to a bad reading there.

Last night’s reading was no exception. I arrived fifteen minutes early to find the place packed way beyond capacity and no hope of a seat (perhaps because in their listing of the KGB reading, The Village Voice claims that Kelly Link has written the two best sentences of the last 10 years). There were lots of non-usual suspects which is always heartening.

I made the mistake of slipping out to the loo just before it began, thus ensuring that I spent the first reading in the hallway, sitting on the steps, scrunching out of the way for mad thespians running up and down the stairs, and catching the occasional snippet of reading from inside the bar.

Apparently Holly Black read a fairy tale set in the Phillipines about a girl who was trying to avoid getting rabies from some elves at a night market. Everyone I talked to who actually heard her story, said it was fabulous.

I timed my loo break better for Kelly Link‘s reading, and was able to sit at her feet, gazing up adoringly as she read a fabulously funny story about a girl trying to avoid getting rabies from nasty tattooed dog-owners in a small town located near a zombie city not far from the Canadian border. Much fun was had at the expense of Canadians (fine by me as long as she stays away from dissing my people). There were also lots of pyjamas. I love pyjamas. It was wonderful.

New York City, 19 June 2003

A Buffy Confession

I am a Buffy tragic. I have been an avid follower and, of late, scholar of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since the first season. It’s the first television show I’ve ever been obsessed with, the first time I’ve found myself in the role of a fan. A particularly strange shift for me because I’ve spent a large part of my scholarly career writing about fans without actually being one. Now I am. I watch the show. A lot. I read and write about it online, in magazines, fanzines, journals, books. I’ve lectured about it. I’ve been interviewed about it for Australian TV, radio and print media.

There’s a long list of reasons why so many people love Buffy. Reasons that have been given by fans and scholars and reviewers and others consuming vast tracks of the internet and print in the form of articles and reviews, poems and stories. Buffy the Vampire Slayer captured me in the first place because it was a genre TV show that took the rules of the genre seriously, understood them, was metaphorically resonate, cared about continuity and consistency, engaged in fabulous world-building, was intelligently written and acted and had a sassy self-awareness that was not sly or annoying. It is both funny and sad, often at the same time.

My obsession involves watching the show repeatedly, devouring DVD and other commentary by the writers, particularly Joss Whedon, and thinking long and hard about the show. This intense engagement with a set of interlocked texts as complex and as well-executed as Buffy is extraordinarily pleasurable.

My increasing obsession and professional engagement with Buffy has found me frequently called upon to defend the show. Not to the large unwashed hordes out there who will never watch or understand the show (and frankly, who cares about them?) but to other Buffy fans. Ever since the fourth season, when Buffy and the Scoobies left Sunnydale High behind, there has been a vehement rain of Buffy fan backlash.

Like relationships with other human beings, fan relationships with TV shows sometimes thrive on a mix of love and hatred, none more so than Buffy. For the past few seasons, my role of defender has meant I haven’t always admitted to my own dissatisfactions with Buffy. I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer more than I’ve ever loved a TV show (hell, more than quite a few people in my life) but there are times when I hate it too.

Defending Buffy The Vampire Slayer
. . . . I read occasionally that people haven’t been as happy with this year (actually, I hear that every year), show’s not the same… (Posted by: Joss Whedon May 22, 2002, 2:15 AM UPN.com linear board)

I loathe defending Buffy to other fans. I feel like I’m defending a close relative. I want to tell them, "If you can’t say anything nice, then shut up." I am not rational about it. While defending the show I will say anything, no matter how illogical. I will frequently contradict myself. I don’t care. If a particular writer is attacked I will dredge the record for good episodes or lines they’ve written. I will airily wave aside complaints about plot holes as a clever play with the tropes of the genre. I’ll make stuff up: "That was not a crap line. It was a direct reference to Cansino’s last film, The Widow in the Shadows made for RKO just before he was blacklisted. Had a limited release in 1962. Nope, not available on DVD. Though apparently there’s a French bootleg video."

I cannot stand fans being so narkily and pickily critical of the show. Don’t they understand how tight the TV-land budget of time and money is? Don’t they understand that certain actors aren’t always available? Don’t they want to enjoy the show? Anyway, why does everything have to be about whether each episode or season was good or not? Don’t they realise that you can’t possibly decide that until you’ve watched it at least five or more (often way more) times? I wish they would embrace proper criticism, that mystical process whereby you can write thousands of words about the object you dissect without once revealing whether you like it or not.

Of course, I also can’t stand fans who (like myself) defend Buffy against all criticism no matter how just. Or who like it for the wrong reasons. The show is not perfect. There have been bad episodes. I know that. I just can’t stand to hear others say it.

The first murmurs of "They’ve lost it" and "Buffy‘s going down the toilet" began with Angel’s return at the beginning of Season Three. He was dead. How could they bring him back? What a cheap gimmick. Like some trashy afternoon soap opera. When a character’s dead they should stay dead. (Hmmm, I pointed out, you mean like Buffy’s death in "Prophecy Girl"?) His return from hell, the critics muttered, undermines the tragic arc of the second season. Of course, by the end there was far less murmuring about bringing Angel back, and many fans now believe Season Three is the best ever.

Buffy had been criticised by fans before, but only for less-than-great episodes. "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" 1.11, "Bad Eggs" 2.12 and "Beauty and the Beasts" 3.4 had all been slammed, but Season Four was the first time a sizeable number were trashing a whole season. What was it about Season Four? I have friends who say it was Angel’s departure. These same people prefer Angel to Buffy. As they are clearly insane, I’ll discount them. (They also think "Once More, With Feeling" 6.7 is the worst Buffy episode ever, so you can rest easy with my dismissal of their opinions.)

Most of the criticism boiled down to unhappiness with the Scoobies leaving high school. The show, many said, just doesn’t work once the central literalised metaphor—high school is hell—is lost. When the Scoobies are in college or working various odd jobs or unemployed, there’s no easy overarching metaphor that binds the show together. Being a young adult, trying to find yourself; life after high school is more complex. But it does resonate. The Scoobies’ search for adult lives and adult identities is certainly more emotionally real than any number of so-called realist shows about everyday life such as thirtysomething.

Another criticism aimed at Season Four is its preponderance of arc episodes. I have a friend who is convinced that more arc episodes than standalones means that a show is "decadent." Buffy, he says, has been irretrievably decadent since that dreaded fourth season. The references to previous incidents, once clever and witty, now overwhelm the show, making it an indulgent exercise playing to the in-crowd. Buffy is so dependent on internal references, this friend maintains, that it is now a soap opera.

I disagree. Strongly. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe it is a soap opera, but one screened in prime time with brilliant writing, fabulous acting and far less than sixty pages of script filmed a day.

Some other criticisms of the show I’ve had to deal with:
None of Buffy’s lovers since Angel have been worthy of her. He was her one true love. My response is to try not to roll my eyes. Angel is, in fact, my least favourite of Buffy’s partners. Even Riley is better (despite the writers apparently not knowing how dodgy it is for a T. A. to sleep with one of his freshman students). Their relationship was particularly interesting towards the end when Riley’s doing the whole vampire drug/sex thing. Ah, sweet tragedy. Buffy mooning after the wooden Angel was tedious, overdone (a big uggh to their theme music) and lasted way too long. It only became interesting after he became Angelus. The more compelling (with way better dialogue) Season Two relationships were between Spike & Drusilla and Cordelia & Xander.

They’ve neutered Spike. He hasn’t been a decent character since Season Two. Oh, how many ways can I disagree with this one? I love Spike with a chip. I love Spike with a soul. I adore him tragically in love with Buffy. "Fool For Love" 5.7 gives every Spike episode an extra layer—oh the fun of looking for William (I-may-be-a-bad-poet-but-I’m-a-good-man) in badass Spike.

All the villains have sucked ever since the Mayor was toasted. Why does no-one remember how lame the Master was? Worst villain ever. (And unfortunately he had the same name as the villain in Doctor Who who was way less lame.) The Initiative was a great idea. Glory is underrated. The Trio was mostly silly but had many interesting moments.

The writing has just gotten worse and worse (also known as the why-can’t-Joss-write-every-episode complaint). There are just as many shithouse, badly written episodes in the early seasons. "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" anyone? Or "Inca Mummy Girl" 2.4? (Can’t help with the Joss complaint. I wish Joss wrote and directed every episode too, although with the proviso that I don’t think every episode he writes on his own is pure gold. "Lie To Me" 2.7, "Anne" 3.1 and "Family" 5.6 are nowhere near the level of "Prophecy Girl" 1.12 or "The Body" 5.16. One episode Whedon co-wrote is amongst the worst Buffy episodes ever: the aforementioned "Out of Mind, Out of Sight.")

Season Four was going to be hated even before it first aired. Buffy tragics (like me) sat down to watch the first broadcast of "The Freshman" 4.1 with a great deal of fear in their hearts. Would the show be as good as it used to be? Is it all over? That fan fear has remained. Can the best TV show of all time stay good after so many seasons? Every episode is watched with an eye for evidence of decline. And every Buffy fan I know has turned to me to prove to them that the end isn’t pretty seriously nigh.

The fear is in my heart too. In my position as defender of Buffy to the once faithful, I watch each new episode with mounting terror. Is it a crap episode? Is it a crap season? Should I be heckling along with everybody else? Is Buffy’s inability to kill Spike a sign of decadence? Is Willow’s evil turn amateurishly handled, and her recovery even more so? Are they lamely recycling villains? Am I ever going to be able to watch a new episode of the show and simply enjoy it?

Buffy Mini-Festivals, or, How DVDs Saved My Life
No, I will never again enjoy an episode the first time through. I’m too nervous, too absorbed with anticipating criticisms and how to respond to them. I’m not capable of enjoying an episode until I’ve watched it several times. And it doesn’t become pure pleasure until the DVD set comes out and I’ve watched said episode in the context of the whole season (including all the writer/director commentaries) in the space of two or three Buffy-packed days.

Oh the glories of DVDs. Episodes that I hated when I first saw them are transformed. "Ted" 2.11 turns out to be a chillingly good episode, not the dreaded movie-of-the-week number I remembered. Even less-than-great episodes like "Some Assembly Required" 2.2 with its spectacularly lame plot—boy reanimates dead sports-hero brother (with his high school science know-how) and then builds him a mate out of spare dead-girl parts—turns out to have wonderful arc development and priceless exchanges between the Scoobies. It’s a rare episode that doesn’t have at least a moment of fabulous dialogue or a gorgeous set up for events a season or more later.

Listening to Joss Whedon’s commentary over "The Body" confirms every worshipful thought you have ever indulged about the guy’s writing and his attitude to making the show. The creators think about what they’re doing:

Joss Whedon: "Buffy" is made by a bunch of writers who think very, very hard about what they are doing in terms of psychology and methodology. We take the show very seriously. We are perhaps the most pompous geeks of them all. When somebody says there is a philosophy behind "Buffy" that is the truth. When they say there is symbolism and meaning in what we’re doing, that’s true too. (Joss Whedon AOL Chat, 10 November 2002 http://www.geocities.com/soporjoe77/josschat.html)

Although watching a whole season back to back is excellent, there are stomach-tightening moments when horrible suspicions about a given episode or story arc are confirmed. Yep, it is as bad as I feared. But there is a solution—a beautiful one which has salved the wounds suffered while watching and defending Buffy. I create my own Buffy mini-festivals! I recommend it as the very best way to ensure your Buffy viewing is stress- and anxiety-free.

All that’s required is some judicious episode selection. Start with the obvious, say a series of relationship festivals: Spike & Buffy (first "School Hard" 2.3, next "Halloween" 2.6 and so forth), or Cordelia & Xander ("What’s My Line Part 2" 2.10, "Ted" 2.11, "Bad Eggs" 2.12 and "Innocence" 2.14 etc.). Or you could have a Jonathan festival ("Inca Mummy Girl," "Reptile Boy" 2.5 etc.) Or a Ripper retrospective ("Halloween," "Band Candy" 3.6 etc). Then you can graduate to the less obvious: the Anya’s-afraid-of-bunny-rabbits festival, the conveniently-located-axe festival, and the slutty clothes festival.

Here are some of my favourites:

The Perfect Buffy Festival
There’s at least one perfect episode of Buffy every season. Watching them together gives me a happy. The following are my current choice of most perfect from Seasons One to Six:

" Prophecy Girl" 1.12: What is so fabulous about "Prophecy Girl" is not that Buffy beats the tedious arch-villain, but that she does it with the aid of the entire ensemble cast. The episode is the distilled essence of everything that had been keeping me watching the show up to that point: the fabulous sharp dialogue between the characters ("You’re looking at my neck," says Xander to Angel on the way to rescue Buffy), the rip-roaring plot that barely lets up, the beautifully drawn friendship between Buffy, Willow and Xander, the tragedy of sixteen-year old Buffy walking knowingly to her death. All the promise of the season comes to fruition. Before "Prophecy Girl" I thought Buffy was a pretty cool show with some great moments, way better than anything else on the box. In its wake I was an obsessive Buffyholic.

" Innocence" 2.14: the episode when the Buffy & Angel romance finally got interesting. I adore the moment when you really know Angel is bad: not simply because he bites into the woman’s neck, but because he blows out a plume of her cigarette smoke. Angel’s smoking. He’s a villain now. This is a perfect arc episode because it turns the action up to eleven.

"The Zeppo" 3.13: By Season Three the fans were completely familiar with the standard Buffy plot, so clearly it was past time for the creators to mess things up a bit. They did so delightfully. Buffy deconstructs itself by making the A plot into the B plot. Angel and Buffy snatch a moment alone together, the music swells up, Xander walks in, the music goes away. It’s the first time the writers really played around with the structure of a Buffy episode, and it’s, well, perfect.

The perfect episodes of Seasons Four through Six are, of course, a no-brainer: "Hush" 4.22, "The Body" 5.16 and "Once More, With Feeling" 6.7. Not just perfect Buffy but perfect television.

Willow & Tara Festival
Okay, this is a pretty obvious festival, but I adore these two, and their relationship illustrates one of the many things I love about Buffy the Vampire Slayer: it endlessly builds on itself. Casual dialogue from early seasons start to become more resonant in the light of later events. "Willow’s not looking to date you," Xander says to Buffy, "or if she is she’s playing it pretty close to her chest" ("Prophecy Girl" 1.12). Then two seasons later in "Dopplegangland" 3.16, Vamp Willow comes onto Willow with the traditional face-licking method. "I think I’m kinda gay," says Willow, somewhat perturbed by the whole experience.

Seeds are planted and then they grow. It’s glorious to watch. Especially when they grow into Tara & Willow having the best metaphoric sex ever shown on television. When these two women do spells together then whoosh. From the hand-holding vending-machine propelling of "Hush" 4.10 to the unbelievably sexy spell of "Who Are You?" 4.16: Tara’s thumb to Willow’s forehead, lips and sternum, they begin to chant, they start to breath heavily, their hands touch, their breathing becomes even heavier, they glisten with sweat, their eyes half-close, a magical circle rises around them, they stare into each others’ eyes, Willow falls back gasping. Oh my. But there’s more to come: the superlative "You Make Me Complete" scene from "Once More, With Feeling." Sigh.

All-Charming-Pretty-Boys-Who-Aren’t-Vampires-Are-Bad Festival
I always knew that, but thanks to Buffy for proving it over and over again. Watch Tom in "Reptile Boy" 2.5, Ford in "Lie to Me" 2.7 and Parker Abrams in "Living Conditions" 4.2, "Harsh Light of Day" 4.3 and "Beer Bad" 4.5. They’re all variations of the same guy and they’re all bastards. But cute bastards.

Dreaming Buffy Festival
I love the way the show uses dreams. Instead of the gorgeous though not especially informative Twin Peaks’ dream sequences (nicely referenced with the red curtains in "Restless" 4.22) Buffy’s dreams are not merely beautifully done, but provide acres of plot and character exposition. In fact, the very first time we see Buffy, she’s in bed dreaming about the season’s villain, the Master ("Welcome to the Hellmouth" 1.1). Turns out Buffy dreams a lot, and those dream sequences just get better and better. The moment when Giles suddenly turns to strangle Buffy while Willow and Xander sit by obliviously ("When She Was Bad" 2.1) startles the viewer and instantly conveys just how much Buffy has not recovered from her ordeal with the Master. The predictive dream sequences of "Surprise" 2.13 and "Graduation Day Part 2" 3.22, with its references to Dawn’s arrival in Sunnydale two seasons later, are the beautiful seeds that grows into the all-dream episode of "Restless" 4.22. How much do I love "Restless"? My love is bigger than the ocean. I cap off this festival with the mostly-delusional "Normal Again" 6.15. Delusions, dreams. Same thing.

Tragic Buffy Festival
I love the sheer heart-wrenching pleasure of tragedy, and Buffy is the most tragic show on television. Hours of joyous pain and many damp tissues. A single line of dialogue can set me off, from Buffy’s plaintive, "Giles, I’m sixteen years old. I don’t want to die" ("Prophecy Girl" 1.12) to Jonathan’s speech when he presents Buffy’s Class Protector Award, "Most of the people here have been saved by you" ("The Prom" 3.20). "The Prom" makes me tear up no matter how many times I see it. So does "Innocence," "I Only Have Eyes For You" 2.19, with its haunting use of an already creepily haunting song, and "Seeing Red" 6.19 with Tara’s death. Of course "The Body" and "The Gift" 5.22 ("Don’t do it Buffy, let the brat jump!") make me howl.

Buffy’s life (like those of Hamlet and Odysseus) is one continuing train wreck that affects everyone around her. At the end of Season Six, there’s not a cast member who is not in some way a tragic figure. I love it.

But as I’ve mentioned several times there are times when I hate Buffy. Here are two festivals that show why:

Actually, They’re All Stupid Festival
Unfortunately there are a handful of episodes where the Scoobies seem to have collectively or individually lost all claim to even the intelligence of a gnat. Most don’t involve some spell that explains the idiocy away. Buffy spends most of "Triangle" 5.11 crying in an unconvincing, vaudevillian, over-the-top way. What the hell was that about? I bought that kind of acting in "Something Blue" 4.9 cause, well, there was a spell.

Worse still are the episodes when the entire cast, director and writing team are rendered moronic. "The Inca Mummy Girl" 2.4 has an even lamer plot than "Some Assembly Required," with no cool Scooby dialogue or arc plotting to save it. It’s ineptly written, directed and, sad to say, acted. The story could have been lifted from a Goosebumps book. Kids go to museum, scary mummy comes to life. The plot holes are large enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through. The South American exchange student is staying for two weeks with the hugest trunk you ever saw—conveniently big enough to stash a body in. Everyone keeps doing things purely for plot reasons. There’s dead time. When Xander picks up the Incan Mummy girl from Buffy’s place there’s an endless, pointless filler conversation between them and Joyce and Buffy. It’s like watching As the World Turns. The dialogue between the Scoobies is awful: "Do we have to speak Spanish?" asks Xander. "Cause I don’t know much besides ‘Doritos’ and ‘chihuahua’."

"A Very Special Buffy"
This is the worst of all possible festivals, suitable for viewing only by the very brave. I hate with a fiery burning passion when an episode of Buffy turns into "a very special Buffy," something Whedon has explicitly promised would never happen. In these episodes some kind of heart- (or rather stomach-) wrenching problem comes up and is dealt with and we learn a lesson. You know what kids? Domestic violence is wrong ("Beauty and the Beasts" 3.4). Sick kids are sweet ("Killed By Death" 2.18). Death is sad ("Help" 7.4) These episodes are vile. I have to pinch myself. Am I watching some horrible cross between Charmed and Seventh Heaven?

"Help" does appallingly badly everything that "The Body" did brilliantly. We’re supposed to care about some kid we’ve never seen before who talks in breathless meant-to-be-wise-beyond-her-years psychobabble. Die, already. The penultimate scene consists of the Scoobies sitting around discussing their tragic loss as heart-tugging music swells around them. (Whedon specifically didn’t use music in "The Body" because it’s too easy; he didn’t want to let the audience off the hook.) Buffy says she wished she’d saved the kid, "She was special." Yeah the kid’s horrendous teenage angst poetry sure was special. In the last scene Buffy is back in her counsellor’s office. Gee, kids, looks like even our superhero Buffy can’t save everyone. Though, hang on—isn’t that the lesson learnt from Joyce’s death? The last two scenes of "Help" are just like the wrap of some sitcom or Touched by an Angel. It was all I could do not to throw up.

But even worse is the "very special Buffy" arc of Season Six: Willow’s magic addiction. Or, gee, could it be a metaphor for drug addiction? Just in case you haven’t caught on, there’s a poster-boy drug dealer with hippy clothes and long hair called Rack who talks slow, and lots of scenes of Willow being all spaced and, ooh, kind of stoned-looking. The sight of Willow in "Wrecked" 6.10 (which gets my vote for worst Buffy episode ever) in the junkie waiting room causes me physical pain. Drugs are bad, man. Just say no. I wished I’d been stoned watching it, which would at least have eased my pain. Man, the Buffy metaphors used to be a tad more clever and emotionally resonant. As in, you sleep with your boyfriend and overnight he turns into a monster.

I hate Willow’s becoming Dark Magic Queen all the more because the writers blew it. The set up for Willow’s descent goes all the way back to her first tentative steps with magic in season one. They did not need to belabour the drug addiction metaphor with Rack and Amy, and Willow’s AA (or is that MA?) total abstinence. (Especially as Giles’ approach at the beginning of Season Seven seems far more sensible.) I have rewritten that arc in my head a hundred times. First I put together a mini-festival of Willow’s use of magic, which includes Giles’ angry remonstration with Willow after she brings Buffy back ("Flooded" 6.4), and Willow’s chilling speech to Dawn ("Two to Go" 6.21). In the versions in my head, Willow’s complete descent into blind grief, rage and madness does not turn her into an after-school special villain mouthing ludicrous lines like, "There’s no-one in the world who has the power to stop me now!"

Way More Love than Hate
Ultimately the brilliance of Buffy makes the occasional falls from grace that much harder to stand. Knowing that every episode of Buffy could be a work of genius of the level of "Who Are You?" 4.16 or "Restless" or "Once More, With Feeling" makes the occasional sub-Charmed-level hour a stab to the heart. Why can’t Buffy be produced like The Sopranos, with time and money to burn?

Buffy is both good and bad; wonderful and excremental. Even the very worst episodes have moments of gold (well, okay, almost all do). And, even a few good episodes have a cringe-worthy moment or two. A great deal of criticism and other writing about Buffy has gotten caught up in dichotomous thinking: it’s good or it’s bad, it’s feminist or it’s misogynist; it’s racist or it isn’t. Buffy is all of these.

Buffy is certainly obsession-inspiring. That’s why I fervently hope that Season Seven is the last season of Buffy. Frankly, I can’t take any more. I pray that the show will end. I want to watch television without a stomach full of knots. Seven seasons is plenty. More than enough to keep me happy with endless reprogramming of my Buffy festivals. If it all stops at the end of this season then I can rule out the possibility that there will ever be an entire bad season that is nothing but episodes like "Killed By Death" and "Wrecked" and "Help." I want a finished, no-longer-unfolding text. I don’t want there ever to be a set of Buffy DVDs that I can’t do anything with.


Coda: Way More Hate than Love
The balanced, temperate words above were written only a short way into Season Seven, before I realised how horrifically Buffy the Vampire Slayer had gone off the rails. It’s many months now since I have made any attempt to defend the show. Instead I have taken to bitterly muttering about how much better it would have been if they’d finished in the Sixth Season, making "Normal Again" the final episode. I’m now one of those people I used to defend the show against. There is no one more bitter than an ex-true believer. Color me narky and picky.

I’m writing this coda a week after the season finale and to be honest I’m still in shock. On the one hand, I’ve gotten my wish: Season Seven is the last season of Buffy. On the other hand, I’ve also gottten what I most feared: a set of Buffy DVDs I can’t do anything with.

Everything I write in this coda is flying in the face of my assertion that you really can’t have a coherent opinion about a Buffy season until it’s come out on DVD and you’ve seen it at least five times. I’m not saying I won’t change my mind, but right now I’m looking forward to watching Season Seven on DVD about as much as I look forward to a 24 hour plane ride in cattle class.

Season Seven was a nightmare. Only three episodes I would describe as good (forget about looking for any works of genius—a "Once More, With Feeling", a "Hush"—there weren’t any): "Selfless" 7.5, "Conversations With Dead People" 7.7 and "Chosen" 7.22. Each of these episodes had problems. "Selfless" added all sorts of resonances to Anya’s character, setting up exciting possibilities for future development. None of them went anywhere. The rest of the season trundled along as if "Selfless" had never happened. The rationale for Tara’s not appearing to Willow was lame in the extreme. Why would Willow be persuaded, even for a second, by the annoying ditz from "Help"? "Chosen" felt exactly like what it was: an episode butchered to fit its hour time slot. Everything except the tedious Spike & Buffy love story was short-changed (I sure wish Faith and Robin Wood had gotten a bit more of that screen time). Anya’s death, which should have been tragic (especially in light of the groundwork laid down in "Selfless"), managed to elicit little more than a "bummer, man" expression from Xander. Hardly anyone else even noticed.

No episode of Season Seven made me cry. Well, okay, except for tears of disbelief that the show could possibly have become so bad. The worst failing of Season Seven has been the writing. Overall it’s been shocking. The humor was forced, and the characters all developed multiple personalities, none of them believable. The Buffy and Spike relationship become as wet and annoying as that of Buffy and Angel. Since when was Buffy a humourless bitch? Had the Scoobies learned nothing that they would so easily turn against her yet again? Since when did these people speak in a series of tedious speeches:

Buffy to Faith: Don’t be afraid to lead them. Whether you wanted it or not, their lives are yours. It’s only gonna get harder. Protect them, but lead them ("Empty Places" 7.19).

And yet, after all, it is Buffy. This is the nasty divorce, but we may in a year or two become friends again. There’s always a chance that those DVDs will work their magic and I’ll be able to come up with a whole new set of Buffy mini-festivals. (I can’t help noticing that "Selfless" is the perfect end to the Anya’s-afraid-of-bunny-rabbits festival.) Right now, though, I’m just so relieved it’s over.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Scott Westerfeld, L. Timmel Duchamp and Glenn Yeffeth for all their useful comments on this essay, which was first published in Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series) edited by Glenn Yeffeth.

New York City, 30 May 2003

Brave Rabbits: the Carol Emshwiller and Ursula Le Guin Show

Saturday’s conversation between Carol Emshwiller and Ursula Le Guin was fabulous and moving and for me the highlight of the 2003 WisCon. Eileen Gunn fed them the occasional question, but mostly they chatted amongst themselves, covering writing about the recent war (Ursula needs to stew on things for a while, so hasn’t yet; for Carol the process is more immediate—she’s already sold a number of stories on the subject, at least one of which is in print), teaching the craft of writing (Ursula loves to steer her students towards contemplating the fine art of comma placement), raising childen while trying to write (apparently the trick is to get them to go to bed by 7:30pm) and a great deal more about the road they’ve had to hoe as writers. It was glorious wittnessing such a warm and easy friendship between two very different women. Ursula’s path has been for the most part golden (does anyone truly have an easy path?) with supportive parents and spouse, while Carol came to writing later, with little support and a certain amount of hinderance from her spouse. Her discussion of the difficulties of stealing time to write whle raising her children ("I felt like I couldn’t breathe," she said at one point, smiling) elicited hisses for her late husband from the audience, and yet there was no condemnation in her words nor even the faintest whiff of bitterness. Ursula claimed to be a rabbit in comparison to Carol’s bravery. Carol claimed that she too was a rabbit. John Kessel dryly pointed out from the audience that, if so, she was a very brave rabbit. The audience laughed a great deal, and I know that I was not the only one whose eyes filled with tears.

Carol is in her eighties and Ursula in her seventies. The average life expectancy of a woman in the USA is 79, so they’re doing well, but have hardly reached Guiness Book of World Records ages. So why the big deal? Carol and Ursula—at any age—are extraordinary people. Warm, witty, compassionate brilliant writers. Part of the big deal is that they are doing some of the best writing of their careers right now. They show that the life of a writer can just keep on going. If you’re healthy and still sparking on all cylinders—though both Carol and Ursula seem to have way more cylinders than most of us—you can write, and more importantly, you can keep getting better. Who doesn’t want to hear that message?

But what filled my eyes with tears as I listened to those two white-haired, sharp-witted, funny, funny women was that not only are they ubelievably cool folk that anyone would give their eyeteeth to hang out with but they run counter to the predominate images of old women we get in the west. Most of us under fifty have never seen anyone remotely like them on television, or on film. We were given no expectations as we grew up that old age for a woman is anything other than a time of horror, ugliness and stupidity. You’ll lose your looks (someone must’ve forgotten to tell Carol and Ursula about that one), your mind (ditto) and will either turn into a mean, screeching witch who eats children or a gentle, silver-haired Stepford grandma with an endless supply of home-baked cookies and homilies and little interest in anything other than her grandchildren.

Most of us in the west are afraid of old age. On Saturday, watching Carol and Ursula talk and laugh about their writing lives, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t remotely afraid.

Madison, Wisconsin, 25 May 2003