Sydney Writers' Festival: The Road to Bennelong

Margot Saville acknowledged the danger of being too close to the book’s subject when trying to objectively pen a political biography. “In the end it was my book, my reputation and the book had to stand on its merits and not to be seen as propaganda,” Saville told a Sydney Writer’s Festival audience at the Walsh Bay precinct.

Speaking about her book The Battle for Bennelong – The Adventures of Maxine McKew aged 50something, Saville conceded it was not her idea, likened the experience to childbirth and said she would do it again.

On knowing Maxine well, she said, “that’s kind of good and bad, I copped quite a lot of criticism for that and I think rightly justified in that it’s very hard to write objectively about someone who is a friend, and that was a constant balancing act for the book.”

To compensate, she was sometimes harsher on McKew than she needed to be to validate its contents.

The friendship didn’t hinder the substance of the material. Saville had no background as a political reporter, yet the publisher approached her because they didn’t want a standard political book.

Following Labor’s star candidate on her quest to unseat the Prime Minister, facilitator Deborah Cameron dwells on the importance of consulting both camps of the political spectrum: to which Saville says, “I did greet him warmly at Paddy McGuinness’s funeral. I greeted Mr Howard like an old pal but it was not reciprocated.”

But what was the difference between the candidates? “Mr Howard would only turn up [to local events] if there were media there. That was the difference.”

With odds at $4.50 at the start of the campaign, Saville calls herself an idiot for failing to bet. Then she “kept thinking that I wanted her to win because then I’d sell more copies of the book.”

When McKew won however, people started looking for explanations, and thought maybe her husband was responsible.

“Lot’s of people like to think that strong women are always directed by a man. It’s commonly held and people are always saying to me, Hogg’s behind it isn’t he.” She says, “I honestly think that’s not the case.”

With a Maxine the movie in the works, an audience member queries whether Bennelong has changed her. As a public figure, McKew’s become more cautious. Margot recalls a moment during the campaign when Maxine was standing in a queue to buy underwear and an onlooker commented ‘are you going to wear that on election night?’ She says Maxine can’t go out and do what she used to, because “there’s always someone with a mobile phone and a camera.”

Saville spoke of her transformation into ‘wallpaper’, mastering the art of becoming invisible. She was in and out of the office so often and present at all the events that everyone assumed she was there to work: “you get the best moments, when people don’t realise you’re actually observing them.”

A key setback was that she filed the book before Howard’s concession of Bennelong, which the audience noted happened after an extensive period.

Referring to the candidates as chalk and cheese, Saville says Howard clearly lost touch with key factions of the seat, enabling McKew to tap into the electorate.

“John Howard actually during the campaign never referred once to Maxine by name. We were always waiting for it. He always referred to her as ‘the Labor candidate’,” Saville says.


Photo: Taken by Bonita Silva

Sydney Writers' Festival: Signature Styles

Linda Jaivin "signing" a book

There's a scene in the film National Treasure 2 where author Riley Poole peeks out hopefully from behind stacks of books at his own book signing. Except for an old man who waves vaguely to him, he sits there unnoticed until a girl approaches him and asks, “Are you Benjamin Gates?”

It’s not easy to be at a book signing. But when it’s an empty house, it’s even worse.“You’re always full of dread when you go to a book signing that you’ll embarrass yourself and the bookshop,” says David Dale, co-author of Soffritto – A Ligurian Memoir with Lucio Galletto. “You’ll be sitting there and half an hour goes by and you can see the sales assistants thinking, ‘This bloke’s a complete dud’.”

In a perfect world, at each book signing there would a reasonably long line of people. Why? Signed books equal money. “You can’t return signed books,” says Victoria Tomkinson, publisher for Linda Jaivin, author of The Infernal Optimist. “Out there with your sharpie, that’s money in your pocket.”

“Every author knows that,” Jaivin chimes in.

“Some writers have lots of people, other writers have hardly anyone - and when that's you, it brings back memories of adolescent rejection,” says Catherine Coles, author of The Poet Who Forgot.

Or worse, it reflects on the author’s bad performance. Chief queue wrangler for the Sydney Writers Festival, Morgan Smith, says that a long queue for book signings by authors is a measure of how well they captivate their audience at Festival events.

“Obviously,the big name overseas authors [have long queues] but also those who talk really well about their books and ideas,and somehow capture the imagination of the audience,” she explains.“You can always tell the writers who have been really good by the length of the queue.”

"But there’s a downside to popularity. “My hand doesn’t get tired,” says Dale. “My problem is to think of something to write.”

Jaivin says she has a way around this: “At the launch of my first novel, the comic erotic Eat Me, I came up with the idea of kissing someone’s book to leave a big red lip print.It must have been the champagne talking. Anyway,after that,everyone wanted a kiss on their book.”

“Because I had to keep refreshing my lipstick, I went through nearly the entire tube on the one night. Kissing copies of Eat Me became something of a tradition and I still do it when people ask – and occasionally when they don’t.” Was it worth it? “I never begrudge people my kisses. In case any other authors thinking of taking this up, I have one thing to say: matte works better than gloss.”

At least a kiss is simple – fans often struggle to understand what the author wrote. But sometimes this is deliberate.

“One time, I recall beginning a dedication and then realising I was less than 100 per cent sure how to spell a key word in it,” says Mark Tredinnick, poet and author of The Little Red Writing Book. “Fortunately for me, my writing is close to illegible, and I made sure it was at its least clear for the word in question.”

Jillian Rice, at lunch with Dale and Galletto, doesn’t seem to mind the near-illegible writing and says she always gets a book signed if she can. “I feel it gives me a personal connection to the author.” On the other hand, Roger Kerr, also at the lunch, doesn’t particularly care about a signature.

Rather, he uses the opportunity to engage in one-on-one conversation with the author. “I get them in on an unusual question,” he says slyly. “I like to ask them a question they don’t expect. The book signing is irrelevant, it’s more about the talking. I’m curious as to what sort of person the author is.”

Morgan Smith frowns on this. “The main problem in signing queues is when people want to tell the author their life story or give a long critique. “Ask for [your] book to be signed, keep the chat down to a nice compliment – ‘I loved your last book and I’m really looking forward to reading this.’”

“It’s very interesting,” says Dr Stephen Juan, Sydney University anthropologist and author of the Odd books series. “If the author is famous and the person has read several of their books, the reader already has a relationship with the author but the author does not know the reader at all.

“It’s a one-way relationship and it’s easy for a reader to be offended … because they just don’t understand the author doesn’t know them.”

For all the pitfalls, one rule seems simple: have a book by the author for the author to sign. Steve Toltz, author of A Fraction of the Whole, recalls: “At one signing, someone gave me the Burroughs book Naked Lunch to sign. I signed as William Burroughs.


Pic: courtesy of the supremely awesome Kris Lapez whom I am very much indebted to.