The latest issue of The Believer comes with all the usual goodies we’ve come to expect from this quirky but edifying lit mag: lengthy book reviews, personal essays and clever interviews. Steered by the dynamic team of Heidi Julavits, Ed Park and Vendela Vida, The Believer continues to trump its literary challengers.

Highlights in September include Rich Cohen’s personal essay, ‘Closing Time’, which examines the (strange) history of the American automobile industry, Stephen Elliott’s ‘My Father’s Murder’, which recollects a violent moment in his father’s life in Chicago, and Sara Gran and Megan Abbot’s compelling re-evaluation of V.C. Andrew’s bizarre ‘children’s’ literature.

There are some intriguing interviews, too. The Believer’s interviews always take a standard format – question/answer – and on the whole it works quite well, as they are always discursive. This month there is an interview with the journalist, essayist, environmentalist, historian and art critic Rebecca Solnit, and Philip Zimbardo, the academic infamous for the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 (which saw 24 undergraduates play the role of prisoners and guards and live in a mock prison in the basement of the university’s psychology building). Here, Zimbardo contemplates the experiment’s implications for ethics, free will and the notorious prison, Abu Ghraib.

Towards the back, Tony DuShane talks to Nick Cave during the ‘Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!’ tour with The Bad Seeds. Cave offers telling insight into the formation of the score for the filmic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which is to be directed by John Hillcoat (who worked with Cave on The Proposition). Cave also reveals that his new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, began as a screenplay – and that he ‘basically did it on tour’: it was written by hand, on the bus, as the band drove through Europe (does this come as a surprise to anyone?).

The Believer always remains quite tongue-in-cheek. Especially fun is ‘Sedaratives: A Monthly Advice Column’. This is my favourite:

Dear Sedaratives:

I’m interested in finding a new job in this shitty economy. Can you advice me which field to look for work in? I’m good at nothing.

Kevin Albert, Oshkosh, Wis.

Dear Kevin:

I would advise you to go into accounting or health care, two sectors that are growing even as the economy is shrinking. Based on the current condition of both our health care and financial systems, you should be fully qualified to succeed in either field. Failing that, you could always be a special advisor to the president.

The Believer has a playful, kitsch aesthetic that continues to endear – as does its basic, committed ethos: ‘we will focus on writers and books we like’. In part reactionary, the magazine was established in response to the shrinking space on American broadsheets for literary review content. Oh, and its original title? The Optimist.

Keep an eye out for October.

Things have been a little quiet over at KYD headquarters this past week – or at least on the blogging front – because we’ve been super busy organising our first public outing, the Kill Your Darlings Literary Trivia Night, held at The Pumphouse in Fitzroy last night. It was a huge success, with a healthy portion of funds raised towards our inaugural print run and a good night had by all. Next stop, Adelaide. Watch this space …

We’ll be posting photos and an official wrap-up of the event in the next few days, but in the meantime (while we’re recovering), here’s some online reading I’ve recently enjoyed:

Over at 3000 Books, Estelle Tang is taking a ground-up view of the publishing industry with her series ‘Hello Interns’, interviewing the APA publishing interns, starting with Stephanie Stepan, publicity intern at Text and Belinda Leon, publishing assistant at Oxford University Press (not actually an intern, but kinda, sorta, near enough). It’s pretty interesting to read about how different people get started and why they work in the industry. (Hint: it’s not the money.) You may remember Estelle from previous roles such as Melbourne Writers Festival Official Blogger 2009.

Leanne Hall, my fellow Readings bookseller, won the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing this year for her unpublished manuscript, This is Shyness. On her blog, she writes about the experience of sitting down with her publisher to talk about where to go next – and finds it pretty exhilarating. I’m pretty stoked about Leanne’s win, not just because she’s lovely, but because she’s a fantastic writer. I fear Leanne is destined to achieve cult internet status before her book comes out though, thanks to her Friday hobby of dressing up in bizarre themed outfits and posting them on Facebook and later, the blog. I confess that I find myself looking out for her Friday posts – and I know I’m not alone. I don’t know why they’re so awesome, but they just are.

And Kerryn Goldsworthy, a very fine book reviewer indeed, has some pretty sensible sounding guidelines on her blog what makes a good good review, a good bad review, a bad good review and a bad bad review. Recommended reading for anyone who writes or is interested in reviewing culture.

The Occupational Health and Safety Risks of Being a Writer and Reader

I recently had to suffer through a conversation with someone who was convinced that my job, as a writer, reader and editor, was ‘soft’.

‘My brother’s in construction,’ they told me, ‘and I’m a fireman. We both have dangerous jobs. I risk injury every day of my life. It’s stressful. But you’re a writer. You just potter about in pyjamas and sit at a desk all day. No risks. Easy.’

‘You can get injuries from writing,’ I replied, indignant that he assumed my job was without stress and physical risk (and quietly alarmed that he knew I liked to write in my pyjamas).

‘What? Paper cuts?’ He sniggered.

The popular perception of the writer, free from bodily and psychological harm, irritates me. I don’t believe being an author and reader is as soft-core as most people imagine. In fact, I’m convinced that writing is a hazardous occupation. Not quite as hazardous as, say, disposing of radioactive waste or being Naomi Campbell’s personal assistant, but still, a career nevertheless fraught with danger.

For example, the other night I was lying in bed, having just finished a chapter of Jill Dawson’s Fred and Edie. Deciding it was time for sleep, I flung out a hand to turn off my bedside lamp and accidentally disturbed the tower of books on my bedside table.

(Now, I don’t use the word ‘tower’ lightly here. This was a pile of twenty-five fat novels. I know there were twenty-five, because I counted the books while wiping my blood off their pages later.)

As this mammoth column of literature teetered towards me, I froze with terror and forgot to put out a protective hand. I squeezed my eyes shut and uttered a pathetic whimper of fear, as the tower loomed over my head, toppled over, and delivered me with an almighty concussion.

Books hurt. They’re heavy and hard, and the corner of a solid hardback has eye-gouging potential. Any reader who has reached for a book in an upper shelf of a bookstore and accidentally brought down a pile of its neighbours will know what I mean. If you ever visit a large library and listen hard, you will hear, under the hum of air conditioning, the faraway screams of victims as they’re belted on the head with heavy tomes that have been dislodged from their upper shelves.

Head trauma is therefore the first occupational health and safety risk that comes to mind when I consider the dangers of reading and writing. The collapse of my bedside tower of books, and the injuries I suffered (mild concussion and a split lip) is evidence of this. Books are unsafe, and any serious reader or writer who lives amongst shelves and towers of badly stacked books also lives under the constant threat of bruises and brain injury.

There are other physical health problems that can afflict the writer and reader besides head trauma. I regret to say that I suffer from all of the following: weakened eyesight (from a childhood spent reading in the backseat of the car at night, snatching paragraphs every time the car passed under a street light), poor posture (slumping over a keyboard every day), the development of a hunchback (most commonly suffered by proofreaders and sub-editors made to pore over size 10 font), and insomnia (kept awake at night by a page-turner).

But this isn’t all. The list of occupational health and safety risks grows when you consider the other, more hidden, psychological traumas suffered by writers and readers:

Anxiety: Excessive fondness for one’s own books (a characteristic of the avid reader and serious writer) often leads to severe nervous anxiety in the occasion of the books being lent and not returned in due time.

Social persecution: An early-childhood addiction to Enid Blyton often leads to the habitual use of words such as ‘horrid’ and ‘bother’, which can then lead to bullying from less-literate peers.

Psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies: A writer, shut up at home with her computer, often suffers from poor social skills and, occasionally, mild insanity. When invited out for a rare social engagement with friends, the writer may forget to introduce herself, will giggle at inappropriate moments or may not remember how to speak at all. She might talk of her novel’s characters as though they are real people. Unsettled and excited by this rare social contact, the writer might also display mild symptoms of psychosis, such as hysterical laughter, anxiety, and sexual aggression.

Heartache: A consuming love of the written word can lead to jealousy from partners, the deterioration of relationships, and consequently, stress, heartache and debilitating loneliness. For example, a partner might threaten to break up with a writer or reader because they made them wait on their couch for two hours while they finished a book. The partner might think the reader is neglecting them. The reader will usually argue that narrative climax warranted such neglect. The partner will argue that the reader loves books more than them. The reader might agree.*

As you can see, the writer and reader are faced with a worrisome list of occupational health and safety risks. Whilst they may not have to operate heavy machinery, the literati are nevertheless threatened on a daily basis with physical and psychological trauma. Next time I see that cynical fireman, I’ll be sure to remind him of this. And if he doesn’t listen to me, I might just have to belt him over the head with a dictionary.

*Taken from an actual case study.

Guest post by Michelle Calligaro

“When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.” Joyce Carol Oates

One man being hounded at the moment because of the violence in his art is Quentin Tarantino over his new film Inglourious Basterds, a pulp action-thriller set during World War II. I will admit that Reservoir Dogs is one of my all-time favourite movies, but I haven’t watched many of Tarantino’s films since. I gave up after Natural Born Killers – I don’t even think I watched it all the way through. But a friend convinced me that Inglourious Basterds was worth seeing, and I wasn’t disappointed. The plot is inspired, the international cast excellent and it is visually and stylistically spot-on.

But, and I think this is what the critics are missing, the most interesting thing about Inglourious Basterds is the way Tarantino presents violence. It isn’t always easy to watch, I spent half the film with my hand over my eyes, but all the characters are compromised by it. And while Tarantino has himself said that we love to watch it, I don’t think, in this instance at least, it is violence simply for violence’s sake. The black humour prevalent throughout doesn’t allow a complacent view of the agresssion, for which none of the characters are vindicated: Aldo, the American ‘hero’ and leader of the basterds is clearly psychotic. The classic ‘Mexican-standoff’ moment, when three men have their guns pointed at each other’s dicks, pretty much sums up for me the appalling and ridiculous futility of male violence that is magnified in war.

Some have said that his use of the pulp genre reduces the absolute horror of his subject. I disagree – like any great artist, he makes us see something we are very familiar with in a new way. You can only watch so many realist dramas about the Holocaust before you start to become numb to the horror and inhumanity of it all. Inglourious Basterds, while being highly entertaining, challenges you all over again. And at the same time, Tarantino continues to question his own art by setting the destruction of Hitler and his Nazi war machine inside a cinema – an icon of art, but also one of the great instruments of war propaganda.

Tarantino’s films don’t always satisy beyond the level of schlock fest, but Inglourious Basterds is inspired. And to return to Ms Oates, it would be very naive of us to think that the reality of World War II was any less senselessly violent than Tarantino imagines.

Cross-posted at The Readings Carlton blog

Finalists Announced

Five authors have been shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Literature, an award worth a whopping $60,000. This year Barry Hill, Hannie Rayson, Shane Maloney, Alex Miller and Gerald Murnane make up the famous five. The Prize, which is offered every three years, is awarded to a Victorian writer whose body of published or produced work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature, and to cultural and intellectual life. All genres and forms, such as fiction, non-fiction, essays, plays, screenplays and poetry, are considered.

Best Writing Award 2009

The shortlist for the 2009 Best Writing Award has also been announced.

The Best Writing Award is for a piece of published or produced work of outstanding clarity, originality and creativity by a Victorian writer aged forty years or younger.

The nominated writers are:

Tom Cho: Look Who’s Morphing (Giramondo)

Joel Deane: Magisterium (Arcadia)

Lisa Gorton: Press Release (Giramondo)

Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man (Hamish Hamilton)

Simmone Howell: Everything Beautiful (Pan Macmillan)

Myfanwy Jones: The Rainy Season (Viking)

Lally Katz: Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd (HLA)

Nam Lee: The Boat (Hamish Hamilton)

Amra Pajalic: The Good Daughter (Text)

Jeff Sparrow: Killing (Melbourne University Press)

The recipient of the Best Writing Award 2009 will be invited to participate in a three-month association with the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. They will also be awarded $30,000 – nothing to sneeze at!

We at Kill Your Darlings think the shortlist for the Best Writing Award is looking particularly stellar this year. It’s refreshing to see new writers, such as Amra Pajalic and Simmone Howell, lined up with the likes of Nam Le and Chloe Hooper – a writer whose mantelpiece is already cluttered with prizes.  Chloe’s true-crime book, The Tall Man, has already cleaned up the Victorian, Queensland and NSW Premier’s Prizes, The John Button Prize for political writing, the Australian Book Industry non-fiction prize and the true-crime prizes at the Ned Kelly and Davitt Awards!

The winners will be announced on November 11. We’ll keep you posted.