Shanghai Literary Festival- Jancis Robinson and Gail Jones

During the next three weeks, Shanghai is hosting a literary festival. According to the program, it began about 5 years ago with only one or two authors and has grown to 55 authors, some of which are using the event to launch their newest book. There are a range of topics, but the majority of them have an Asian theme. There are no tickets for the overall festival; one has to purchase a ticket for each author that they wish to hear. The event is hosted at M on the Bund in either the Crystal Room (complete with a curtain of crystal beads) or the Glamour Bar. For the price of 65RMB (about $9.00 USD), you get to hear and participate in conversations that range from travels on the Silk Road, Chinese Feminists, to children's books, get a drink of your choice (white/red wine, orange juice, or coffee/tea), and enjoy a stunning view of the historic river area. I attended one session on Saturday and another on Sunday; the setting was intimate, the weather was sunny so the windows were opened slightly and every 15 minutes, the clock from the nearby historic building would chime.

I wanted to see/hear both authors for similar yet different reasons. Both spoke on the subject of writing. Since I am increasingly spending more time thinking about the power of written words and their placement in order to convey images, feelings and concepts in the effort to tell stories, I thought it might be wise to see how published authors approach their craft. I had heard an engaging interview with Jancis on Grape Radio, one of the podcasts that I enjoy listening to (always makes me thirsty for a glass of wine), and could not pass up the opportunity to see her in person. Of Ms. Jones, I knew nothing of before Sunday. But, I wanted to see her, in a quest to broaden my reading horizons, and possibly find new and intriguing authors.

Jancis Robinson is a pre-eminent wine expert and has written the Oxford Companion to Wine, and other titles, as well as has a blog on which she posts her tasting notes, I think on a daily basis. The title of her talk was "Writing about Wine:Impossible or Impudent." Writing about the taste of wine is quite difficult. If you are one of the roughly 5 percent of society with the largest number of taste buds per square inch, you have a range of flavours, that the rest of us might never taste (Jancis is in that 5 per cent). So first of all,how does one describe using words, how things taste, and how does an uber taster make it relevant for the regular wine drinker? The first question for me, is the real challenge. Try as I might, I came to the same conclusion that she and many other wine reviewers have. Taste can only be described in terms of other tastes. So for example, some wine tastes like cherries, or chocolate, or has hints of tobacco or other flavours that are familiar to her readers.

However, it occurs to me that all authors use comparative methods ( ie. it is like, it resembles, it has the scent of...) to describe anything from feelings, to geographical locations; most of us know the color blue, have felt the sun on our skin, and have smelled freshly baked bread. Critical to the success of the author in reaching their audience, is the familiarity of descriptors to the intended audience. This is sometimes why translations in other languages and the success of the work, is more complex. I wish that I had thought of the above while at the session- it certainly would have been a better comment than the bloke who wanted Jancis to recount and interesting "antidote" (NOT a typo- he meant anecdote) of some wine personnage she had et. I would say then to her question, not impossible, just relative, and not impudent, just personal- and readers should be encouraged to read others and come to their own conclusions.

Gail Jones is a professional writer and a professor of writing in Australia. She read from her novel Sixty Lights- which are sixty short stories, using 60,000 words, and each short story is meant to by like a photographic image. She said that she likes to read poetry for the condensed images that they convey through the power of language. From the too brief passage that she read, the condensed product is what she sets out to do, without using the poetic format. She has an exceptional vocabulary, which is all the more amazing given that she was raised in the Australian"bush" and did not read books as a child. The passage from Sixty Lights is not included here,here, but she describes the images and purpose so much better than I would, in this transcript of an interview. I leave you with the link and really encourage you to look at it. Her latest book is titled Sorry and is focused on the aboriginal issue in Australia. I did not buy her books at the fair, which was likely a mistake, but she is now on my list to read. She reminded me a bit of a younger Margaret Atwood with her precision word use and her knowledge of technical parts of writing, as well as her vivid, vivid images (I have partially read the Margaret Atwood book entitled "Negotiating with the Dead" in which she discusses the method of writing).


One of the sponsors of the event, City Scene did some live time blogging of some of the bigger presentations. I did not want to attend a later session on Sunday, so I signed online. While not as good as actually being there, the blogger managed to post every 10 minutes or so and summarized some of the highlights and included some of the questions and response. Pretty cool use of technology, I thought and available to all. You can even participate, once you figure out the time difference. If you have time on your hands next Saturday and Sunday (probably your early Sunday and Monday morning), you could always check here.(just select Shanghai)

I have earmarked the program for next weekend's sessions. I hope to hear Arundhati Roy and Fatima Buttho. And then there is a Chinese mystery author who is on the following Friday.