MISGIVINGS ABOUT BOOK COUNCIL
Little is known about the Book Council of Australia, announced by Tony Abbott at the Prime Minister's Literary Awards in December, except that it will divert $6 million over three years from the Australia Council to promote writing and reading. Historian David Day, chairman of the Australian Society of Authors (and author of a new Paul Keating biography), tells Undercover he has "serious misgivings" about a council that takes money from the Australia Council and is under the Minister for the Arts rather than "a standalone body that can speak without fear or favour". The ASA board will discuss the book council at its February meeting but Day says, "I think we would have trouble justifying it to our members, because there is so much anger among authors". The Australia Council plans to use money from several areas so the impact is not only on grants to authors and publishers. The ASA has supported the industry push over several years for an independent book council, which seemed likely under Labor's Industry Minister, Kim Carr, until he lost his job.
Reconciled: V.S. Naipaul.Credit: Indranil Mukherjee
PEACE TALKS IN JAIPUR
The 15-year feud between V.S. Naipaul (pictured) and Paul Theroux ended at Jaipur Literature Festival last weekend, according to media reports, when Theroux went on stage to push the wheelchair of his former mentor, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. At an earlier event celebrating Naipaul's 1961 novel, A House for Mr Biswas, the Nobel laureate cried when Theroux praised the book as "the foundation of Naipaul's genius" and "one of the finest books I've ever read". The friends were estranged after Theroux sold some personally signed Naipaul books and wrote a critical book about their relationship, Sir Vidia's Shadow. Ian McEwan began their reconciliation by getting the men to shake hands at Hay Festival in 1996.
INCESTUOUS AUTHORS AND OTHER FANTASIES
Prolific fantasy author Neil Gaiman has been busy on Twitter during his Australian tour. (He is at City Recital Hall tonight.) Undercover enjoyed a page he tweeted from The New Stateman in 1977 which showed a book review of Science Fiction at Large, edited by Peter Nicholls. The reviewer, science-fiction and fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, wrote that of 11 contributors to the book he knew six, one was his ex-wife's boyfriend and another a close friend. "Of all literary worlds, the sf world is probably the most incestuous since Bloomsbury," he commented. An illustrator had told him, "The percentage of syphilis among sf people is higher than among Marine veterans returning from Vietnam. They are all screwing each other." This, Moorcock said, means resentments were many but unspoken. Unfortunately Gaiman did not provide the rest of the review but this entertaining start suggests Moorcock's assessment would not be entirely objective. Please reviewers, don't use him as your model.
NOVELISTS ON COURSE
Results are coming in from Allen & Unwin's Faber Academy four-year-old novel-writing course. Former Herald journalist Debra Jopson did the course in 2011 and Random House will publish her novel set in Lebanon, Oliver of the Levant, early in 2016. A third of the students in last year's course have found an agent or had a publisher's interest. This year's courses will be taught by Kathryn Heyman in Sydney and Paddy O'Reilly and Toni Jordan in Melbourne and there's a full scholarship on offer in both cities (deadline for applications is February 9). Find out more at a free night in Sydney on February 2 or at faberwritingacademy.com.au.