Open Page by Linda Jaivin

Why do you write? To find expression for my thoughts, stories, and dreams; to entertain, and sometimes to persuade. Are you a vivid dreamer? Yes, but I don’t write my dreams down. I let them sparkle and disintegrate. Where are you happiest? In the harbour, the sea, pools, the bath. When I was little I wanted to live in a house where all the furniture floated and you could swim from room to room. I still do. What is your favourite music? I have broad tastes: Jimmy Little, Sufjan Stevens, Frank Sinatra, Radiohead, P.J. Harvey, Lorde, Gurrumul, Powder-finger, Karma County, Sex Pistols, Paris Combo … I’d like to be able to drop some more highbrow names into the mix, but honestly I never listen to Mozart or Bach. What is your favourite book? An impossible question. I often say Madame Bovary, and sometimes Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but I’ve recently been mesmerised by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her Half of a Yellow Sun in particular. Ask me again in six months. And your favourite author? Shakespeare. Love that dead white dude. Love his plays, his sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and all the rest. And your favourite literary hero and heroine? Perhaps le petit prince of Le Petit Prince and either Alice of Alice in Wonderland or Pan Jinlian, the restless, cheating, husband-murdering, sex-mad anti-heroine of the Chinese classic Outlaws of the Marsh and the great erotic novel it inspired, Jin Ping Mei. It depends on my mood. Some days it’s Eugene Onegin. Name an early literary idol or influence whom you no longer admire – or vice versa. Tom Robbins. I once found his novels exhilarating. Now I think them terribly over-written. How old were you when your first book appeared? Eat Me came out when I was forty. Before that I threw away two draft novels and shelved one, and composed many short stories and much poetry, as well as countless magazine articles. It was a long apprenticeship. What, if anything, impedes your writing? Daydreaming. Financial worry. Life. The Internet. I’ve only found a solution for the fourth: Freedom, an app. It takes you off the Internet for as long as you like. I’ve read that Jonathan Franzen uses it too. How do you regard publishers? With gratitude. My experience has largely been one of feeling hugely supported. I love the editing process in particular, and always learn so much. What do you think of the state of criticism? In Australia – not ideal. The literary world is a small pond, and the fish (with noble exceptions) are either competing for food or fertilising one another’s eggs. If you had your time over again, would you choose to be a writer? Of course. If I couldn’t be a rock star. And if I could be a rock star, I’d be one who was also a writer. What do you think of writers’ festivals? They’re usually great fun. I like meeting readers and other writers, too. It’s the only time we all get to come out of our caves and sit around the fire. Do you feel artists are valued in our society? Only by people who value art. The denigration of writers and artists as ‘élites’ by so many of the powerful would be funny if it weren’t so disheartening. Those people who do value art, however, are passionate about it, and that is consolation. We dance for them. What are you working on now? A screenplay, some essays – and I’m gearing up for the next novel.

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Letters to the Editor - April 2024

The Buddhist and the Ethicist: Conversations on effective altruism, engaged Buddhism, and how to build a better world by Peter Singer and Shih Chao-Hwei

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