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Five Questions for Chris Flynn

JA October 01

Since March this year, writer and editor Chris Flynn (of former Torpodo mag fame) has been curating and hosting Dog’s Tales, an increasingly popular weekly storytelling event at Dog’s Bar in St Kilda. In a new foray for our Spike interviews, we chat with him over the digital divide about what goes into making a literary culture and why small events in big cities matter. The next session of Dog’s Tales features Lisa Lang (Utopian Man) and Chris Womersley (Bereft) on Tues Oct 5 at 8pm (more details here).

Empty_chair

Tell us about Dog’s Tales – what happens on those fateful nights in St Kilda?

At around 8pm on a Tuesday night the private room at the Dog’s Bar starts to fill up. There’s only 40 chairs in there so latecomers often have to stand next to Luke May down the back. He’s there with a Readings hat on in case you want to buy one of the guests’ books. The door is locked and the heavy velvet curtain pulled across at about ten past. The lights are dimmed as I sit in the huge leather armchair, bathed in a pale green glow from the reading lamp. As host I then welcome our first guest for the evening, who reads for around 20 minutes. They might read one long written piece, several short ones or simply recount an anecdote without the aid of notes. We then have a brief open mic section for those brave enough to tell a three minute story. After a short break we resume to listen to the feature storyteller, who regales the room for half an hour. Afterwards, the two guests usually hold court in the bar, fielding questions, compliments and offers of marriage.

How did the idea for these events first come about?

The owner of Dog’s Bar, David Carruthers, is one of those rare patrons of the arts who puts his money where his mouth is. He’s been involved in film for years and wanted to start a storytelling night for ages. He approached Josephine Rowe and I to run one for him, not realising that we were great friends, next-door neighbours and that we lived two minutes around the corner from the bar. The serendipity of it was hard to resist so we ran a test night last November with Cate Kennedy, Steven Amsterdam, Mischa Merz and Luke May all reading. That was way more successful than we anticipated so we started it on a weekly basis in March of this year. Six months later we had a Booker Prize winner sitting in our chair on stage at the Toff during MWF and we have all sorts of exciting plans for 2011.

DBC_Pierre

DBC Pierre reading at the Toff, image courtesy of the MWF


What is it do you think that draws people to a night of live storytelling, as opposed to say simply curling up on the couch with a book?

The overwhelming response from audience members is one of childlike delight at being read a story for the first time in years. There’s something ineluctable about being read to, something deeply satisfying that’s hard to explain or quantify. Why do kids demand a story at bedtime? Maybe sitting in a warm, dark room with a faint light reminds us of drifting off to sleep as children. It’s certainly not something we get to experience much as adults, and when it’s another adult telling the story, particularly the adult who actually wrote the story, who knows exactly how to word the phrases and what rhythm to maintain, even the simplest tale can take on a power and resonance that you can never attain by reading it yourself on the tram or the couch. Early on in our lineup, Angela Meyer read a 20-minute story to a completely silent room of adults who practically gave her a standing ovation at the end and I knew then that we were onto something. I was down the back and you could have heard a pin drop during those 20 minutes. The audience was gone, they were somewhere else, deep inside her story. I’ve seen that again and again since. As Freddie Mercury once said, it’s a kind of magic.

How important is it for writers, readers and publishers to maintain a sense of ‘community’? How do you think Melbourne, as a City of Literature, stacks up?

Melbourne does this better than anywhere I’ve lived and I think that’s because we’re a growing, evolving city that hasn’t put too many barriers in place preventing emerging writers from making the contacts they need to progress in their careers. A lot of other cities are much more controlled and difficult to penetrate. It feels wide open here. Writers, readers and publishers mingle at launches and festivals. If you’ve written a genuinely great book, it won’t be that difficult to find a publisher here. Similarly, if you want to meet and chat with your favourite writer, that’s pretty easy too. The sense of community was highlighted for me during MWF recently, when on a single Thursday night there were events like the Noel Pearson oration, Big Ideas at Fed Square, the Sleeper’s launch and the ‘Going Down Swinging’ 30th anniversary party on the same evening, and they were all really well attended. It feels like the community that exists around books and writing are all on the same page (excuse the pun) because we’re growing as the city does.

Finally, what’s the last book you loved, and why?

I just finished Lorrie Moore’s ‘A Gate at the Stairs’, which was the 65th book I’ve read so far this year. I’m on course for 90, but don’t think I’ll crack the magic century. This one sat on my shelf for a while because it has such a heinous cover and uninspiring conceit (college girl takes job as nanny, not much happens) that I didn’t want to read it, but I’m glad I finally did. It was a breath of fresh air reading a writer with so much humour and wit. There’s way too much ‘misery fiction’ around for my liking that wallows in traumatic childhoods and screwed up relationships. There’s sadness, death and regret in ‘A Gate at the Stairs’ too, but Moore knows how to write about those subjects without reveling in them and uses humour to, if anything, increase their poignancy. Given we spend most of our time trying to make each other laugh, I’m always disappointed that aspect of our lives is not reflected more in fiction. Witnessing Moore acknowledge that humour is often found in strange places made me fall in love with her a little.


 

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