A thousand blessings rain upon the head of long-term LeafSalon faithful Curtbutnotshort: he has manfully ignored a ridiculous workload in order to bring us this - a thoughtful and smirkworthy insight into his Going West festival last weekend. Thank you, Curt - it's made this Kiwi cultural exile very happy.

My weekend at Going West was interrupted with tempering the PA at Eden Park (but was unable to dampen Wellington supporters) and paternal duties [Curt is a sound engineer, and yes, father, in real life - Ed.], however I did manage to lap up Friday evening and most of Saturday’s events.

The festival opened with Karlo Mila giving the Allen Curnow reading: a soliloquy on poetry and the death of a king. Her observations were punctuated with photographs: vivid images of fire lining the route of the funeral procession and the passion of the proceeding riot – scores of children kneeling by the roadside in formal attire, a lone child succumbed to the heat and occasion, Tongan dignitaries wrapped like Californian rolls.

Chris Price then presented the keynote address on the increasing prevalence of 'truthiness' (statements that sound true but which have no basis in fact) in both journalism but also literature. Whilst there can be little argument that truthiness is an unwelcome guest in news reporting its use is more ambiguous in literature and the blurring of fiction and history/biography appears to be at the bleeding edge. I personally was unfazed by James Frey’s outing and remembered having a good laugh on LeafSalon at the posts of Norma Khouri doing a Winston.

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I’ve had a few goes at this – it’s been really hard. For the first time in seven years, I’m not going to make it to the Going West Festival and I'm taking it hard. Wah! But two trips home from Sydney in a year is more than enough for the family wallet unfortunately…

But I have to be strong, and alert readers to the literary delights on offer. As usual Murray Gray, Naomi McCleary and the rest of the Going West team have come up with a programme that’s pure kiwiana, mixed with bracing, left-of-centre intellectualism; a bit like eating a meat pie with a very serious single malt whisky in your right hand (maybe a finger or two of Lagavulin, Murray?).

I would highly recommend lashing out and getting a whole weekend ticket – time would be the only issue because for the money it's a steal. A measly $150 gets you into all sessions, plus Friday evening supper, two lunches plus morning and afternoon teas. And it’s always so cosy, sitting down to eat and chat to clever people in the lovely Titirangi surroundings with like-minded literary enthusiasts (or pouncing on your literary victims while they’re halfway through their quiche, if you’re anything like me). God, I’m going to start crying in a minute. No, really.

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Many thanks to Maggie Rainey-Smith for contributing to LeafSalon in an article inspired by two recent literary events. The speakers were worlds apart in their opinions, but Maggie wonders whether there might be a middle ground. Maggie is the author of About Turn (Random House, 2005), and Turbulence (Random House, 2007).

I thought it would be interesting to compare Greg O’Brien’s Janet Frame Memorial Lecture which opened NZ Book Month on Sunday 31st August, and another event that I attended just the day before – a luncheon with Sophie Hamley, an Australian literary agent from the Cameron Cresswell Agency. Both were thought-provoking, and both were about the world of the writer.

Greg talked about the ‘laboratory’ versus the marketplace. His lecture was all about the idea that the art of writing and being a writer is separate from that of being a published author. He quoted Roland Barthes in saying ‘the author performs a function, the writer an activity’. To demonstrate the difference between writer and author, he used the example of Janet Frame choosing to not publish certain works during her lifetime - she was happy to be the writer rather than the author of those works (although one could argue, perhaps she knew they would be posthumously published? I’m intrigued by that idea, because it seems to me that being published and acknowledged as a writer was central to whom Janet Frame was).

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