Author:

Finished off my Writers/Readers week presence Friday night, seeing former World Bank head Joseph Stiglitz at the Michael Fowler Centre. Mostly the same old crowd – anti-globalization hippy types were thin on the ground, although Ed of Ed’s Juice Bar fame was a few rows in front of us.
After a painfully overlong introduction by the moderator (he actually got heckled by this most genteel crowd for taking too long), Stiglitz got into it. He was great to listen to, avuncular and friendly with a sharp turn of phrase, and while he’s obviously aware he just needs to drop a dig at BushCheney to get a crowd applauding he didn’t go to that well too often.
Mostly it was standard stuff from him – the IMF and World Bank and G8 are part of the problem, not the solution, because they are dogmatically applying economic models that do not work on the ground and make life worse for people rather than better. Good to hear him say it but nothing eye-opening. He talked a bit about the New Zealand context, and how our economy is so small that we’re stuck in globalisation now – even if we wanted to control our trade borders to the extent China and the US do, we couldn’t, because our economy would fall over.
In question time, audience questions quickly got on to the subject of the environment and climate change and didn’t look back. Stiglitz didn’t go into heavy detail, just wasn’t enough time for it, but generally weighed in behind full-cost accounting where atmosphere and water (etc.) are codified into the economic system so there’s some representative cost when they are despoiled. He made a point of saying that he believes we’re going to have to change the way we live, sooner rather than later, and that preparedness means ceding power and resources to the developing nations – somethng the developed nations are reluctant to do.
It was a great session but far too short. We could have sustained another hour, easily. Oh well.
So that was that. Thanks to the parentals for the gift of my WritersReaders week experience, and respect to my brother for going to all three with me.

Garry Trudeau was Thursday night. My expectations of the Doonesbury creator were dashed – his reputation as reclusive and publicity-shy did not match up to the slightest bit of reticence or awkwardness, indeed he was incredibly comfortable before the audience and downright effusive. Sean Plunket would ask a question and he’d skid off on long, winding replies full of well-practised gags and insight. He had well-worn anecdotes for everything that was thrown at him, but there’s no cause to resent that – the guy’s a legend and just seeing him was neat.
Still, not much of note to report. Much more fun to be there listening than to read about it afterwards, I expect.
I was pleased by his opening words, where he said yes, he was a satirist and social commentator and even soap opera writer, but most importantly he was a comic strip artist.
Was even more pleased that almost the first question from the staid, politics-minded 50-something crowd (one always gets such a crowd at Writers and Readers week) called back to this, by asking him what other comic strips he enjoyed. No surprises in his response (Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side and currently Dilbert) but it was nice to hear. Classic newspaper strips are enjoying a surge in legitimacy with lots of well-assembled archival collections on release, such as the Complete Peanuts and Complete Popeye; I would have liked to hear more on that, but to be honest I’m a politics-minded dude like everyone else in the crowd so I was delighted with what we got.
For more on Trudeau, Grant enthuses here.

Writers/Readers Week @ Festival of the Arts: New York Stories
Three authors spoke about their novels, each responses to the events of 9/11. Of the three, I’d only heard of Mohsin Hamid, whose recent book The Reluctant Fundamentalist has caught my attention if not my reading commitment. He proved to be the most compelling guest, despite being present only by voice linkup from London.
Hamid spoke about 9/11’s cause and consequence as “a catastrophic failure of empathy”, on the part of the Muslims celebrating when the towers fell (who were, like the character in his novel excerpt, “caught up in the symbolism of it all” and at a remove from the human cost); on the part of those in the US and UK who turned to war.
Empathy also in his answer to Terry Eagleton’s recent broadside at Martin Amis et al, (“I have no idea why we should listen to novelists on these matters any more than we should listen to window cleaners.”)
Hamid suggested that what novelists bring that others don’t is empathy. Through story and characterisation, good writing can deliver empathy. And empathy is crucial.