Kindle Edition
Download to your Nook (eBook)
Amazon
A Sense of Place Publishing
A Sense of Place Publishing
Category:
Biography
Type: Non-Fiction
Price: $9.99 (eBook)
Hunting the Famous is a meditation on journalism and writing by veteran news reporter John Stapleton. Spanning the decades from the late 1969 to 2009, the book covers everything from the writer and journalist's early years, saddled with a compulsion to write and not much else, to his years as a general news reporter on Australia's two best newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian.
Hunting the Famous is a meditation on journalism and writing by veteran news reporter William John Stapleton. Spanning the decades from the late 1969 to 2009, the book covers everything from the writer and journalist's early years, saddled with a compulsion to write and not much else, to his years as a general news reporter on Australia's two best newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. Prior to becoming a staff reporter Stapleton's unlikely promise to himself to live or die by the typewriter led to a string of encounters with some of the world's most famous authors, including Gore Vidal, Dirk Bogarde, Paul Bowles, Joseph Heller, Al Alvarez, Anthony Burgess and Salman Rushdie. Hunting the Famous also includes affectionate portraits of Australian writers such as author David Malouf, poet Vicki Viidikas and hard drinking journalistic legends such as Jack Darmody and Joe Glascott. As a news reporter Stapleton encountered and wrote stories about everyone from street alcoholics to Australian Prime Ministers, including Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. He covered thousands of stories, from the staple flood, drought, fire and natural disasters of the Australian bush to scenes of urban dysfunction in inner Sydney. Hunting the Famous covers a period of profound change within newspapers as the Information Revolution transformed the nature of the profession. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the craft of journalism and the operations of the media
Excerpt
I had a vicious hangover the morning I met Anthony Burgess.
At the time I was yet to work out that only the lowest of the low in terms of the pecking order of print journalists got slotted in at 9 am.
Thus it was that the famous author, in the midst of blinding pain, appeared before me in the foyer of one of London's many up-market hotels. At the time I shared the disdain towards Burgess held by some of the slower, less prolific writers in the English canon.
Burgess had just penned his book Ninety-nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939; along with another in his Shakespearean series titled Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End of Enderby.
Indeed, after I had waded through the series, there did indeed seem to be no end to Enderby.
Burgess's publication of Ninety-nine Novels had created a predictable furor in literary circles, promoting the publication of counter lists.
As quickly became evident when I asked him about the sometimes excoriating commentary accompanying its publication, Burgess was hugely enjoying the controversy over which books should and should not be included in a list of the 20th century's best fiction.
The criticism was water off a duck’s back. He was already a multi-millionaire. Nothing could touch him but time itself. Critics were just mosquitoes as far as he was concerned.
“Who would want to be a critic?”Burgess demanded. “Do these people sit in school and dream about their futures and think, yes, that's what I want to be, a critic. Is that all their dreams are made of?”
As for the controversy, you had to start somewhere Burgess shrugged. The book had promoted debate and that is what it was intended to do. And hopefully it had got people reading more books.
Although I had not enjoyed the Enderby books I asked Burgess about hopefully what was the last of them.
Burgess had already breakfasted in his room so unfortunately the famous author had no desire for any more repast. I could have done with a free coffee and some breakfast, alcohol sweat defying the hotel’s air conditioning. The interview ended up being conducted on a couch in the foyer.
The public relations woman sat perkily next to Burgess throughout, occasionally trying to facilitate the conversation.
When the interview wound up after an hour which had seemed like an eternity I made my way across the football field of a foyer and out into the London streets.
I hadn't bothered to dress up for the interview, and didn't possess the clothes anyway, but the sight of my shambolic self in the foyer's many mirrors did nothing to instill self-confidence.
As I stepped down from the mezzanine level and headed towards the hotel's revolving doors, I saw Anthony Burgess and the public relations woman staring after me quizzically, and then burying their heads together.
Not that Burgess could talk. In the late 1950s he was dismissed from his position as a teacher in Brunei, and as an excuse claimed to have had a brain tumor; a tumor that was never found.
Burgess's story telling abilities were well known to extend to himself.
As Wikipedia observed of the tumor incident: "Burgess' biographers attribute the incident to the author's notorious mythomania.”
He was said to be suffering from the effects of prolonged heavy drinking and associated poor nutrition...of overwork and professional disappointment.
There was no air of disappointment about Burgess when I met him.
Indeed, Burgess could hardly have appeared more affluent, stolid or certain of himself.
As I entered the over-white light of the street, I had a stab not just of disorienting pain, but of envy for the workers in the street, the shop keepers behind their counters, the bus driver passing by, the legal secretaries with bundles of documents rushing to their offices. I envied them their normality, singleness of purpose, their apparent certainty in who they were and why they were.
While Burgess prepared for another interview before flying back home to Monaco, I headed back to an increasingly frustrated lover, to another night of pointless carousing and implausible excuses.
|
