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Love and Desire at the National Library of Australia

David Malouf
Damian McDonald
David Malouf giving the Kenneth Binns Lecture at the conference, Love and Desire: Literature and the Intimate, 23 September 2006

Important Australian writers addressed themes of love, desire and intimacy in ‘Love & Desire – Literature and the Intimate’, a conference at the National Library of Australia held on 23 and 24 September 2006.

The conference explored the heart of the creative process as writers shared their thoughts on some big questions: ‘What do they think of the scenes of intimacy and desire that they create?’; ‘How much do they draw on their own experiences of love and sex in their writing?’; ‘What similarities does the creative writing process share with love and desire?’

The Library’s Director of Publications and Events, Dr Paul Hetherington, developed the program.

‘This major conference addressed themes that are common to all of us but which are rarely discussed in a public forum. The speakers, all of whom are of an exceptionally high calibre, brought a level of personal experience that made a deeply satisfying event for the audience,’ he said.

David Malouf, one of Australia’s most distinguished writers, opened the conference with the Kenneth Binns Lecture entitled ‘Love and Literature’. His lecture explored intimacy and desire in literature and our understanding of what it is to be human.

‘Nothing in the whole heady business of writing is more mysterious than the relationship between writer and reader,’ said Malouf. ‘That is, the spell that is cast on the willing reader by the writer’s voice; the way we internalise that voice and make it, for the time of the reading, our own, so that the experience it brings us seems no less personal and real than what we experience in the world.

‘When we speak of being unable to put a book down, it isn’t that we can’t wait to find out what happens next. It’s that we don’t want to give up the close and quite tender intimacy that has been established; we do not want to break the spell,’ said Malouf.

This lecture paved the way for topics including ‘Love and Obsession’, ‘The Body in Writing’, ‘Intimate Histories’, ‘Family and ‘Friends’ and ‘Writing Desire’.

Brian Castro entranced listeners with his recollections of falling in love with language:

‘At the age of ten I was sent away from where I grew up in Hong Kong, to a distant, foreign place. I was put on board a Qantas aeroplane in the care of what was known then as an air hostess. Being Australian, she spoke with a strange accent. I could barely understand a word. Yet I think I fell in love with her language. It was the first time I had taken account of the way language could inspire intimacy and I think this became the formation of my literary life.’

Helen Ennis, who’s biography Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss and Photography recently won the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction, explored that most intimate of photographs, the close-up. And Canberra writer, Francesca Rendle-Short, revealed the mortification of growing up with a mother who was also a moral crusader.

Other speakers included Fiona Giles, Lucy Dougan, Michael McGirr, Gail Jones, Leigh Redhead, Marion Halligan, Brenda Walker, Deborah Robertson, Charlotte Wood, David Brooks, Carmel Bird, Hsu-Ming Teo, Beverley Farmer, Rosie Scott, Peter Rose, Dorothy Porter and Nick Earls.

You can listen to a webcast of David Malouf’s address online at www.nla.gov.au/webcasts.

Kathryn Favelle
National Library of Australia