ON THE RIGHT PAGE
Levy a ‘fabulous’ festival find
In the The Cost of Living, the most recent addition to writer Deborah Levy’s “living autobiographies,” the author questions the “societal” story foisted on women as she tries to wrest her own recently upended life into a manageable shape.
Like her first memoir, 2013’s Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living tracks parts of Levy’s life in real time as she asks: What does it mean to be a writer? To be a woman?
Big questions for sure, but ones the accomplished playwright and novelist (shortlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize) tackles with remarkable clarity, with help from the likes of French writer and feminist Simone deBouvier. This clarity has resonated with women everywhere.
Levy will be in Vancouver to take part in the Vancouver Writers Festival, and to discuss her small books that have left such a big impact on readers (Oct. 20, 8 p.m. Studio 1398. Free, register at eventbrite.ca). The event is one of 80-plus at this year’s festival.
“(Levy) has been on my radar for a while as a fiction writer,” said VWF artistic director Leslie Hurtig. “I think she is going to be a fabulous addition.
“She has a lot to say about writing, for sure. We know from her memoirs she refers frequently to her writing process and how it links with her personal life as well.”
The Cost of Living sees Levy undergoing great change. She is 50, divorced. She has left a nice, big house that she made into a home for everyone else but herself to live in a finicky apartment (the boiler doesn’t always co-operate), as her mother dies and she tries to re-invigorate herself while writing in a friend’s cold garden shed.
While ideas and insights about writing continue from the first autobiography, the second book is really a query into what happens to women who finally say no to the patriarchal norm and who decide to shrug their shoulders at chaos.
“I wasn’t setting out to be a hero for anyone, but I think the book does speak to women,” Levy said over the phone from Paris recently.
“You know I am talking about stepping out of the story that patriarchal society writes for us and what it costs … what does it cost us to have our name erased and to be the wife? What does it cost us to live a more self-directed life?
“There’s also a sort of quest in the book, which is to find a major female character, an unwritten
female character, whose main talents are not suffering, endurance, sacrifice and patience and lowering your voice and smiling when you don’t feel like it, and comforting others and serving their needs.
“That’s all there to be discovered in the book.”
To say Levy’s writing is timely is an understatement. Women are marching, shouting, banding together and delivering a collective eye-roll when some politician or power-broker says: “I wouldn’t be here without the support of my wife.”
Really, what’s the wife’s name? “I think women are speaking out and speaking up,” said Levy, adding the time to be quiet and demure to the patriarchy is over. “The young women I meet, I think they can change the world. They are really speaking their minds.”
When Levy started to ponder the idea of a memoir, she realized that she wanted to tell her stories without the filter of time.
“I thought it would be interesting to write a living autobiography when you don’t have the benefit of hindsight, and life is happening in the present tense and you’re not wise and you have your bad times and your good times, and they are all happening in the present tense,” said Levy, who has been in Paris doing a Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination fellowship.
She is one of around 100 authors who will be on hand to talk about their work and engage in discussions with other writers at VWF.
“Books haven’t gone anywhere,” Hurtig said.
“They are hotter than ever. Right now people are hungry for intelligent discourse and that is what we are able to provide.
“Our tag line for the festival came to us from one of our visiting authors, Sisonke Msimang. She said in a TED Talk she gave that ‘stories are the antidote to bias.’ I do believe that is what we are trying to achieve at the writers fest.”
New this year to the festival is the inclusion of a guest curator. Cherie Dimaline, the award-winning Metis writer, has taken on that role and curated four different festival events.
“It’s a means to keep things fresh and interesting,” Hurtig said.
“I can only speak for myself and the kind of books I like, and certainly I try to be as well rounded as possible, but you need to bring in new voices to know what else we should be looking at.
“We try our best to balance things and make sure we are presenting different perspectives, different voices, different ages of writers at the festival so there is something for everybody.”
The festival also has to reflect the world in which it operates.
“We have to pay attention to the world and as publishing trends reveal themselves, and there is no doubt the #MeToo movement has had an effect on what’s being published and, of course, as a woman I want to make sure this important movement is being acknowledged and represented here at the festival.
“I think we have done a good job of programming some events that really highlight this new wave of feminism; certainly issues around the world like migration and inequality. Those are issues that are very important to me, so we have events that talk about these important aspects of current events.”
The festival also offers a great slate for youth, with more than 30 events for kids from kindergarten up to Grade 12.
There is also free programming set for Oct. 20.
“The whole point of that is to reach out to people who have never been to a festival before,” said Hurtig. What they will find at this festival is not the usual writer at a podium reading from their latest work. VWF seeks to have a more connected approach between the writer and the audience.
“We try to steer away from straight readings. We want to have conversations. We want to educate people. We don’t want it to just be a writer standing up front and reading,” said Hurtig. “I think going back to that point of people right now wanting intelligent discourse ... they want to hear intelligent conversation, and to know everything is going to be OK as long as we all keep talking, and as long as there are smart people in the world thinking about important issues and not yelling at each other.”