We liveblogged four whole days of the Sydney writers' festival. Relive the action here, and let us know what you thought of the festival in the comment box
And with Emma Donoghue's closing address to the festival about to start, I'm going to put this liveblog to bed. Thanks very much for keeping us company this festival, and especially to everyone whose tweets, comments or pictures we've used. It's been a fantastic festival. Do let us know what your highlight has been in the comment box below.
Returning to Melbourne destroyed of body, inspired of mind. Thanks for a great @SydWritersFest@jemmabirrell#swf2014
Irvine Welsh meets his public! Nice T-shirt.
Just met this legend!! Thanks for the pic @WelshIrvine ! #IrvineWelsh@SydWritersFest#trainspotting#authorcrushpic.twitter.com/QYP088pyA7
And, thanks to the Sydney writers' festival official blog, I see that more sessions have been uploaded onto Soundcloud. Here's AM Homes:
Here are the Stranger in a Strange Land panelists Jane has that as her pick of the festival.
Strangers no more. @AmyTan Ben Law Gary Schentgart #SWF 2014. Backstage. pic.twitter.com/OS7OPkiI2t
Also, there has been some breach of poetry-slamming etiquette.
Hey poetry slammers, that wasn't guerrilla or contrarian, it was fucking rude. #sydneywritersfestival
Ahh ...
Final drop of Sunday sunshine @SydWritersFest before heading to the airport. Happy. #BarefootHistorianpic.twitter.com/QCjcMxXck2
Hmm, there seem to be plenty left to me ...
Bob Carr's tome selling like 'hot cakes' @Sydney Writers' Festival!! pic.twitter.com/dxEPtNYnNC
Speaking of Shteyngart, Bethanie went to his solo stage interview on Saturday. This is what it was like:
Its always hard to interview a satirist. Theyre funny but in a way that can be evasive when youre enquiring about the subject of their work, a memoir. I had the experience the night before of interviewing Shteyngart and had asked him the same question that opens the From Russia With Love session. Given how autobiographical his earlier works are, why a memoir now? Why now? Youre asking why not never? The short answer is I needed to build a pool. So I thought, ker-ching!
Later, though, he talks about his choice to work in the satiric form: Comedy is the ballistic missile where you package the sadness. The sadness in his memoir Little Failure, is of his parents lives and the way in which their presence in Russia prevented them from being the artists they wanted to be. He writes about Russia, he says, because Greatly unequal societies create great literature. Societal conflict is the great conflict. He relates a trip to Russia in which he visits a restaurant called 1913. I asked the waitress, Why 1913? That was the only good year in Russian history.
We've just posted Jane's account of this morning's great session Stranger in a Strange Land, in which Amy Tan, Gary Shteyngart (him again) and Benjamin Law discussed being the children of immigrants. She writes:
Strangers in a Strange Land is that perfect blend of a writers' festival panel: funny, perceptive, occasionally shocking, and allowing the audience a new insight into the writers and the ways their lives can be connected through their work. Tan says that as a child, she felt as though she had landed in the wrong family - she felt American. Shteyngart, emigrating with his parents from Leningrad to New York when he was seven, found solace in writing: "it was the one thing where I didn't have an accent."
Law, on the other hand, feels he had a reverse experience to typical. Growing up in Queensland as one of five children, with Sesame Street on television and Law starting school the same year the World Expo came to Brisbane, "I started out in a place of confidence," he says. "Multiculturalism was in. [...] We were considered sort of awesome."
The weather is gorgeous out on the wharf although there is the feeling that things are winding down the crowds are starting to thin out, for one thing. However, there's been one notable appearance:
Chilling out with Grug @SydWritersFest Family Fun Day! #swf2014pic.twitter.com/y7oKuw9i5v
We've posted Bethanie's report of last night's session with AM Homes. The winner of the 2013 women's prize for fiction spoke candidly about the trauma caused by discovering that she was adopted, and about how that trauma influenced her work:
For years, my grip on life seemed so tenuous. I wouldnt buy tickets to concerts because I didnt think Id be around that long. I wouldnt buy a big pack of toilet paper, because the four pack seemed like enough. Now I feel like its OK for me to exist. And it sounds traumatic, but it really was traumatic.
She breaks the mood by quipping Im available for adoption again. I have a child and pets, Im the whole package.
Bethanie caught up with Gary Shteyngart and asked him some questions:
What are you reading?
Yesterday afternoon Jane attended the Writing Bodies session with crime writer Tara Moss, philosopher Damon Young and the extremely busy Irvine Welsh. It took in exercise, the way women's bodies are fictionalised and how we get to know people through their physicality. She's written about it here. An excerpt:
Looking at Welsh's novel, Young calls Lucy "the very picture of the professional jock", and thinks it is interesting to consider the role of the personal trainer: in entering this relationship, he says "a lot of us have lost sovereignty over our bodies." Welsh relays the inspiration for the book: watching two women exercise together, and one breaking down in tears. "You're paying someone to do this to you," he says incredulously.
We've just posted an absorbing interview with Alexis Wright, one of Australia's most celebrated writers, whose novel The Swan Book was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin earlier this month (she won the prize for her previous novel Carpentaria in 2007). She describes writing as a calling, and tells Maryam Azam that she wants to offer an authentic Indigenous voice to Australian literature. Which isn't to say that she doesn't take influences frpm around the world:
Though might lead one to assume that Carpentaria and The Swan Book must be distinctly Indigenous Australian in theme and style, Wright is candid about the sources of inspiration for her novels, citing the literature of South America, India, the Middle East and Ireland.
I didnt find the voices in published literature in Australia that could show me the way, she says. She sound inspiration in writers such as James Joyce, Seamus Heaney and Carlos Fuentes. She looked to writers who had a long association with their own countries and had some of the troubles we had. Wright says with some feeling that Heaney felt like a mentor I wish I had while I was trying to write.
The novelist and critic Chris Flynn was at the Australian book industry awards on Friday night where, as we reported yesterday, Tony Abbott gave a speech and was handed a petition against the arts cuts announced in his government's federal budget. Chris has kindly written his take on the event, which is very revealing:
Prime minister Tony Abbott gave a speech midway through Friday nights Australian book industry awards in Sydney, during which he talked about being an author politician and gave assurances as to the future of the prime ministers literary awards.
Attorney general and minister for the arts George Brandis was also in attendance. A strained silence filled the room as Abbott moved quickly to address the topic of the recent budget.
Still lots of love for the festival on social media. This was the People of Letters session, where (according to the programme), well-known Australians were paired off and invited to write "a letter to my other half".
on that note, I'm starting my strop about sydney's best time of year being almost over. #swf14, you quick, interesting, wonderful mistress.
It's a slightly overcast Sunday morning and Bethanie, Jane and I (Alex) are back in the bunker at Sydney Theatre for the final day of Sydney writers' festival. For a kick-off, I've just launched my report of yesterday's sold-out session by Christos Tsiolkas, a very illuminating hour in which the author of The Slap and Barracuda talked about his upbringing in a working class Greek immigrant family in Melbourne, how his novels are about how to be good, and most startlingly how he goes about writing sex scenes:
Marr asked him about the sex in his writing, and whether writing about sex is more enjoyable than the act itself. Tsiolkas laughed, and said that while it would never beat his best sexual experinces, "sometimes writing sex is better than some of the sex I've had." In a moment that seemed impressively candid to me (though some will regard it as too much information), Tsiolkas said that the best way of writing sex scenes is to "do the first draft, orgasm, and then start editing. You can be objective post-orgasm."
And with that we're going to sign off for today as we're about to get chucked out of the bunker. See you tomorrow for the final leg.
An observation on audience questions from Jane, who's been to the Writing Bodies session:
I've found audiences at this festival a bit hesitant with asking questions - rather than the verbose "I'll take that as a comment" question, panel hosts have been struggling to see arms raised. Still, I have a new favourite question, directed at Irvine Welsh this afternoon: "Is watching your films a reasonable substitute for the books? Because I've not read your books."
Welsh was very diplomatic with his answer, suggesting that while films can do things books cannot - such as becoming a social experience - he still recommends the books, saying simply "I think your own interpretation is always more interesting than the film."
I've been having a look at the official Sydney writers' festival blog and have to say that it's great. The writers in residence, Fiona McFarlane and Chris Flynn, have been attending and writing up plenty of sessions (here's McFarlane on the Judging Women discussion), and there's also some excellent multimedia content, which, thanks to the power of embedding, I'm also going to share with you now. Here's Andrew Solomon's opening address.
Jane has written about the event she attended this morning, which despite its title Culture Wars, turned out to be a discussion of what the arts are and how to value them rather than a ding-dong about the struggle between right and left in matters like education. The definition of culture was pretty broad, as this excerpt indicates:
Jim Hearn, a chef turned cultural researcher, takes on the notion that culture is everything. The study of the way workers interact with in banks, he says, has the same validity as studying Sydney's Vivid or Adelaide's festival of arts. "We are all subject of culture," he says, "whether we like it or not. We can leave society and go to a desert island [...] but we can never leave culture." Even on that desert island, the way we would think, and the language that we would think in, would be completely informed by the culture we came from.
A few more tweets. Lots are about the weather (although it's clouded up a bit now). Such as ...
Absurdly perfect day here at Sydney Writers Festival. Assuming organisers sacrificed a goat at some point for this weather #swf2014
printed tunics canvas bags franzen in hand? linen pants Sydney Writers Festival, 2014 @timminchin
Something I wrote is inside this and it's for sale at #swf. @kyd_journalpic.twitter.com/LI1OeYTIYe
.@sarahblasko singing to us now #SWFpic.twitter.com/E8Xl4rZ9mn
Bethanie has interviewed Ceridwen Dovey, whose book Only the Animals sees human conflict through the eyes of creatures including a mussell.
What are you reading?
Jane's been taking a look at what people are reading at the festival. She writes:
In case the hundreds of books from dozens of authors in the festival, and all of the reading suggestions coming out of panelists weren't enough, I've been taking a sticky beak at what people are reading in-between events. There are new books (Jo Nesbø's The Son, Alexis Wright's The Swan Book) and old books (Ivan Turgenev's On the Eve, Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) and more than a few library books. The Sydney Morning Herald, the Saturday Paper, one lonely mX, and dozens of programme guides are not only reading materials, but are all doing a quite nice trade doubling as makeshift hats in the sunny Sydney weather.
Bethanie 'flaming fingers' Blanchard has just posted another piece. It's a funny but very telling report from the Judging Women session yesterday, in which Eleanor Catton and Claire Wright found that despite being from different countries and working in contrasting genres, they had both had the same kinds of experiences of sexism. Not least (in what is surely the phrase of the day) "the dick table".
While travelling to book signings around the country for the release of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, Wright spent much of her time in bookshops around Australia, particularly airport bookstores. The books placed with most prominence were always books written by men about male topics: sports people, politicians, war.
Wright took photos of these prominent displays, referring to them as dick tables and began taking her book from the W section of non-fiction and placing it alongside others on the display. There were two other books on Eureka by male authors at the time: Peter Fitzsimons Eureka and The Sons of the Southern Cross by Grantlee Kieza and it seemed appropriate to put it with them.
Last night Tony Abbott was handed a petition signed by dozens of writers objecting to the arts cuts in the federal budget, previously published in Guardian Australia. He was giving a speech at the Australian book industry awards.
Bethanie has interviewed Maxine Beneba Clarke, the poet and writer who handed the petition to Abbott. She said:
Tony Abbott was seated in the middle of the room, and about halfway through the event they announced the main course and I just approached his table very humbly, and said, Look I know that its really forward of me to approach you like this, but Ive been wanting to meet you for quite a long time, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to actually come up and speak to you.'
He looked quite taken aback, and I had a petition in a sealed envelope with a copy of my book because I was worried that if I told him it was a petition he wouldnt accept. He asked me who I was, and I told him my name and I said Ive just published my first book Ive brought a copy here particularly for you, Id really love it if you would accept the book.
Some people hopefully feeling inspired ...
My #swf2014 flash fiction workshop group writing away... pic.twitter.com/l92maNmUJW
Bethanie attended a talk on criticism last night at which the Pascall prize was announced. Here's her report:
Last night, James Ley was awarded the 2014 Pascall Prize for critical writing. It was the second time hed been notified that hed won the award, in a now notorious mix up that saw the wrong James receiving the call in 2012 it was James Bradley who was to receive it that year.
We've just posted Jane's review of last night's panel of Irvine Welsh, Sandi Toksvig and Gary Shteyngart discussing "humour and debauchery with a few manners in between". Rather a random title, borne out by the discussion, which contained a few laughs but not much illumination. Jane writes:
Occasionally, themes in the careers of these three very different writers converge. Struggling slightly to speak to the theme of the event, Crabb asks: what is the etiquette about writing about real people?
"Well, there is a legal department at Radom House," Shteyngart says with both relief and frustration.
Good morning. Fuelled by flat whites, Jane, Bethanie and me (Alex) are back in the bunker for another day at the Sydney writers' festival. We've got loads of great stuff coming up today including an interview with Alexis Wright, Adam Brereton on Malcolm Fraser and Bob Carr, and a review of last night's session on "humour and debauchery".
I saw a very moving panel last night called What is normal, anyway? Andrew Solomon, Jo Case, Robert Hoge and AM Homes discussed identity in the context of family (being or having a child who turns out to be different from its parents). It was the end of a long day but I welled up several times, particularly when Hoge discussed the first couple of weeks of his life. He was born with a tumour in the middle of his face that distorted his features and badly disabled legs; his mother refused even to go and see him for the first week of his life. His parents didn't want to take him home, but finally decided to after asking their four older children (aged between ten and four), who had been to the hospital to see and hold their baby brother, whether they should. The kids all said yes.
Getting ready for writers' reflections in Glorious Sydney at #SWF14pic.twitter.com/CwBwnVWYJ7
Looking forward to Australia and the World with Malcolm Fraser and Bob Carr. What we need is better pyjamas. #SWF14
Want to recall some of Alice Walker's words? Here's the transcript via @tveedercomhttp://t.co/ZH7kVEvcLM#oneplusone#swf14#abcnews24
I'm going to wrap up for the day now, but will be going to see Andrew Solomon discuss "what's normal anyway?" and hopefully a session on manners and debauchery with Gary Shteyngart, Irvine Welsh and Sandi Toksvig (what a combo). This was the scene last night. Thanks for reading see you tomorrow.
I, er, got the wrong door to the David Marr session (which I was late for in any case) and ended up in The Rally Cry: Stories That Inspire Change. Given that it was about digital journalism, it was something of a busman's holiday for me. My colleague Madhvi Pankhania was even on the panel, along with Patrick Abboud, a video journalist from SBS2's The Feed, and Hal Crawford, editor in chief of Nine MSN.
A lot of hot media topics were chewed over: is the homepage dead in the age of social media sharing? Should articles be either incredibly long or incredibly short? Why is data journalism important, and why is it such a growth area? Is Australia becoming saturated with news websites (possibly, seemed to be the consensus Crawford believes that only the biggest sites will survive).
Jane went to see Thomas Keneally interviewed on stage earlier this afternoon her report is here. He described Joan of Arc as "a stroppy sheila" and expressed regret that Julia Gillard didn't live up to her promise to be "the second coming of a female Christ".
Women are a frequent topic of the conversation: Gillard and Joan of Arc, but also the women he has been writing about since the mid 90s, up to his most recent novel, The Daughters of Mars. Writing these female characters, he says, is "one of the great challenges of having grown up in misogynistic institutions."
Women, he says, "are remarkable. They can have the most graphic hysterics if their daughter's room is untidy, but give then a real problem and they just deal with it." And as a writer, he has a theory: "under the cement of Australian manhood, everything we need for a woman is in our subconscious, or in our souls. Somewhere."
Meanwhile, there is a parody account of the questions some people ask at writers' festivals. Check out Writers' Fest Questions at @WFQuestions. Here's a sample:
.@SydWritersFest Please explain why @EleanorCatton asked me to remove my handmade steampunk-inspired hat during her talk?
Leunig, "As an adult you can have a mature innocence. I try to see things like a child. What is this?" #swf2014pic.twitter.com/XJQHZylpqz
Jane bumped into the playwright Nakkiah Lui for a Q&A.
What are you reading?
I'm about to leave the bunker for the first time today to see a session called Turning a Blind Eye, about ethics and the law. My colleagues have been to see Thomas Keneally and a session called Judging Women, so stay tuned for reports of those.
Alice Walker has been out and about to Redfern.
After an inspirational morning at Mudgin-Gal. #alicewalker#redfern#swf14pic.twitter.com/YWeFzjcg5m
Bethanie Blanchard has just posted an illuminating write-up of the sessions she attended yesterday Bob Carr discussing his notorious memoirs and a panel of writers on engaging with politics. She writes:
What struck me in Carrs session was how relaxed and trained he is as opposed to the agitated and passionate speeches of the authors in the earlier session: Christos Tsiolkas speaking forcefully and almost exasperated at his own lack of answers, Alexis Wright gentle and meandering but sharp in her criticism. Carr was effortlessly able to conduct the audience to laughter or concern. As he noted candidly in the session, entertainment is part of the political function. Lets be honest you want to be entertained. If politicians are entertaining theyve got more leeway to make big policy decisions because everyones diverted by the show.
We've just posted a great review of Sandi Toksvig's show last night by Jane Howard. Who knew that Sydneysiders would have heard of British 80s kids Saturday morning show No 73?
Jane writes:
The show is at its most touching when a homage to her friends and their adventures, and particularly the bond they often shared over the English language and the puns that can be made with a language which is much more complex than Danish.
She is delighted every time the audience enthusiastically replies yes when she asks if weve seen this British television show, or heard that British radio programme. If any of these questions are answered with uncertainty, she tells us we must go hunt it out these the things Toksvig has loved, and this show is about sharing her love for them with us.
Jane was also brave enough to attend the late night, ahem, erotic fan fiction session. She writes:
My night ended with erotic fan fiction at the festival club, and it wasn't the sort of adventure I thought I'd be having at this festival. The audience, younger and all together rowdier than their daytime counterparts, laughed and cheered through the five stories that is, when we weren't grimacing and covering our faces. There were Scottish terriers, political figures, beloved characters from children's films (now surely ruined forever), and a particularly epic cosmic copulation with Carl Sagan.
A few more great tweets, compiled by Jane Howard:
The best thing about #swf2014 is that when you're reading to kill time all your fellow bookworms know better than to interrupt you.
Listening to Alice Walker speak last night was a game changer. #amwriting#swf2014
Today - Christos Tsiolka (beautiful, thoughtful, all too brief) and Sandy Toksvig (smart, funny, joyous) #swf2014
Just experienced 15mins of being completely enthralled by Jesus & Christianity. How bout that. Thanks @rezaaslan - fascinating. #swf2014
Lots of booklovers up early getting amongst it! #swf2014pic.twitter.com/NA9s24OrUh
The panel on American policy in the middle east at the Chaser's freewheeling talk show Empty Vessel sounds as though it got rather heated:
This panel at #SWF is going off! Panelists are coming to blows! Amazing. This might be the best writers fest panel I've ever seen?
My colleague Jessica Reed went to the All the Best storytelling session last night. She writes:
The US motherlode of story-telling events, the Moth, has in recent years inspired the birth of various spawns go to any big city, and you can spend a night with strangers reading your most embarrassing teenage diary entries, listen to a cast of women reading out letters, or try your luck at true stories comedy nights.
Meanwhile it seems that exciting, possibly drunken things have been happening overnight.
The bar has broken down at a Writers Festival event. We may be about to see the most over-privileged riot ever! #swf#FeralsRevolting
Writers festival has turned Walsh Bay into Big Day Out for 70yo women with silver bobs. Saw my Mum passed out in the HarperCollins tent #SWF
Haven't finished writing my erotic story for tonight...¯\_()_/¯ vodka #SWF
It's Friday morning and we're back in the bunker. We've started the day with a brilliant piece by Andrew Solomon, who gave the opening address at Sydney Writers' festival on Tuesday. The author of Far From the Tree, a monumental and prizewinning book about parents who bring up "difficult" children, has written about Australia's stolen generation, the removal of Indigenous children from their parents, and the repercussions of those policies. He writes:
Our ideas of what constitutes responsible parenting are strongly culturally determined, and members of other cultures have the prerogative to define such matters for themselves. An Australian childhood is different from a Congolese one; a 20th-century childhood is different from an 18th-century one; a gay childhood is different from a straight one; a fundamentalist childhood is different from an atheistic one.
It may be that many Indigenous childhoods look all wrong to those who regard them from the fortress of their own system. Yet it may well be that such childhoods make sense to the families enacting them and that the removals, which now seem so rational will seem anything but to the generation that follows ours.
As I said earlier, I went to see Colin McDowell this morning. As promised (or should that be threatened?), I've now written it up the piece is here. In a very entertaining hour he bigged up Victoria Beckham, excoriated middle-aged men who wear trainers (like me), and talked about the democratisation of fashion (halted by the return of haute couture). He also revealed the price of a bespoke Chanel suit about £45-50,000 but pointed out that if you're young and great looking, that beats any fancy outfit. So not much comfort there - unless you are indeed young and great looking.
I'm going to wrap up for the day now, but tomorrow we've got lots more great stuff including a piece by Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree, a report from the Sandi Toksvig show which is taking place tonight, and a review of the festival club storytelling session.
A great day today at the Sydney Writers' Festival #swf2014pic.twitter.com/w22tdJ5wpv
Here's what people are talking about on Twitter. As you can see, the weather really is very nice.
Stunner of a day at @sydwritersfest. #swf2014pic.twitter.com/omcdImpyga
. @SydWritersFest An old man just fell off the pier I think it was David Malouf? #swf2014
Bethanie Blanchard has been to see Bob Carr. She writes:
Bob Carrs Diary of a Foreign Minister session was packed, and I file in with hundreds of others, our shuffling bringing to mind the sorts of airline arrangements Carr complains of in the work.
A note from Jane about a session called The Naked Bookshelf which she attended this morning:
Of course at a writers' festival youre going to see many amazing writers but I didnt expect one of the first things Id see would be an amazing book. In the morning session The Naked Bookshelf, where writers discussed their book collections, however, Kate Forsyth held up a signed, first edition Enid Blyton. I may have been sitting ten metres away, but it felt pretty special to be sharing the room. It is just one book of 7500 in Forsyths collection, including another first edition she showed off an Abby Girl book, which her mother bought for 20 cents and is worth around $6500. There were only a handful of books sitting on the table in front of us, but collectively the audience was amazed. What it would be to go discover what else lies on her bookshelves.
I've just posted a really nice Jane Howard report from David Malouf's session this morning, part of his ongoing 80th birthday celebrations. It was as much about his life of a reader as of a writer; the books that turned him on to literature aged 12, and a quick crash course in Australian literature:
From Australian literature, he has been influenced by Frederick Mannings The Middle Parts of Fortune, Kenneth Seaforth Mackenzies The Young Desire It, and Patrick Whites The Aunts Story. Of these writers, says Malouf, although theyre not always writing about Australia or Australian characters, their Australianness is absolutely taken for granted, and absolutely present.
Sorry for the somewhat pregnant pause I've just come from two back-to-back events with writers that couldn't be more different. Most recently, Irvine Welsh did a webchat with Guardian Australia readers. Here he is doing it in a deserted conference room in the hotel where all the writers are staying.
Irvine Welsh: live Q&A - the proof http://t.co/LDJgrBEHOppic.twitter.com/HHnwz6Sshk
We've just posted a great account by Van Badham of last night's Alice Walker event, in which the Pultizer-winner explains how reading so much as a child awakened her political consciousness:
It's reading that she credits with the ability to develop political empathy. "If our children could just read everything and feel themselves into everything they're reading, things would be very different when they grew up," she says, recalling a particular fondness for Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. "I recognised myself in Jane Eyre. It amazes me how many white people can't read themselves in black characters. I didn't feel any separation between me and Jane. We were tight."
Here's a flavour of the scene outside. Nice, eh?
It's a beautiful day on the harbour down at the @SydWritersFest ! Hope to see you there! #swf2014pic.twitter.com/DsfPfREqis
The Sydney writers' festival is arguably the most important literary festival in Australia. Authors and thinkers from all over the world including Alice Walker, Eleanor Catton, Andrew Solomon, Irvine Welsh are joining illustrious locals like Christos Tsiolkas, Thomas Keneally and our own David Marr in a festival of reading, thinking and generally celebrating the power of the written word. It all takes place in a glorious location on Sydney Harbour, and today the sun is beaming. What's not to like?
Today we've got a lot of great stuff coming up including a live webchat with Irvine Welsh at 1pm AEST (post your questions here), a report from last night's headline event with Alice Walker, news from David Malouf's session celebrating his 80th birthday, coverage of Bob Carr's event where he will talk about his notorious memoirs, and a roundup of what people are saying and doing on social media.