Confessions of a radio novice

Jo Case, Deputy Editor

Thursday, November 2

7:45am

Arrive at work in the ABR office, painfully aware that I have my bimonthly book review segment on Triple R at 11 am. Just over three hours away. (Peter Rose and I share this monthly gig.)

7:50 am

Outside, the sky is the colour of charcoal, smudging from dense black clouds to a solemn grey. Sheets of rain attack scurrying commuters, grim-faced below their umbrellas as they scramble on and off the Bridge Road tram. At the café where I grab my morning tonic, the moustachioed proprietor makes small talk as he pours my latte and I scan the front page of The Age at the counter. ‘We’ve been needing this,’ he says, nodding towards the open (!) door. I nod and mumble, putting down the newspaper and its drought headlines, feeling less charitable than I should.

Melbourne is back to its trademark sombre self after several days of uncharacteristic sunshine. I, too, am sombre.

8:00 am

Back at my desk, I ponder the flaws in one of the books I have chosen to speak about, 700 Days in El Salvador. Flaws that only became apparent last night, when I was typing up my notes. Flaws that don’t exist for the reader of the book, nor the print reviewer, but have the potential to topple a somewhat inexperienced radio reviewer.

1. I am unsure of how to pronounce the author’s surname (Gierck).
2. I am bound to mispronounce the Spanish words and place names I’ll need to use, particularly El Mozote, the site of El Salvador’s most notorious massacre.
3. The book’s range is complex and difficult to pithily summarise, particularly the background material about the situation in El Salvador, which many listeners will be unfamiliar with.
4. WHAT IF I’M ASKED A QUESTION ABOUT EL SALVADOR’S HISTORY AND I CAN’T ANSWER IT?

My husband, who will study in Mexico next year, helped me with my Spanish pronunciation last night (if only I can remember it). I’ve done my best to summarise. And I’ve gone through the book and made a handy one-page timeline of significant events in the history of El Salvador, just in case. I shall hope for the best on the author’s surname.

I open up my notes from last night and revise them a little. I manage to cut my summary of 700 Days in El Salvador by a third. Some quick fact-checking reveals that I’ve got the premise of Emily Maguire’s first novel, Taming the Beast, slightly wrong. (I thought it was about a uni student’s affair with her professor. It’s about a high school student’s affair with her English teacher. Glad I checked.) I’m reviewing Emily’s second novel, The Gospel According to Luke, another book with an inappropriate sexual attraction at its core; this time between a fundamentalist Christian youth pastor and the lefty feminist social worker from the sexual health clinic across the road.

I put my notes aside and do some other work for a while, so I won’t feel I’ve spent three office hours on a fifteen-minute radio segment.

9.00 am

Returning to my notes and taking advantage of an empty office (Peter is in Adelaide working from Flinders University and our new office manager Leigh Parris has the morning off), I decide to practice talking aloud. I pace the length of the office as I talk to myself. As I am alone, I decide to embrace my nuttiness. I not only do my own ‘bit’, but occasionally I interject as Richard Watts, presenter of Smartarts. (Me as Richard: ‘So, Jo, what’s happening in the world of books?’ Me as me: ‘Well, Richard, there’s been a lot of controversy about …’)

I do this twice, red-penning my notes as I come across lines that seemed fine, until my tongue stumbles over them when I say them aloud. I also cut a few parts of the still-overlong notes on 700 Days in El Salvador.

9:20 am (ish)

I take in my own changes, print out a fresh version of my notes, and return to intermittently answering e-mails and editing reviews.

9:40 am

Someone fumbles with the lock, and I hear the door open. Footsteps approach down the hallway. I wasn’t expecting anyone. Has Peter returned early? Does this mean an end to my rehearsals? Not that I was planning another stint, of course …

It’s our Thursday volunteer, Rebecca Starford, a Creative Writing student at Melbourne University. I thought she was taking a break for exams. She’s not. It amazes me that our trusty student volunteers continue to arrive in the midst of assignments, thesis deadlines, looming exams (and, I would imagine, hectic social lives), managing to make ABR a priority all for the princely sum of … our sincere gratitude. And some valuable work experience, of course.

I’m immensely relieved that Rebecca has arrived well AFTER my lone posturing has ended, and that no one need ever know about it. We chat briefly and she cheerfully agrees to man (or is that woman?) the phones and watch over the office while I’m out.

9:45 am

I tell Rebecca that she has just missed me walking around the office talking to myself.

10.20 am

Umbrella in hand, bag stuffed with November issue of ABR, my notes, three books and a digital camera (see photos), I dash from the office entrance to the back of the cab. Considering the rapid-fire rain that continues to bullet down, I don’t get too wet in the process.

I read over my notes and the relevant ABR reviews to the soundtrack of Neil Mitchell discussing the shock decision to axe (sorry, to decline recommissioning) The Glass House. It seems he’s an unlikely fan. I am utterly sidetracked, particularly by the pensioner-aged caller who tremulously declares that she watches it every week and loves it.

10.45 am

Despite the snail-crawl traffic between Richmond and Triple R’s East Brunswick office, I’m early. Today, the waiting area outside the studio is empty. Last month, I was one of a parade of guests – due, I was told, to the first weeks of the Melbourne Festival. (As I waited, Gillian Waring’s publicist nodded at Dark Roots, the book I was holding and asked me, ‘Are you Cate Kennedy?’ I paused, savouring a momentary fantasy in which I was, before admitting that no, I was merely reviewing the book.)

I sink into a worn brocade couch in a corner as rain stampedes overhead. It’s cosy here, like one of my old share houses, or a Fitzroy pub without the alcohol. The walls are cheerfully plastered with garish posters advertising the station’s subscription drives and thirtieth birthday celebrations; others trumpet the imminent Big Day Out and various local gigs. Twigs of bottlebrush rest in a glass on one of the two desks in the room, beside a phone and a sticky-tape dispenser. A green plastic wall clock rests on the sideboard next to me, alongside a Megasketcher and a pile of magazines. Richard announces a Tom Waits track. A sneakered station employee (I think) emerges from his studio and offers to make me a latte, which I gleefully accept.

Richard pokes his head around the door and waves. ‘You’re on in ten minutes.’

10.50 am

My reverie is broken as I realise that there is no more time to get it right. This happens every month. Three weeks pre-show, I enjoy deciding what I will talk about: a mix of literary news and book reviews. Preferably books we’ve reviewed in ABR, so I can mention the fact on air. I read or re-read the books, take notes. (Still enjoying myself.) Then a few days before the show I remember that although I like the idea of public speaking, I’m not so fond of doing it. I like to get things right. On paper, it’s possible to ensure that, to the best of your ability, this is what you want to say and how you want to say it – before you launch it into the public domain. (There’s even an editor in between to make sure.) On radio and on screen, there’s no safety net. You can prepare all you like, but if you don’t perform when the light turns green, that’s it.

I gulp my coffee as the head appears again. ‘Seven minutes.’

I madly scribble on my printed pages, thinking of new things to say and dismissing my intricately planned notes.

11.00 am

Richard is back for the last time. ‘Come in.’

I gather my bag, my umbrella, my books, my notes and follow, leaving the dregs of my coffee among the Beat magazines on the coffee table.

As I sit down at the microphone opposite, Richard is on the phone. ‘Giveaways are gone. Thank you.’ Pause. ‘Giveaways are gone …’ He picks up one line after another until all the flashing red lights have died, then looks up and nods at me as I play with the mike. ‘How’s things?’

11.01 am

I’m on.

11.15 am

It’s over for another two months. I know that I will have to do my best not to pick apart what I can recall of my performance on the tram ride back to the office. But I’ve survived, dignity relatively intact.

Nonetheless, as I run from the Triple R entrance to the 96 tram idling opposite, dodging rain and cars alike, I butcher an old maxim in my head. Ideally, writers (at least, this one) should be neither seen nor heard – only read.

Jo Case reviewed Michele Gierck’s 700 Days in El Salvador (Coretext) and Emily Maguire’s The Gospel According to Luke (Brandl & Schlesinger). She also discussed Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist (Picador) and Jonestown by Chris Masters (Allen & Unwin). To read her review notes, click here.

Peter Rose will appear on Smartarts with Richard Watts at 11am, Thursday 7 December.