2 At Perth Festival too, it is important to avoid saying, ‘In Australia we . . .’ instead of, ‘In NSW (or whatever state) we …’. It is sometimes easy to forget that you are still in Australia but it’s only because of the distance travelled into the setting sun and the iron ore deposits under your feet. Papers on the importance of regionalism are highly valued. Whatever you do don’t mention that when the Fellowship of Australian Writers bought Tom Collins’ house as a museum and meeting place, they bought the wrong house. Always eat in Fremantle never in Perth — at the Capri — and order roast chicken and spaghetti. About wine, say you’ve heard great things about Cloudy Bay. You don’t have to mention that the grapes come from New Zealand. Talk about the quality of light.

3 At the Sydney Festival it is poor form to have anything prepared but you should have — just don’t show it. Jean Bedford says that overseas writers are forever saying, ‘I haven’t got a thing prepared, I’ll have to wing it’. But when they get on to the platform they have a carefully written, philosophically complex piece in large type for easy reading. Sydney is the only festival where you’re given the money in small unmarked bills immediately after the session. Speakers are told to ‘keep it short, jokey, and drop lots of names and gossip’. Gossip is the art from of the Sydney Festival. Sydney literati are tickled if you say, ‘Follow Me is Sydney’s Meanjin’. Don’t expect to be invited home (except for reasonably safe sex) — Sydney writers entertain in expensive restaurants and have Gold American Express cards because they all get to write films. Take flying clothes (ankle length leather coat, white silk scarf, leather Hying helmet, goggles, gloves) because you’ll be taken by seaplane to Berowra Waters Inn for lunch or helicoptered in to Susie Carleton’s new place at Leura (if no invitation is received, see Tom Thompson). Talk about the quality of light coming off the harbour.

4 At Spoleto (not ‘Spoleeeto!!!’) in Melbourne, if possible you must conceal that you are from Sydney. You will be asked trick questions aimed at confirming that Melbourne is ‘a very cosmopolitan place’. You will hear remarks that Melbourne has the biggest Greek or Italian or French or Viennese population outside Athens. Rome, Paris and Vienna. It’s not true, of course, but play along with them. Discuss endlessly where to get the best cappucino. Unless you’re from Melbourne don’t, don’t ever criticise a restaurant. Never refer to the Australian Opera, or the Australian Film Commission or the Australia Council — if you have to mention them call them the NSW Opera, etc. If your party trick is impersonation, forget it. Say how fantastic it is that intellectuals in Melbourne can write intelligently about sport. Praise Art and Text for dragging Australia into the post modern world. Pretend that it is still a Melbourne magazine. Praise Scripsi for ‘rubbing Aus­tralia’s nose in what is really happening overseas’. Pretend that there are no Joyce scholars in Australia. Go to Stewart’s and tell Dinny O’Hearn that you hear he really thrashed Louis Nowra. Literary theory is the art form of Melbourne. Ask what happened to the Allen’s neon sign. If you wish to tease Melbournians say that the Sydney telephone book is going to be four volumes next year. Say you’d like to try some of the fantastic wines of the small Victorian regionals. Praise the ‘big city’ quality of the Melbourne population, say that it reminds you of Rome.

5 In Brisbane at the Warana Festival there is little need to go much past Breakfast Creek, the Valley, the Staff Club at UQ, and the mud crabs. It is generally known as the most ‘relaxed’ of the festivals. You are not expected to turn up at sessions (especially if you’re audience). If you tell a good story in the bar, that’s enough. It is the only festival which recognises the bar yarn as an artform. The yarn is to Brisbane what gossip is to Sydney. It is the only festival where I’ve seen a strippergram as part of a session (but that was before the Fitzgerald inquiry and Laurie Hergenhan was running the session). They have a river cruise as an option to attending any of the sessions. Brisbane has the best Hilton in Australia and you should quietly move out of the designated conference hotel and stay there. Please, don’t make the joke, the pilot on the plane said, “we are now entering Queensland, please put your watches back ten years" You can get plenty of laughs at the expense of Aboriginals and Feminists. Keep saying, ‘God. I feel relaxed’. Forget about wine, the heat destroys any decent wine. Comment on the quality of the heat.

6 At Adelaide you have to remember that they were the first to have a festival, a writers’ week, to drink wine, to have homosexual sex, to be militantly feminist, to have small press publishing, to have gracious living, to appreciate the civilising place of art and wine in life, to sit up till dawn at a concert. You should remember that they never had convicts in the state so it is untainted. Adelaide is the only festival where I’ve been to a party and found police stationed outside, and inside found the Premier, the Chief Justice, and the Minister for Justice all grooving (no, not with each other). When invited to a gracious private home in the Hills, no matter what time of the year always ask to sit in front of a mallee root open-fire. Always ask to see the wine cellar. Praise the quality of life.

7 At The Canberra Word Festival say that it’s good to see a festival that is ‘intimate and real’ and not surrounded by all the elitist bullshit of the other festivals. But don’t say ‘small town atmosphere’. Say that the city is easy to find your way about in once you get the hang of it and that Canberra really does have a soul. Say that you like the art but not the gallery. Eat at the High Court. Keep saying, ‘God, I feel intimate’. Praise the quality of the air. the light, the dryness of the heat and the old Parliament House.

8 At the Darwin Festival just say, ‘Of course the dingo did it’ and you’ll get guffaws of laughter. Praise the quality of the beef.

General Protocol

9 At a book launch remember that the author is in fact launching their previous book. Because there is no way you could have read the book being launched the author will expect praise for their previous book (the title of the previous book is opposite the title page under ‘Other books by the author’).

10 At a book launch remember that all the other authors there, ostensibly to honour their colleague, are quite (or not so quietly, as the case may be, Louis) launching their last book. They’re there to steal praise away from the book being launched.

11 It is fashionable, especially in Melbourne, to suggest that the work of fiction demonstrates some aesthetic theory. If you know no aesthetic theory try saying the words, ‘I like the hermeneutical gaps’. In Sydney it is fashionable to say that theory is merely description of what is being done by advanced fiction.

12 At an arts festival it is fashionable to say that a work is something else other than what it obviously is, so a film is a ‘comic strip’. Or a painting is a ‘narrative’. Every artist regardless of what their art form is wants their work to be likened to a ‘video clip’. You can say that a book is ‘cinematic’. A dance performance can have ‘architectural qualities’.

13 It is a good thing to say to an artist that they ‘take risks’. It means that they have risked making fools of themselves but you avoid saying whether they have.

14 With well-meaning, politically directed art you can say ‘you’ve made a really powerful statement’ which means that they may not have made art but they got the line right. Or you can say ‘Oh God. I know exactly how you must have felt’. Or you can say simply, ‘you’re very brave’.

15 It is still seen as praise to say ‘the work forces us to inquire into the roots of one’s bourgeois hypocrisy’.

16 Even though the arts divide into those who want to make pure art and those who ‘have something to say’, in fact those who say they are making pure art really think they are ‘saying something’. Having ‘something to say’ is a bit suspect but ‘saying something’ is acceptable (even if what is being said is not quite clear — that is called sub-text, something that is only half in the work). Everyone knows now that art is not supposed ‘to give answers’ but it is still the secret wish of the artist to be seen as ‘having a few answers’.

17 Always end which of the publishers’ representatives has the ‘pencil’ (the singer Dave Allen told me about the pencil. In Las Vegas when you’re a star performing at an hotel you have the pencil — you have the right to sign for anything and the hotel picks up the bill). So at a festival it’s a publishers’ representative who can sign for meals and drinks. You need to find who has the authority to sign, who has the pencil.

18 When artists say. ‘let’s cut the crap — tell me what you really think’, they are lying. As Gertrude Stein said, ‘praise, praise, more praise’.