Stories From a Successful Book Launch
Amy Vuleta reports on a particularly entertaining book launch recently held at our St Kilda shop.
Earlier this week Readings St Kilda was full to bursting with people celebrating the launch of Bernard Cohen’s new novel, The Antibiography of Robert F. Menzies.
Cohen’s novel was launched in the greatest of style by the infinitely fabulous Libbi Gorr. Perhaps known to most as the feisty Elle McFeast, Libbi is the author of The A to Z of Mummy Manners, and is a host on 774 ABC Melbourne. Libbi is also Bernard Cohen’s first cousin, and she charmed and entertained with one of the best launch speeches I think I’ve ever seen.
She said that, with The Antibiography, Cohen has ‘reinvented the book’, creating a whole new genre, one that she defines as ‘“creative biographic accountancy” […] incorporating fiction and totally kosher.’ She concluded, in the spirit of Cohen’s novel, with an impression of Paul Keating, recounting the story of a conversation they had together about the novel. The audience were in stitches, and Cohen himself was delighted at the show.
Following Libbi, Cohen’s daughter Pola Cohen took the lectern to read a letter from the novel’s research assistant, Cordell Froat (one of the ‘below the line’ voices present throughout), giving the audience a taste of what to expect in the pages of Bernard’s satire.
And finally, after giving his heartfelt thanks to his loved ones and team of supportive friends and colleagues, Bernard Cohen read a few passages from his novel, even donning his Menzies-inspired top hat. By turns outrageous, biting, witty, reflective, and clever, Cohen inspired more than a few attendees to rush over and buy the book there and then.
From all accounts, the novel’s strength lies in its subversive structure and satirical brilliance, its multiphony of voices—a few above the line, and a few more below—and in the potential a technique like this has for challenging how we experience history, politics, our Australianness, and, above all, the nature of fiction.
Here are some photos from the evening:
