Author Chloe Hooper discussed her new novel, The Engagement.
AND so for another instalment of the Melbourne Writers Festival, the fat lady sang. Although last night it wasn't so much a fat lady as a rather slender man in his late 60s. Robert Dessaix brought the 11-day literary bash to a close with a moving, humorous and thought-provoking riff on mortality, inspired both by a spell in hospital and a musing on Philip Larkin's poem Days in which the curmudgeonly genius asked: ''What are days for?'' and answered, partially: ''There to be happy in/ Where can we live but days?''
It was the end of another festival and also the end of Steve Grimwade's tenure as its director. He was pleased that box-office expectations had been exceeded even before the second weekend. ''The mood across the festival - from guests and audiences - has been very warm. We always like to exceed expectations and unexpected things happen. And those unexpected things have been glorious. I have had no time to be raking over my departure.''
With yesterday being Fathers' Day, there were plenty of father figures considered over the weekend. Richard Holloway, the doubting former Bishop of Edinburgh, confessed that his historical understanding of religion had been about understanding the absence of God the father. ''I'm obsessed with the possibilities of God, but I've never possessed God.''
His own doubting had brought him to the point where he now lurked ''in the dark corridor of the church. I don't want it to go away, I want it to be more forgiving. I want it to be humbled.''
Pico Iyer admitted that novelist Graham Greene - ''a great apostle in the church of humanity'' and the subject of his latest book - had had as profound an influence on his life as anyone. But he said one of the great things he inherited from his real father, a philosopher, was a long-lasting friendship with the Dalai Lama, whom his father had quickly come to know when the Tibetan leader had first emerged from his country.
Novelists Deborah Robertson and Patrick Gale both deal with fictional fathers and the paternal urge in their latest books, while Don Watson, in a session on the prose and poetry of political speechifying, touched, in some amazement, on the elevation of former US president George W. Bush to virtual king-like status in the days after 9/11. Father of the nation?
But it wasn't all fathers. US philosopher Martha Nussbaum lamented that in her country, the low tax rates then-president Bush had introduced - lower even than under Richard Nixon, apparently - still applied to the rich. The real ethical issue about tax in her country was whether the president - whoever he is - was willing to tax the rich. ''It is inexcusable that the rich shouldn't pay more.''
British novelists John Lanchester and Chris Cleave considered the nature of the greatness of Great Britain - ''a geographical description rather than a statement of awesomeness'', Lanchester immediately pointed out - and agreed that the widespread rioting last year reflected a disenfranchisement of young black youth but also a lack of shared political demands.
But both said the riots could have been stopped almost as they began.
Lanchester identified a ''weird absence'' of policing. London had one policeman for every 500 citizens, he said. ''There was something very dark and mysterious that it [the rioting] was allowed to happen when the police were facing a 10 per cent cut. The police manual doesn't have riots tactics as 'sit back and let them get on with it'.''
There are no conventional father figures in Chloe Hooper's return to fiction with The Engagement, but there are gothic thrills and sexual fantasy. She admitted she had a sleepless night wondering whether she had written a literary version of Fifty Shades of Grey.
''Obviously it's totally different - unfortunately in terms of sales as well,'' she pointed out.
The Age was a festival sponsor.