You know how kids construct their image of the outside world from scraps of cartoons and fragments of school assignments, and the rest from imagination? So they get lots of stuff wrong--sewer grates are to keep the alligators out of the streets, whatever day is garbage day on your street is garbage day for the whole world--and growing up is the process of idly mentioning these incorrect suppositions and getting them straightened out by the older and the wiser.
Except, some of these suppositions are so irrelevant and minor that you never bring them up, and they don't get mentioned in a class or conversation for years and years. And then you're thirty, and you are somewhat crushed to find out over Mexican food that no space program--not Canada's or the US's or anyone's--is working towards the goal of building a glass or possibly Pyrex dome on the moon filled with a breathable atmosphere so that people can live there full-time.
!!!
I can't even begin to explain why I thought that was true, or why I am now so sad that it isn't. It's not like I wanted to spend my retirement on the moon...I just thought I'd have the option.
I'll keep drivin' / you keep sleepin'
RR
PS--But the good news is that I've had new horoscopes for the past two days--hooray! Of course, today's includes the line, "This is a powerful move that will make you feel powerful..."
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
Narrative Dream
I am, in general, against talking about dreams (you always get that sentence when someone is about to talk about his or her dreams). Most dreams that I've heard narrated are very boring, and mine certainly are. They are actually often textbook anxiety dreams, about forgetting I registered for a Spanish class until I am forced to take the exam. And I'm not wearing a shirt. Blah blah blah.
About once a year, I have a cool dream, in a narrative format--a tv show, a movie, once a magazine article (the whole dream was text), or else just a series of events that *could* form a narrative, if I wrote them up properly. Often I *do* write these dreams into stories, though honestly, it never really works out. So I thought I'd spare myself the disappointment, and just sketch out the dream here. Feel free to quit reading now.
So I found myself in need of a place to live (though much less discomfitted by this than I would've been in real life) and took a room in the house of a middle-aged couple who had two teenaged daughters. The ethnicity of the couple kept shifting between white and Chinese, but the daughters were both adopted Chinese orphans. Them being teenagers would put their adoption somewhat before it was easy to get babies from China, I believe, but my dreams have never been long on historical accuracy.
The man of the house was the butcher at a No Frills, and the woman's job was unclear, but she was somehow heavily involved in political activism. I seemed to be going through a tough time in my life, not only because I was homeless but for other reasons that weren't really mentioned in the story (this dream is so obviously a short story). Anyway, I was out of the house a lot, but when I was home I mainly hung around with the guy, who was short and heavily muscled and *smoked* (what year did I dream?)
He really liked his job and enjoyed telling me about the ins and outs of butchering for mass sales (I don't actually think that goes on at No Frills). The store was, oddly, owned by Mel Gibson, who was apparently an all right guy. The daughters were fascinated by him, and their father would bring home candy wrappers that Mel had discarded, which enthralled them, though I think they also might have been selling them (on eBay?) The wrappers were made out of silk, delicately embroidered with Chinese characters in blue thread.
For a while, something kept me very busy and I wasn't interacting with the family much, and then I realized that the girls and the wife didn't seem to be there at all. I asked the man, and he said the girls had gone to summer camp, and the wife was just busy. We were sitting around late at night in the living room, him sitting on the couch and smoking, me lounging on the floor. It was very comfortable, but somewhat forlorn. He confided to me that his wife was a lesbian, but it had been necessary for her to have a husband in order to adopt the two girls from China (that's not correct, actually, is it?) and she had felt it important politically that she take them. The marriage was ok, more or less, she just had her focus mainly political activities. It was not clear to me whether this was a euphemism for affairs, and I wondered if it was to him.
The man related this to me more or less easily, considering the emotional import of what he was saying. I was sad for him, but he didn't seem to register his marriage of convenience one way or another. He loved the daughters, and seemed to have a good deal of respect for his wife. We sat in silence for a while in the living room, and then I woke up.
I was wide awake in bed
RR
About once a year, I have a cool dream, in a narrative format--a tv show, a movie, once a magazine article (the whole dream was text), or else just a series of events that *could* form a narrative, if I wrote them up properly. Often I *do* write these dreams into stories, though honestly, it never really works out. So I thought I'd spare myself the disappointment, and just sketch out the dream here. Feel free to quit reading now.
So I found myself in need of a place to live (though much less discomfitted by this than I would've been in real life) and took a room in the house of a middle-aged couple who had two teenaged daughters. The ethnicity of the couple kept shifting between white and Chinese, but the daughters were both adopted Chinese orphans. Them being teenagers would put their adoption somewhat before it was easy to get babies from China, I believe, but my dreams have never been long on historical accuracy.
The man of the house was the butcher at a No Frills, and the woman's job was unclear, but she was somehow heavily involved in political activism. I seemed to be going through a tough time in my life, not only because I was homeless but for other reasons that weren't really mentioned in the story (this dream is so obviously a short story). Anyway, I was out of the house a lot, but when I was home I mainly hung around with the guy, who was short and heavily muscled and *smoked* (what year did I dream?)
He really liked his job and enjoyed telling me about the ins and outs of butchering for mass sales (I don't actually think that goes on at No Frills). The store was, oddly, owned by Mel Gibson, who was apparently an all right guy. The daughters were fascinated by him, and their father would bring home candy wrappers that Mel had discarded, which enthralled them, though I think they also might have been selling them (on eBay?) The wrappers were made out of silk, delicately embroidered with Chinese characters in blue thread.
For a while, something kept me very busy and I wasn't interacting with the family much, and then I realized that the girls and the wife didn't seem to be there at all. I asked the man, and he said the girls had gone to summer camp, and the wife was just busy. We were sitting around late at night in the living room, him sitting on the couch and smoking, me lounging on the floor. It was very comfortable, but somewhat forlorn. He confided to me that his wife was a lesbian, but it had been necessary for her to have a husband in order to adopt the two girls from China (that's not correct, actually, is it?) and she had felt it important politically that she take them. The marriage was ok, more or less, she just had her focus mainly political activities. It was not clear to me whether this was a euphemism for affairs, and I wondered if it was to him.
The man related this to me more or less easily, considering the emotional import of what he was saying. I was sad for him, but he didn't seem to register his marriage of convenience one way or another. He loved the daughters, and seemed to have a good deal of respect for his wife. We sat in silence for a while in the living room, and then I woke up.
I was wide awake in bed
RR
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Talking Salon (again, still)
Nota Bene Books
Intersection
The Globe and Mail
Thirsty (in response to the Globe)
Seen Reading
Resurrected / livin in a lighthouse
RR
Intersection
The Globe and Mail
Thirsty (in response to the Globe)
Seen Reading
Resurrected / livin in a lighthouse
RR
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Sadness, but...
The IV Lounge Reading Series has ended. It was great while it lasted, and since it's not ending due to some Cyril Sneerish corporate takeover but simply the need for extensive building renovations, it seems tacky to complain. I guess we can all just reread the IV anthology and remember the good times.
We never saw the sights
RR
We never saw the sights
RR
Everybody blog!
At That Shakespeherian Rag, Nigel Beale refuses the Salon de Refuses, and at Thirsty, Dan Wells refuses back. Intersection is blogging again, but I just found out. My Tragic Right Hip has been blogging for a while, but I just discovered her existence and coolness.
My friend C. has no personal internet presence sadly, but does have a very cool iPhone. I have nothing new to say about anything, but I was happier about being photographed with an iPhone than this photograph would lead you to believe. On the positive side, I no longer hate my hair. On the negative side, my horoscope continues to advise patience. Hence the eye-roll?
Does he get lost / hey what are you reading?
RR
My friend C. has no personal internet presence sadly, but does have a very cool iPhone. I have nothing new to say about anything, but I was happier about being photographed with an iPhone than this photograph would lead you to believe. On the positive side, I no longer hate my hair. On the negative side, my horoscope continues to advise patience. Hence the eye-roll?
Does he get lost / hey what are you reading?
RR
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
There was a Bill Murray movie like this
My email homepage provides a horoscope, so while I'm not wildly into astrology, I've taken to checking it every day with mild curiosity. Even though these things are just vague enough to suit everybody, they are also filled with very vague good advice that it would do no one any harm to follow. Like this:
Gemini
You'll be working with a lot more energy than the people around you will have today, so you need to be prepared to wait for them -- a lot. This is not good news if you're dependent on others for your own progress, but you won't be able to speed anyone up -- so don't waste your time trying. Even though patience doesn't always come easy for you, you'll find that as the day goes on, you'll get more and more comfortable cooling your heels while other people try to catch up.
Be patient--sure, why not? It's usually something cheerful and zen like that, something that makes me feel better heading into the day. Unforutnately, the system at the website use seems to have broken down, and the above has been my horoscope for the past week now. I'm beginning to feel that this is affecting reality, thatI am in fact living the same day over and over again. I'm TIRED of being patient. I want to move ON. Is that too much to ask??
Um, there may have been other problems recently that the random zodiac machine at excite.com had nothing to do with. Either way, this is bad for morale.
Love love love
RR
Gemini
You'll be working with a lot more energy than the people around you will have today, so you need to be prepared to wait for them -- a lot. This is not good news if you're dependent on others for your own progress, but you won't be able to speed anyone up -- so don't waste your time trying. Even though patience doesn't always come easy for you, you'll find that as the day goes on, you'll get more and more comfortable cooling your heels while other people try to catch up.
Be patient--sure, why not? It's usually something cheerful and zen like that, something that makes me feel better heading into the day. Unforutnately, the system at the website use seems to have broken down, and the above has been my horoscope for the past week now. I'm beginning to feel that this is affecting reality, thatI am in fact living the same day over and over again. I'm TIRED of being patient. I want to move ON. Is that too much to ask??
Um, there may have been other problems recently that the random zodiac machine at excite.com had nothing to do with. Either way, this is bad for morale.
Love love love
RR
Monday, August 25, 2008
Rose-coloured Reviews Neon Bible by The Arcade Fire
Writers are obsessive creatures, many of them (us?) worse than footballers with their lucky rabbits and left-shoe-firsts. I've seen many acknowlegements pages that thank a particular brand of pen, a restaurant owner, someone who leant the author a lucky sweater--anything in the writing environment that seems like it might have leant a charm to the process. Nothing is so common among these gratitudes to atmospheres as those to bands and albums listened to obsessively in the background while typing. The repeat button is a creative security blanket, and unlike a hunk of fur or crossed fingers, music is at least good company.
I say that all by way of making myself feel better about the fact that it's a strange day in 2008 if I don't listen to Intervention by The Arcade Fire six or seven times. I'm a sucker for the strings and the soar, the intensity of Win Butler's histrionic vocals, the organ music... That is perhaps my perfect song.
I know, I know, I like a lot of schlock (full disclosure: the symmetrical purchase to Neon Bible in the twofer record-store deal was Metro Station by Metro Station). But I think I can recognize the good stuff when I hear it, and Arcade Fire seems to me to be making sonically complex, lyrically fascinating songs.
Some people find this band a little intense, and I believe Sasha Frere Jones thinks they're one of the whitest bands ever (not touching that one)--so, not for everyone? And if you don't like their music, I imagine you're *really* dislike it: Arcade Fire are notable as much earnestness of message as they are for pyrotechnics of medium; the vocalists tell stories and embody characters within them, and those characters believe their stories. If you dig that sort of thing, this is a nice change from pop music (ie., Metro Station), who only ever embrace sincere emotion for romantic ("Kelsey, I'd swim the ocean for you / the ocean for you / the ocean for you / Oh, Kelsey") or erotic ("I know you're dying / to take off your clothes") declarations.
Arcade Fire has a much much wider range of material. Their last album, Funeral seemed to me to about the dreamspace of the suburbs, the fantasies and nightmares of snowdays and boiling kettles, lonely children and lonely marriages. It was fascinating to see them build a world with these songs--Funeral is not a concept album, it's not a linked narrative, but it is a creation larger than the individual songs. After you listen to the whole of it, you feel of that place, and partways in it.
*Neon Bible* really does take on the bible and relgion, particularly revivalist (is that a word? I'm trying to write this review with as little recourse as possible to outside opinions) Christianity, throughout the ages. One of the best pieces on the album is (Antichrist Television Blues) (no, I don't know why the title is in parentheses). It's the fairly straightforward story of a guy who hates working downtown parking cars and wants to serve God, so he grooms his young daughter as a singer of religious songs. She is successful, and he gets what he wants (whatever that is.) You feel like this is character who told himself lies and believed them, who really never got the exploitation in one he did, until the last line of the song, where he snaps, "So tell me how am I the Antichrist?" Like the endings of all my favourite short stories, this song ends with insight into both what came before and what might come next, but not nearly enough to feel you've got it fully nailed down.
Some of the less rocking songs are a bit dirgelike, and I actually dislike the first single, Black Mirror (I *think* it's the first single). They do better on the soaring line than the sinking one, I can't really repeat that enough. But they do do dreamy pretty well in most cases, though you have to listen a number of times to really get it (the title song) or perhaps never will ("Windowsill"). The music is still hyponontic, even when the song doesn't make *total* sense.
Even when they don't make sense, the lyrics are still strangely effective at being affective ("We can reach the sea / they won't follow me"--what sea? who are they? why would they follow you? Well, I guess I'm into it now). For me, despite the strings and the soar, it is the lyrics that puts *Neon Bible* above the merely very cool. But I do think it's that, too (organ music? hooray!)
I'm free today
RR
I say that all by way of making myself feel better about the fact that it's a strange day in 2008 if I don't listen to Intervention by The Arcade Fire six or seven times. I'm a sucker for the strings and the soar, the intensity of Win Butler's histrionic vocals, the organ music... That is perhaps my perfect song.
I know, I know, I like a lot of schlock (full disclosure: the symmetrical purchase to Neon Bible in the twofer record-store deal was Metro Station by Metro Station). But I think I can recognize the good stuff when I hear it, and Arcade Fire seems to me to be making sonically complex, lyrically fascinating songs.
Some people find this band a little intense, and I believe Sasha Frere Jones thinks they're one of the whitest bands ever (not touching that one)--so, not for everyone? And if you don't like their music, I imagine you're *really* dislike it: Arcade Fire are notable as much earnestness of message as they are for pyrotechnics of medium; the vocalists tell stories and embody characters within them, and those characters believe their stories. If you dig that sort of thing, this is a nice change from pop music (ie., Metro Station), who only ever embrace sincere emotion for romantic ("Kelsey, I'd swim the ocean for you / the ocean for you / the ocean for you / Oh, Kelsey") or erotic ("I know you're dying / to take off your clothes") declarations.
Arcade Fire has a much much wider range of material. Their last album, Funeral seemed to me to about the dreamspace of the suburbs, the fantasies and nightmares of snowdays and boiling kettles, lonely children and lonely marriages. It was fascinating to see them build a world with these songs--Funeral is not a concept album, it's not a linked narrative, but it is a creation larger than the individual songs. After you listen to the whole of it, you feel of that place, and partways in it.
*Neon Bible* really does take on the bible and relgion, particularly revivalist (is that a word? I'm trying to write this review with as little recourse as possible to outside opinions) Christianity, throughout the ages. One of the best pieces on the album is (Antichrist Television Blues) (no, I don't know why the title is in parentheses). It's the fairly straightforward story of a guy who hates working downtown parking cars and wants to serve God, so he grooms his young daughter as a singer of religious songs. She is successful, and he gets what he wants (whatever that is.) You feel like this is character who told himself lies and believed them, who really never got the exploitation in one he did, until the last line of the song, where he snaps, "So tell me how am I the Antichrist?" Like the endings of all my favourite short stories, this song ends with insight into both what came before and what might come next, but not nearly enough to feel you've got it fully nailed down.
Some of the less rocking songs are a bit dirgelike, and I actually dislike the first single, Black Mirror (I *think* it's the first single). They do better on the soaring line than the sinking one, I can't really repeat that enough. But they do do dreamy pretty well in most cases, though you have to listen a number of times to really get it (the title song) or perhaps never will ("Windowsill"). The music is still hyponontic, even when the song doesn't make *total* sense.
Even when they don't make sense, the lyrics are still strangely effective at being affective ("We can reach the sea / they won't follow me"--what sea? who are they? why would they follow you? Well, I guess I'm into it now). For me, despite the strings and the soar, it is the lyrics that puts *Neon Bible* above the merely very cool. But I do think it's that, too (organ music? hooray!)
I'm free today
RR
Too Far to Go
I can be heard reading part of John Updike story today. I very rarely hear my own voice without the reverberation of my skull, so I find listening to this an odd experience. If you are more used to not living inside my skull, you might find this recording less troubling. It's a beautiful passage, in any event.
Your boots frozen in the soil of Spain
RR
Your boots frozen in the soil of Spain
RR
Sunday, August 24, 2008
On the weekend (an epic photo essay)
There was a journey to Rexdale.
Then Blogger freaked out and wouldn't let me show the rest of the pictures. But trust me, it *was* epic. You wouldn't believe how far you can go and still be in Toronto. That's what I love about Toronto. You wouldn't believe how thrilling imported sodas (Ting! Faygo!) can be! I tried on the world's sluttiest dress, and leggings that came down over my toes. I bought a quarter pound of balloons! Good times, my friends, good times.
Don't wanna see it on my windowsill
RR
Then Blogger freaked out and wouldn't let me show the rest of the pictures. But trust me, it *was* epic. You wouldn't believe how far you can go and still be in Toronto. That's what I love about Toronto. You wouldn't believe how thrilling imported sodas (Ting! Faygo!) can be! I tried on the world's sluttiest dress, and leggings that came down over my toes. I bought a quarter pound of balloons! Good times, my friends, good times.
Don't wanna see it on my windowsill
RR
Friday, August 22, 2008
While I'm at it...
I didn't realize that the Canadian Notes and Queries online exclusive included me, but it it does. My profile and a short story, "The Words," are both there, if you're into that sort of thing.
Well, you don't lie to me!
RR
Well, you don't lie to me!
RR
Thursday, August 21, 2008
True and amazing
1) Getting off a crowded bus today, I emerged into an equally crowded busstop, with a long thick line of humanity snaking into the distance. There was about a busful of people there waiting, give or take a few. I walked away along the line and in the thicket of it, I passed a boy of about twenty, engineer cap and diamond stud, but cheerful open blue eyes. He was supporting a red chrome low-rider bicycle with wide silver handlebars. I glance at the baleful crowd ahead of him and behind and thought, "How's that going to work out?" Then I drew parallel to him and glanced again at his face, and he looked right into my eyes and shrugged.
2) Once got a starred review in the Quill and Quire this month. People have been telling me this all week, but I finally got a copy today and there it was.
It's true, I swear.
Your hair twists / in miniature mobius strips
RR
2) Once got a starred review in the Quill and Quire this month. People have been telling me this all week, but I finally got a copy today and there it was.
It's true, I swear.
Your hair twists / in miniature mobius strips
RR
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Doings
1) Today--A profile of me in the Canadian Jewish News by Ruth Mestechkin.
2) Monday August 25--Reading aloud on Julie Wilson's weekly Readers Reading podcast--sixty seconds of me and Mr. Updike, to your ears by the miracle of digital recording! I am thrilled by the technology (and the text).
I didn't ask you
RR
2) Monday August 25--Reading aloud on Julie Wilson's weekly Readers Reading podcast--sixty seconds of me and Mr. Updike, to your ears by the miracle of digital recording! I am thrilled by the technology (and the text).
I didn't ask you
RR
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The smartest thing I've ever said?
"The easiest thing is just the one you're good at."
Oh!
She's fallin' asleep at the bar
RR
Oh!
She's fallin' asleep at the bar
RR
Monday, August 18, 2008
You might wanna
1) Attend the launch of the book in the preceeding post--this advertisement was supposed to come at the end of my *The Killing Circle* review, but in my excitement I forgot. See the link for full deets, but quickly, it's tomorrow night at 8:30 at the Gladstone, and it's gonna be awesome.
2) Donate school supplies to kids in need via the Salvation Army and Sleep Country. It's always good to give, but this is especially fun because it enables the school-deprived to indulge in coloured pencils and theme binders, and to finally find a good home for the very expensive scientific calculators we were forced to buy in grade 11 (it's official: logarithms are no longer relevant to my life).
We can reach the sea / they won't follow me
RR
2) Donate school supplies to kids in need via the Salvation Army and Sleep Country. It's always good to give, but this is especially fun because it enables the school-deprived to indulge in coloured pencils and theme binders, and to finally find a good home for the very expensive scientific calculators we were forced to buy in grade 11 (it's official: logarithms are no longer relevant to my life).
We can reach the sea / they won't follow me
RR
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Rose-coloured Reviews The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper
In this review, I *will* make an effort, but my feints at objectivity are probably going to be even lamer than usual. For something actually insightful, try The Walrus or Pickle Me This.
Though I'm not much of a reader of serial-killer thrillers, I did really love this book for craft of language, for plotting, definitely for voice. But if Mr. Pyper started experimenting in the former of toaster-oven instruction manuals, I'd probably take at least an interest in that, too. I've been a fan since I read his first book, a collection of short stories called Kiss Me (click on the link just to see the book cover, my favourite book cover ever), way back in 2000 (it came out in 1996--I'm always behind). In truth that collection of literary fiction remained my favourite of his for a long time, as the mystery/thrillers he wrote after, though very very good, never resonated with me as deeply. Until The Killing Circle came along and blew everything else out of the water.
Full disclosure: when I found that this novel centres on a writing group and their teacher, I was very very alarmed. I love writing about writing and about learning to write (ooh, Lynn Coady's Mean Boy), but I also love *learning to write,* and to this end, once took a class *from* Andrew Pyper. He was a great great teacher, and my work came really far in those three months, but there were still a lot of moments in that class that could easily be parodied, if one were searching for material. I've stayed in a wonderful writing circle with three of my classmates, and we all thought, uh-oh.
Of course not. Although this book is about the profound ambiguity between story and life, it's also about the trouble that lies in store for (or from) those who cannot tell the difference. The authors *in* the story lie to themselves and to others about the definition of fiction, but the author *of* the story has an amazingly assured hand.
Much has been made about this book being a roman a clef to media politics in this city and this country. The central character, Patrick Rush, works at *The National Star* and the leader of the writing circle is "Conrad White"--hee? I don't know much about newspapering and I never did figure out who the snippily successful managing editor at the paper was, let alone Mr. White. Easier to enjoy were some of the broader jokes, about "The Quotidian Award...awarded to a the work of fiction that 'best reflects the domestic heritage of Canadian family life'...A rainy-day parade of stolid farmers and fishermen's widows," as well as the endless reality programming about transforming your neighbours' homes.
Those sort of jokes are quite fun, but parodies and veilings of reality are, in this book, far less interesting than the stuff that's simply real: things about the city of Toronto, and how writing works. Pyper wrote a groovy article in the Star about city as character in this book, and it truly is one. The alleys that Patrick runs down away from shadowy figures are not just scary-novel devices but actually real alleyways I know and love, off Queen near Palmerston, others closer to the lake. The Rosedale subway station and the nearby ravine. Kensington. All these places are both instantly recognizable and suddenly terrifying as they make their transition from real-world to fictional-world.
And that's the brilliant thing about the book--it's actually about that process, how writers bring bits and pieces of reality to fiction and transform it into something not more or less but entirely different from the sum of its parts. Writing is a huge act of faith, I think it is and I guess you sort of have to in order to do it. Author Pyper gives the writer his or her due, but character Patrick gives the writer far more, something close to godlike incantatory powers--"Waiting for a way to tell the one true story that might bring back the dead." And it is in this obsessive over-estimation of the lessons on writing that put the book into terror territory.
It's wrenching, I gotta say. Gory, but also psychologically very very weird and disturbingly intimate. The central character is not violent, but he's not a lovely person at all times, either, and the crimes for which he is culpable, and his justifications for them, give us weird insight into the mind of the murderer. And that freaked me the hell out. If the prose weren't so good (and, just when you're white-knuckling the spine, so funny) and the story so tightly plotted and surprising, I would not have made it to the dark dark ending. This isn't "my kind" of novel, but the really good writing is beyond genre, and I think *The Killing Circle* qualifies.
I can't talk much about the plot, because most everything is a twist or a turn that affects everything but you don't see it coming. Or at least, I didn't see *anything* coming; possibly if you are more familiar with serial-killer fiction (I hear there's lots) you might not be so startled by everything. I can't necessarily recommend this book to you; it's creepy and sad and certainly does not redeem one's faith in mankind. It's gripping, though, and you could learn a good bit about writing by reading it.
Maybe try only reading it during the day.
Don't wanna see it on my windowsill
RR
Though I'm not much of a reader of serial-killer thrillers, I did really love this book for craft of language, for plotting, definitely for voice. But if Mr. Pyper started experimenting in the former of toaster-oven instruction manuals, I'd probably take at least an interest in that, too. I've been a fan since I read his first book, a collection of short stories called Kiss Me (click on the link just to see the book cover, my favourite book cover ever), way back in 2000 (it came out in 1996--I'm always behind). In truth that collection of literary fiction remained my favourite of his for a long time, as the mystery/thrillers he wrote after, though very very good, never resonated with me as deeply. Until The Killing Circle came along and blew everything else out of the water.
Full disclosure: when I found that this novel centres on a writing group and their teacher, I was very very alarmed. I love writing about writing and about learning to write (ooh, Lynn Coady's Mean Boy), but I also love *learning to write,* and to this end, once took a class *from* Andrew Pyper. He was a great great teacher, and my work came really far in those three months, but there were still a lot of moments in that class that could easily be parodied, if one were searching for material. I've stayed in a wonderful writing circle with three of my classmates, and we all thought, uh-oh.
Of course not. Although this book is about the profound ambiguity between story and life, it's also about the trouble that lies in store for (or from) those who cannot tell the difference. The authors *in* the story lie to themselves and to others about the definition of fiction, but the author *of* the story has an amazingly assured hand.
Much has been made about this book being a roman a clef to media politics in this city and this country. The central character, Patrick Rush, works at *The National Star* and the leader of the writing circle is "Conrad White"--hee? I don't know much about newspapering and I never did figure out who the snippily successful managing editor at the paper was, let alone Mr. White. Easier to enjoy were some of the broader jokes, about "The Quotidian Award...awarded to a the work of fiction that 'best reflects the domestic heritage of Canadian family life'...A rainy-day parade of stolid farmers and fishermen's widows," as well as the endless reality programming about transforming your neighbours' homes.
Those sort of jokes are quite fun, but parodies and veilings of reality are, in this book, far less interesting than the stuff that's simply real: things about the city of Toronto, and how writing works. Pyper wrote a groovy article in the Star about city as character in this book, and it truly is one. The alleys that Patrick runs down away from shadowy figures are not just scary-novel devices but actually real alleyways I know and love, off Queen near Palmerston, others closer to the lake. The Rosedale subway station and the nearby ravine. Kensington. All these places are both instantly recognizable and suddenly terrifying as they make their transition from real-world to fictional-world.
And that's the brilliant thing about the book--it's actually about that process, how writers bring bits and pieces of reality to fiction and transform it into something not more or less but entirely different from the sum of its parts. Writing is a huge act of faith, I think it is and I guess you sort of have to in order to do it. Author Pyper gives the writer his or her due, but character Patrick gives the writer far more, something close to godlike incantatory powers--"Waiting for a way to tell the one true story that might bring back the dead." And it is in this obsessive over-estimation of the lessons on writing that put the book into terror territory.
It's wrenching, I gotta say. Gory, but also psychologically very very weird and disturbingly intimate. The central character is not violent, but he's not a lovely person at all times, either, and the crimes for which he is culpable, and his justifications for them, give us weird insight into the mind of the murderer. And that freaked me the hell out. If the prose weren't so good (and, just when you're white-knuckling the spine, so funny) and the story so tightly plotted and surprising, I would not have made it to the dark dark ending. This isn't "my kind" of novel, but the really good writing is beyond genre, and I think *The Killing Circle* qualifies.
I can't talk much about the plot, because most everything is a twist or a turn that affects everything but you don't see it coming. Or at least, I didn't see *anything* coming; possibly if you are more familiar with serial-killer fiction (I hear there's lots) you might not be so startled by everything. I can't necessarily recommend this book to you; it's creepy and sad and certainly does not redeem one's faith in mankind. It's gripping, though, and you could learn a good bit about writing by reading it.
Maybe try only reading it during the day.
Don't wanna see it on my windowsill
RR
Peevish
A peevish post is inappropriate in a blog called Rose-coloured, I know, but there's always the optimistic hope that by putting these negative theories out there, I'll inspire someone to talk me out of them. Or, if not, I'll try to keep the negativity to a minimum.
I hate it when people don't listen to others when they talk, in all the myriad forms that takes. One form is someone offering, as if as a startling revelation of self, something that turns out to true of nearly everybody. Not only is this annoying because it's hard to think of follow-up questions for such obvious positions ("So, is a pain thing for you at the dentist, or more of a gag-reflex thing?") but because it is obvious that if the speaker had ever paid attention to what other people say, they would know their revelation is nearly universal. Some examples:
1) I am a wuss about the dentist.
2) I'm actually really shy at parties.
3) I have a weakness for chocolate.
4) Hospitals make me nervous.
5) I hate liars/phonies/rude people.
6) I sometimes forget people's names and then feel bad about it.
7) I can't really remember any of the math I learned in high school.
It's not that there aren't tonnes of exceptions to these (except maybe number 5--though I'm dying to meet one); it's just that the exceptions are the interesting ones. I definitely want to know what there is to dislike about chocolate, how to have total recall of acquaintance names and trigonometry, and how to buck up at the dentist. And really, everybody is an exception about *somethings*; that's what makes people interesting (I love hospitals). When people don't don't bother to be interesting, it is very annoying to me. I guess that is something of a universal truism, also. It is hard not to be hypocritical when being hypercritical!!
If you can't talk me out of this polemic, at least tell me what general rule you are the exception to and/or add some more to my list. I think *you* being interesting would cheer me up, also!
Workin' for the church
RR
I hate it when people don't listen to others when they talk, in all the myriad forms that takes. One form is someone offering, as if as a startling revelation of self, something that turns out to true of nearly everybody. Not only is this annoying because it's hard to think of follow-up questions for such obvious positions ("So, is a pain thing for you at the dentist, or more of a gag-reflex thing?") but because it is obvious that if the speaker had ever paid attention to what other people say, they would know their revelation is nearly universal. Some examples:
1) I am a wuss about the dentist.
2) I'm actually really shy at parties.
3) I have a weakness for chocolate.
4) Hospitals make me nervous.
5) I hate liars/phonies/rude people.
6) I sometimes forget people's names and then feel bad about it.
7) I can't really remember any of the math I learned in high school.
It's not that there aren't tonnes of exceptions to these (except maybe number 5--though I'm dying to meet one); it's just that the exceptions are the interesting ones. I definitely want to know what there is to dislike about chocolate, how to have total recall of acquaintance names and trigonometry, and how to buck up at the dentist. And really, everybody is an exception about *somethings*; that's what makes people interesting (I love hospitals). When people don't don't bother to be interesting, it is very annoying to me. I guess that is something of a universal truism, also. It is hard not to be hypocritical when being hypercritical!!
If you can't talk me out of this polemic, at least tell me what general rule you are the exception to and/or add some more to my list. I think *you* being interesting would cheer me up, also!
Workin' for the church
RR
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Today
It is rainy and cold in Toronto and I have something in my eye. On the upside:
--Today is the media launch for The Eden Mills Writers Festival. I am going to read a story (well, part of one) to the media. I hope I get whatever it is out from behind my contact lens by then.
--Today I have an essay on That Shakespeherian Rag.
--Today (well, tonight) is the Salon de Refuses launch for TNQ and CNQ, both of which I received in the mail yestereve, and they are so lovely to look at (I trust they'll be lovely to read, too, but we're not moving too fast around here, being now particularly blinky).
She's too good to be true / to me
RR
--Today is the media launch for The Eden Mills Writers Festival. I am going to read a story (well, part of one) to the media. I hope I get whatever it is out from behind my contact lens by then.
--Today I have an essay on That Shakespeherian Rag.
--Today (well, tonight) is the Salon de Refuses launch for TNQ and CNQ, both of which I received in the mail yestereve, and they are so lovely to look at (I trust they'll be lovely to read, too, but we're not moving too fast around here, being now particularly blinky).
She's too good to be true / to me
RR
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Mayumi
So, yes, I did it: I bought a digital camera. It doesn't usually take this much Sturm und Drang to buy a camera (or a house) but I have a tough time with electronics. Thanks to all who supported me in my invented problem, and thanks especially to the subject of my first digital photo, beautiful Afshan in the unbeautiful rain:
The other major event of the weekend was a haircut that reduced my attractively uninteresting (boringly benign?) shoulder length curls into the Emo-Boy Special--a jaw-length tangle that flips over my entire face the moment I nod. Leaning forward, I could be in My Chemical Romance. *You* try to guess the difference:
See, impossible to tell who's who!!
Look forward to more amusing guessing games of this nature with the help of Mayumi. Mayumi is the camera--I name my appliances to make them seem less threatening, and this camera is of Japanese parentage.
My heart is far away / tell me what to say
RR
The other major event of the weekend was a haircut that reduced my attractively uninteresting (boringly benign?) shoulder length curls into the Emo-Boy Special--a jaw-length tangle that flips over my entire face the moment I nod. Leaning forward, I could be in My Chemical Romance. *You* try to guess the difference:
See, impossible to tell who's who!!
Look forward to more amusing guessing games of this nature with the help of Mayumi. Mayumi is the camera--I name my appliances to make them seem less threatening, and this camera is of Japanese parentage.
My heart is far away / tell me what to say
RR
Monday, August 11, 2008
Warnings
1) If you are taking a bubble bath, do *not* put your head under if you are easily upset by loud noises. Upon re-emerging, your ears will be filled with bubbles that will pop, creating the sound of a forest fire burning a path directly to your brain. Very upsetting.
2) $13 is enough to pay a hair-dresser to obtain a tidy, competent haircut, but it is NOT enough to pay a hair-dresser to try to dissaude you from your own bad ideas. If you say anxiously, "Do you think that would work for me?" a salon-type will say, "Sweetie, maybe you need to rethink this," but a barber-shop type will say, "Please sit back in the chair."
3) The air tastes like fall.
I think it's coming and it comes so fast
RR
2) $13 is enough to pay a hair-dresser to obtain a tidy, competent haircut, but it is NOT enough to pay a hair-dresser to try to dissaude you from your own bad ideas. If you say anxiously, "Do you think that would work for me?" a salon-type will say, "Sweetie, maybe you need to rethink this," but a barber-shop type will say, "Please sit back in the chair."
3) The air tastes like fall.
I think it's coming and it comes so fast
RR
Sunday, August 10, 2008
A Week of Us
This week, everyone is talking about Canadian short stories--about writing them, reading them, liking and hating and utterly ignoring them, anthologizing and mythologizing them. If only it could be this way always!
If you've not already been reading Steven W. Beattie's amazing month of short stories for the past ten days, this week you can tune into 7 Canadian stories, with a bonus essay by me (though, it's mainly on an American author's [Donald Barthelme] story, sorry). Today you can read Alex Good take on the stories in the Toronto Star, you can pick up the new issues of Canadian Notes and Queries and The New Quarterly for some of the best of the story writers in the country, and you can hear an assortment of all these people Wednesday night at the Gladstone to talk about it all.
It's fun to be immersed in the hot topic for once!
It could be fantasy / or maybe it's because he needs me
RR
If you've not already been reading Steven W. Beattie's amazing month of short stories for the past ten days, this week you can tune into 7 Canadian stories, with a bonus essay by me (though, it's mainly on an American author's [Donald Barthelme] story, sorry). Today you can read Alex Good take on the stories in the Toronto Star, you can pick up the new issues of Canadian Notes and Queries and The New Quarterly for some of the best of the story writers in the country, and you can hear an assortment of all these people Wednesday night at the Gladstone to talk about it all.
It's fun to be immersed in the hot topic for once!
It could be fantasy / or maybe it's because he needs me
RR
Cover Story
However long I wind up staying in this business of book-making, I am sure the anecdote of how *Once* got its cover will remain one of my favourites. And not even only because the book ended up looking exactly how I had dreamed it would. I really like how the cover came about from a bunch of different cool people being creative together. Most of the time, the actual writing of anything is pretty anecdote-free: “And then I worked constantly on the story for seven weeks, and it still turned out sort of incoherent, so then I rewrote it again”—not really an anecdote. Quite often I’m having a good time on my own (I wouldn’t do it otherwise) but there’s rarely anything to report other than when my computer crashes. It’s only when you are working with other people that things, in my opinion, get interesting.
So for a long time I had a quite distinct vision of the the cover image I wanted, but I didn't say anything about it because the author doesn't necessarily get to--it depends on everybody's process at the publishing house, time, patience, etc. Actually, when Dan Wells from Biblioasis did ask me, at a launch for another book, what I wanted for the cover, I was so startled I said I didn't know! Later, of course, I retracted this and said I wanted a photo of people sitting on a bus, each person alone and not making eye-contact with the camera, staring out windows or reading, muffled by winter clothes.
Sound familiar?
Dan said that sounded good (I was thrilled!) and promised to look for stock images for me. Later, I think it occurred to both of us that maybe lonely cold people on busses don't so much like having their pictures taken, and that these images might turn out to be hard to find...
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, I was spending the day writing with my friend Emily (a fine writer and artist, with no web presence, sadly). On the way home, we were sitting in the subway station and to pass the time she pulled out a stack of slightly imperfect linocut prints her artist-friend Marta Chudolinska had been on the verge of throwing out. Em and I were both rather stunned at what passes for imperfect with some people--they were all haunting lovely images of bedrooms and dreams and...people on a bus.
"That's my cover!" I think I said rather loudly.. Emily was happy for me to have found something I wanted so much, even though she was sorry that I was taking away her picture (I did eventually return it). This was just a few days before the Panel in Peterborough, which is actually the only time I've been in the same room as both Dan and John Metcalf, who edited *Once*. I was *dying* to show them Marta's image, sure it was perfect, yet *I* don't make covers, so what do I know about finding the ideal image to start with. It's a long way from linocut to finished cover layout, but Dan said he thought he could do it and both him and John the image was pretty damn good.
And then, a couple weeks later, I had this gorgeous cover, which I can't show you right now because Blogger is being difficult. There's a tiny version is over at right, if I haven't already shown it to you 12 000 times. Which is a good indication of my level of involvement in this whole process. I have no idea how Marta took the idea into linocut form, or how Dan took the linocut into book-cover form, so this story is missing some key chunks. I just think it's pretty amazing that I get to play on the team at all, and I wanted to share.
Set my body free
RR
So for a long time I had a quite distinct vision of the the cover image I wanted, but I didn't say anything about it because the author doesn't necessarily get to--it depends on everybody's process at the publishing house, time, patience, etc. Actually, when Dan Wells from Biblioasis did ask me, at a launch for another book, what I wanted for the cover, I was so startled I said I didn't know! Later, of course, I retracted this and said I wanted a photo of people sitting on a bus, each person alone and not making eye-contact with the camera, staring out windows or reading, muffled by winter clothes.
Sound familiar?
Dan said that sounded good (I was thrilled!) and promised to look for stock images for me. Later, I think it occurred to both of us that maybe lonely cold people on busses don't so much like having their pictures taken, and that these images might turn out to be hard to find...
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, I was spending the day writing with my friend Emily (a fine writer and artist, with no web presence, sadly). On the way home, we were sitting in the subway station and to pass the time she pulled out a stack of slightly imperfect linocut prints her artist-friend Marta Chudolinska had been on the verge of throwing out. Em and I were both rather stunned at what passes for imperfect with some people--they were all haunting lovely images of bedrooms and dreams and...people on a bus.
"That's my cover!" I think I said rather loudly.. Emily was happy for me to have found something I wanted so much, even though she was sorry that I was taking away her picture (I did eventually return it). This was just a few days before the Panel in Peterborough, which is actually the only time I've been in the same room as both Dan and John Metcalf, who edited *Once*. I was *dying* to show them Marta's image, sure it was perfect, yet *I* don't make covers, so what do I know about finding the ideal image to start with. It's a long way from linocut to finished cover layout, but Dan said he thought he could do it and both him and John the image was pretty damn good.
And then, a couple weeks later, I had this gorgeous cover, which I can't show you right now because Blogger is being difficult. There's a tiny version is over at right, if I haven't already shown it to you 12 000 times. Which is a good indication of my level of involvement in this whole process. I have no idea how Marta took the idea into linocut form, or how Dan took the linocut into book-cover form, so this story is missing some key chunks. I just think it's pretty amazing that I get to play on the team at all, and I wanted to share.
Set my body free
RR
Friday, August 8, 2008
Help
Eating lunch with a big table of friends. L. sits between J. and S. Everybody talking. J. nudges L., points at S.: "Oh, she has something in her hair. Can you help her?" L. reaches over, removes small piece of pineapple from S.'s long shiny hair.
Now that we're done / I'm so sorry
RR
Now that we're done / I'm so sorry
RR
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Rose-coloured Reviews *Avenue Q*
The musical Avenue Q has occasionally been compared to Jonathan Larson's Rent except with puppets. Much as I enjoyed both musicals, I have to say this comparison is not apt; Avenue Q is a *parody* of Rent. Liking one is no guarantee of liking the other; in fact, if you are a terrifically intense fan of the dramatic, earnest change-the-world-one-block-at-a-time-ishness of Rent, it might really piss you off to see people and puppets waving their arms around and crooning, "Everyone's a little bit racist!"
Not me (or at least not very much-the next line, "And that's ok!" got me a little). The songs in Avenue Q are very very very funny, and often uncomfortably accurate. Like all the best parodies, Q loves its targets but doesn't spare them, and that includes the audience. Songs like "Schadenfreude" and "There's a Fine, Fine Line" (between love and wasting your time) make you cringe as you laugh, and that's pretty impressive for puppets.
The other big comparison you hear for Avenue Q is with Jim Henson's Muppets, and you definitely do see that in not only the fuzzy humanoid forms but also in the dexterity of the puppeteers. However, while Henson's creations have at least a pretense of *not* being puppets, all I could think when the stage lights came up on Avenue Q is is "You can *see* the puppeteer!!!" It took me a while to adjust to seeing Kate Monster and Princeton, allegedly freely acting people, being trailed by actual people dressed in grey with their hands up the puppets' shirts (none of the puppets have any legs). What's amazing is how quickly my alarm disappeared. You really start seeing only one being in these units. It helps that the puppeteers are really actors, and give incredible performances with both their hands and their faces. When Kate Monster looks sadly down at the ground, so does her puppeteer, a concept that works amazingly well. I think all the puppeteers were moving their lips, but we had terrible seats (I could've stood on my seat and touched the ceiling [but I didn't]) so this didn't trouble me overmuch. The upside of seeing the people behind the puppets was more than worth it. The best moment of puppet-engineering is when the sexy bad-girl puppet leaves a room and, since the puppet has no lower body, the puppeteer swings her hips. Hilarious, and effective.
Great songs, great performers, cool puppets and stunts used to cool effect-what could be wrong? Well, in light of all that other stuff, it wasn't *very* wrong, but, um, the story? Such as it was. Wondrous Fred recently called "Greatest Hits" musical storylines like *Mamma Mia* basically "song-delivery systems" and sadly so is the book for Q. The songs are pretty biting but also present the characters as semi-complex (well, it's a musical) and confused. In dialogue, however, they are a seventh-grade guidance class on how to achieve maturity. The closeted gay guy has no motivation, the commitment-phobic guy has no motivation, the sloppy irresponsible guy has no motivation-eventually they just stop doing the self-destructive stuff they were doing. Oh, and the women just don't have flaws to start with-except the slut.
This stuff wouldn't be problematic, really (it's a *musical*!) but towards the end of the second act, everyone starts squawking about how much they've "learned". Couldn't we have just left this as a cool entertainment with a few really insightful thoughts about social behaviour, without trying to crazy-glue a moral on it? Because, by my count, both major problem sets in the show were solved by money falling from the sky, and the last song ("For Now", which is as brill as all the rest of the songs) is about making do with whatever you've got because it is what you've got.
Now, I'm totally recommending you see this show and I think you'll love the whole thing, but really, *really* don't try to learn too much from it. You might, actually, anyway, but that's not much the point.
Back out on the car
RR
Not me (or at least not very much-the next line, "And that's ok!" got me a little). The songs in Avenue Q are very very very funny, and often uncomfortably accurate. Like all the best parodies, Q loves its targets but doesn't spare them, and that includes the audience. Songs like "Schadenfreude" and "There's a Fine, Fine Line" (between love and wasting your time) make you cringe as you laugh, and that's pretty impressive for puppets.
The other big comparison you hear for Avenue Q is with Jim Henson's Muppets, and you definitely do see that in not only the fuzzy humanoid forms but also in the dexterity of the puppeteers. However, while Henson's creations have at least a pretense of *not* being puppets, all I could think when the stage lights came up on Avenue Q is is "You can *see* the puppeteer!!!" It took me a while to adjust to seeing Kate Monster and Princeton, allegedly freely acting people, being trailed by actual people dressed in grey with their hands up the puppets' shirts (none of the puppets have any legs). What's amazing is how quickly my alarm disappeared. You really start seeing only one being in these units. It helps that the puppeteers are really actors, and give incredible performances with both their hands and their faces. When Kate Monster looks sadly down at the ground, so does her puppeteer, a concept that works amazingly well. I think all the puppeteers were moving their lips, but we had terrible seats (I could've stood on my seat and touched the ceiling [but I didn't]) so this didn't trouble me overmuch. The upside of seeing the people behind the puppets was more than worth it. The best moment of puppet-engineering is when the sexy bad-girl puppet leaves a room and, since the puppet has no lower body, the puppeteer swings her hips. Hilarious, and effective.
Great songs, great performers, cool puppets and stunts used to cool effect-what could be wrong? Well, in light of all that other stuff, it wasn't *very* wrong, but, um, the story? Such as it was. Wondrous Fred recently called "Greatest Hits" musical storylines like *Mamma Mia* basically "song-delivery systems" and sadly so is the book for Q. The songs are pretty biting but also present the characters as semi-complex (well, it's a musical) and confused. In dialogue, however, they are a seventh-grade guidance class on how to achieve maturity. The closeted gay guy has no motivation, the commitment-phobic guy has no motivation, the sloppy irresponsible guy has no motivation-eventually they just stop doing the self-destructive stuff they were doing. Oh, and the women just don't have flaws to start with-except the slut.
This stuff wouldn't be problematic, really (it's a *musical*!) but towards the end of the second act, everyone starts squawking about how much they've "learned". Couldn't we have just left this as a cool entertainment with a few really insightful thoughts about social behaviour, without trying to crazy-glue a moral on it? Because, by my count, both major problem sets in the show were solved by money falling from the sky, and the last song ("For Now", which is as brill as all the rest of the songs) is about making do with whatever you've got because it is what you've got.
Now, I'm totally recommending you see this show and I think you'll love the whole thing, but really, *really* don't try to learn too much from it. You might, actually, anyway, but that's not much the point.
Back out on the car
RR
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
The Salon des Refuses
You may have heard that Penguin Canada recently put out a new anthology of Canadian Short Stories. You may also have heard that it doesn't seem to contain a number of true innovators of the form--people like Clark Blaise, Mark Jarman and Heather Birrell. To make these omissions a bit more obvious--and perhaps a bit more appreciated, The New Quarterly and Canadian Notes and Queries have worked together to create The Salon des Refuses (I'm sorry, I can't for the life of me get Blogger to do the accent). The summer issues of these two journals will showcase some of the best of what's being done with short stories these days, and to talk about stories in general and in specific. I suspect there will be some word for the art of anthologizing, as well.
These two issues will be on newsstands this month, and if you subscribe to one I think the other one will just turn up, too (good deal!) There's also going to be a This is Not a Reading Series event--a literary forum--on Wednesday August 13, at the Gladstone, from 8:30 to 10:30. I'm stoked.
Full disclosure: I have work in both these issues, too. There's the Metcalf-Rooke Award feature--three stories plus an interview with Amy King--in TNQ, and a long profile with John on the writing life in CNQ. Getting to rub margins with the Salon authors is a huge honour, and it does inspire the imagination...maybe if I keep on going, keep writing and rewriting, keep learning and asking questions and leaving parties at 10:30 to go home and work, someday in the far off future, I too could be ignored by a prestigious anthology. In such company, it's a pretty heady thought.
I love all the boys with the band
RR
These two issues will be on newsstands this month, and if you subscribe to one I think the other one will just turn up, too (good deal!) There's also going to be a This is Not a Reading Series event--a literary forum--on Wednesday August 13, at the Gladstone, from 8:30 to 10:30. I'm stoked.
Full disclosure: I have work in both these issues, too. There's the Metcalf-Rooke Award feature--three stories plus an interview with Amy King--in TNQ, and a long profile with John on the writing life in CNQ. Getting to rub margins with the Salon authors is a huge honour, and it does inspire the imagination...maybe if I keep on going, keep writing and rewriting, keep learning and asking questions and leaving parties at 10:30 to go home and work, someday in the far off future, I too could be ignored by a prestigious anthology. In such company, it's a pretty heady thought.
I love all the boys with the band
RR
Monday, August 4, 2008
Studies Have Shown
Me: It's not like your life is so much harder than everyone else's.
B: Actually, it is.
Me: Really?
B: Other people have it much easier. Studies have shown.
Me: Really? What studies?
B: Studies that I have conducted.
Me: Describe.
B: Everyone I meet, I ask them how they are and they all say "Fine."
If you really loved me you'd buy me a beautiful pearl
RR
B: Actually, it is.
Me: Really?
B: Other people have it much easier. Studies have shown.
Me: Really? What studies?
B: Studies that I have conducted.
Me: Describe.
B: Everyone I meet, I ask them how they are and they all say "Fine."
If you really loved me you'd buy me a beautiful pearl
RR
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Rose-coloured Reviews the July 21st New Yorker
I hear there's been much anger over the cover of the July 21st New Yorker, which is a satire of the way certain right-wing American media elements caricature Barak and Michelle Obama as Muslim extremists. Yeah, I didn't get it at first either—I didn't even recognize who was being depicted, and didn't much about it at all. After the joke was, at length explained to me, I didn't think it was very funny, and certainly not interesting or incendiary enough to be worth the negative reaction it's gotten (Fred agrees with me, which always makes me feel smart). But everybody has an off-day, judgement-wise, no one got hurt and, as Mr. Obama says, "that's why we have the First Amendment."
But I love the New Yorker a lot, so when they disappoint me I do feel sad. But really, when I'm sad, reading the New Yorker is a good distraction. So I read the issue as a distraction from the cover, and I was no longer disappointed.
In the most direct counterpoint to the cover is Ryan Lizza's 18-page The Political Scene profile of Obama, "Making It: Where Barak Obama learned to be a pol." There were some interesting anecdotes about his early years as a community organizer in Chicago, and his later-early years forming and breaking alliances in local and state politics. Obama doesn't always come off looking like a saint, which apparently is a surprise to some people, but really, I sort of knew he wasn't Marty McFly, tumbling into the race for the most powerful political office in the world by accident. And, well, I think that's better if he's going to *get* the most powerful office in the world and then do something effective and good with it.
"Making It," I should say, was *wicked* boring: a clothes-line narrative strung with endless detail. I read it all--18 pages of city council meetings is not too much to ask for someone I'd vote for if I could—but really, not much effort was made as concision, or interest: didn't the candidate ever tell a *joke*?
Much better: a fun and accessible Annals of Science piece on physics's outsider artist Garrett Lisi, Patricia Marx on shopping in Shanghai, and Yoni Brenner's "Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers" ("6. For a taste of the U.K., fry up mini-servings of fish-and-chips. Take it to the next evel by wrapping them in small pieces of newspaper, which, oddly enough, all seem to be printed with unfavorable reviews of Jeff's novel").
Best of all is the short-story "Yurt" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. This story, about an elementary-school teacher who leaves her teaching post for Yemen and returns a year later, refreshed and pregnant, is very funny and very wise in the ways of late twenties thinking which, deep though my love is for the New Yorker, is wisdom I've often longed for in it's pages. I was very glad to learn that the narrator—and really central character—of this piece will have her own book come fall, *The Miss Hempel Chronicle*.
So we see, as usual, that you can't judge anything by its cover though really, of course people do. And knowing that they do, we should still work pretty hard on those damn covers.
Anyone perfect must be lying
RR
But I love the New Yorker a lot, so when they disappoint me I do feel sad. But really, when I'm sad, reading the New Yorker is a good distraction. So I read the issue as a distraction from the cover, and I was no longer disappointed.
In the most direct counterpoint to the cover is Ryan Lizza's 18-page The Political Scene profile of Obama, "Making It: Where Barak Obama learned to be a pol." There were some interesting anecdotes about his early years as a community organizer in Chicago, and his later-early years forming and breaking alliances in local and state politics. Obama doesn't always come off looking like a saint, which apparently is a surprise to some people, but really, I sort of knew he wasn't Marty McFly, tumbling into the race for the most powerful political office in the world by accident. And, well, I think that's better if he's going to *get* the most powerful office in the world and then do something effective and good with it.
"Making It," I should say, was *wicked* boring: a clothes-line narrative strung with endless detail. I read it all--18 pages of city council meetings is not too much to ask for someone I'd vote for if I could—but really, not much effort was made as concision, or interest: didn't the candidate ever tell a *joke*?
Much better: a fun and accessible Annals of Science piece on physics's outsider artist Garrett Lisi, Patricia Marx on shopping in Shanghai, and Yoni Brenner's "Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers" ("6. For a taste of the U.K., fry up mini-servings of fish-and-chips. Take it to the next evel by wrapping them in small pieces of newspaper, which, oddly enough, all seem to be printed with unfavorable reviews of Jeff's novel").
Best of all is the short-story "Yurt" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. This story, about an elementary-school teacher who leaves her teaching post for Yemen and returns a year later, refreshed and pregnant, is very funny and very wise in the ways of late twenties thinking which, deep though my love is for the New Yorker, is wisdom I've often longed for in it's pages. I was very glad to learn that the narrator—and really central character—of this piece will have her own book come fall, *The Miss Hempel Chronicle*.
So we see, as usual, that you can't judge anything by its cover though really, of course people do. And knowing that they do, we should still work pretty hard on those damn covers.
Anyone perfect must be lying
RR
Friday, August 1, 2008
Favourites
I'm forever maintaining that I don't have a favourite book, that I love books as a concept too much to ever pick one above all others. But I do have a number that, when pressed, I can put into that top-tier slot--books that are good enough that I'll love them forever and forever, even if from day to day, what is the absolute number one varies quite a bit.
For a number of years, since high school really, two of those have been Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block and Too Far to Go by John Updike.
Weetzie Bat, as you know if you clicked on the link or ever were a teenage girl, is very loosely a young adult novel, a fantasy, a fairy tale, and a damn good story. Every time I reread it, it's worth it--Block's language is as sweeping and funny and romantic as a heavy-headed peony bloom flopping to the grass, like a puppy leaping into your lap and trying to keep going up your body, like a metaphor and then a metaphor and then, just in case you didn't get it, a few more images and then an example. Block has an absolute generosity of spirit for her characters--they can be as weird or sad or messed up as they want, and still be beautiful--that translates to a generosity of prose for her readers. If you don't get it, don't relate, don't care; the author will come and get you on the return pass, and eventually just win you over with the sheer love she feels for what she is writing. Just one sentence: "Then they went into the clubs dressed to kill in sunglasses and leather, jewels and skeletons, rosaries and fur and silver." Love it or don't love it; there will always be more. I love it.
Though *Too Far to Go* is perhaps not such a standard of the linked short story form as *Weetzie* is of the young adult novel, Updike is one of the masters of that craft of short stories. This book is not a novel about a failing marriage, it's a set of stories that take place within a marriage, and that marriage has it's bad moments and eventually ends. The emotional punch is always powerful, but as with Block, it's the sentences that will kill you. Updike performs the great trick of *seeming* laconic and spare and plain while actually being wildly intelligent and intelligently wild is his sentences, images, every word: "The taxis they hailed carried heads in the rear and did not stop. They crossed the Via dei Fori Imperiali and tried to work their way back, against the sideways tug of interweaving streets..."
Favourites! I've tried to say why I like these two books, but I think really the only explanation would be for you to read them. A perfect map of the world is the size of the world, after all. (This could be why I have such trouble writing book reviews.) There are reasons why these are both good, why I like them, but why I would rank them higher than other books (Block's contemporary fairy tale above, say, Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine, or Updike's dreamy realism over something by Anne Tyler--a mystery. There too many good books in the world to start splitting hairs like that, especially when my love of these books is at least partially invested in where they came from and who gave them to me and how I was feeling open and excited when I read them first.
And could I ever rank one of these two above the other? Updike is the more accomplished writer; Weetzie Bat is the character closest to my own experience and my own heart. Favourites are great but they are arbitrary, fun only insofar as they give you an opportunity to show your love for something. And who can ever quantify love?
I feel old and tired
RR
For a number of years, since high school really, two of those have been Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block and Too Far to Go by John Updike.
Weetzie Bat, as you know if you clicked on the link or ever were a teenage girl, is very loosely a young adult novel, a fantasy, a fairy tale, and a damn good story. Every time I reread it, it's worth it--Block's language is as sweeping and funny and romantic as a heavy-headed peony bloom flopping to the grass, like a puppy leaping into your lap and trying to keep going up your body, like a metaphor and then a metaphor and then, just in case you didn't get it, a few more images and then an example. Block has an absolute generosity of spirit for her characters--they can be as weird or sad or messed up as they want, and still be beautiful--that translates to a generosity of prose for her readers. If you don't get it, don't relate, don't care; the author will come and get you on the return pass, and eventually just win you over with the sheer love she feels for what she is writing. Just one sentence: "Then they went into the clubs dressed to kill in sunglasses and leather, jewels and skeletons, rosaries and fur and silver." Love it or don't love it; there will always be more. I love it.
Though *Too Far to Go* is perhaps not such a standard of the linked short story form as *Weetzie* is of the young adult novel, Updike is one of the masters of that craft of short stories. This book is not a novel about a failing marriage, it's a set of stories that take place within a marriage, and that marriage has it's bad moments and eventually ends. The emotional punch is always powerful, but as with Block, it's the sentences that will kill you. Updike performs the great trick of *seeming* laconic and spare and plain while actually being wildly intelligent and intelligently wild is his sentences, images, every word: "The taxis they hailed carried heads in the rear and did not stop. They crossed the Via dei Fori Imperiali and tried to work their way back, against the sideways tug of interweaving streets..."
Favourites! I've tried to say why I like these two books, but I think really the only explanation would be for you to read them. A perfect map of the world is the size of the world, after all. (This could be why I have such trouble writing book reviews.) There are reasons why these are both good, why I like them, but why I would rank them higher than other books (Block's contemporary fairy tale above, say, Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine, or Updike's dreamy realism over something by Anne Tyler--a mystery. There too many good books in the world to start splitting hairs like that, especially when my love of these books is at least partially invested in where they came from and who gave them to me and how I was feeling open and excited when I read them first.
And could I ever rank one of these two above the other? Updike is the more accomplished writer; Weetzie Bat is the character closest to my own experience and my own heart. Favourites are great but they are arbitrary, fun only insofar as they give you an opportunity to show your love for something. And who can ever quantify love?
I feel old and tired
RR
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