Rose-coloured Reviews "Dead Girls" by Nancy Lee

It seems somewhat vulgar to summarize as delicate and precise and elliptical a story as Nancy Lee's "Dead Girls," from her 2003 collection of the same name. But such is the task of the reviewer, so:

We begin with a woman unhappily trying to come to grips with both the television news on a serial killer of prostitutes, and then the impending sale of her home. We learn first that the home must be sold due to the financial difficulties of the woman and her husband, then that it is her husband who is pushing for this solution. Only after these facts of their relationship are established is the character of their daughter introduced--they seem to have bankrupted themselves paying for rehabilitation treatment for her.

Gradually, it emerges that the girl, Clare, is not in the house, that the treatment has not worked, that her whereabouts are unknown. Gradually, it emerges that she is herself probably a prostitute, and that that is the central reason for her mother's horror at the news reports on the unidentified bodies of prostitutes found in a mass grave. The mother watches the news compulsively, waiting to see if her daughter will be one of the dead. She struggles with the idea of packing up the girl's clothes, books and stuffed animals before they move. She prowls the red-light district of her city, watching the prostitutes there offer their wares, always imaging each as Clare.

Yeah, see: vulgar, sensationalistic in summary, but tender and horrifying in full. I use terms like "gradually it emerges" because Lee does not trade in the shocking turn of events, the explicit reveal--instead she insert the reader in a life already going on, and leaves us the task of interpretting our surroundings. What the reader picks up on at what point depends on who that reader is, what sorts of details he or she is attuned to.

The writer seeks to immerse the reader as fully as possible in the story-scape: "Dead Girls" is written in the second person singular, the alway- imposing "you" is the protagonist, the one who navigates these tragedies and despairs. If you've ever been in a writing workshop, or indeed, if you've ever read a bad second-person story, you know how dangerous it is for a writer to make this choice--the attempt to conscript the reader into the story, if it fails, usually takes the whole piece down with it. If the reader won't go where she/he is being shoved, he or she is left sitting in his or her living room with a book in hand, and that's all.

I don't usually like to be shoved: I balked slightly as soon as I saw the first line, "You are addicted to television news," although I was willing to try to get into it. Quickly, I got why this was going to work: this is a protagonist who wants desperately out of her own situation, and out of her own body. Much as you might try projecting onto a listener when trying to explain a badly chosen action--"You know when you just panic and yank the wheel into oncoming traffic?"--this "you" could easily be the "I" of self-abnegating first-person narrator.

Does that explanation make sense?

It did to me, and still there were problems on first reading. I read too fast and got confused, thought it was the husband that was in rehab, had to go back. Again, I wound up ok with this, the in medias rez opening on a scenario to which there *isn't* a logical explanation necessitating a certain amount of dislocation for reader and characters alike. The writing is spare and sure, it pulled me in eventually, into the quotidian details of disaster like, "...your husband is in the driveway in gloves and a toque, washing his car in the freezing cold. He offers to wash yours" and "You felt a small stab in your chest as if someone had slid a safety pin through your heart."

The story takes its time, things evolve as slow as real life. When the central character sets up a continuous-play stereo in Clare's locked room, the music resounds in the house for days as "a surrogate heartbeat," an illustration of the narrator's clinging to illusion, the return of the daughter of the shining eighth-grade portrait, not the grim and damaged teenager she is now. The protagonist often mishears, or doesn't hear at all, what her husband says to her, and she is content with that; she won't try harder, turn down the volume, accept his growing acceptance of the loss.

(How do you feel about reviews that tell what happens in the second half? Even if the piece is not overtly "suspenseful", I still find kinda weird about revealing how it ends up. Yet I also feel I can't really talk about the story satisfactorily without covering all the events therein. Consider yourself warned.)

To me, I think the story comes to be about the husband and the wife, and whether they can salvage anything of their love and their shared life without the physical manifestation of that love, their offspring. And thus, it hinges to a great extent around sex. There's a long paragraph early in the story about why the bereft parents have stopped having sex, referring to Clare's fate as rooted in her conception, "...an unspeakable crime...the shrouded crapshoot of chromosomes. So much easier to believe it all went wrong back then..." This paragraph steadily gains weight as we move through story, absorbing the misery of the sex acts ministered and absorbed by the working girls, by Clare herself, as her mother well knows.

When we come back to the sexual relationship of the parents at the end of the story, it is terribly sad, but—again, this will depend on who is reading—I thought cathartic. The story seems to question whether love is love when its object is lost; if love unrequited metastisizes, or can it still be salvaged as something worthwhile. I think the ending offers at least the possibility of hope.

Even if I tip my head and reimagine the ending as despairing, I still think this story is compelling, gripping, and not unlovely portrayal of those eternal twins, love and loss.

Like me if you will
RR

Hooray for real life

Ah, holidays are nice but so is real life--onward!

Pasha Malla defines love (via Fred).

The Ideal Tiger walks alone.

I read with Mike Smith and Kathleen Phillips at Strong Words at the Gladstone Hotel on January 19.

I been on the road too long to sympathize
RR

BIRT 2008 (review)

I had a little head-down-on-the-table moment a few weeks ago, when I realized that my 2008 Resolution tally came to about 15% achieved. Not very pretty. The wise council I received, once I pulled my face up from the wood-grain, was that actually, my 2008 resolutions were mainly stupid, so I shouldn't feel bad about not achieving them, although possibly I should feel bad about making them in the first place.

So, fine, whatever, I'm not even linking to the 2008 resolutions--there were some "interesting" ideas in there. A few were actually ok, though: I succeeded on "attend more readings," in the best way possible: I had much fun, heard much great poetry and prose and met many lovely folk. I am so addicted to hearing readings now that I don't think that resolution needs to be repeated.

I came most of the way on "floss every day," "eat healthily" and "buy non-corporate," but not fully-completely, so those go back on the list. And then I failed utterly on "stop eating gelatin", but in retrospect, I think the cosmos aligned to expose me to an abnormally huge amount of gelatin in January and February 2008, making it difficult to get any traction on that particular resolution. So I'm going to try it again, despite some heckling from the peanut gallery.

Ok, so that's one resolution success, four resolutions to repeat, nine failures and six new resolutions to come up with before Thursday. Not a problem. Just let me rest my cheek here on the desk for a moment.

Tried it in my very own dreams
RR

Admirable Words (III)

The truth is that like all great French generals and statesmen, I am a man of action by default. My real vocation was to be a writer but my early stories were rejected by corrupt monarchist editors who wished to suppress the truth about Corsica. Before they went to the blade, my poems were taped to their mouths. Now I feel most myself in the night silence of my tent, the candles sputtering, the white paper stretching out in creamy reams softer than the eyeball of an empress. My letters to Josephine, my diaries of war, but most of all the words unwritten, the vast armies that have sunk into the whiteness of paper like my troops into the snow of the endless Russian plains.

Lost, yes, because words cannot equal the splendour of these pre-dawn hours, the wonder of being alone in a tent near tomorrow's battlefield. Outside my canvas the starry sky sparkles over the heads of my sleeping troops, four hundred thousand men lurching towards the dawn, toward the first light that will jerk them awake, full of fear and hunger and that wild chaos only I can harness, only I can turn into an orderly hurricane of violence that will send them flying into the enemy, hacking and being hacked until their skins split, their bones shatter, their blood masses in stinking pools slowly draining to dark patches on the earth so at the end of the day, as the sun sets on the dead and the dying, as the cries of the wounded rise above the surgeons' saws and the hasty whispered prayers of my priests, I, Napoleon, repulsed, sated, sick at heart, fulfilled, I will mourn the great unconscious mass of men who sleep around me now; I will mourn their dead and crippled horses, their orphans, the rivers of wine they will never drink, the aging flesh their hands will never know. Monster, yes, that is the title with which history will reward me, but I am most at home in my lonely simple tent, doing the job that has been left to me, the manufacture of dreams and nightmares, sending my word-rich armies onto their pages of snow, letting them cancel and slaughter each other until all that remains is a brief and elegant poem, a few nostalgic blood-tinted lines limping towards eternity, yes, that's how I want to be remembered, bleeding and limping in rags across the snow, or even forget the blood, the rags, the snow, the limp. Just me.

--Matt Cohen's "Napoleon in Moscow," from Getting Lucky

Gifts

Of *course* Christmas is not really about pretty objects wrapped in pretty paper, much as I do like such things. I occasionally lose track of what Christmas *is* about, it not really being historically my family's holiday, much as we do like it now. Mainly, it's just a time of year when kindness as well as prettiness seems more apt to happen, and to be accompanied by friendliness and food and frolic. La! This year, a few of the gifts I received:

--orange scarf with *curly tassels*
--hugs
--glitter cards
--apple-flavoured KitKat
--baking support (because as soon as a ruler, a candy thermometer, "egg wash" or extreme patience is called for in the recipe, I can't do it by myself)
--lunch at Allen's
--Deborah Eisenberg's *Twilight of Superheroes*
--thoughtful review in The Westmount Examiner
--out-of-town friends in town
--baby pictures
--Bill Murray in *Scrooged*
--Christmas carols on every station on FM radio (I listened for about 2 days, which is about right. I firmly believe that people who hate Christmas carols have just been over-exposed).
--new hoop earrings to replace the ones I wrecked 1.5 years ago and never got 'round to buying for myself
--somewhere in the depths of Canada Post right now, a mixed tape
--the happy realization I can finally get my foot above my head (though only if I am leaning on a wall/fridge/car)
--leisure time and naps
--fancy tea towels
--tidings of comfort and joy

I hope it was very similarly wonderful in your neck of the woods.

Star of wonder / star of night
RR

PS--What are we celebrating on Boxing Day?

The Merriest

This has been my standard Christmas wish for some years, but it does still very much apply, and hell, it's worked for June Christy since 1961.

I'd like to fix this bag of tricks
And hand'em out with a fleeting greeting:
Smiles for the frowners
Saluts to the uppers
Boosts for the downers
May the day be the bowl-of-cherriest,
And to all, the merriest.

Hope you swing during the season
Hope the days go great
Hope you find plenty of reasons
The whole year long to celebrate.
Sun for the mopers
A laugh for the criers
Luck for the hopers
To the strange and the ordinariest
Me to you, the merriest!

Thoughts for the musers
A cheer for the winners
Breaks for the losers
To the beats and the debonairiest
Greetings like the merriest!

Hope there's oil under your rose vine
Hope you get that raise
Hope you hope everything goes fine
The next three hundred and some-odd days!

Friends for the loners
Songs for the singers
Grins for the groaners
Make the day nothing-can-compariest
At the most, the merriest!

RR

Rose-coloured Reviews Balance Exercises on the Bosu Ball

I have terrible equilibrium, as I believe has come up in this space before, in relation to climbing things, crossing stages, and most especially, walking on ice.

But it's not as if I'm just working my way through winter at a violently whining crawl. I've been working on this issue in various ways, most recently since June on the fun and dangerous Bosu Ball!

Wikipedia defines a Bosu Ball as:

an athletic training device consisting of an inflated rubber hemisphere attached to a rigid platform. It is also referred to as the "blue half-ball", because it looks like a stability ball cut in half. The name is an acronym which stands for "Both Sides Utilized," (although the BOSU official web site also says it means "Both Sides Up") a reference to the myriad ways a BOSU ball can be used [1].

Click here to see a picture (yes, that is the best one I could find).

This is a branded product, Bosu, but as far as I can tell there is no generic term. I guess there's a pretty limited market for half a rubber ball with a standing platform, and the Bosu people have covered it. Good on them, I say.

What do you do with a Bosu? Well, tonnes of stuff according to various websites, but for the amateurs among us, we basically move upper body exercises onto this really tippy platform, which adds an element of core strength (you improve your posture and tighten your abs in an attempt to stay vertical) and lower-body strength (you brace your feet and tighten your quads for similar reasons).

It takes awhile to just get to a comfortable point of standing still on a Bosu. Start out practicing near a wall. Put one hand on the wall and foot fartherest from the wall in the centre of the flat surface. Then put the other foot as close as possible and wiggle the first foot out until they are parallel. Wiggle a bit more until you are balanced, more or less. There. Now take your hand off the wall.

The easiest things to do on a Bosu involve standing still and moving only your arms, something like an Arnold Press. That is where you do a biceps curl with a dumbbell in each hand, and then flip the arms out into a shoulder press, then reverse back to start (see here for a cute little video. And yes, it was named after the Terminator.

Any sort of standing biceps/triceps/shoulder exercise will work on a the Bosu, and you can move on to doing squats, cable pulls, all kinds of strength training stuff.

If you're me, you have to cut way down on the weight you're lifting every time you put an exercise onto the Bosu, to compensate for the extreme distraction of potentially falling over and smashing your skull into the very wall you used to pull yourself upright. Every time you do the work-out, though, you gain confidence. It's really *not* the safest thing in the world, but with a reasonable amount of care (about what you work out around, principally--mats are good, bench-press bars are bad) you can be reasonably assured of finishing the work-out in one piece.

Six month later, I do think I am marginally steadier on ice and land, though six months of indoor exercise cannot erase a life-time of falling phobia. I do appreciate the efficiency of these exercises, since they always hit the aforementioned abs and quads, no matter what you are doing. And Bosu exercises are a novel challenge, keeping me from getting bored with my work-out.

But really, a Bosu costs $45 to $60, is sort of terrifying and you could always just do a lot of Tree Pose. Only get involved if you can try out a ball for free somehow; lots of gyms have them. If you like this sort of possibly-concussion-inducing challenge, maybe then go ahead and spend the dough.

Me, I'm still scared, and I actually don't try to do this stuff on days I'm feeling headachy or otherwise more off-balance than usual. But I have felt some small gains from it, and it is satisfying to me reasonably steady up there, though also something about it that's like being a trained bear in a cirucs. And then there was the time I was doing standing cable rows and squats on my Bosu, concentrating *very* hard in order to keep from pitching forward into the weight stack and smashing out all my teeth. A woman strolled past, stopped aghast and exclaimed, "And you're chewing *gum*!"

All you single ladies.
RR

Bring in the light

This year, the first night of Hannukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, falls tonight, late enough in the calendar year to coincide with Winter Solstice, the day with the shortest period of sunlight in the year, celebrated by many as the "rebirth" of the year that ushers in the lengthening of light period of days.

Whether you'll be celebrating either, both, or nothing in particular this evening, lightness and brightness to all.

They always did the best they could
RR

Link it up

The Maclean's blog calls me Rookie of the Year. A lovely review of *Once* on Rover Arts. Camilla Gibbs's blog (and next book?) are all about Pho! August and Writer Guy offer two different views on rejection letters.

In less litsy news, tomorrow Hannukkah starts! Yesterday and tomorrow we had/will have blizzards! And I am absolutely untroubled by any inclement weather, because for the first time since last December, I am on actual, really no-work-or-stress-involved holiday.

Let the frolicking begin!

Gonna keep on thinkin bout you
RR

Siege mentality

I am definitely the first to complain about ice and snow (to the extent that I am actually banned from complaining about heat and humidity in summer, having used up all my complaint-credits in the first half of the year). Yet there is something a little exciting about blizzards. Not when you are out in the trying to do something or go somewhere or not get hit by a skidding car, but sometimes when you are just building a fort or rolling down a hill, it's nice to be constantly coated in snow. And sometimes not.

Also cool is the sort of siege mentality of being indoors when the earth is going haywire beyond the windowpanes. I feel a little scared to go out, but very much appreciative of being in. How silly, I guess, but it is a fun white-out world out there, as seen from in here.

Maybe I wouldn't say that if I weren't beseiged in here with such deep supplies of gingersnaps and truffles.

Man, you're in love
RR

Tomorrow

I'll be This Ain't the Rosedale Library around 7:30, so that Pamela Stewart and I can help Jim Christy launch his new book, Scalawags.

It should be awesome, and I'm planning on being slightly less nervous than usual, emboldened by friends, glitter and pizza.

Without that worried head / there'd be just a bleeding neck
RR

Matches and Misses

Remember September? Yeah, it's blurry for me too, but I do recall going out to Winnipeg to participate in a couple events tat the very wonderful Thin Air Literary Festival. On of those events was The Matches and Misses reading with Daria Salamon, Nicole Markotić, Gerald Hill, David Bergen, Pasha Malla and l. There's an audio recording of that lovely up now on the Thin Air podcasts list, if you want to feel like you were there. The evening was introduced and enlivened by Charlene Diehl and the whole thing was ace. It's a long recording, and worth it, but if you are searching for my stuff, I'm fourth, just after intermission.

Yeah oh yeah
RR

Not sucking

Steven W. Beattie's post about Canadian books that didn't suck in 2008 is exciting overall, and not just because it includes *Once*, right next to My White Planet, one of my favourite non-sucking books of the year (see previous post). It is, however, such a joy to see *Once* out and socializing in such wonderful company.

New York was great
RR

Making a list

Lately, there have been a lot of lists floating around the print media, the blogosphere, and every place else--something about the calendar year drawing to a close makes people want to enumerate what they've loved, liked, hated, eaten, read and watched; where they've been and what they've done.

It's the book lists that I care about, obviously, though this year as most I don't get as much confirmation/argument of my own opinions as suggestions. I (should I be embarrassed to tell you this?) don't read very many brand-new books. If people are talking about something that sounds like the sort of lit-fic I enjoy, and people I respect are enjoying it, I will eventually read it, but not necessarily the year it gets published. I am reading more new books than I used to, but what with that whole 500-plus years since movable type came on the scene, I have quite a backlog from years past to get through.

The nice thing about books is that they stick around--almost everything I read this year is still in print and available, if you are reading these lists with an eye towards gift-buying. So while I've tried to stick to the best of the newer texts on this list, it's been supplemented from other years. As well, I wouldn't say these are the "best" books I read this year, rather those that stuck with me the most, that hit me the hardest, made me the happiest. A very personal list, but then, aren't they all?

The notes are transcribed from my reading journal, the first-impressionistic semi-articulate paragraph that I write as soon as I finish anything. In case you were dying for a peek inside my reading process.

Books I Loved in 2008

The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper
Deeply disturbing and profoundly well-written, a murder mystery about writers + how they maybe steal souls. If there weren't so much genuine artistry to the prose, and so much writing about writing (my favourite thing) I would've found the violence too much. As it was, horrifying, but worth it.

Stunt by Claudia Dey
Wow. A sparkling, sparky, utterly new sort of book. Beautiful language provides a balm to the sadness of the plot. Slightly hard to follow the second half, but even if you miss a beat, the language and emotion carries you on. Lovely, aching work.

The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels
It is something to read every short story a writer has ever written, starting in wild youth into elderly. When he was *on* he was brilliant and that was often: "Making Changes" (a really romantic orgy story), most of "Journal," almost all of the Nachman stuff. Both comforting + alarming to find a few duds. I loved it more than I'd thought I would, + I planned to love it some.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
A graphic novel about a homosexual dad's relationship w his lesbian daughter, and with books. Fun, sad and beautiful. And wildly smart.

Various Miracles by Carol Shields.
Oh, I did love this. She makes formal constraints look like nothing, yet the stories are tight + spare + perfect. And warm + generous + just...oh.

Muriella Pent by Russell Smith.
Amazingly hilarious depictions of banal things--book club, Skydome, lit classes. Amazing dialogue, natch (boy banter!) Amazing sexuality (mainly). Can't believe I hadn't read this one until now.

Making Bones Walk by Alex Boyd
I am so used to working hard for my poetry--and when it's worth it, I love to, but when poetry as accessible and urgently personal as this, it feels like a gift. Love poems, sleep poems, work + subway poems--my kind of poems.

Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About" by Mil Millington .
Hilarious lad-lit, both genders behaving dreadfully. Plot makes no sense, but set pieces + dialogue made me laugh aloud. Enormous (336 pages), v. satisfying.

My White Planet by Mark Anthony Jarman
Deeply challenging, yet repays all energies tenfold in insight and genuine pleasure. "Bear on a Chain" is like a blown-open story, still breathing and working brilliantly though you can see into the heart. Some terrifying violence you can't look away from. Some great humour. Astounding achievement.

Flirt: The Interviews by Lorna Jackson.
Reputedly "difficult," but I didn't find it so. Funny + interesting + occasionally challenging, but mainly entertaining. Certainly a superlative act of imagination--a series of them.

Pardon Our Monsters by Andrew Hood
As good as expected, and then some. Very very honest + weird + violent, but also a real love of + joy in language. Also, hella funny.

Tom Thomson in Purgatory by Troy Jollimore
Very funny, wise, human. Stylistically tight, wild verb conjugations (don't see that every day!), lovely to see sonnets that I can love heart and mind, and loved the characters behind it all, too.

The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
So brilliant + bizarre, sadness of characters not at all cloaked by the absurdities that surround them. Hilarious tragedy. Didn't understand the ending, but don't care.


The angels wanna wear my red shoes
RR

Nice News

...helps, on a rainy, do-I-have-the-flu-or-don't-I? sort of morning. News like:

*Once* on the Pickle Me This Indie Picks 2008 list.

Phillip Marchand reviews *Once* in The National Post.

I just can't let this be
RR

Language, Open and Shut

Writing is the only art form that mainly strives to be not itself. Any serious writer dwells in the beauty of language, the elegance of phrasing, sound and rhythm, but over the long-term, the longer-than-a-sentence term, good writing strives to make you stop seeing it, stop seeing the words on the page and start seeing the images and characters those words create. As a writer, I want readers to feel my stories as people and events, not in ink on paper.

To achieve this, of course, the writer is reliant on language, the very thing she wants to make you not see. To achieve an image that transcends ink and paper, you need language like a stone polished so brilliant that we see only the reflection of the world, and not the stone's surface at all. The rightest word must be the most precise and specific, penetrating and resilient, in order to engage the reader in creating the image in his or her mind. If you just say "tree" the reader might see a budding maple from outside the window of her third-grade classroom, or she might see dying yellowed pinetree on the shoulder of an Alaska highway, but more than likely, the reader will just see the Times New Roman letters t-r-e-e, and nothing more.

A writer seeks to corner an image, an emotion, a sensation--to make it stay put for a minute so a reader can get a sort of fleeting, slantwise glimpse of what the writer sees in *her* head when she thinks about trunks and branches and leaves. You can never do it completely, and some writers are ok with more gaps in the fence than others. The task allottment might differ from writer to writer, or text to text, but the project of creating meaning in a story, novel or poem is always a joint one between writer and reader.

In conversation--well, in good conversation--statements are like story-writing. When I describe my day, date or dinner to you, I'm trying to give you enough information that you can recreate it in your own head. Same as a story. But dialogue is a much more delicate dynamic than text, and we not ever *just* offering information--in conversation we ask for information in return. And there is a very different linguistic necessity in asking questions, or even opening topics, than there is in making statements/telling stories.

I've had considerable sensitivity training, in the formal sense (there are many life experiences that qualify as sensitivity training, I know) and one of the things I've been taught is to open language as wide as possible, to leave space in a question for *every possible answer*.

You'd think that'd be easy--by the very fact of asking a question, we admit we don't know the answer. But quite often, the words we use to ask can imply that we believe we know the range of the answer. When I point at a woman's wedding band, and say, "How long have you and your husband been married?" that's (say it together, grad school kids) heteronormative. When I suggest that an acquaintance buy a certain item, I suggest I know she can afford it. When I make an idle joke about a colleague being "off her meds," I imply that I know she's never taken mood-stabilizers.

And, as we've so often established her at Rose-coloured, what do I know?

Most people are tough enough to weather such slights, and generous enough to forgive them. But it's alienating, absolutely, to misapprised (literally, mis-seen) again and again. And if one is going through a particularly vulnerable time, maybe you aren't that tough. Around this time of year, there's a lot of seemingly inoccuous queries about family that could be truly upsetting if your family is dead/abusive/too distant to afford plane fare. Never even mind that we aren't all celebrating the same holidays--even as a Jew who enjoys Christmas, I don't find it so unreasonable that *everybody* stick to saying "Season's Greeting" to those whose denomination is unknown.

That my version of "open" language comes from sensitivity training leaves me open to a little bit of mockery, sometimes, and other times is just confusing. I am so well programmed (I actually eventually taught the class) that I really fear hurting someone by asking loaded questions like, "How was your Mother's Day?" "Why don't you buy a new one?" "Are you going to talk that over with a friend?"

So I'm a little over-delicate--I don't ask a lot of questions if I can't make them very neutral. Because I am actually passionately curious (read: nosy); I want to know everything about your life you feel like telling me. But there's the thing, I want to know *anything*--and if I slant the question so that it sounds like I already know, or expect to know, why would you speak at all?

When I tell a story, on the page or in conversation, I want to give you the gift of what I know, more or less elaborately done up with paper and bow. When I ask a question, I want to give you clean a clean and empty box, with the flaps folded back, to make it easier for you to give me anything at all.

Can I put this lightly?
RR

Books for the Literati

*Once* makes Geoff Pevere's Last Minute Shopping Guide.

Sort of amazing company to be in.

How I'll hate going out in the snow
RR

What Dreams May Come

Reading the Writing About Dreaming post on the Joyland Blog made me want to point out that I agree--nine times out of ten, a person talks about dreams in order to speak uninterrupted about him- or herself--who can contradict you, or even add information, if you are talking about what you imagined? It's very annoying, especially if you, like me, mainly think that dreams are just myriad snipped-off ends and mangled impressions of the day that just passed.

But the other thing that post made me want to do is tell you about my dreams last night! I so rarely dream anything I can remember and then last night I did, and woke up to blogging about dreams and now I want to share. Here's to contrarian self-absorbtion!

Dream #1: I needed to talk to this guy, but he'd gone camping.
Dream #2: An acquaintance was making fun of me for refusing to walk on the cracks between tiles on the floor (something I actually won't do if I can avoid it. But the woman in the dream has never mocked me for it in waking life).
Dream #3: One of my friends was doing my laundry for some reason.

That's it. Boring and pointless, yes? But that's probably it for the week, Rebecca-dreamwise. And so it needed airing (well, not *needed*).

Soon one morning
RR

Admirable Words (II)

I wanna take a streetcar downtown
Read Dostoyevsky* and wander around
Drink some Guinness from a tin
Because my UI cheque has just come in.
Aw, where you been?

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

You've been under my skin for more than 8 years
It's been 8 years of laughter and 8 years of tears.
And I dunno what the future could hold or will do
For me and you
But I'm a much better man for having known you.
Yeah, you know that's true.

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

Well, I've been told that there's a sucker born every day.
Well, I wonder who, and I wonder who.
Maybe the one who doesn't realize there's a thousand shades of grey.
'Cause I know that's true, yes I do, yeah, I know it's true.
Yeah, I know it's true, how 'bout you?

They've been pickin' up trash and they're puttin' down roads
They're brokering stocks
The class struggle explodes
And I play this guitar just the best that I can
Yeah, maybe I'm not and maybe I am.
Aw, who gives a damn?

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

Well, I've kissed you in France and I've kissed you in Spain
(harmonica)
And I've kissed you in places I'd better not name
(harmonica)
And I've seen the sun go down on Sacre Coeur
(harmonica)
But I like it much better goin' down on you.
Yeah, you know that's true.

Because
Everything is coming up
Rosy & grey.
Yeah, the wind is cold but
The smell of snow
Warms me today
And your smile is fine
And it's just like mine
And it won't go away
Because everything is rosy & grey.

Yeah, rosy & grey!


--"Rosy & Grey" by The Lowest of the Low

*This is from the concert album, *Nothing Short of a Bullet.* On the studio album, *Shakespeare My Butt*, it's Henry Miller. Take your pick.

Clod

I have an intense devotion to etiquette, brought on by a lot of underaged reading of Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post. I have thoughts, which I try not to share, on how one should conduct oneself regarding coasters, hairpins, floral arrangements and divorce. The reason I do not share these things is that they are antiquated and unhelpful, and most people only find my rule-following annoying and compulsive, not, as it is meant to be, respectful and friendly.

And then when there is a rule that I could usefully follow, such as RSVP, I drop the ball. I have been corrupted by modernizing forces, aka Facebook--where RSVP is not the French acronym for the polite imperitive, respondez-vous, s'il vous plait but a vaguer suggestion, "respond if you want it to show up on your wall, if you want someone to save you a seat or a sandwich, or if you feel like it. No committment required; feel free to ignore if unavailable/uninterested."

Such is the social climate of Facebook--that's the way it works, and it is respectful to follow the rules of Rome when there. But Facebook is not the Governor General's awards, and despite the fact that I felt very sad about not being about to go, it never occurred to me to call and tell anyone this, despite the swirly-script RSVP clearly printed on the invitation. So I now also feel very sad about making the nice GG people call me to find out that I will not, in fact, be there tomorrow.

I have learned a lot from this experience, and will be rereading my Post and Vanderbilt shortly. Until then, if you are going the GGs, or any of the attendent amazing events, have an extra good time on my behalf.

Stared at the grown-up feet while they danced and swayed
RR

Dead-hot Workshop

Once, I wrote a story called, "In the Time of the Radio Gods," about my usual favourite themes: love and awkwardness, death and music, ghosts and grad school. I did a couple drafts and then read it aloud to 20-odd other writers. Then everyone said what they liked and hated about the story, a teacher corralled some of the comments into usable form and added her own insights, and then I revised it again. That was my first workshop, in high school Writer's Craft class, and I've been workshopping on and off (mainly on) ever since.

Workshops are not for everyone. I'm sort of infamous for wanting to do everything as a team sport--I've never seen why I should choose a narrative direction, a life course or an entree all alone when there are so many estimable opinions to be accounted for. Not everyone feels that way, and to have to face those 20-odd opinions when you really only want to sort out your own feelings about the work can be very hard. Workshopping too early, too much or with jerks can be very upsetting.

Nevertheless, I sort of feel that any writer who would like to publish ought to try workshopping once. Just to see how it feels to get other people's opinions on your work, to learn how to discount opinions that don't help and make use of the ones that do. I know there *are* writers who work perfectly in splendid isolation, who can produce work that resonates immediately and powerfully with no oustide help, but I do not think they are the majority. The rest of us need to know how our work will be read to help us write it.

I've actually seen some talented writers set themselves way back by slaving over work for ages, and then having the first person who reads it be the slush-reader who rejects it with a one-line form-letter (I've *been* that slush-reader). The year before that lovely workshop, I actually had a story published in a lit journal, and I found the editorial process devastating. The ed in question liked the work but want it to be better than it was, and he had no patience with my tiny 17-year-old feelings. He had a job to do, and that was create good writingl, not necessarily a good writer (though, honestly, the best editors do both). In a workshop, people have the time, energy and impetus (grades, the fact that you'll be commenting on *their* work) to be thorough, tactful, and to try to say something you'll actually be able to use. A good workshop leader will at least try to keep students on-task and thoughtful, and to push readers to go with the writer's ambition wherever it might lead.

Of course, I've workshopped in not-so-ideal circumstances: profs who didn't give a toss, colleagues who cried in the face of criticism, friends who felt awkward saying anything but, "It's great!" Once, a class workshopped a rather good excerpt from a semi-autobiographical "mom-lit" novel. Then, at coffee break, I ran into said mom in the hallway with her coat on, car keys in hand. "Babysitter issues?" I asked her. "No," she shrugged. "I just only like the part of class where we talk about *my* work."

But I also got my first tastes of absinthe (blech) and Bukowski (well...) in workshop, got told my work was boring, poetic, post-modern and brilliant; made amazing friends, learned how to deal with rejection, learned how to write a query letter, learned a lot about sex (not all workshoppers want to talk about their sex lives, but a fair number do). My workshop leaders and colleauges have been some truly talented writers, some truly famous writers, a kitten named Chub-Chub and some genuine friends.

This post is sparked partially by having lunch yesterday with the leader of that first-ever workshop leader, Pam North. So many years later, I am still so grateful for her attention and insight, and so many years later, she is still giving that same attention and insight to class after class of maybe-writers-to-be. Also this week, I'll probably be relying on the attention and insight of my writing-friend (a dear one, but no one who would ever so succumb to the urge to say "It's great!" just to make me happy), Kerry. *Also* this week (this is quite a workshoppy week, I guess) my four-person monthly workshop will once again reach quorum, when our fourth member returns from the coast for a holiday cameo. I will thrilled to hear of her adventures and give her a hug, but I am also thrilled to be reading her work again. Following the path of other writers through their giant leaps forwards and occasional missteps is another reason to workshop--you learn where you might want to go.

My worst moment in a workshop was one a prof handed back a story without any comments at all and, when I asked what he thought, sighed and said, "Oh, Rebecca, I don't care what you write." Not awesome. But the fact is, most people don't care what the writers are up to, and in a workshop there is an unusually high concentration of those who do. Which helps when, like after the moment above, you need a little honest feedback, a little genuine praise, and maybe a hug.

Alex never gets what she wants
RR

What a great idea!

Broken Pencil has listed *Once* in their Indie Holiday Shopping Guide. If you are in need of such things...

Doesn't stop Jeanne from slumming with the musicians
RR

The Gang

Last night in my mailbox: Diane Schoemperlen, K.D. Miller, Mark Anthony Jarman, Cynthia Flood and many more (including me--amazing) in Best Canadian Stories 08. So much awesome, all in one place!

Let me know if your heart's still beating
RR

Rose-coloured Reviews "Bookkeeping" by Harold Brodkey

This story is glittering, minute, precisely accurate, and very amusingly devastating. Can you say words like "amusing" and "glittering" about a story that concerns the psychological scars and ethnic alienation wrought by the legacy of World War II? Probably; in 2008, you can say most anything.

In 1968, when Harold Brodkey fisrt published this story in The New Yorker it might have been harder to have been so damn funny about anti-Semitism and LSD, not to mention terror-bombing. But then again, those things would also have been closer, more intimately relatable issues than in our own time; the story feels both dated and shocking in it's head-on address of "drugs, Jews, and Germans"--the three search terms the *New Yorker* uses for it in it's archive.

So let us lay out the Germans, the Jews and the drug-users: Avram is having his old, rich and generous friend, Louise, over for cocktails in order to meet her new husband, Ulrich. Avram is Jewish, Ulrich is German, Louise is midwestern and huffy. Early in the evening, another friend of Avram's (unknown to the other two) named Annetje, calls: she is having a bad LSD trip, scared she will throw herself out a window, and Dutch. She wants Avram to come over and comfort her, but Avram is afraid Louise will feel "slighted" (this word comes up over and over) if he leaves her. He compromises by inviting Annetje to join the party and, when she balks, offering to walk the two blocks to her place and escort her back.

"Bookkeeping" is the third story in Brokey's massive midcareer collection, Stories in an Almost Classical Mode. The first two are also about Americans who are perilously over-weighted with European history, but unlike the first two, this one isn't set there, and thus there is (in my opinion) less paralysis, more action, and more relatability for a modern reader who finds herself curiously *un*freighted by European history.

Annetje endured terrible suffering in the Netherlands and then Italy during the Second World War, and since her post-war immigration, been a "temperamental coward," at least in Avram's eyes. Terribly beautiful, she can capture any man's attention, but she wants only someone who will make her feel save and taken care of, without any risk.

The irony of the story is the "bookkeeping" of the title, the system of ethical deposits and withdrawals that Avram keeps with the universe: will he debit compassion or gratitude, choose Annetje's terrible vulnerability or Louise's polite tunnel-vision? Does Avram the American owe Annetje his time because she suffered in Europe, or does he owe Louise because she has leant him money? How immoral is it for him to try to have his cake and eat it too, to bring both women together for the benefit of (mainly) only himself?

We all do this in weak moments (at least, I hope we do): calculate who we can afford not to talk, to pay attention to, to be kind to. But Annetje's suffering has both a social aspect, since she speaks out of bounds in this firmly repressed environment, and a historical one, since her Dutch suffering points up Ulrich's German complicity and Louise's American isolation...and Avram's Jewish guilt.

Or does it? The story's brilliance lies not in one-to-one correspondences of metaphor, but it complicated and disrupted metaphors, paradigms of national identity that may prove to be faulty, or ridiculous. Does the fact that Ulrich is an officious jerk have anything to do with his being German? Wouldn't Louise still be alcholic and judgemental if she were born in Paraguay? Or do their environments strengthen the inborn characteristics? Or what?

Big questions, the lot of them, and a lot of ground covered for 20something pages (which qualifies for "long short-story" status, but is by no means one of Brodkey's longer works). It's an intense piece, but not a heavy one because, unlike the others mentioned here, there's tonnes of dialogue, rapier-thin and rapier-sharp, to aerate all the soul-searching. I've actually never seen anything like this:

....[Avram] pointed his finger savagely. "What are you afraid of? Why are you jealous of Annetje experimenting with self-illumination?"

"I am not jealous."

"Oh, you do not want this experience," Annetje said vaguely. "It is terrible. My teeth burn like little fires."

"I am not jealous or defensive. I am protesting this trampling on what it means to be a responsible human being."

"Except when drunk," Avram said, slyly relentless.

"Except what when drunk, please?" Ulrich asked. Annetje was staring into space.

"Responsible, darling," Louise said to him.

"Yes, I believe in that," Ulrich said.

"Even for crimes during the war?" Avram demanded, turning on him.

"And what of Vietnam?" Ulrich replied instantly.

"You can compare Vietname, deplorable as it is, to the camps?"

"The camps?" said Annetje, terrified.

"I am sick of the camps," Lousie said.

"Bad conscience," Avram said. "If I had any backbone, I would refuse to speak to you ever."

"You do not look Jewish," Ulrich said.

What a really inglorious evening, Avram thought. He said, "Isn't that wonderful? But you can tell I'm Jewish because I'm so brilliant."

"Oh, yes," Ulrich said agreeably.



!!

There are four people in this room and everyone's talking, everyone's alive and miserable and full of their own personal histories and hates. It's wretched and it's funny, and the way these characters only believe in the realities they can cope with makes me wonder about the nature of human morality.

Which every story doesn't accomplish, I don't think.

This story is dated, certainly, but because the emotional sleight-of-hand is so carefully nuanced, and the dialogue so sharp, both still ring true. And with those paths into the story, we can begin to understand these characters and their milieu, to learn both how far we've come since then, and how far we haven't.

Yeah you gotta help me out / don't you put me on the back burner
RR

December Reading

No, I don't know why the print is so tiny. Blogger hates me!! On this illegible but actually quite nice poster, what it actually says is that

On December 18, Anvil Press is launching Jim Christy's book *Scalawags*, and me and Pamela Stewart are going to read too, to add to the excitement.

Thursday December 18, 7:30 PM
This Ain't the Rosedale Library
NEWISH LOCATION: 86 Nassau Street, Toronto, Kensington Market

Should be awesome. No direct festive-season link, but some of us may be sporting some festive glitter.

In the night / I will hide away my fortunate one
RR

Reviews anew

2.5 months and 10 or so reviews into my life as an author of a book, I can't be said to have exactly calmed down or anything, but I do have a little bit of perspective on how it feels to have one's work read by strangers. I have been lucky that the *Once* reviews have been mainly thoughtful and intelligent in both their praise and their criticism. Of course, other people's readings are not always coincidental with mine, but that's the great thing about writing fiction: if you do it well enough, myriad interpretations are possible and, indeed, can co-exist quite happily within a single story. I am always thrilled to hear about an understanding of my writing that I've never thought of, and sometimes I even like it better than what I originally meant.

People have been generous in sharing their thoughts with me outside of formal reviews. I feel lucky to have so many emails and face-to-face conversations with friends, acquaintances and strangers about my work. One way to become a better writer is to try to find out how much of what you mean is getting through, whether people are getting jokes, what's pissing them off and what's making them think. I really do learn when people tell me that stuff, good and bad. It also simply helps, when I sit down to write, to know there's an engaged and interested set of readers beyond my keyboard.

Ok, so a review can also be an evisceration, and if I were a stronger woman I'd provide an example (but I'm not). Even that sort of thing, though, hasn't upset me as much as I thought it might. You've got to figure, if every book has its ideal reader--the person who is interested in and moved by exactly the sorts of language and event that the book contains--there's got to be a least-ideal reader, too, who hates all those things. And that person is still going to be legitimite in his or her tastes, much as I might suffer from the occasional bout of hurt feelings.

But to hear from a reader--at a party, via Facebook, or in a review--that he or she *gets* it, understands the story and felt it and thought about it--is amazing enough to trump most anything. And I've had so much of that this fall that...well, it's amazing. Like this:

"In 'Linh Lai', and 'Pho Mi 99', you get the sense that Rosenblum, winner of the Metcalf-Rooke Award, really worked and suffered to create a thoughtful and authentic separation of state between her the conscious creator, and the non-existing cerebral core of her characters."
From Peter Davidson's review at The Danforth Review

I want to see you in the light of morning
RR

The Short Story's Moment of Mystic Expansion

"The short story concentrates on its grain of sand, in the fierce belief that there — right there, in the palm of its hand — lies the universe. It seeks to know that grain of sand the way a lover seeks to know the face of the beloved. It looks for the moment when the grain of sand reveals its true nature. In that moment of mystic expansion, when the macrocosmic flower bursts from the microcosmic seed, the short story feels its power. It becomes bigger than itself.

--From Steven Millhauser's *NYT Book Review* essay, The Ambition of the Short Story

This essay was part of Bruce Johnstone's presentation at the Waterloo reading last week, and it was joyful news indeed. The writing little high flown at times (takes a few swipes at the novel, a perfectly respectable form of prose) but it also reminds a story reader and/or writer of the possibilities and responsibilities of this beautiful form. I don't understand the picture of the cow, actually. Do you?

When Johnny saw the numbers he lied
RR