Rose-coloured

www.rebeccarosenblum.com

2010-08-25T17:19:00.003-04:00

Hello, friends. This blog has moved to www.rebeccarosenblum.com -- please check it out!

Movin' On

2010-05-14T08:11:00.000-04:00

Rose-coloured regrets? I have none: this has been a wonderful blogging experience ever since that delightful day in March 2007.

But now I'm off to www.rebeccarosenblum.com, courtesy of the fabulous Stuart Lawler at Create Me This. Thank you for being a rose-coloured reader, lovely friends, and I hope you will hit the road with me to the new space (and change your links/feeds/spycams accordingly).

Career Notes: Everybody sad!

2010-05-11T12:59:00.001-04:00

I think at my career-talk thingy on Thursday, I am going to be asked about how I balance writing stories and earning a living. My glib answer is "badly," but my non-glib answer is not too much better--I do what I can, sleep less than I want, miss parties I'd enjoy, I don't own a car, cellphone, cat, or cable box, and have truly demented tax returns. But judging by the state of the bloggersphere today, everybody is miserable in this situation. So I'm in good company, and at least I'm not injured:

Mark reports on AL Kennedy's description of the writing life composed of exhaustion, obsession and back pain.

AJ comments on Geoff Pevere's description of the writing life as composed of networking, being ignored, and self-doubt.

Amy comments on the writing life of trying to find a totally un-writing-related job to support the writing. I like how Amy is positive and puts the pros of the situation before the cons, albeit after the eye-gouging reference.

So what am I really gonna tell the kids on Thursday? That if you want to do a thing that doesn't pay much (or sometimes anything) you will have to do another thing that pays at least something, to balance it out, at least for a while. And while yes, that can suck the life right out of you and make you just want to lie down and have a little nap at the bus stop or the grocery store, it can also be stimulating and exciting to be in two different worlds. And a workaday job, as opposed to writing, will introduce you to new people, help you learn to work as part of a team, expose you to ideas you did not think of yourself, and more than likely offer at least some cake.

This might be aggressive silver-lining searching from someone writing this blog post as her sole creative outlet this week, as she spends her days editing and her nights marking teenager stories (Bulletin: I have learned about the teens: they like the video games. Also: weird fonts.) But there's always gonna be tradeoffs, and quite often I get to write for a few hours at a time. At least, that's what I tell myself.

I think I'm going to do a post on "Jobs for Writers." I've had a lot of different ones, but not nearly all that are out there--please send comments if you've had a particularly good, or particularly bad job-writing fit that we can all learn from.

Back to work!
RR

The News

2010-05-10T08:59:00.001-04:00

So the news is, in case you have not been picking up on my extremely subtle hints, that Rose-coloured is moving to its very own dedicated URL with a splendid new design from Create Me This, and life is good. Ok, life is actually incredibly hectic, so I've been building up to the big unveiling by not posting much--I'm sure you've been crushed by my silence. But see below--lotsa cool stuff:

1) May is the Month of the Short Story. I sort of knew this last year, but not really, because I spent most of May in Japan, where was probably not the Month of the Short Story and even if it was I wouldn't have understood. Anyway, I definitely know it this year because Steven WB has moved 31 Days of Short Stories to now and that's so amazing. Although my first thought when I saw the first post was, "Hey, that's not until August!" I have a hard time with change. At least it's not one of those 30-day months or I would really have lost it.

2) Amy asks (in the comments on the last post) what I say when I'm asked by a random person at a party what I do--writer or editor. It depends on the party--I go to a lot of parties where people are both writers and editors and other artistic people and sympathizers. In *that* crowd I always say writer (if we talk for long, the other will come up though) because they are likely to get it and be nice about it. *However* if the party consists of people of unknown professions, I say "editor" because I'm scared they will be mean to me if I say "writer." That's, mind you, a stupid stereotype of people in the non-obviously creative professions (in fact, most people need to be creative to get their jobs done). However, some people *are* dismissive, and I get really sad when someone, even a random stranger, is mean about my writing. It's like they insulted my significant other--the conversation cannot go on. And although rare, this *has* happened.

Pharmaceutical exec: So, what do you do?
Me: I'm a writer. I had a book of stories come out in 2008.
PE: A writer? Really, so you just sit around and write all day?
Me: Well, actually...
PE: Man, that would be great--sleep in, make coffee, write a little story. No crazy commute, no DVP, no stress..
Me: Well, actually...
PE: (long detailed discussion of PE's exact route to work, timing, possibility of accidents, etc. Seriously, 10 minutes!) A writer, wow, I should get on that. That would be the life. No stress at all! You wouldn't believe what I have to put up with.
Me: You must wish you were dead.
PE: What?
Me: I wish *I* were dead?
PE: What?
Me: Oh, look, the hostess just put out a new kind of cheese. Excuse me.

Ok, I might have made a little tiny bit of that up, but largely, it's accurate, and so very depressing. I'd rather just say "editor" and talk about my bus route to the office. Which makes me, I know, a giant wuss, but it's less stressful by far.

3) Lindsay has a new website too, and it's really pretty. Spring is the time of web renewal, apparently!

More to come soon, I promise--and brace yourself for the big change (I think this is a change I will be able to handle) of URL, coming soon!

RR

Career Queries

2010-05-05T12:38:00.000-04:00

Although it does not come up on Rose-coloured very often, I work as an editor. To do this, I got my publishing certificate. Most of the curriculum was to make us competent enough to do certain jobs in the publishing industry, which was very useful. As well, though, a sizeable chunk of time was devoted to helping us *get* those jobs. You'd think that latter part would have been interesting, and it was, but it was also very odd.

The classes on job-getting inevitably had a guest speaker who had been very successful in publishing--someone who had been at it 20 or so years and had risen to VP status or similar. They were supposed to tell us both about life in the industry and how they got their starts. The former category always a lot fascinating stuff , but the latter... Some weird kind of modesty would overtake our speakers, coupled with spotty memories, and they just could not (or would not) admit they had ever been ambitious or tried hard or even *wanted* to work in publishing. "Just fell into it," "wasn't good at anything else," "friend begged me to take the job," were a few of the things I heard.

I don't think these people meant to come across as they did, which was weirdly smug and secretive. I think the industry has genuinely changed in the last 20 years, and it used to be much easier to just "fall" into a successful and exciting career. And, well, I think some of those people *did* fear seeming like they had been ambitious and tried really hard to get promotions and earn money--that's not something the genuinely bookish are supposed to do.

Well, here's the truth about me: I have always had a strong--borderline obsessive--desire to feed and clothe myself and to sleep indoors, and I thought it would be best if I could do it working with books. This was hard to do, and continues to be, but I can (usually) manage. Sorta.

So when UofT Career Centre asked me to speak to a bunch of graduating students about my work and path to it (and ongoing), I suddenly had a wash of that bizarro reticence mentioned above--"Oh, I don't really know, it just worked out, sorta..."

Which is of course crazy--I remember exactly how I got here, and some of those wounds are still quite fresh. I think maybe offering advice feels too much like tempting the fates--"Hey, I am confident in my work; must be time to shoot me down!" And, in truth, no one is an expert except on whatever works for that person...and even then, there's a fair bit of randomness involved.

But I do think I'll be able to tell those young graduates a few useful things, and maybe it'll even be good that I'm low-level enough to remember how hard you have to try to get started. Since I suspect a lot of the Rose-coloured readers might work in publishing, or be interested in it, please feel free to post either queries or advice (or both) that I might use in my talk (May 13). I promise to post whatever notes and answers I come up with here afterwards.

I will of course also be talking about writing stories and stuff, and how I balance the two (poorly). But I have a feeling that students weeks away from summer vacation who are willing to go to a careers seminar are not in the market for a job that you would require another job to support. But...what do I know?

RR

Road Trips Announcment

2010-05-04T12:55:00.000-04:00

Frog Hollow Press sent out their announcment of my forthcoming chapbook, *Road Trips* today. I tried for a while to figure out how to post the pretty flyer here on Rose-coloured, but Blogger seemed determined to thwart my desire. And then Dan very nicely posted it on Thirsty, thus solving all my problems.

So take a look, if you care for such things. The cover is posted, too, and it's super-lovely. Just a few more weeks to go--I'm hoping to have the book in time for my birthday!

Yay!
RR

Smart cat

2010-05-04T08:04:00.002-04:00

The cat I am cat-sitting is a genius! She has figured out what the sound of my alarm clock means! What it means is that I am going to hit the snooze button and lie there for 9 (0r 18) more minutes, not entirely awake but conscious enough for petting. At the sound of the alarm, she comes scrambling from the foot of the bed or, like this morning, the other room and positions herself by, or on, a hand. When I can feel her there (my eyes are usually still closed) I pet her, and she is happy.

Seriously, that's some pretty good behavioural knowledge after less than a week, no? And she knows that the boiling kettle sound, which is similar to the alarm-clock sound, is useless to her, so she just glares at me until I shut that off.

Rose-coloured reviews Date Night

2010-05-03T17:07:00.001-04:00

It was pretty much obvious that I would see Date Night even though the reviews weren't amazing. I have been a big fan of Tina Fey ever since she and Jimmy Fallon were Weekend Updating--no one has more slang terms for "vagina" in her repetoire and no one says them with more flare.

I always forget why I like Steve Carrell--unlike most humans, I've never seen *The Office*--and then I remember *Little Miss Sunshine* (which I rewatched over the holidays and still love). Oh yeah, and he was the *40-Year-Old Virgin* too. Yeah, I like Steve Carrell plenty.

So it's disappointing to see such stellar comedians struggling to elevate this film above "fine" or "funny enough" or "not a total waste of money." And it is *slightly* better than those things, but largely on account of their efforts. The script is solidly silly, which is no way to be. There are no risks, there are no non-stock characters (sexy calculating babysitter, foozball playing loser male friend, teary-eyed histrionic female friend, supercompetent superattractive male special ops...should I go on? You can probably guess if you've ever seen...any other movie).

The premise is that Claire and Phil Foster's marriage, bogged down by kids, work and life in the burbs, has lost its spark and, in a reasonably pathetic effort to regain it, Phil proposes to take them to the hottest restaurant in Manhattan on a Friday night without a reservation. Which, sorry, makes Phil look like a moron, when he clearly plays the character as a reasonably bright guy.

There are a *lot* of slipups like that in the script--some far worse. On Phil and Claire's first depicted date night, Claire mentions that the next evening they have bookclub. At bookclub, she mentions that the evening after that, they have a date. Who has a date every other evening, especially with two small childrens and another excursion on the intervening evening (she says with a touch of envy?) Also, Phil is later described as a "tax lawyer" though the shot of him at work shows him explaining a modest tax refund to his dumbass clients--something *accountants* and their assistants do. Oh, and that poster showing Carrell wearing lipstick and Fey with a kissprint on her face? Inexplicable, because that scene doesn't happen in the movie.

I'm harping--this is minor stuff, but indicative of a film made with a minimum of care. So Claire and Phil steal an unclaimed reservation at the restaurant by impersonating the reservationees, only to find themselves help to account for those folks' attempt at blackmail. The best part of the whole movie is when they are dragged out into the alley midmeal by evil henchmen. Claire, thinking they're just in trouble for the reservation hijinx, takes her bowl of expensive and fabulous rissotto with her. When one of the thugs knocks it out of her hand, she cries, "Great, now I'm going to have to pick that rissotto up of the ground to eat it!" Ha!

Should I get into the plot thickeners? I should not get into those, for those are dumb. They go to a spooky boathouse in Central Park, they break into a realty firm, they steal a car and crash it into a cab that gets stuck on the grill, they are forced to pose as strippers...blah blah blah. It's all highly unlikely yet utterly predictable, and hard to even care--obviously, for such likeable people, things are going to work out just fine.

But they are so nice, so charming and funny and self-effacing, so clearly much smarter than whoever wrote the script...it's a pleasure to watch these two work. Apparently, bits of the show were improvised, and it's pretty easy to tell which ones--the ones with funny voices, assumed characters, a measure of confidence completely out of keeping with the domestic schlubs these two are supposed to be.

On their dates, Claire and Phil play a game where they spy on people in the restaurant and try to guess what their life stories are. These stories are fairly funny, and supposed to convey, I suppose, Claire and Phil's lifelong committment and intimacy. But that doesn't work--Fey and Carrell don't have that sort of chemistry (they don't kiss until the very end of the movie, and that one is totally a joke). They do *have* chemistry, but it's that of two professional comics who respect each other and are happy to riff off each others' one-liners. The restaurant brain-storming sessions are funny because they're the actors trying to top each other.

Who is supposed to be the target market for this movie? I'm worried it's actually me--30somethings who want to cling to the delusion that, just because we haven't bought minivans yet, we are still somehow cool. No, wait, maybe it's 30somethings who want to be convinced that even thought they *have* bought minivans, they are still cool enough to solve crimes.

Well, it doesn't matter, because once you are in your 30s, you aren't cool unless you own a bomber jet, so we can all give it up to the next generation: my students who went to see *Kickass*. I almost went to see it too, but I heard the violence was gratuitous so I didn't. Uncool!

But I was pretty excited to hear Tina Fey's latest slang term for vagina. That counts as immature, right? Anyway, I was not disappointed.

RR

Workshop #9: Empathy

2010-05-01T16:04:00.002-04:00

Workshop #9 was about many things, in truth, and the largest part of the class was given over the peer editing. This actually went better than usual, because I gave them detailed questionnaires to fill out about the stories--no matter how many times I told them "Really great!" was not a constructive comment, they were insisting on using it before. In fact, although none of the questions I asked on the sheet could grammatically be answered with "Really great!" some of them persisted in putting it anyway, in response to things like "What part of the story did you like best?" and "What parts did you find confusing?"

Anyway, it went well (I made them erase all the "Really greats!"s that I saw) and I think a lot of the kids got a lot out of it. But maybe you can tell from the above that I'm having a bit of a tough time this semester, and I don't at all think the whippersnappers are at fault. I think they don't want to write stories, most of'em, and heaven help us, that is a defensible position.

So part of Thursday's class was spent brainstorming how story-writing works as a transferable skill--how learning to write a short story full of characters and problems and settings and emotions--could help them in a job that would (I don't know why I didn't guess this would be a high priority in a low-income area) pay them a living wage.

It is the luxury of the middle-class to go to school hoping to expand one's mind and interests and range of friends and readings. Kids in precarious financial situations want the value-add, the curriculum correlation, the job skill in their lessons, because the need to get that damn job looms large. And they don't necessarily see the use in learning to write fiction. In fact, one of my students actually announced this in class--a low point for me.

I like to write stories because I like to write stories--full stop. It's fun for me, and every now and then I get a little bit of attention or praise or money for doing it, and that's enough for me. But I actually think writing helps me in every other facet of my life, too, and I was eager to tell them that--I thought they might really not know.

It seemed, though, as soon as I asked the question, that everyone *did* know how stories could help them. They brainstormed the following list:

teacher
editor
journalist
police officer (every class mentioned this one)
doctor
lawyer
social worker

They also put secretary, which I didn't get, but whatever--it's a really good list.

They were a bit weaker when I asked "Why do these people need to know how to tell a story?" The three are obvious (how is a teacher or an editor going to recognize good work if she/he can't create good work, and journos do pretty much the same thing as fictos, only with the truth). What else? I asked. "They gotta write reports," was the answer.

Absolutely, of course--being able to write a coherent narrative of events or issues, not a list or a sketch, is so important in many roles, persuasive or otherwise.

But I think one of the reasons that so many of the jobs listed are so-called "caring" professions--because it if you are going to work with people, you need to be able to make a good solid leap towards understanding other people's points of view. What use is a doctor who cannot guess how a patient is feeling when in pain and be sensitive, or how someone will react to bad news. How can a social worker help kids or families in trouble if she or he can't imagine what they are going through?

I think too much emphasis on imaginary people could be a problem, sure, but too little attempt to imagine how it feels to be someone not-me, to get out of my own upbringing and situation and likes and dislikes and education and tolerances, can make it really hard to relate to anyone. Empathy helps life go on, and in many many jobs, a lack of it means you can't do you work.

Obviously, I could stand to improve this facility even more--to have known earlier in the semester that the kids wouldn't automatically see the links and extensions from my lessons, that I would have to *tell* them that I wasn't trying to train them to be writers but rather to train them to be people who could see a story from any angle, and find a story anywhere.

Someone complimented me recently on a story recently, and I said I greatly appreciated the compliment (I did!) because the piece had been very very hard to work on. He said of course, because it was so technically complex.

I was startled for a moment--I had meant that the emotions and events in the story were hard to deal with, and was about to say so, when I realized that we meant the same thing. There is only one way to express emotions, or anything else, in writing, and that is with words on a page, rhetorical devices, pacing and vocabulary, foreshadowing and description, all the skills I've been trying to teach the youngins. The story's emotion doesn't exist separate from my ability to tell it--just like so much of what doctors and teachers and advertisers tell us exists only in their words. So we'd better make it good.

I am really going to miss my smarty-pants students, though I doubt they'll miss me. A kid I like, who has been really alienated lately, was staring at the wall when I described how the last class would be organized. I could have sworn he wasn't listening at all, but when I asked if there were questions, he raised his hand and asked, "Did you say *cookies*?" I said yes, I plan to bake cookies for the last class, and he grinned.

I was pleased, not only because he'd was pleased, but because if he'd caught the word "cookies" buried in all that other stuff, he might have actually *heard* some of the other stuff. But I don't know--in truth, I have no idea what he was thinking.

RR

Good/bad

2010-04-30T13:03:00.001-04:00

Fred just reminded me of our every-five-years-or-so project, 1000 Things We Like (I guess since we've done it twice now, it's thus far 2000 Things We Like and Counting). If you want in on the action, meet me back here in 2012, but in the meantime, this list reflects that today is a fairly well-balanced day, but I wish it were more 1000 Thingsy:

Good: Kashi Raspberry Chocolate Granola Bars

Bad: Realizing the fridge you've been storing your lunch in does not work, and is basically a well-sealed cupboard.

Good: Catsitting, and ensuing cheerfully one-sided conversations about weather, snacks, and people who are jerks.

Bad: Looking down during yoga class and realizing your black pants are covered in white kitty fur.

Good: Nice weather.

Bad: Short attention span.

Good: Gorgeous fountain pen in the mail.

Bad: Attempting to listen to instructions on how to fill fountain pen over the phone, shortly followed by realization that one is soon to be covered in ink and/or very embarrassed at a high-end stationers.

Good: K's birthday.

Bad: K far away in England, unavailable for celebration/cake/hug. In fact, all of the most ardent supports of 1000 Things are unavailable for hugging or any close-at-hand celebrations.

Good: Literary Salon at the glammy-glam Spoke club on Tuesday night.

Bad: Being too old to go out during the week without being sad the next morning.

Good: The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

Bad: Adams still dead.

Good: When I get home, cat will be there.

Bad: Now worry constantly when I am out that cat will eat plants and get sick.

Good: Internet for random useless but friendly and entertaining yammer.

Bad: Useless URLs.

Good: Well, it'd be better with a "b", in my opinion...

RR

Insane conversation in my hallway just now

2010-04-27T22:32:00.003-04:00

From beyond my apartment door: incessant meowing

(RR opens door, cat comes scurrying down the hall to greet her.)

RR: You're a cat!

Cat: Meow meow meow!

RR: What are you doing here? Where are your people?

Cat: Meow etc.

RR: Where do you come from? (RR begins walking down the hall; cat trots along eagerly, doglike) I don't know where you come from. Is this your door? (pointing at door) This one? Do you live here?

Cat: Meow, purr. (rubs against RR's legs)

RR (continuing down the hall; no doors are open; it is too late to be knocking on strangers doors): Is this your house? Where do you live?

Cat (appears to recognize nothing; purrs)

RR: Well, I don't know. (returns to apartment) No, you can't come in--you have to stay out here so they can find you! No, I'm sorry, you are a very nice cat, but your people will want you.

Cat (sadly rejected, goes away)

????

Note 1: Yes, this conversation happened out loud, not in my head.

Note 2: I have lived in this building since 2004 and never before tonight been to the other end of the hallway.

Note 3: Having a nice little cat appear at my door and volunteer to live with me is a longstanding fantasy of mine, and it pretty much crushed me to turn it away.

Rose-coloured reviews Killarnoe by Sonnet L'Abbé

2010-04-27T12:52:00.001-04:00

I knew I wanted to read something by Sonnet L'Abbé because I've seen her do a few readings over the last year or so and they were amazing. I totally believe that the best way to sell a book is to have the person who likes it most (usually the author, one would imagine) read a little bit of it to you. A few distainful readers notwithstanding, this would be the ideal selling technique if only more people went to readings. I am one who does, and thus buy a lot of books, though in truth *Killarnoe* was a gift (a requested one!)

*Anyway*, I loved L'Abbé's readings , and I was pretty sure I would love the poems on paper too. I was right. Killarnoe is a book rich in play, in sex, in sound, in self-deprecation, in jokes and juxtopositions and alliterations and *rhymes* (the rarer it gets, the more I like it). It is joyful, thought-provoking reading.

The poems I heard at the readings were, I think, largely from the second section in the book, "Instrumental." Each is a meditation or exploration of a sound, which gives the poems titles like the thoughtful "Ah", catchy "I" or the sexy "Ungh." These pieces are full of life, though I suspect highly theorized at their base. Breaking language down to sound memes (AMT, am I using that word right?) is not a simple task, but the poet manages a light touch nonetheless: "noteworthy / the pure ooh / of boo /of moo // the poor ooh / of few / of zoo."

I was surprised to find I didn't much like a section of political poems called "Z: Ghazals for Zahra Kazemi." In a reading, I had been quite astounded by the weird sad fear and humour of "My Osama bin Laden T-shirt" (which appears in the book in the section after Z). Upon rereading, that piece held up, but the other topical stuff left me cold.

One reason could be is that ghazals are a highly complex, very structured form with which I'm not really familiar. There's a lot of repetition (a L'Abbé trademark, I'm told) and not much room for narrative. To put it more bluntly, I didn't understand these. Then I found the notes in the back of the book and I *did* understand--at least who Zahra Kazemi is, and some of the other people mentioned in the work--but I still didn't really "get" the poems. I couldn't go inside them--they required me to bring with me a certain amount of info, or at least insight, that I don't have.

That's ok--some poetry is always going to shoot over someone's head, and writing for the rather large subset of the population that reads th newspaper is not a crazy idea. Most of L'abbé's work is so multilayered, so open and accessible that though I nearly always suspected there was more to it than I had understood, there was plenty for me to savour.

Like a poem towards the end of the book, "Third Breast," which was decidedly creepy and bizarre and I really like it. But I have the strong impression there it obliquely references a tri-breasted creature somewhere in mythology that I'm forgetting about...do you know? I'm sure L'Abbé knows, and I don't, but it doesn't matter. I will think about that poem for a long time anyway, which really, is the point.

I once had a wonderful English prof--this might have even been in high school--who drew a diagram about layers of meaning. Literal, metaphor, allusion, symbol, allegory, etc. Then s/he (I actually have no idea who this was, sorry) said that a story poem that was only surface would be pretty simple and dull, but that work that only existed on the deeper levels would also be dreadful, because the reader would have no point of entry or reference, no simple enjoyment or identification before the heavier work began.

I think about this when I read a book like *Killarnoe*, which operates on so many levels and seems open to having the reader on any or all of them, or wherever you would like to go.

RR

Rose-coloured reviews 4lbs of strawberries for $5 at Metro

2010-04-26T08:20:00.000-04:00

I consider a good price for a one-pound (454 gram) clamshell of California strawberries to be $2.99--higher in the dead of winter. So when I saw two 907 gram clamshells for $5 at Metro, I was awed (I believe you could also replace one of the boxes with a honeydew melon, but I don't own knives sharp enough to cut honeydew rind, so I stayed away from that).

My grocery-shopping escort declined a box, claiming he could not eat 2 pounds of strawberries before they went off. I scoffed at this, but quailed at the prospect of 4 pounds, so I just got the one. As it turned out, they still charged me the sale price even though I didn't buy the sale amount (this is one of Metro's usual, and nicer, policies)--so my 907 grams cost $2.50. Score!

Unlike much sale-priced produce, my berries aren't underripe. They are nice and dark and, for imported berries, fairly soft. That's still not *very* soft--Cali berries always have a bizarro crunch factor that is completely absent in lovely delicate local berries. But the local berries won't be ready for, minimum, another month, and one of the stranger aspects of globalization is the taste it creates for out-of-season fruits. I want berries *always*, not just the six weeks you can pick them in southern Ontario. So Cali berries it is.

These are, I think, the best of their kind I've seen. They are nice and sweet (most of them, anyway) and very few off berries (just one in the box so far, and even that was likely edible). I am very impressed. And what's more, it was not my box--I looked at the others stacked up and the Yonge & College Metro (can't vouch for any others) and they looked uniformly dark red and healthy. Yum.

Running into this sale was fortitous for a Sunday when I skipped lunch in favour of a poetry vending machine launch and wound up eating a giant burrito at 4pm, because a big fistful of berries plus cereal made a really great supper around 8 that evening. Life is good...but I can't wait for Ontario berries.

RR

The Toronto Poetry Vendors

2010-04-25T18:19:00.003-04:00

This is Toronto poet, and one of the Toronto Poetry Vendosr, Carey Toane (the other is Elisabeth de Mariaffi), giving me a sneak peak inside the city's first (that I know of) poetry vending machine, now installed and activated inside This Ain't the Rosedale Library.

Slip in a twoonie (wow, I never write that word--is that how you spell it?) and you'll get a tiny brightly coloured broadside featuring a poem. The Toronto Poetry Vendors offer poems by 10 Toronto poets--here's the gang, if you are curious:

Kevin Connolly
Dani Couture
Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Andrew Faulkner
Jacob McArthur Mooney
Stuart Ross
Jenny Sampirisi
Meaghan Strimas
Carey Toane
Paul Vermeersch

The neat things is that the poems are just stacked in there, and so when you turn the crank, you just get the next one in the queue, no picking and choosing. So after this afternoon's lovely launch (excellent readings, excellent cookies), everyone in the audience bought a poem, and then milled around asking each other, "Who'd you get?" "Who'd you get?" It's like baseball cards for the litsy set.

Seriously, funnest thing ever. Also, how often do my photographs turn out this cute? Like, seriously, almost never. It was the poetic buzz, I tell you!

On Nostalgia and Homogeniety

2010-04-24T08:24:00.000-04:00

AMT wrote a wistful post on nostalgia, which fit in perfectly with the current theme of my days lately, which is trying to remember what it feels like to be a teenager.

I keep thinking I do--all eager and nervous and twitchy and stuff--and then I realize that's me now. It is so hard to recall how you felt/acted/thought back when you were a different person, particularly if you don't think that person was all that different than your present day self.

But we are--I am pretty sure, though hazy, on this: people change more than they realize, and the parts of themselves they forget tend to be the ones that differ the most from the present day. This impression comes from having talked to a wide variety of people over the years, none of whom can recall being on top in high school. Everyone was teased, persecuted, trod upon, lonely and alone. I have rarely met anyone who says they were more or less fine in high school, and never to having been the sort of jerk that is more than fine and makes others feel bad about it--or wings French fries at their heads. Apparently, that's the sort of thing you rinse out of your consciousness when you hit your 20s.

So I'm going to come right and make this bold pronouncement, nearly damning for a writer: I was ok with high school. It was not the best 5 years of my life, but I had some fun, some good friends, some good teachers, learned some stuff. I vaguely recall being teased in grade 9 for wearing a ballet top I bought at the Bay (I still have it) and I certainly never got invited to the coolest parties, but...so? It would've been weird if kids I didn't know invited me to their parties, and anyway, I lived way out in the country and my dad would never have driven me. I hung around with folks I liked, ate lunch with them in the hall by the auto shops, edited the yearbook, and was left largely alone by everyone else.

I seriously worry this makes me a less interesting person to some people, which in itself is such a high school thought.

I am trying to get these memories back because I want to be able to "get" what is going on with my students. One of the hardest things to remember is conformity. It has been a very long time since I worried seriously about the ways I deviate from the status quo. I am not much of a rebel--I think I'm naturally a lot like the status quo--but not entirely, and who cares?

One of the great perks of one's twenties as that there are so many different things to do and ways to live that it's very hard to even *find* a standard to try to conform to. I know people who stayed in school for a decade straight after graduating high school, people who found jobs first and went to school when they could afford it, who dropped out immediately and those who never studied formally again after high school grad. I know people who married immediately after high school, after college, after travelling through Europe, after 6 or 10 or 2 years of dating, or barely any time at all. I know people who are politically opposed to marriage, who were fervently delighted when Canada legalized same-sex marriage, and those for whom the whole institution seems irrelevant. Friends my own age have kids in school, kids in diapers, kids in utero, cats, dogs, houseplants and (only one) guinea pig. People are cheerfully devoted to their jobs, wrathfully alienated from their jobs, climbing the corporate ladder, unemployed, underemployed, fascinated by their work or terrified of it. I know homeowners, couchsurfers (ok, we're getting a little old for that), rooming-housers, apartment dwellers, parental-home dwellers, and perpetual travellers. I know people who think of poverty as only one car, and people who think of wealth as ordering dessert.

How am I supposed to conform to that? I can't, so I don't worry about it (and feel happy I have such interesting friends). What makes conformity an issue in high school, I think, is that by nature of the age you have a certain amount of it. Almost everyone lives with their parents, has to be at school at a certain time, takes basically the same classes, and, due to how neighbourhoods tend to work, has basically the same amount of money. They are limited in who they meet beyond their families and classmates, and exposed to a tonne of marketing about music, movies, and fashion, not to mention fastfood, cosmetics, etc.

Even when I was a weird kid, I had basically the same sort of shoes as everyone else--not exactly, and believe me everyone knew it, but I did in fact like a lot of what everyone else liked. There was not much else available to like--not that I knew of, anyway--and those Birkenstocky sandals *were* very nice.

It is actually not that hard to recall that perfectly natural assimilatory instinct--I want clothes I see people wearing on the bus all the time. But it is harder to transer that into the classroom, where kids are reluctant to raise their hands, share their ideas, read their work, or even admit to liking something, if they do not already have pre-approval from their peers. In some ways, me being really impressed with a particular student's work is no joy for them, because it singles them out. There's nothing more depressing than realizing that your too-loud compliment is being met with a glare, and you might not be seeing any more of this student's so-good work. Argh.

This does seem to fade with the older kids--they're happier to talk about what makes them/their work unique. They're closer to their twenties, and the point in your life where it is not only acceptable, but desirable (positively ravenously so, at certain university parties) to be a touch odd.

Another weird part of my nostalgia is wondering if the decade without a status quo is coming to an end. I wonder because this nostalgic thinking led me check the Facebook profiles of a bunch of people I knew in high school (oh, what did we do with our creepy stalker tendencies before Facebook?) It's actually really hard to tell what people are up to with the standard privacy settings, but two things I can tell you are popular are getting married and having babies--almost everyone's profile picture was a wedding shot/ultrasound/baby pic. Intense.

The difference between grown-upitude and high school, of course, is that people care less what others do--both because they are more tolerant and openminded, and because they don't have a lot of time to invest in writing a mean little song about some other adult's lack of real estate savvy or whatever. But I'm trying to experiment with feeling a little bad about the ways I'm weird anyway--I thought it might bring me closer to my students.

This is definitely a very odd thought experiment. Thanks for reading.

Linkages

2010-04-20T08:33:00.000-04:00

I am mainly recovered from last week's slump, and have various good things to suggest, report, and share:

--If you missed Sunday afternoon's lovely Draft Reading Series 5.2 Salon des Refuses(you poor thing), you can recapture some of the magic by reading Mark's essay on rejection (from the Draft magazine) or looking at AJ's pictures.

--If you are still in hot pursuit of poetic pleasures to celebrate Poetry Month, why not go see the Toronto Poetry Vendors launch their big bright green poetry machine (I have no idea if it's actually green, but it's called Spearmint...), this Sunday at This Ain't the Rosedale Library.

--Another poetic option would be to read my one and only published poem, originally from echolocation, now reposted on Pickle Me This. I am pretty proud that Kerry considered this piece--called "Dead Boyfriend Disco"--worthy of inclusion in her Poetic April. I write perhaps three poems a year, mainly lame ones, so I'm pretty proud that DBD exists, period. Warning: it's really long, probably because I wanted it to be a story.

And yes, I am still reading tomorrow evening, 7pm, at the Free Times Cafe with fine folks like Adrienne Gruber and Andrew Daley. I am looking forward to it because it's going to be fun; you might be looking forward to it being over so I'll stop mentioning it every day!

RR

Workshop #7: Grammar

2010-04-19T08:57:00.002-04:00

Workshop #7 was actually mainly about Images and Imagist poems, as I think I mentioned somewhere earlier, but we actually covered lots of other ground. Although it is really outside of my purview as the creative-writing person, I snuck in a grammar lesson. I really really want them to stop smudging stellar work with dumb grammar mistakes. I also want to put my foot down with the kids who say they are not "good" at grammar.

I think so many of these rules are like learning the multiplication tables or the provincial capitals--either you had a good teacher in grade 3 who made you memorize them, or you didn't... The teacher I'm working with certainly does give some excellent grammar lessons, but the kids seem to have a deficit of years. You can get by in conversation a lot of the time--maybe always, depending on what career you choose--just by listening to how others talk and emmulating them, without knowing most of the rules of grammar. But it is much much harder to get written grammar in this way, especially for kids who don't read except one forced. Lovely as it is to get self-righteous and say that reading for pleasure is a gift and parents just have to show kids blah blah blah, it doesn't always happen. This is also an issue for kids who grow in homes where English is not the first language. They might hear tonnes of very erudite conversation, read books and watch high-end tv (or they might not), but if it's not in English, it's not helping them with their grammar.

So schools don't teach grammar (I guess I can't generalize, but mine certainly didn't and I don't know anyone else who learned English grammar in a systematic manner--do you?), and kids don't always have the opportunity to pick it up elsewhere, and I end up with bright, engaged, insightful students who write things like, "She weared her prettiest dress," and were genuinely startled to find out the past tense of "to lie down" is "to lay down."

I am into good grammar, but I'm not fanatical about it--I roll my eyes when the grocer advertises "fresh" fish, but c'mon, do I know how to fillet a pickerel? He has his knowledge base and I have mine, and as long as we can understand each other, I don't see myself as being in the position to make further demands. Chefs can't make me stop putting barbeque sauce on my salad, and personal trainers can't stop me from over-emphasizing cardio in my workouts, and fashion designers can't make me stop wearing those turquoise fishnets I bought for $3 and which don't fit...we can't all be experts in everything, and sometimes, we don't even want to be.

I am in favour of good grammar the way I am in favour of good etiquette--not as an end in itself, or as a stick to beat people with, but as a means of facilitating clear communication and conveying respect to the reader/person you are speaking to. Setting the table neatly shows care for your dinner guest's ease and pleasure of dining. Yes, he could probably have gone and found a fork in the kitchen, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and yes, you do know what I mean when I say "I teared it open", but it's just that much more confusing, difficult, and less fun.

In class last week, I told the kids, "No one ever won a Nobel Prize for grammar": it's just a tool to get your point across. But they really need to get the tool--it makes their (good) work so inaccessible when I have to puzzle over when it takes place because the tenses are inconsistent, or who did what because the pronouns don't match. I told them also that grammar is *not* a smart/dumb issue--if you've had less exposure to it, you know less, and it's annoying that you have to make up for that, but all they need to do is sit down and memorize this stuff. Unfortunately, if they don't bother, they will *look* dumb--I hope it wasn't inappropriate to use that phrase with my students. Grammatical errors, being mainly simple and easily avoided if you just memorize the rules, look like they are made by dumb people when, in fact, they are mainly made by lazy people.

And then we did a bunch of conjugations and they had to copy things down off the board and everything--it was way old school. I hope it helped. I really think that good grammar will make their lives a lot easier--on resumes and cover letters, on school papers, work emails--people respect good grammar, because reading it is a lot easier than reading garbled stuff, and clean writing conveys respect for the reader.

All that said, in my little heart, I love language rules and am always eager to learn a new one, and to discuss and debate their usefulness and implications. I could talk your ear off about transitive and intransitive verbs, a topic very few people know about and yet very few people get it wrong in everyday writings. I don't get to be smug, despite my copyediting classes and fervent adherence to the Chicago Manual of Style--I make tonnes of sloppy mistakes on this blog (as you likely well know) and in many other scarier places. The trick is not to just know a lot of stuff about grammar, but to know enough grammar to make clear all the other stuff you know.

RR

Evenements

2010-04-17T14:03:00.004-04:00

I went to a wonderful performance last week, a world-renown Canadian artist with a huge and frantically loyal following. I myself am new to this talent, but I attended the event with a group of sincere enthusiasts, who see this fellow on every tour, and buy pretty much everything he puts out as soon as it's available. We went over 40 minutes early, and already there was a sizeable group there, staking out the good seats. When we ran into another group of folks I know, they were even more enthusiastic, and everyone was instantly able to chat about complex details of this guy's work. When he finally took the stage, there was uproarious applause from the standing-room-only crowd and even some hoots at his knowing, witty banter with the crowd.

Rock concert? No, it was a reading: this really happened.

It was last Thursday, at the Toronto reference library, the world-wide launch of Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay, which consisted of a reading and staged interview with Jared Bland.

It was a stellar reading and a fascinating interview, much like many I've seen in Toronto over the past few years. What was different was the massive, wildly enthused crowd--not like I've never seen one, but not to this degree. I don't have much of a spatial eye, but I'm going to guess close to 300 people. Unlike me, most of those weren't just there to see what all the fuss was about--most of these folks had read at least two or three of Kay's 11 novels, which are mainly 400-500 epic tomes with a lot of complicated history, maps and family trees in the frontises, and three years of research behind them. I was pretty impressed at this well-read readership--who says they aren't out there? How inspiring.

And, of course, the show was pretty stellar on its own--Kay is an assured reader, and a convivial modest interviewee. Bland's questions came from close reading of not only the book at hand but numerous of Kay's others. The author seemed very pleased to answer such insightful, thoughtful questions (no "What sort of pen do you use?" generica) and the interview seemed more like an extremely well-spoken chat--with 300 people raptly listening (and occasionally hooting) in the background.

It just makes me really happy that such a crowd could gather at the library on a Wednesday for this sort of event, let alone be so incredible gleeful about it. Scott lent me Ysabel by way of GGK introduction, and I really hope that I like it so I count myself among that crowd. And even though it's likely some Rose-coloured readers find that Kay's work is not something you dig, I just thought the event itself was really cool and inspiring.

Some other events this week, which are likely to be equally fun and fascinating though a little less crowded and rowdy:

Tomorrow (aka Sunday) at 3pm, the Draft Reading series (pretty much the only series that I know of on Toronto's lovely east side--can you think of any others?) presents Dani Couture, Michael Bryson, Mark Sampson, Ian Burgham and Ellen S. Jaffe.

Wednesday evening, 7pm--The Free Times Cafe (on college, just west of Bathurst)--the Hear Hear Reading Series presents Adrienne Gruber, Andrew Daley, Julia Tausch, and yours truly. People never hoot during my readings but it would actually probably throw me off a lot if they did.

RR

Stuff to be sad about

2010-04-14T08:01:00.000-04:00

In case you didn't take my point yesterday, my problems are totally lame and largely of my own making. Doesn't really cheer *me* up to think that, but might cheer you, concerned friends, to know that I have not been stabbed, shot, hit by a car, infected with anything, fired, dumped, or insulted. I'm merely having a loserish week (and it's only Wednesday). To whit, here are some things that, if you do not have enough problems, you may wish to be sad about with me:

1) Not yet having the new lists issue of The New Quarterly (for which this list is a poor substitute).
2) Combination skin.
3) Was working on a new story for several weeks, put it on hold to work on something else, and upon returning to the project, can no longer remember what the hell I was planning to do with it.
4) Dressing not on the side, as requested.
5) Amy moving away. Sadness not improved by opportunity to buy her stuff since I don't need any stuff (but maybe you do?)
6) Still cannot find crystal lightning bolt earrings (has been six years, but every now and then I re-open the mourning).
7) Russell Smith launch on same night as Guy Gavriel Kay launch; RR not cloneable.
8) Hardcover books hurt my tiny mouse hands.
9) Weekend kitten visit apparently cancelled.
10) While catastrophic affects of doing large part of a project backwards have been averted (by frantically redoing all the work), am terrified someone is going to ask be why I did it backwards...and I won't know the answer.
11) Now worried that listing bad things that have not happened to me (see above) will tempt fates.
12) Tax season.

To balance things out...good stuff:

1) TNQ will likely come soon.
2) Guy Gavriel Kay launch with Scott and co will be super-awesome (and perhaps afford an opportunity to eat in a food court, one of my favourite forms of dining).
3) Weekend bowling still on.
4) Finished 3rd draft of another story (the one that distracted me form #3, above) and sent it away.
5) People keep giving me free lipsticks. I counted this morning (what? you have your hobbies and I have mine) and discovered I have seven lipsticks, despite the fact that I have not paid money for one since the year 2000.
6) Have a blog to complain to.
7) Sparkly sunrise this morning.
8) Nice friends.
9) Mother some sort of tax genius.
10) Am wearing sockettes with gold trim, as purchased on my whirlwind trip last May.
11) Spring.

RR

Transcribing The Stills

2010-04-13T12:31:00.000-04:00

Oh my god, everything sucks. Not really; it's pretty much limited to first-world problems around here, but morale is low. And what boosts morale faster than transcribing the lyrics of popular music? Transcribing the lyrics of angry popular music (note to anyone baffled by the above: I occasionally enjoy writing down the lyrics of a song I like while I listen to it. It forces me to really examine each word; a song that I still love after I've done this is lyrically unimpeachable).

I started with Destoyer, but in the end I didn't want to post the whole song because when you *do* think a lot about the lyrics, some of them sound pretty psychotic. So I'll just post the best verse, and suggest that you watch the video above and not overthink the lyrics, because it's pretty catchy, and also I used to live next door to where the video was filmed.

And arrows are pointed
And the archers delighted
Oh the thrill oh the smell
The shit I've been put through
Let angels to no one [I think I have that line wrong, but the principles of the game preclude looking it up]
Well I hate you and your blood
So don't make a goddamn sound
Well I'm comin' well I'm comin'
To your town

I ended up doing The Stills' "In the Beginning" which is vaguer but still wrathful. Also, I can't find a good video for this, but you can hear it off their CBC3 page.

This story ends in bloodshed
The face I love
The city I'm from
Well the persons I've met
The persons I've let down
But our hero never turns around

It's nice to see you're moving on
I know hard to carry on
And it's just never what it was
Oh in the beginning
In! the beginning!

And how did this start
And when did we begin
In a ball of fire and stars and soot [I think I have that line wrong]
And that brings me here now
Well my heart's caving in
A tornado whips it round the poles
And it's --rainin'

Oh!

It's nice to see you're movin' on
I know it's hard to carry on
And it's never what it was
Was in the beginning
Well in! the beginning!

[bridge]

In a ball of fire
In a ball of fire
[do do do do do]
In a ball of...
[do do do do do]

Anyway, in case you didn't pick it up, I totally love The Stills, and I feel their stoic deadpan guitar-fuelled rage is exactly in keeping with my own. Hope this has been a good pitch for them--you don't even have to listen to their music exclusively when you're angry!

RR

Bits and Bobs

2010-04-12T12:45:00.001-04:00

The always wondrous Kerry Clare has found another of her own kind, ie., another fascinatingly bookish Kerry! This one is poet Kerry Ryan, and their interview together is really insightful. A small example:

"KR: Well, domestic subjects are easy to come by; we’re constantly surrounded by them. But that doesn’t make it easy fruit to reach — there’s always the challenge of finding the aspects of everyday experiences or objects (especially the ones everyone is familiar with) worth the attention of a poem."

I don't look at a lot of photo blogs because, well, I don't have much technical insight into photography, and to just look at image after image, day after day, on a strictly "That's so awesome!" level, I must agree with the photographer pretty closely on the definition of awesome. I agree *very* closely with Brooklyn Codger about awesomeness--check this out, and tell me if you are surprised that her real name turns out to be Rebecca. Her posts are generally one (or more) of my favourite things: 1) things found on the ground, 2) cats, 3) food, 4) books (quite often, 1 and 4 combine), 5) cityscapes, 6) craft projects (ok, I don't get much out of crafts, but BC is so charming I go with it). Now go look at the whole blog and see if you agree about the awesomeness.

You can read a little interview with me over on the Now Hear This blog, posted in anticipation of my reading for them, next Wednesday at 7pm at the Free Times Cafe. It's been ages since I've done a reading in town, leastwise one that was public, so I'm really excited (ok, I'm always excited about readings). What to read, what to read...
RR

April is Poetry Month

2010-04-10T09:16:00.003-04:00

But you knew that, I'm sure, and are probably well into a much-more-organized-than-mine celebration. But nevertheless, I am enjoying the poetic focus right now, reading the John Smith tribute issue of CNQ and Paul Vermeersch's Between the Walls (ok, so I read that at the end of March, but I'm still going to count it). Right now I'm in the middle of Skim by Mariko Tamaki, which is not poetry but a graphic novel, and also absolutely captivating (and funny!) so far (I knew it would be--not sure what took me so long to get to actually reading it!) But after that, it's back to poetry with The Laundromat Essay by Kyle Buckley, another book everyone but me has already read and loved.

Also this week, I'm thinking I'll do a poetry class with the teens. The teacher recommended it, and if I weren't such a chicken it should have already been on the slate. But I'm actually really worried about this, because I am not a poet. I've studied loads poetry, mind, but I very much doubt what the kids want is help with scansion. They would like to know how to write the stuff--or really, since they are teens, they are probably already writing it and just want to get better. But I don't know that I know about that.

I think the easiest way into poetry is the Imagists. It was for me anyway--I think The Red Wheelbarrow was the first poem I really really *felt*--it didn't feel like an inept teen half-guessing at an erudite writer's goals, but like the poem was there to paint a picture in my head and it did that. Anyway, it's a happy memory for me, so I'm gonna try out some of that stuff on them, and use it as an opportunity to talk about finding the single *right* word, not 17 close-enough, out-of-the-thesaurus words (a problem my students are having. Let me know if you have any recommendations, even if they're not from that particular movement--my students aren't too fussy that way, and neither am I.

And one more bit of poetic news is that I received an absolutely lovely illustrated copy of Hillaire Belloc's *Cautionary Tales* as a gift this week, from someone who likely has no idea that it's Poetry Month, but it does nicely suit. I haven't read the whole of it yet, but as soon as I saw the title in the table of contents, of course I read this one (the poet's been dead more than 50 years, so I'm not violating copyright by sharing this, am I?) It's best read *aloud*!

Rebecca
Who slammed Doors for Fun
and Perished Miserably

A trick that everyone abhors
In Little Girls is slamming Doors.
A Wealthy Banker's Little Daughter
Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater
(By name Rebecca Offendort),
Was given to this Furious Sport.

She would deliberately go
And Slam the door like Billy-Ho!
To make her Uncle Jacob start.
She was not really bad at heart,
But only rather rude and wild:
She was an aggravating child...

It happened that a Marble Bust
Of Abraham was standing just
Above the Door this little Lamb
Had carefully prepared to Slam,
And Down it cam! It knocked her flat!
It laid her out! She looked like that.
*
Her funeral Sermon (which was long
And followed by a Sacred Song)
Mentioned her Virtues, it is true,
But dwelt upon her Vices too,
And showed the Dreadful End of One
Who goes and slams the door for Fun.
*
The children who were brought to hear
The awful Tale from far and near
Were much impressed, and inly swore
They never more would slam the Door.
--As often they had done before.

RR

Workshop #6--Dialogue

2010-04-08T13:04:00.000-04:00

When I taught creative writing for the first time, last year, I didn't teach dialogue. I claimed to have run out of time, and more or less had, but in truth I didn't shift the schedule to accomdate dialogue because I had no idea how to teach it.

I think it's inappropriate to relay compliments about myself, but a number of people have told me I write dialogue well, and most of the time I believe them. It seems logical that I would be good at it, since I love it! Definitely I've found that the things I find fun are also the things I can do well, but I've also find that people who are good at things can't teach them. Did you ever have your math-brained friend try to tutor you in algebra? It's horrible, right? Because they keeps saying like, "ok, and obviously the vector would go this way," and they actually have no way of explaining it if its not obvious to you. Mathy people's brains make too many math leaps and they can't retrace their steps for someone whose own brain doesn't leap.

What you want is a teacher who struggled and struggled and struggled with something, and eventually achieved some (possibly low) level of mastery. That person remembers every step of the process and is able to explain it clearly to the novice--a teacher that remembers what it is like to learn. Which is why I think my most useful lessons are on plot structure or self-editing or things of that nature--I struggle with those still, and my memories of my learning process are as recent as last night, so I can bring the kids some very well-rehearsed tips.

I am not saying I've "got" dialogue or am not constantly trying to improve--certainly I am, and there's plenty of room to do so. But dialogue is the fun part for me and I do bounce along more easily with that stuff than anything. And it's really hard to say why or how!

But for my students, I'll try. Start with the thing that every creative writing teacher--and anyone who has even heard of the process of creative writing--would advise is that if you want to write dialogue, listen to people talking. Absolutely! And not just your friends--listen to as wide a range as possible. Eavesdrop in restaurants and on transit. Make note of how people use certain words and how they vary--dresser or bureau? Snow machine or skidoo? "Bay-gal" or "bag-el"?

Of course, the flip side of this is that really good, really readable fictional speech is highly stylized, and if you use real speech to convey character you would need the length 0f an evening (a whole first date!) to catch an even slightly accurate portrait. I don't take notes and don't record--indeed, I never quote directly from strangers. When I listen, I just want to get the rhythms of their speech, turns of phrase, that sort of thing.

What to leave out? Sneezes, burps, apologies for dropping things on the floor, long descriptions of what a mutual friend is up to, repititions, speakers losing their place in the story for no reason, giving of directions, self-absorbed monologuing (unless it both a. reveals a lot of character and b. is funny), conversations about the weather that are actually about the weather, way-too-plot-heavy-garbage (some people probably actually say, "I don't think you love me anymore, Bruno. I think you have played me false" but they do not need to be immortalized in fiction).

In short: dialogue in realist fiction is *like* real speech, but *better*. So I brought hyper hyper stylist stuff--Pirandello, Beckett, Abbott and Costello. Oh, and it was funny stuff, too, at least in my opinion. I'm finding that the students feel the weight of "writing a story" really a lot--I wanted to remind them there's supposed to be some entertainment value here.

And then I taught them how to punctuation dialogue and then...well, it was a short day so then we were out of time, but that was pretty much all I had anyway. How *do* you teach dialogue?

RR

Slackers and singles

2010-04-07T21:08:00.000-04:00

Final set of votes on weird word variations are in--I'll add mine in now and also the reason I've asked the questions. These were a bit more pointed than the others, I guess.

1) What is the piece of furniture you put your folded-up clothes into?

5 said "dresser," 2 "chest of drawers," and no one said "bureau." I say "dresser," too--I just thought everyone else said bureau and I was in the minority. I guess I just have a complex. Actually, this question was not particularly pointed.

2) What did you call the badass kids at your high school that just hung out smoking all day and never seemed to go inside the school?

1 for "stoner," 1 for "slacker," 1 for "kids in the smoke pit" and 2 didn't even have a name for this. No one said the term that was common at my school, which was "skids." I know, not very nice, and yet somehow clever because it sounds like "kids" only more messed up. I thought this was a local term, but I heard a Toronto girl use it the other day and thought maybe it was everywhere. But no?

3) And a reversed question: how do you define the word "single" as related to romantic relationships (as opposed to ice-cream cones or whathaveyou)? All 4 of the voters, plus me, define the term as some variation on "not in a relationship of any committed nature," Mark even going so far as to say, "Not to be confused with unmarried." But that's synchronicity is perhaps because all the voters are in approximately the same age range--I think I have found a generation discrepancy!

It all started a few weeks ago, when I read Sex and the Single Girl, which is, FYI, a really fun read, and slightly shocking both in showing how much things have changed (women were assumed to derive little fulfillment from work, not to be able to travel alone, and to want to kill themselves if they weren't married by 25) and how much they haven't (women who live alone are still regularly asked, "And do you really even bother to cook when it's just...you?" Correct answer: "No, I just get canned goods. I find if I just tip the can over my upturned mouth while standing on a piece of newspaper, there's almost no cleanup. More time for weeping!")

Then, about two weeks after I read it, I realized, that book wasn't about "single" girls at all. It was about girls in long- and short-term relationships with men they weren't married to. When I brought this issue to my mother, she said yes, that the single women were the unmarried ones, at least to her generation. So apparently I am single in that conception of the word, which is not likely to play very well within my non-legally-binding but certainly real relationship. Ahem.

So now we know--words are slippery, and will betray us at the slightest variant definition. This has been a most fascinating exercise, bloggy friends. Thank you for playing along.

Bad Blogger

2010-04-05T12:00:00.001-04:00

Dear Rose-coloured,

I am so sorry that I completely blanked on our third anniversary, last Wednesday. I truly believe that we are an excellent couple, Rose-coloured, and together we have so much fun, make such lovely new friends, and waste so much useful time that could have been spent getting the tomato sauce off the wall. I could never have imagined that what began as a self-absorbed fling could blossom into the long-term, with digital recorders and long distance interviews, shout-outs on serious blogs, and such kind comments a vast improvement in my nonfiction writing skills (and some actual publishing of it), all in pink pink pink!

Look how far we've come! When we first met, I had three jobs and was scrambling to finish my masters degree, and yet you always inspired me to write nonsense about busses and snacks and friends, no matter how tired I was. Now I have, um, two jobs and a book to finish (hm, not that far after all), and yet I totally haven't gotten sick of friends, busses, snacks, or blogging. Maybe I am a little (tiny bit!) tired of pink.

The forgotten anniversary is only reflective, rest assured, of those above busynesses. My love is pure, and I promise I will make this oversight up to you...what would you say to a new house?

Love and inanity,
RR

The last of the word surveys

2010-04-04T21:20:00.003-04:00

Ok, I'm going to stop doing this soon, because it is sort of addictive and I fear this becoming the Weird Word Variations blog. But y'all are very interesting, you know, and I keep coming up with new things I want to ask.

These are the results of the last round of questions, posted here. You should really go to that link and read all the crazy comments, because I wasn't able to adequately quantify the discussion, nor most of the bonus questions. But here's the gist of it:

1) What do you call the evening meal? The midday meal? Does that ever change? For what reason?

People mainly only answered the first part of the question, so I'll just post stats for that: 2 said dinner, two said supper, 4 said either of the above, and 1 said tea (yay, uniqueness!)

2) What do you call the garment you wear between the shower and getting dressed?

3 people call it a housecoat, 4 say bathrobe, 1 says dressing gown, and 1 declines to answer.

3) What do you call knocking on the door then running away (as a joke, not a failure of nerve)? This is interesting, because I hadn't heard of this (at least, not as a defined concept deserving of a name) but only one other person said the same. 1 said knock-a-door-run, 4 said Nicky-Nicky-Nine-Doors, 2 said Knock-Knock-Ginger (which is also a pretty good band), and 1 said knock-door-run-fast, which sounds more like instructions than anything.

4) What do you call catching a ride while on roller skates/blades by hanging onto the back of someone's car/truck? 2 said bumper-hitching, 1 said skitching, 1 car-surfing and 4, including me, were baffled and terrified and didn't know this was a concept.

And the final set of questions--there weren't going to be anymore, but then I had a bunch more weird conversations (such is my life), inspiring these:

1) What is the piece of furniture you put your folded-up clothes into?

2) What did you call the badass kids at your high school that just hung out smoking all day and never seemed to go inside the school? (some might construe the answers to this question as offensive--feel free to say "what other people called them/us is...")

3) And a reversed question: how do you define the word "single" as related to romantic relationships (as opposed to ice-cream cones or whathaveyou)? I am not talking about weird-tension, when-should-we-change-our-Facebook-status question, but an actual black-and-white definition. I always thought there was only one, but apparently there's at least two!

Good night, weird lovelies!

Rose-coloured and Mark review Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms

2010-04-02T08:53:00.003-04:00

I can't tell you how much I enjoy doing this series.

RR: Hello and welcome to the 3rd installment of Rose-coloured and Mark review bizarre candies that we find in our travels. Mark has been to America. Mark, would you like to tell us what you have brought back from America?

MS: Sure. I've brought back a very special package of M&Ms chocolate candies. These are Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms. As if strawberry were a verb.

RR: But it isn't a verb. In case anyone is learning English from this blog, it's not a verb.

MS: It's not a verb. But these are Americans so we'll forgive them... I think it's important to describe what's on this package. We have one of the M&M characters that's holding a jar of peanut butter in his left hand and a strawberry in his right hand and looking rather mischievous, as he's about to...dip the strawberry in the peanut butter.

RR: Which wouldn't be a crime necessarily, but how this could be manifest in M&M form is what we are curious to discover.

MS: Without further ado, I say we bust into this.

[much crinkling noise]

RR: So what I have in my hand is a red M&M, larger than a plain M&M. In fact, I would say the size of a peanut butter M&M. Mark has a brown one. I am going to attempt to bite mine in half in an attempt to see if the peanut butter is blended with the jelly.

MS: I'll do the same, just for consistency's sake.

[biting noises; this is a very good tape recorder]

RR: It didn't work. I got it all in my mouth at the same time. Ok, so it's a single paste. We're looking at Mark's because I failed. Oh my god, it's so weird. It's peanut butter, but then you chew for a while, and then it tastes like strawberries. Is that what you're experiencing?

MS: [laughing] Yes, it's as if it's been laced with strawberry.

RR: But it doesn't look like strawberry. Let us reiterate, it is not red, it is the colour of peanut butter [note of rising hysteria in RR's voice].

MS: Here, try a brown one. They are very flavourful, though.

RR: I don't even know if they're bad, but I'm trying to think so hard and... [chewing] There is no evidence of strawberries! You know, if you ate these fast, you would not even know there is a strawberry aspect to them. It is only by leaving it on my tongue and really thinking, that there's a hint... Are you experiencing that?

MS: Yes, very much so. I've bitten a red one in half and I'm looking at the inside: it's the red shell, followed by what could only be described as a mantle of chocolate and then a deep core of peanut butter.

RR: And...and...I don't know where...maybe the strawberry is in the shell! I'm taking this apart. Oh, the yellow has red speckles on it! I am going to gnaw off the shell.

MS: Ok. Rebecca is attempting to gnaw off the shell...in a sort of bunny rabbit fashion.

[sounds of gnawing]

RR: The strawberry is not in the shell. It's somewhere in the peanut butter that only looks like peanut butter.

MS: It think it is an important time to reiterate that this is peanut butter that has been strawberried.

RR: I guess we thought we knew what that verb meant. We didn't. [Package crinkle] So this contains the things that one would expect [RR reads ingredient list aloud] You will be shocked to learn: no fruit. So the strawberry, whatever it is, comes under "artificial flavours."

MS: It is a synthetic strawberry. Which is strange, because I bought this in Florida.

RR: But not at the strawberry farm?

MS: No, at a Walmart [short Walmart discussion--American Walmart sells beer!!]

RR: I just...sucked on one [until it dissolved] and, um, you couldn't taste the strawberry. Although now that it's gone--I've swallowed it--I can. The problem is, if I knew less, I would think that these are delightful. I love peanut butter M&Ms and these are, for all intents and purposes, peanut butter M&Ms.

MS: They are.

RR: But now that they've been analyzed, I don't know if I can get that kind of joy out of them anymore. I'm afraid that though this is a good candy, it's been overthought by the producers, and us...

MS: Respectively.

RR: And I cannot endorse it. There is something in there, and it's hard to discern, and hard to define, and it makes me anxious. I cannot pass this candy even though it is, technically, delicious.

MS: It is technically delicious, yes. A word of advice to our readers: don't overanalyze this candy; simply eat it. As an M&M, it's very good. It's got that nice peanut kick at the end. Just enjoy it for what it is. But if you are hunting for the reason why they've used strawberry as a verb, you're going to drive yourself insane.

RR: I would have to say that my advice would be to buy peanut butter M&Ms.

MS: And if you want some strawberry in there, buy some strawberry jam and put it on the M&Ms.

RR: I think that would be the solution.

MS: Now, that's weird. Just in this last minute or so, I've gotten the sensation of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

RR: When your mouth is empty, right?

MS: Yeah!

RR: Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. I'm frightened.

MS: It's like an aftertaste. It's somewhat unwholesome, but...it's there.

RR: I'm troubled. There's something in them that's not food that acts on the tongue. Mark is still eating them; I am not eating them anymore.

MS: This will be my last one.

RR: You eat as many as you want. I'm glad that someone is enjoying them. I mean, parts of me are enjoying them. I mean...we had no way of knowing that these candies would not stand up under analysis. They are best eaten in the dark, possibly while drunk.

MS: Drunk at the movies.

RR: So I'm giving them 4, because I cannot pass them. Mark?

MS: I'll give them a 6.5, but no more.

RR: No more grading or no more eating.

MS: No more than a 6.5. But you'll also note that I've stopped eating them.

RR: We have other candy. We'll be fine.

Workshop #5: Writing about the senses

2010-03-31T12:55:00.000-04:00

Something weird has been happening to me--my senses are getting sharper! Not vision, unfortunately; a few days ago, I took my contacts out and then mistook an empty toilet-paper roll lying on the floor for a mouse (and what was it doing on the floor, we wonder). But hearing and smelling, yeah, it's getting intense! Does this happen regularly to women in their thirties? It's sort of an unlooked-for, and in someways unhelpful, bonus. I had a near meltdown at a meeting because someone was twisting her pen barrel against the nib, and the rubbing made a very high-pitched squeaking noise. Apparently no one but me could hear it, but I eventually had to halt the meeting and request that the pen be quarentined, lest my brain explode. I'm sure all neighbouring dogs were very grateful. And I swear I can smell supper cooking in every house I pass at a certain hour, and you wouldn't believe the number of people in this city who get on the bus smelling of pot. I also uttered the words, "You bought a new brand of deoderant!" in an accusing voice, which is really something that, if you told me ten years ago I would be doing, I would have been profoundly shocked (and still sort of am).

Wow, everything I post has to have this big long personal preamble--sorry! What I'm getting at is, now is a good time to be doing the workshop I'm doing tomorrow, which is writing about sensory perceptions. I marked the first batch of assignments this week, and I can see that, as per usual, it's the visual that reigns supreme. Not unusual, even with mature writers, but I really do want them to broaden out. I'm going to be doing the same exercises as last year, which involve giving them a specific sensory stimuli, and one that lacks obvious references (unlike say, the scent of roses or the taste of honey, there are few obvious cliches about the flavour of Bubblemint gum or the sound of Leonard Cohen's voice) and inviting them to write about.

I think those exercises are useful for any writer to do at any age (and prettymuch always listening to Leonard Cohen is helpful) but the lesson I'm going to do beforehand is probably of less use to adults--a bit too elementary. But it's going to be on to the difference between subjective and objective adjectives.

It's so hard to remember being a kid and having a really narrow frame of reference and experience, mainly within the family and a group friends that might all have a similar narrow frame. It's so hard to remember when I thought a word like "beautiful" or "fascinating" or "boring" had a universal, unassailable interpretation. I'm not looking forward to breaking it to the whippersnappers that they can't say, "ugly wallpaper" and leave it at that, because every reader will have a different interpretation of the word "ugly." Better to describe the brown and gold flocked velvet wallpaper objectively, and leave it to the readers to conclude for themselves that it is ugly...some might not do so (!) but that's their perogative--perception is complicated.

I am so sure they are going so say, "But you say 'awesome' and 'amazing' and 'super' all the time. Those are totally subjective words." Fine--so they are. But me talking (or blogging) is supposed to be subjective, or that's how I justify it. And I'm also available to fill in the reasoning behind my judgements in person (or on the blog--really, just comment) whereas a narrator is not available to the reader beyond the last page of the story--it's got to be all in the writing. Anyway, that's what I'm going to tell them, and I hope they buy it, because then I'm going to ban all subjective adjectives.

I'll let you know how it goes.
RR

Survey says

2010-03-30T12:51:00.001-04:00

Well, as usual, y'all are fascinating. I had about 16 people answer these questions, so let us remember that these findings are in no way scientific, especially since some of the answers don't add up since people gave more than one response (both equally valid if they say them both, says I!) But fascinating, absolutely. I'll run through the answers and in doing so give you mine--I think then you'll see why I'm asking these questions in the first place.

1) You have a car, your friend does not, you are both going to the same place, and you would like to be helpful--what do you say to him/her?

13 people offered some variation on "Would you like a ride?" while only 3 mentioned what I usually say, which is "Would you like a lift?" (actually, what I really say is, "Could you give me a lift?" since I don't have a car). I always felt I'd gotten the lift thing wrong, because what's common in my little town is "Would you like a drive?" I thought maybe it was a rural thing, but in the survey, the lone respondent who used it was an urban Maritimer, so who knows?

2) What is that piece of terry you use to clean yourself in the shower/bath called? (although if Salinger can't solve this one, maybe I can't either)

Washcloth got 10 votes, beating out facecloth, which got only 6. I am thrilled--I am a washclother who thought she was outnumbered, but I was wrong! I am disappointed not to see washrag appearing in the survey at all; my suspicions that JD Salinger made it up are probably sadly justified.

3) What do you call a number of houses all designed, built and sold by the same company, on a set of streets where only such houses exist?

Housing development got 6 votes, subdivision got 8, and cookie-cutter homes got 2. Seriously? I didn't know about these until I went to high school in the suburbs, where these are everywhere and people call them surveys--I assumed the surbanites know of which they speak and have called them that ever since. Although it didn't occur to me until right now that that word must have something to do with the work of a surveyor in laying out the land plots. Interesting! Also interesting to hear from August that these sorts of uniform residental/commerical villages don't exist where he comes from. I thought the concept, if not the term, was universal!

4) You have left something at your place of employment--express this in a sentence.

Landslide: 14 votes for variations on "I left it at work," only one for "I left it at the office," and none at all for my hometown locution, "I left it at my work." No idea where that possessive comes from, but since "at work" isn't really grammatical either, I'm not willing to disown it.

5) Long thin beans that you can eat in the pod--what are the green ones called? What are the yellow ones called?

The green ones are relatively straightforward--13 votes for green beans,1 for beans, and 1 for snow peas (which is a different vegetable entirely where I come from).

Some confusion here with the yellow ones, including several people who declined to vote because they hadn't heard of them or simply refused to discuss them. From those who participated, 2 votes for yellow green beans (which RR dislikes), another single vote for beans, 5 votes for yellow beans (fine), and only one other vote for what the Rosenblum family calls them, which is wax beans. I have no idea why we call them that, and the other vote is from a Franco-Manitoban, who says its definitely not a French thing. So really we're no further along than we were before. But you sort of knew this survey was a waste of time before we started, now, didn't you? Really.

6) What do you call the nipple-shaped plastic thing you put in a baby's mouth to stop him or her from crying?

Pacifier (what I call it) got 6 votes, soother got 10 (and I do think this is more common in Canada). There were also a couple votes for family/nonsense variations, which are sweet.

7) What are your geographical origins that might impact your diction?

People answered from all over, which made me happy just because it was interesting for me! Thanks for participating in my reindeer games!

This survery brought up a few bonus questions in the comment section and in conversations. If you aren't bored with this project yet, feel free to discuss:

1) What do you call the evening meal? The midday meal? Does that ever change? For what reason?

2) What do you call the garment you wear between the shower and getting dressed?

3) What do you knocking on the door then running away (as a joke, not a failure of nerve)?

4) What do you call catching a ride while on roller skates/blades by hanging onto the back of someone's car/truck?

Whatdyacallit?: survey

2010-03-28T19:36:00.002-04:00

Different people often have different names for the same things. Sometimes the reason for this is regional, sometimes I cannot figure it out at all. I am fascinated by this, maybe because I was raised in one region by parents from another, so I kept noticing what people said when it was different from what I said. Anyway, I thought I would survey you, gentle blog readers, on a few things that always stick out to me. Please note that this is no way a studious, well-thought-out survey, nor am I planning on doing anything with the results other than finding them interesting (do you notice how nervous it makes me that an actual professional linguist reads this blog?) Note also, to avoid giving any bias as to how *I* would say things, the questions below are somewhat grammatically weird. And finally, I know I've already bugged a few people in blogland about this--it's one of my pet subjects! Sorry for the repeat, guys.

1) You have a car, your friend does not, you are both going to the same place, and you would like to be helpful--what do you say to him/her?

2) What is that piece of terry you use to clean yourself in the shower/bath called? (although if Salinger can't solve this one, maybe I can't either)

3) What do you call a number of houses all designed, built and sold by the same company, on a set of streets where only such houses exist?

4) You have left something at your place of employment--express this in a sentence.

5) Long thin beans that you can eat in the pod--what are the green ones called? What are the yellow ones called?

6) What do you call the nipple-shaped plastic thing you put in a baby's mouth to stop him or her from crying?

7) What are your geographical origins that might impact your diction? (for example, RR is from Southern Ontario, but her parents are from Brooklyn/Los Angeles, and because of the position of the tv antenna, most of the tv she watched growing up was from Buffalo)

If you feel like answering in the comments, or on your own blog and sending me a link, you will have made a humble nosy girl very happy. I'll post my answers in a little while, so as not to taint the sample (ha!)

RR

Events: I likes them

2010-03-26T12:11:00.001-04:00

Last night was the incomperable Book Madam's Sociable at the Pour House, which I attended with Kerry Clare and great joy. It would have been more useful if I'd blogged about this *before* the event happened, but you probably heard about it anyway. I'm a little out of the loop, but judging by the crowd around the bar, this was not an event that suffered from lack of publicity.

More upcoming events of awesomeness:

Wednesday March 31, 7pm--The launch party for the Baracuda anthology, put together of the most outstanding work from last year's SWAT program. One of my students is in it, and some of this year's are going to come out and applaud. I'm super-stoked.

Sunday April 18, 3pm--Draft Reading Series re-emerges from its winter hibernation with readings by Michael Bryson, Ian Burgham, Dani Couture, Ellen S. Jaffe and Mark Sampson. Woot!

Monday April 19, 6pm--Launch party for the poetry books by Paul Vermeersch, John Steffler, and Dionne Brand.

Wednesday April 21--Um, I think I'm reading, at the Free Times, as part of the Now Hear This series. Except, when I went to get the link, I got this instead, so now I'm not sure. Maybe someone will tell me soon. Check this space.

RR

Incidents and accidents

2010-03-25T12:48:00.001-04:00

1) In class yesterday:

Me, looking over the shoulders of two grade 11 girls as I walk past their desks: Girls, c'mon! I said no phones. (keep walking)

Girl, calling after me: Sorry, miss! We were just--

(I turn to them)

Other girl: Trying to look something up.

(Me internally: Dictionaries live in phones now?)

First girl: Yeah. How do you spell "schizophrenia"?

Me: Oh, well, er-- Yeah, fine. Look in your phone.

First girl: Thanks, miss.

Me: You've won...

Other girl: Yes, miss.

Me: ...this round.

This proves that the reason I refuse to get a cell phone is that I am afraid they are smarter than I am (and I'm probably right, because what I was actually think began with "s-k-" until I realize that was nuts. People think I'm a good speller but I really just own a good [paper] dictionary and sit with it open at my left elbow, which is why I spelled "schizophrenia" correctly above).

2) On the subway, I laughed aloud at something I was reading. What I was reading was Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood, so it's not so surprising that I laughed, because it is very funny. But it's a little surprising because I almost never laugh aloud when alone. I don't know why, but somehow I think laughing is a communicative act, though semi-involuntary. I like funny movies and go to a fair number on my own (for reasons of necessity brought on by [occasionally] having extremely bad taste--I can't accept that they would bother to make a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine unless that had something important to say about the subject) and I'll laugh with the audience in happy solidarity, but not really reading and watching tv alone (from what I remember).

Anyway, but then I did, last night, and it caused the drunk guy behind me to say something obscene to or about me. Which is not exactly positive reinforcement to keep doing it.

3) I was walking down the sidewalk this morning and a truck travelling the opposite way made that "ffffffftttttt" sound that I always associate with air brakes although I actually have no idea what it is. But the truck was still moving along at a good clip, and then I noticed that a little jet of steam/smoke shot out under the *front* bumper in time with the noise. I was staring at this in perplexity when I realized the driver was waving at me in a hey-there-old-friend jaunty manner. I definitely don't know him. There aren't a lot of pedestrians in that part of town, perhaps he was just offering solace to an endangered species. Or maybe he was just glad I liked his truck?

Does anyone know what the noise and/or steam mean?

RR

Workshop #4: Plot

2010-03-24T07:19:00.002-04:00

Today's workshop is on plot! Boo, I say, but I've found kids really do need this kind of structure--you need to learn the dimensions of the box before you can think outside of it. And it is kind of interesting for me to review the standard plot graph--it's good to remember that that's at least a possibility when I'm writing, and if I choose not to use it I should at least acknowledge that I'm choosing.

But I actually wouldn't really suggest grown-up writers try writing an entire story by the graph--it's not a terrible idea, but it's a lot of work if you are in the middle of a project--to make it worthwhile you'd have to really invest some time in the story, so that the graph didn't just dominate it. But, heck, if you are more disciplined than I, it probably would be illuminating, what you can do with that inverted tick mark.

Instead, here are a couple less ambitious exercises I often do with stories I'm working on, which I found help immensely plotwise. Maybe they'll help you too:

1) Graph your plot *after* you get to the second draft. If you are finding that there's something wonky about the pacing, graph the amount of event/dialogue/description per page and see if you are finding bits that are overloaded versus bits that are slack. In my classes today, we'll definitely be talking about non-standard plot graphs--flat lines, loop-de-loops, parallel arcs, connect-the-dots...all work if you work them, natch, but I find I often don't even know I'm doing these things until I write/draw it out. And it's easier to improve the structure once you know what it is.

If the sketch seems to gimmicky, simply write yourself an outline--Jenny walks to the garden supply centre (two pages), Jenny remembers Derek ski accident (1/2 page), Jenny runs into Derek in the parking lot (4 1/2 pages)--to see if you can spot pacing errors. I never ouline at the beginning, but I find at this point it is really helpful to see where I'm spending my pages. This is especially helpful if it's a double (or more) narration, or a story with a lot of flashbacks, or anything that's important to keep balanced.

2) I'm going to have the kids base their first round of plot graphs not on their own stories but on back-jacket copy from novels--they'll have the basic plots from those, and fill in the rest from their own brains (at least, this is the hope). For an adult, I would suggest doing this in reverse--writing a book-cover blurb for you own story at the midway point in the process. I find that summarizing a story in the manner of back-jacket copy is...well, just as horrible and painful as summarizing in any other context. When asked to summarize, my instinct is always, "I can't, the story doesn't work that way, if you want to know what it's about read it, bah I don't wanna I hate you." And it devolves from there. But at least thinking about the book cover reminds me that this is a necessary process--someday, I hope to have the story *in* a book, and that book will need to have some sort of description written on the cover. Sometimes, the push helps.

If I'm *really* struggling with the summary, that's probably a sign that there's something wrong with the story--there should be a few elements that can be easily described, at least. You're going to judge me for being self-indulgent, but sometimes I also try writing these summaries as reviews--glowing ones. And that of course *is* self-indulgent, but it is also true that if I write down the nice things I want people to say about the work, it reminds me of what my goals for the piece actually are--which is not always so apparent on the page. And, also, on a tough day, it's nice to imagine someone saying nice things about my work.

So...that's a few suggestions on working with plot. Feel free to add more if you have your own better/different plotting exercises, or to let me know if these work or don't work for you. I hope the kids like'em.

RR

Rose-coloured reviews Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

2010-03-23T12:30:00.002-04:00

I have been working on reading all the Hitchhikers' Guide books for a few months now, trying to give the new one a fair shake when I finally read it (it's in the post right now). And then Mark proposed the Retro Reading Challenge, so I fudged my reading challenge into his.

I'm supposed to have read the book only once, and it's possible I did, and at least 15 years ago, which seems about right. So this is my RRC review, then:

This book is hella disjointed. The first three books in the series were too--very very very episodic, and none-too-committed to causality--whatever good gag Adams could think up to put next, that's what happened next, coherence, plot or character development, linear time be damned. The plot never really did come together in any of the books, but the characters, showing their stripes in reaction to whatever lunacy the universe/Adams threw at them, actually did resolve in reasonably consistent, fairly likeable, not especially deep folks. At least, I found them likeable.

Then, in the fourth book in the series, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, apparently someone told the author he needed more emotional resonance or some such, and so two of the four central characters (Zaphod and Trillian) get ditched entirely, Earth gets reinstated (it was destroyed in the first book) and Arthur, the bumbling everydweeb from earth who has spent the last three books stumbling around in terror (as well he should), gets to go home, sleep in his own bed, and fall in love with a pretty girl. Ford Prefect, Arthur's sarcastic savior from the planet Betelgeuse gets to stick around, but mainly for drunken confusion.

I never really understood the parts of *Fish* that Ford was in, but Arthur's love story with Fenchurch is just lovely, if only from a wish fulfillment perspective--there's all manner of impossible concidence and heart-stopping joy and this really great love scene while flying... It does not, of course, make any sense with what came before--no one has experience a genuine emotion besides fear and hunger in the entire series up until now. What's more, no on has said a dirty word, had sex or wanted to--you could safely give the first three books to children if you so desired (they wouldn't understand, but they wouldn't be Corrupted, either). So making the characters say "sh*t" and experience erotic desire in book #4--well, that's changing the rules a bit.

Thus, we are preprared for book #5, wherein 1) earth is gone again, for reasons never made clear, 2) Fenchurch is gone (for good, it seems) due to an accident that is never explained. It's basically as if book #4 didn't happen. Trillian, the pretty earth girl who travelled around with president of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox and "told him what she thought of him" (sex, or even Trillian's attractiveness: never mentioned) is back, though, Zaphod does not make a reappearance after book 3 (unless you count the nothing-to-do-with-anything-and-not-even-very-funny short story, Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, which is stuck in the back of my omnibus of the first four books.

Anyway, sorry--long lead-in. Trillian's back, although this is actually not really her but an alternative-universe version of Trillian that readers have not meant before. Before she met Zaphod and went into space, she was plain old Tricia McMillan (I think that's clever) and she was an astrophysicist--now she's so consumed with regret she's left the profession, is working in television, and has very little enthusiasm for life. It's surprisingly affecting. No, really, read:

"There was something roughly the size ofa large camper van parked about a hundred feet above her lawn.

"It was really there. Hanging there. Almost silent.

"Something moved deep inside her.

"Her arms dropped slowly down to her side. She didn't notice the scalding coffee slopping over her foot. She was hardly breathing as slowly, inch by inch, foot by food, the craft came downwards. Its lights were playing softly over the ground as if probing and feeling it. They played over her.

"It seemed beyond all hope that she should be given her chance again. Had he found her? Had he come back?"

He hasn't, but something else happens and for a while it seems like a female character has a plotline for the first time in HHG history...but then it fades out.

Ford has a very similar plotline to the one he had in 4--namely, hijinx--but it makes a good deal more sense and actually concerns the Hitch Hiker's Guide and so, indirectly, the other characters and some of the things that have come before in the series. But mainly he's just there for the hijinx. And it's awfully fun:

"Ford hurled himself at the door of the editor-in-chief's office, tucked himself into a tight ball as the frame splintered and gave way, rolled rapidly across the floor to where the drinks trolly laden with some of the Galazy's most potent and expensive beverages habitually stood, seized hold of the trolley and, using it to give himself cover, trundled it and himself across the main exposed part of the office floor to where the valuable and extremely rude statue of Led and theh Octobpus stood, and took shelter behind it."

Bwa!

And Arthur, loveable Arthur who no reader would bother reading 5 books about if they did not adore? Well, he has...a series of (mis)adventures, now on all on his own, apparently searching for enlightenment and a place to call home. The adventures are funny, but they all resolve like jokes, with punchlines. And Arthur's story in particular is heavily freighted by this idea of alternate universes, which here makes no sense whatsoever. In Adams's highly imaginative (but perhaps not deeply imagined) universe, Earth is located in a plural sector (ZZ), thus making it unstable in the 5th dimension--depending on where you are on that axis, sometimes Earth is present, sometimes not.

For good or ill, the above explanation does make sense to me. But how does one go about moving in the 5th dimension? Arthur keeps arriving on a planet with Earth's coordinates, realizing it is nothing like Earth and setting off for...the exact same physical coordinates again? How does that happen?

What bugs me about this is, Adams could totatally could have answered these questions; he just got lazy and/or bored with the thought process. If there's one thing that reading 5 books of his in rapid succession has taught me, it's that brother was a genius, yo. He totally understood the science (and philosophy) on which he based his constructions. But he had a short attention span.

Finally Arthur gets a gig making sandwiches on a primitive planet (they'd never seen sandwiches before) and Ford gets free of his scary adventure at the HHG, and Tricia McMillan gets forgotten about. Reappears, Trillian! With a daughter in tow, fathered by Arthur although without sexual participation (ah, the series returns to form) or even knowledge.

The part with Arthur and his daughter, Random (that's her name) is really treacly, and thus in fact Random, because trying spark paternal love in this morass of puns, sight gags and interdimensional physics is a non-starter.

So, pretty much is the resolution of the novel. The gag around which the whole ending, which--to Adams's credit--was set up two books ago is, in my humble opinion, pretty dumb. The lunacy that surrounds it, involving Tricia, Trillian, Random, Ford, and some neat repercussions from book 1--is cooler, but when it finally ends, the bang is a whimper.

The ending, it's been noted in various places, is also really dark, and an attempt to be the be-all end-all of endings: no more books in this series, was it seemed the author's message. Except he later regretted that, and it seems, mentioned that regret to his wife, who contact Eoin Colfer....

This seems like a negative review but it's not--I still love this book! In response to Mark's challenge, I should say the love that I held for it in 1994 was blind love. Back then, my tolerance for ambiguity allowed me to not understand any of the science and still enjoy the kooky tales and gags. And in 2010, I had lost patience with kook for kook's sake, but some of the gags are pretty good, I like the characters and I get (some of) the science.

It's a book with enough going on that two readings probably aren't really enough, but the several pages of analysis above are probably too much. This book was written for, and with, pleasure, and should likely not be overthought--too late for that. I love it anyway, and Colfer's book is going to have a tough act to follow (especially if he's going to come up with an astrophysical logic for reinstating the earth).

I actually have The Salmon of Doubt on my shelf right now, the only DA book (that I know of) that I haven't read. I am sort of uncomfortable with it, as the book consists of stuff recovered from the author's hard-drive, which he never (necessarily) meant to publish, but I do love his writing, probably too much to neglect anything. And perhaps there are clues in there that will help me judge *And Another Thing* when I finally get around to reading it.

I meant to make this review really thorough, but I think it is just really long...

RR

Lookalike

2010-03-22T21:10:00.004-04:00

Remember a few weeks ago this meme went around Facebook about how you were supposed to post a picture of the celebrity you look most like? Well, you probably can't remember, because you have better things to do, but I don't, and was really amazed at how many of my friends bear a shocking resemblance to people I haven't heard of (but are famous, and attractive [natch, because I have attractive friends]).

Anyway, I wanted to play, too, but couldn't, because I don't look like anybody. Well, I look like my mother, who is a delightful person to look like (it makes me very happy when I introduce her as my mom and people say, "Well, obviously!") but she is sadly not (yet) famous for anything. So I didn't to do the meme.

Then, this afternoon, I was at the gym in my ponytail and sweaty t-shirt, trying really hard to do a good clean and jerk (I can do it, too, but I just can't admit what's on the barbell) and it came to me! It's not the comparison I've always dreamed of (which is: perhaps someday someone will tell me I look like Winona Ryder in *Heathers*, pretty much my standard of female beauty).

I had to take this picture myself, so I'm not sure it really captures the striking similarities, but I still find it spooky:

Do you see it? Not, like, twins, but some definite correspondences!

RR

Good things happen

2010-03-22T12:17:00.003-04:00

There are some things it is dumb to wish for, because they may not happen, because there's nothing you can do to make them happen, and it doesn't really matter in the scheme of things anyway. So when such things *do* happen, like, say, being given an elaborate bouquet of roses or being asked for your autograph on the bus, you don't even have a response prepared, and have to just hope you somehow make your delight apparent.

When I return to complaining about how hard my life is, someone really needs to remind me that the above both happened to me this weekend

To read about some other good things that happened to me, you might take a look at my thoughts on publishing with Biblioasis, posted this morning on That Shakespearian Rag.

RR

The Weatherboy

2010-03-19T12:06:00.001-04:00

Now this is just lovely: the Rattling Books podcast of my story, The Weatherboy, as read by Gerard Whelan. I know, it's bad manners to say something I wrote myself is lovely, but it's actually Whelan's delicate reading of the story that I'm in love with. It makes me so happy to hear the story doing things I hadn't quite thought of, yet are perfect for it anyway.

This story originally appeared in echolocation 7, and I'm so pleased it's getting another life.

RR

Collectors' Items

2010-03-17T21:12:00.005-04:00

I am so pleased to announce that my very first chapbook, Road Trips is forthcoming with Frog Hollow Press. It'll be out in May--maybe in time for my birthday! The book consists of two stories, "From an Eastern University" and "The Least of Love", and I am very honoured to have them published in what will no doubt be a beautiful edition, as all FHP publications are. So exciting! If you too are very very excited, you can preorder from the title link above!

An open secret around here is that I have written a great many stories about a character named Isobel, and even thought I was writing a collection about her at one point, although that has not worked out too well (*yet*--I'm certainly not done trying). Anyway, "The Least of Love" is one of those stories. Quite often, people get excited when I tell them certain stories of mine are connected, but other times I explain the connections and they don't care at all--a story begins on the first page and ends on the last for them, and that's that. For the sake of those in the first category (if any) I thought I'd list the (published) Isobel stories here--then you can feel free to ignore and read the stories as standalones, or to track them all down and read in order. Or not to read them at all, that's totally an option too.

These are in the order they happen chronologically in time for the characters, not the order they were written or published in. Places you can find them are beside the titles, should you care to do so.

"Dykadelic"--forthcoming in *The Milan Review" (May 2010)
"Fruit Factory"--*The New Quarterly* 102 Summer 2007; *Best Canadian Stories 2008* Oberon Press; *Once* Biblioasis 2008
"ContEd"--*Coming Attractions 2008* Oberon Press; *Once*; *The Fiddlehead* Summer 2009
"Christmas with My Mother"--*Earlit Shorts 4* Rattling Books December 2009; *Best Canadian Stories 2009*
"Far from Downtown"--forthcoming in *The New Quarterly* summer 2010
"The Least of Love"--forthcoming in *Road Trips* from Frog Hollow Press

So now you know, if you collect these stories, where you can collect them from, including a book that is itself going to be a beautiful collectors' item.

If you, you know, dig that sort of thing.

RR

Rose-coloured reviews The Blind Side

2010-03-16T20:00:00.000-04:00

So Fred posted Sandra Bullock's Oscar acceptance speech. I started out reading the transcript, then partway through I wanted to see her delivery so I switched to the YouTube clip, then I went to CinemaClock Toronto and, as soon as was possible, went pretty much directly to the movie theatre. It's a really good speech.

And The Blind Side is a *pretty* good movie. Not, like, amazing or anything, but for a sweet, funny, no-hard-questions-no-hard-answers film, which I am sure was exactly what the makers set out for, this was a great success.

In truth, I knew as soon as I saw the first trailer last year that I would like this movie--I am a sucker for sweet, funny, no-hard-questions-no-hard-answers films. I held out as long as I could.

In case anyone on planet earth doesn't know this, The Blind Side is about a poor black teenager named Michael, who was taken from his drug-addicted mom at a young age, who has run away from every foster home he was ever in, and is about to wear out his welcome on the friend's couch he currently occupies.

The friend, Big Tony, offers one last favour--when he takes his own son to a ritzy Christian private school to plead for the boy's admission, he takes Michael too, and mentions in passing the boy's troubles. Both are admitted to the school and become, apparently, the only black kids there, although bizarrely, we never see Big Tony's son (or Big Tony) again. Whatever happened to that kid? And, while I'm at it, who paid *either* boy's tuition (Big Tony is a mechanic and unlikely to afford one, let alone two, years at such a place).

Ok, unlikely beginnings out of the way, Michael catches the interest of a kindhearted motormouthed student, SJ Tuohy (oh my goodness, that kid is cute, but only in a movie way. A real kid who talked that much would have to be periodically locked in a cupboard). When the family is driving home late one night, they see Michael walking alone in the cold, and SJ's mom Leigh Ann (Ms. Bullock) stops and demands to know the situation. When it becomes clear that Michael doesn't really have a situation--walking alone in the cold is pretty much the size of things--Bullock and husband (played by Tim McGraw, who I always thought was a singer, but does a fine job here) take the boy home.

He never leaves, and although he's silent and awkward and seemingly often quite miserable, he accedes to Bullock's demands that he accept new clothes from her, to his teachers' demands that he learn something at school, and eventually to the football coach's demands that he learn to be a tough, quick, aggressive player.

I'm a little disturbed that the movie presents Michael as basically devoid of volition, or even survival instinct (before Leigh Ann lectures him, he is content to get pummelled on the playing field). Michael Lewis's book, on which the film was based, is rumoured to give Michael a little more credit for his own success, but since I haven't read it, I can't hazard a further guess.

But it doesn't matter that the film's Michael has almost no agency, because the Tuohys are *so* nice that anything they would want for Michael is going to be the best thing possible. That sounds like hyperbole, and in real life it would be, but in the movies, people can any way we want them to, and sometimes, it's nice to see people who are 100% kind and generous, 100% of the time. It's how I'd be if I could, and since I can't, nice of Sandra Bullock to do it for me.

These actors are talented, and they make the supermoral Tuohy family as convincing as possible. I liked even the daughter, Collins, who had almost no lines but delivered all that she had with beautiful simplicity. I liked the conversation she has with her mom about whether having Michael in the house makes her uncomfortable. She admits that kids at school give her a hard time, but insists, several times, that it doesn't matter.

That's the right point of view, just a hard one to take, especially when you are 17. And we never *see* the kids teasing her--we only see her firm decision to rise above. I suspect part of the reason people (myself included) love this movie is that it makes it seem easy to be good—everything hard (including almost all of Michael's miserable childhood) happens off screen.

Let us not forget that this film is highly Conservative (I think I'm using that big C correctly, right?) The social workers, the public school system, public housing and drug rehabilitation programs, all have failed Michael. The only solution to society's ills--bad schools, dangerous neighbourhoods, drugs, poverty, racism, and violence, to name a few--is for very rich people to take it upon themselves to solve them, one sweetly innocent and earnest teenaged victim at a time.

You know what? I'll stop with the cynicism now, because this is (more or less) a true story, so some people actually did actually did do the things that happen in *The Blind Side* and they must be extraordinary, and certainly inspiring. I just think maybe we should extrapolate much from people who are extraordinary or, indeed, people who own a dozen Taco Bell franchises.

There is a montage a little past the midway point, depicting the summer Michael spends training to be on the school football team. SJ resolves to help him, and there is shot after shot of the tiny white boy and the enormous black boy romping in this perfect field of green. Lovingly shot and lovingly performed, it's a whack of fun.

The only places this film falls apart is exactly where you'd want it too--the usual third-act turn-for-the worse (a car accident, a bit of violence, a weird intervention from some sort of college football organization) are so forced and weirdly foreshadowed as to be utterly implausible. The gangsters and the snarky investigators are the only bad actors in the thing--it's like the casting director said, "Well, we don't want anyone too convincing, or the audience will get upset."

I liked this movie, and many others, because I never had to be upset--only happy and getting happier, until the very happy ending. If you don't like such Hollywood uplift, you won't like this movie--but if you do, it's one of the best of its kind.

PS--To the two women in their thirties who sat in front of me and to the right, talking throughout the film as if in their own living room and repeating the good lines aloud in case anyone missed them: you are everything that is wrong with modern society. May you be splashed by buses in the rain, and find hair baked into your pizza long after the deliveryperson has gone.

It's come to my attention...

2010-03-15T12:47:00.000-04:00

That some young Canadian musicians took K'naan's Waving Flag song, possibly the most perfect song to play on the radio in a good while, and made a slightly less good version to benefit victims of the earthquake in Haiti. I thought this idea was genius when I first heard about it, because it's such a great song about personal empowerment and strength, but a little hazy on the details so it could conceivably work for lots of things (full disclosure: I don't know what it was originally about). They added some specifics anyway ("out of the darkness / in came the carnage"--oh, dear) and a rap bridge (yikes) but it is kind of cool to hear all those voices rising together at the end. So I recommend you buy the less good version, because it's a good cause and a song that you really can't wreck. It's sort of a superhero song, so maybe it can really do a lot of good for Haiti--look what it did for soccor.

That Rover Arts posted a nice review of the Journey Anthology 21.

That Bonjour Brioche in Leslieville is wonderful. Crowded on the weekends, but seriously, any carb in the place is probably gold. And waitress sometimes talk to each other in French.

RR

Brothers and Sisters

2010-03-14T22:50:00.003-04:00

When I was a young whippersnapper student writer, somewhere in later undergrad years, I won a place in a one-day seminar with the novelist/short-story writer Audrey Thomas. It was a cool honour and an interesting day, but the organizers overbooked the workshop a little, and Ms. Thomas wasn't really able to comment specifically on much of the student work. She may havesaid one or two other small things, but the meat of what she said about my story was how nicely unexpected it was that the close friends in the opening scenes eventually turn out to be brother and sister.

That stuck with me--not so much the compliment, although that was nice, but the pointing out that brother/sister relationships are not the most popular topic for stories, and that may well be because not everyone *has* an opposite-sex sibling, especially one that they are close to. It was a good reminder that I needed to check my work carefully for that sort of autobiographical creep--it may be that almost every one of my main characters in my earliest stories *did* have a close sibling. Maybe.

This goes back to that teenager centre-of-the-earth thing--I wasn't entirely sure how people without such relationships functioned, and I suppose I suspected not very well, even though I know some people who didn't, and did (something went wrong with that sentence). I've met a lot more people since then, only children, people estranged from their families, people perfectly polite with their sibs but just none-too-chatty, mainly all perfectly functional, and thus I've gotten over the urge to give every character a brother or a sister.

But I'm still immensely fond of my brother, and I guess I'd like to see our vibe represented in art a little more. I say this because the two of us just finished watching You Can Count on Me, a film that everyone in the world recommends as a great brother-sister films, and that we both loathed. I'm so disappointed, especially since every critic in the world (see the above link) loved it. Not sure what the misfire was there.

We loved The Savages and even Home for the Holidays was pretty good (I think I liked it more than B. did) but...are there others? Because I really can't think of any, and would love some recommendations if anyone has any... (yes, I make a point of watching these sorts of things with B.--what, it's the same as watching romantic movies with your SO, isn't it?)

I'm probably just blanking out of panic, but I'm having the same trouble with books. Of course there's Franny and Zooey, and I want to say Holden and Phoebe in Catcher, but that's kids and I'd actually like adult relationships if possible (being as I'm adult and all). What else... Oh, dear. Maybe I'm having this problem because it's late. I'll try again tomorrow, but if you have ideas, please share!!

Rose-coloured reviews Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner

2010-03-14T13:19:00.000-04:00

I finished a day late (what's up with that lately?) but I was still able to be really pleased that Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner won Canada Reads. Even though I don't really know the radio flavour of the debates or what caused the book to rise to the top for that particular group, I enjoyed it immensely and am glad the book will have a wider audience (and another little decal to put on its cover, along with the GG one) thanks to this.

I am glad the book chosen as our national read is such unabashed fun--full of puzzles and confusion and fanciful adventure, and, especially, language that is an electric delight. I often feel a bit of frustration when reading translations, the sneaking suspicion that however good the English version is, it's a bit...muffled...compared to the original. Nikolski suffered not a bit from that cottony translation-y feel, so a considerable debt is owed to Lazer Lederhendler (what a great name!) for making this translation so crisp and snappy. Read or, really, listen and watch:

"In a few seconds, she will be pinned face down on the asphalt, a knee pressed into her back, and duly handcuffed.

"She swings around 90 degrees and bolts toward the wire lattice. A Frost fense. Good--she knows how this thing works. She grabs the steel mesh and scrambles up as fast as she can. Too late. A pair of hands are clutching the cuffs of her jeans and pulling her down toward solid ground. She tightens her grip and kicks out blindly. The young, aggressive guard holws with pain and lets go.

"Suddenly released from his grasp, Joyce describes an elegant arc over the grid. Sailing head down through the air, she wonders how this is all going to end."

Isn't that perfectly lovely?

From what I hear of Canada Reads, we should count ourselves lucky not to have gotten a medicinal winner that bears its Canadianness like a prescription for better nationalism. Nikolski's set all over the country (except British Columbia, which some of the characters are afraid of), and is gleeful in the place names, the little local details, the histories and topographies, and especially the maps. I could have done with a few fewer descriptions of maps, but Dickner seemed to be enjoying himself so much, so what the heck--it was interesting enough. The cartography theme, the bibliomania theme, the garbage theme, the fish theme--all seem to concentrate on history, signs left behind (ok, except the fish--the fish are just neat). It's a book that's thrilled about being a book, that's thrilled about other books, full of characters who read with joy and enthusiasm. Delightful.

Language, theme, now for the tricky part--what is this book about? Well, there are three central characters, although it's really hard to tell that for a long time--we get histories and ancestries of half a dozen others who them don't reappear. In this, as well is in the formally effervescent language, the emphasis on family trees, and wildly implausible coincidence plausibly brought off, Dickner owes a considerable debt to Marquez (oh, go to the link just to see the photo--have you ever seen a sweeter author photo?)

Ok, wait, not influences, plot--what is the book *about*? I, um, don't know. The three characters, Noah and Joyce in the third person, and an unnamed bookstore clerk in the first, are vaguely connected through a book (Noah and the clerk), family relationships (Noah and Joyce), proximity (all live in the same neighbourhood) and friends (Noah and Joyce). The most seemingly important relationships go unrecognized, though, and mainly the novel is three separate stories with minimal intersection.

Which is kind of awesome--characters move in and out of each other's lives with minimal fanfare, coincidences are known mainly to the narrator not the characters, and life changes happen in a breath without anyone getting too excited. And what's amazing is that this book has *no* closure--I actually literally did that thing where you turn the last page over thinking the story is still going, only to get the Acknowledgements. So you flip back, thinking two pages stuck together and then you realize--that's it. Some lives went on in front of us for a while and they were interesting, and now they will probably continue to go on and be interesting, but not in front of us anymore. We had our share.

If you hate books like that, wait, don't run away--you could think about it differently. If you just read the book as Noah's story, it coheres a lot better as a forward-moving narrative (albeit with a lot of digressions). Noah is by far the most fleshed out character--he has loves and longings and career anxiety. His academic career--studying indigeneous prehistory through archeology, introduces my favourite character, Thomas Saint-Laurent, his supervisor. Saint-Laurent is actually an archeologist of trash--he ends the book protesting the destruction of a dump--and is good goofy fun (although why does no one ever point out that all archeology deals with trash, ie., remains and debris??) Noah's adventures take over more and more of the book, and are pretty fascinating, especially since Noah is such a sweetly baffled, slightly adrift character.

Joyce starts out vibrant and vivid but by halfway through the book she's figured out her career path and then she just apparently...keeps doing it. We don't hear much about her for ages, and never about her ever having a personal interaction with a single soul until very near the end, and then it's only an emergency favour. I do have to quibble with the way women are treated in this book--of five female characters, one is dead as the book begins, three disappear by book's end, and the other one is enigmatic Joyce. Which is, perhaps, just the way it is sometimes, but none of the female characters besides Joyce ever seems to have a rational explanation for anything she does--certainly, none are offered--and Joyce's choices all dead-end eventually. These women serve more as the conditions under which male characters must cope, rather than characters in themselves, which, you know, bugs me. Joyce doesn't fit that mold, being rather a very cool character who wizens away as the story progresses.

That said, I really didn't do things like tally up female versus male plot action while I was reading--I was quite happily swept away by Niokski, and looking back on said sweeping, I think *Nikolski* deserved the complete attention I gave it. This book is big, weird, ambitious, hilarious, true, and magical--and the fact that it was written by a Canadian about Canada, and was voted for by Canadians, makes me proud to be one, too.

RR

Workshop #3: Setting and real estate

2010-03-12T17:32:00.000-05:00

I am once again a day late (a buck short?) in posting my workshop for the week, but most of what we were working on was actually not stuff I would recommend writers over 18 do. It's not because it's "too elementary"--I've found it very useful to do things that are so basic I usually skip, like write character sketches, graph plots (if only to see that they graph as pentagrams or loop-de-loops), read dialogue aloud, etc.

But this week we were working on settings and, knowing that I mainly draw on experience for setting, and know that teenagers often have not been to a lot of different places, I brought in real-estate mags so they could look at the pictures and try to imagine where their characters would live.

This worked only sorta--kids got way too enthralled trying to find their own dream homes. Not that I blame them--that's what I was doing the night before instead of class prep. Besides, this stuff is really too research-y to be much good--what can you really tell from a couple artfully staged photos and a floorplan? I draw almost all my settings from places I've been, reconfigured in my imagination to suit the characters' lives and budgets.

But teenagers haven't been many places, at least relatively. Although my students are a wildly international lot, I'm pretty sure that certain childhood limitations hold true--you are mainly in your family's home, and even if you move, you'll often move to a similar sort of dwelling. And the family and friends you visit, their homes will be in the same ballpark. What I'm basically talking about here is class--though I'm sure many people are exceptions, the way neighbourhood schools work, you see a lot of people in the same tax bracket as your own family, and so small distinctions get blown out of proportion--you think the family with a carport instead of a garage is "poor" and the ones with a swimming pool are "rich."

Then your circle gets a little wider in your late teens, you meet people who more properly qualify as "rich" and "poor" and the scales fall, little by little, from your eyes (this takes longer with some people than others). And until that process is fairly far along, it's really really hard to imagine even basic aspects of how people with different amounts of money live. Yesterday, when one of the students suggested that the "Homes and Land" booklet she was looking at was too ritzy for her characters, I suggested she might want to look at the booklet for the rental market instead. She was horrified and her friends all teased her--"Oh, snap!" So apparently, in that neighbourhood, "poor" people rent.

I really want them to get a sense of the diversity of what goes on in a city, but I'm not sure they did. I keep emphasizing that it's great if they want to write about their own experiences and/or their own context, but they still need to realize that's only one of many many many.

I think one of the wonders of being a grown-up is starting to know about those many, and being (a little) less constrained by where I started. There are aspects of this teaching gig that make me nostalgic for my youth, but I really don't want to be 16 again.

The Baby Zoo

2010-03-10T07:36:00.004-05:00

I keep forgetting to tell you guys about the Baby Zoo! This has nothing to do with anything, but it's something that makes me happy and maybe you'll like it too.

Even back in the days when I thought babies were sticky, noisy emergency-room-visits-waiting-to-happen, and wouldn't hold one unless I was sitting on the floor (less falling distance, should I happen to lose my grip) (uh, that would be my whole life up until about three years ago, when the first of my good friends had one), I still liked looking at babies from a distance. It's pretty much the future of the species in adults finding babies cute-looking, and someone really got all the design elements right on that project.

Even now, when I know some babies quite well and enjoy hanging out with them, my most regular baby glimpses happen at the Baby Zoo. This is an indoor playground that has an entire wall of windows. The architecture probably has more to do with allowing the babies to see out rather than passersby to see in, but it definitely works both ways.

The room is full of soft furniture of indeterminate function in bright pastels (er, brighter than a normal pastel, but not white free of dilution...er, you know what I mean?) There are little climbing ramps and big weighted beachballs for the older kids and musical instruments that can be shaken or whacked for the littler, immobile ones. And there's parachute silk everywhere!

I walk past this place at least once or twice a day, depending on what I'm up to, and have for years, so I can tell you on good authority that the babies go bananas in this place! They can't be unattended even for a moment, so you see a baby laboriously scooting backwards up a slide on his butt while a mom or dad stands at the top, cooing and encouraging and/or (quite often) filming. Sometimes babies just run or crawl on the squishy floor and the parents chase them. Sometimes, in a sea of babies, two will encounter each other face to face and suddenly realize that they are not alone in the universe--you see the occasional ET-style finger-touching moments.

Sometimes babies ignore all the cool expensive equipment in the Baby Zoo and just try to escape, ducking into the cloakroom and trying to clammer back into their strollers and be taken away. Yes, the cloakroom's windowed, too--as is the eating area where you can watching some of the older babies (I guess these are toddlers) smear themselves with pizza sauce and/or frosting, while the parents eat ravenously and listen for choking. Once, I saw a small small boy in a brown corderoy suit desperately suckered to the window (mouth and nose, too), trying to osmose through to reach the goth teenager who was sitting on the ground just beyond the class, eating grocery-store chicken.

Sometimes, I walk past the Baby Zoo at night and then, of course, there are no babies. Occasionally, instead, I catch sight of the old man who cleans the place, carefully vacuuming the everything-resistant rubberized surfaces of the floor and all the equipment. He's chubby fellow with a grey-white beard, a kind of dissolute-looking Santa, and his clothes are the sort I wore too when I cleaned for a living--nothing you'd be too upset about getting puke or pizza sauce on. He probably cleans a lot of office buildings and the like, at night, but you can tell the Baby Zoo is his favourite. He takes off his enormous filthy sneakers and pads barefoot on the squishy pastel floor--and once I saw him toss one of the bright enormous beachballs across the room.

Falling Behind

2010-03-09T08:39:00.001-05:00

I've been reading along with Canada Reads Independently and picking up bits and pieces of Canada Also Reads, and somehow began to believe that the CBC's original Canada Reads was also a long-term, readerly discussion. I thought maybe it had already started, or would start soon, and go all spring. And that at some point in all that, I would get around to reading one book from all these lists, my sole attempted at a shared reading experience, Nikolski (I chose to read this one pretty much because Steven W. said I have to. (Never let it be said I don't read/obey my comments.)

Apparently, I've botched even that, because Canada Reads seems to have started yesterday and apparently will end on Friday, which strikes me as a rather compressed time-frame. So I started reading Nikolski yesterday and though I probably can't finish it in five days (I'm a little confused so far, and keep having to flip back to see who did what), I hope to have a good enough grasp on it experience an emotion (like happiness! or sadness, perhaps!) if it wins or loses the contest.

I don't know why I thought Canada Reads lasted months rather than days, and why I am so incredibly out of the loop that I don't even listen to the radio anymore. I also tried to pick up the phone last night and accidentally dropped it back into its cradle. The person did not call back, and I suddenly really regretted not having call display. Was it you?

I think a lifestyle rejig might be in order.

Yours, reading quickly!
RR

Sad Story Over

2010-03-08T22:11:00.004-05:00

I've been working on one story since, pretty much, the new year, and I just finally finished a second draft. That doesn't mean it's done (hardly!) but it probably has the basic shape and elements the finished story will have. I don't usually know how stories will end when I begin them--this is what some would call "having a problem with plotting"--but I find if I figure out the characters and their situation well enough, I will find their own logical momentum and there will be a natural next thing for me to write, and a thing after that, until there is a natural point to stop.

I reached that natural endpoint with this story in early February, and sort of vaguely knew what it was well before that, but reaching it again now, it still distresses me. The natural fall of events leave the story at an unhappy place. I wish the story ended differently, but I honestly don't think it can--it would not make sense for the characters and their situation as I created them way back at the beginning of the year. I would have to go back and change them--essentially, write a new story.

And I want these characters, whatever they do, whatever happens to them, even if it's unhappy. So I'm stuck with them, and this ending. A lot like life, that.

On to draft three. Actually, I might take a little break first, and work on something sunnier.

That's what I like

2010-03-08T09:35:00.003-05:00

The song with my favourite lyrics ever turns out to be cowritten by Sam Shepard, which of course does not make it any better, but does sort of up the interest factor in Shepard for me. I've only read the occasional New Yorker story by him--does anyone want to recommend what play to start with?

Sunshine on tulips! The ones on my dining-room table look like this and are absolutely splendid.

The weather this week! Yesterday was perfect wandering around weather and I hope that's what you did. And now, we don't have to panic, because the rest of the week will be nice, too. But then next weekend, it's supposed to be 5 or 6 degrees and snowy, which makes no sense. But we have five glorious days until then.

Taco King at Danforth and Donlands. I'm linking to a largely negative post because it's all I can find--but most of those people didn't eat there, just looked at the pictures through the window. I think it's great--cheap fast Mexican food that does not come out of a box, bag, or tube (ie., no cheese of the whiz variety). After a lovely delivery experience (embarrassingly, me and my dining companion ordered so much they gave us three forks--we thought at those prices the portions would be small but they weren't) I went on Saturday to see the establishment. They grill the chicken in front of you and apparently the tortillas are homemade, and everything's a wicked good deal. Let's not let prejudice taint a good thing--just because the owners and some of the staff are Asian, doesn't mean they haven't learned to do Mexican food extremely well! I'm scared it will close because so many restaurants in that area do, and I'll be back to Moe's Southwestern, which is actually good too, but I'd rather have local indy than big American chain if I can.

RR

Workshop #2--Character

2010-03-05T12:53:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm completely not making good on my plan to post lesson plans ahead of the actual lessons to get your feedback on'em, but considering that on Wednesday I briefly stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk because I'd jammed two fingers into one glove-slot and wondered how I was going to cope (I worked it out) we're lucky I managed to get the lesson together for the actual students.

And, when it came time to deliver said lessons, I also count myself lucky that my energy miraculously returned. There's something about those eager, curious faces, their great willingness to learn and/or to laugh if I fall down...

So the character workshop was similar to last year's except the kids took it in a different direction. When I asked where they have seen character descriptions before, they said the usual "in books" stuff, but also, on the backs of movies, on the backs of video games, on plaques at a museum, in biographies (one long character sketch), and then, even more interesting, on your passport or your driver's license!

I love that, because sometimes I do get lost in the "big" "emotional" issues of character development and not bother about "little" details like how old someone is--not "early twenties" but birth year and date. Not, "from southern Ontario" but pick an actual town on a map. These things make a difference to character icebergs, I think--although it sure would be odd if my students think they have to actually use all this stuff in their stories and start describing every character with height and weight!

So, yes, upcoming, a very dates/places/numbers intensive character sketch from me--I'm not sure what style, but maybe a la fight stats in a video game--which actually, come to think of it, probably won't be entertaining at all to you guys, but might be useful to me.

And maybe then I'll get some sleep. Have a good weekend, all!
RR

City of My Youth

2010-03-04T18:07:00.000-05:00

I moved to Toronto on March 4, 2002. I moved to take a barely paid full-time job, and only-slightly-better-paid evenings and weekends job, as well as to go to school the nights I wasn't working. I had two friends in town, an apartment where you could see the fridge from the bed, a fear of the subway system (steel wheels--so noisy!) and two goldfish named Demetrius and Lysander.

The first thing I did when I moved was go to the Spadina Road library (shout out!) and get a UTPL card. I did this yes, partially because of my love of literature but mainly because I had neither an internet connection nor a phonebook, and I needed to find a locksmith to install the lock I had bought and installed in Montreal after the Terrible Millennial Break-In, then had de-installed at great expense when I moved.

I eventually got Jason from Spadina Security. I think locksmiths, like bartenders and nurses, often deal with people who are freaking out or about to do so, and they have to have the people skills to match their technical skills. Jason was extremely nice and comforting about my move to Toronto (he told me I had an excellent lock!) Spadina Security was the first Toronto address I added to my book after I moved, and probably the nicest conversation I had that day.

You'd think that I would have been using all my scant free time to sleep, but as I remember it now, with little in the way of friends and money to entertain me, it stretched out. I wasn't writing much in those days, and even then my tv was only sort of functional. My principal hobby was free-trial periods at gyms. It was a form of entertainment (expecially since I found that Toronto gyms often had tvs you could watch) as well as fitness, plus the trainers who showed you around were usually really friendly. Policies were looser in those days, and I got in at least a couple workouts at almost every gym in the downtown core and some beyond, including one in Rosedale that had an in-house kitten.

I walked everywhere, continuing to be both afraid of the TTC and cheap about the $2.50 fare (ah, those were the days!) "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you time is of no value," I told a work superior in the elevator one day, when he opined that me walking 30 blocks to a store I wanted to try was not an excellent plan. There was little he could say to that, I suppose.

I went to so many libraries to do my homework, so many flowershops just to sniff things, I knew the cost of every brand of everything in the supermarket. My brother (one of the two TO friends) snuck me into his film classes to watch movies about prison breaks. Someone told me not to walk through any parks alone at night and I was SO happy when I finally made a friend in one of my night classes so that together we could cut through Queen's Park on the way home. I was distraught (though he was more so) when he had to drop the class because misdirected arsonists had burnt down his house. I don't know what ever happened to him--I hope he's ok. But then I made another friend and walked home with her.

I finally got a real job, one that paid decently and was only 8 hours a day. It was a shocking amount of free time, and a shocking amount of money (if I told you, you would laugh in pity). I remember buying a pair of pretty ballet flats, utterly flimsy, made out of cardboard and vinyl, for $15, and being thrilled that, a) I could afford to waste money on something I didn't need, and b) that I no longer needed to stand for hours at a time (ah retail) so it didn't even matter that the shoes were cheap.

As it turns out, those cardboard shoes were wonderful and I had them for 6 years. And I learned to take the TTC to get to my new job, and then to take the TTC efficiently, and then to love the TTC with all my heart. I got an apartment with two rooms and spent days doing figure-eights between them. I made more Toronto friends! I started having people to borrow books from and bake cookies for and hug when I hadn't seen them in a while. That was, and has never stopped being, amazing.

With my friends and also alone (because I had in fact learned to enjoy my own company) I went everywhere and talked to everyone and petted everyone's dogs. Never forgets:

--that time Jaime, Lara and I went to the Santa Claus parade in a blizzard and got amazing spots in the crowd because of the snow. And the parade was so silly and happy and the kids didn't care about the weather at all. And these sad free-sample distributers gave us tonnes of free tubes of pudding because they just wanted to get rid of them and I wound up with dozens only to discover I don't like sucking pudding from a tube. And when I got home my hands were so numb I couldn't turn my key in the lock for a few minutes.
--that time Penny and I went to see Chad's band play and then Ron Hawkins jumped on the stage and played a song
--the night I was walking on Sunnyside Beach with Jay and then fireworks started
--the big 2004 blackout, when I was not inconvenienced one iota, but everyone was in such good moods, plus I got a day off work
--finally having my scary crazy operation at North York General and being absolutely convinced that I would die under anesthetic just like my parents' kitten...and then I didn't, and I spent that whole spring being thrilled just to get out of bed
--climbing 22 flights of stairs with Mark J. while carrying the Penguin anthology
--the well-dressed corpulent middle-aged man who approached me on the street late one night to say he'd just been to a fashion industry event, and did I want the samples of cosmetics that were in his goodie bag? (yes!)
--when Ben and I were on our way to sushi when we ran into a naked man...and then another...and then we realized it was Pride weekend.
--when Brandon and I were walking down the street during (a different) Pride and I said, "Hey, that women wasn't wearing a shirt." and Brandon hadn't noticed.
--the untoward flirtation Kerry and I discovered at Starbucks
--when Maya made me run around and around at Circle Thai because she was bored sitting at the table (she's three).
--the day Mark and I took the ferry to Ward's Island for Katie's birthday, but we went to the wrong island and had to walk all the way around and then we ran into everyone and had a big delicious picnic on the beach in the freezing cold
--the night I was reading at Strong Words and brought a bunch of friends to hear me, but the Art Bar was flooded so they gave us a different room at the Gladstone, but the room was locked, so my friends and I just stood on the stairs, with me saying, "I really do have a reading tonight, I swear." (eventually someone came and unlocked the room and it was an amazing night)
--the first time I saw Harriet (who is currently a baby) roll over
--when a man who thought he was flirting with told me that the problem with the publishing industry is "too many Jews"

And the crazy thing is that I've already forgotten so much, no doubt--a hundred idle kindnesses at the grocery store and on the bus, birthday cards, snowstorms, fashion faux pas, and free cheese. But that's, I suppose, what real life in a real place is--not having to keep perfect account of every amazing moment because, while they aren't constant, there will be more to come.

I know a lot of my most-loved Toronto memories are not Toronto-centric--they could have happened anywhere, but they didn't. Toronto is where I've lived the last 8 years, and where amazing and banal things have happened to me, and I'm so grateful. Here's to another 8!

RR

To Do

2010-03-03T12:36:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted any events in a while, in part because I have been, as I may have mentioned so busy I haven't been going to many. But here are some I do plan to attend, because they are awesome and I will soon be (I hope, touch wood, fingers crossed, etc., etc.) less busy. If you are also less busy, perhaps you are interested in:

--the University of Toronto masters in creative writing showcase and gala tomorrow night. Should be some good readings, possibly some wine and cheese, and a nice opportunity to clap for Andrew when he is awarded a prize!

--Bad Dog theatre improva at That Friday Show, (appropriately) this Friday night. Hilarity, uncertainty, and pay-what-you-can--how ideal?

And if you are, sadly, too busy to go out, be comforted that I fully understand.

RR

Endings

2010-03-01T12:13:00.001-05:00

I'm off to Waterloo tomorrow to do a reading for and have discussion with a group of high-school students who have been studying one of my stories, "Fruit Factory." Doing such a talk is a rare honour and a treat for various reasons, many obvious, I'm sure (what human doesn't like it when people pay close attention to something that that human has worked very hard on?) One that might be less obvious is that, since the teacher can guarantee that (at least most of) the students have read the entire story, I can read and discuss the ending.

Endings are very very difficult to write--Sam Shephard said in the New Yorker that, “I hate endings... Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing, and endings are a disaster.” And he's been writing for 30 or so years and is thought to be one of the foremost playwrights of... Oh, despair. What hope is there for the rest of us?

Obviously, the rest of us struggle on, and when we hit on an ending that we think is good and resonant and true to the rest of the story while also surprising and maybe even illuminating in some way, we are damn proud of ourselves--it doesn't happen very often. It'd be nice to get to share it your own self occasionally.

Of course, I'm not kidding myself that my stories are rife with suspense, nor am I of the opinion that knowing the ending of something "ruins" the pleasure of reading the rest. But structuring a story, arranging what happens when, is hard too--almost as hard as writing an ending. In separate places, I've seen story experts as impressive as Alice Munro and John Metcalf say they don't necessarily read stories from beginning to end in sequence, but rather jump around, like moving from room to room in a house (that's Munro being paraphrased there--I'm sorry but I'm not going to be able to find these citations).

That makes me sad, although it makes some sense, too. Certainly I can gauge the emotional tension and intensity, the sense of humour, the clarity and poetry of language if I start in the middle, but I don't get the events as the writer lived them with the characters, and how he or she wanted to place them in my imagination. You can take someone's temperature in lots of places on their bodies, but if you want to know how that person is actually feeling, it's best to just let them tell you (hmmm, is that metaphor working?)

I put a lot of deliberation into making the order of the story make sense to the characters and their worlds--so that's how I want it to make sense to the reader too. There's no reason why a story won't be enjoyable or interesting or perfectly understandable out of order--but that's not how I meant to do it. You might not love it, like it, or even get it the way I did, but I want to give you every chance.

So I don't read endings aloud at events where I assume no one's read it. They might not be going to read it, actually--this might be our one and only encounter--but I'd generally like people to enter the story at the point I worked out as the beginning. So I read beginnings, for the most part, or whole stories if they're short enough, when I do public readings.

But! I like my endings, too! Some of them took a dozen drafts and years of work--if I feel like I finally got it, I take a lot of pleasure in the words as they fell into place and I enjoy sharing them aloud. And even if I do feel like I nailed it, I am very much open to feedback to the contrary--there's always next time--and there's nothing like reading aloud to elicit an honest answer from some people.

So whenever I know the audience has read the work, I choose the ending as my selection to read aloud. This has only happened a few times and I've never done "Fruit Factory"'s ending before. So this evening will find me at home standing on a chair, praticing and tomorrow--who knows what they'll think!

RR

(More) On Advice

2010-02-28T19:45:00.002-05:00

Advice--I love it! Anything anyone I respect wants to (gently) suggest I do or try, I'm open to hearing. I might not do it--I suppose statistically speaking, I do very little of what people suggest I do--but hell, it's education just to know that this person thinks something is a good idea. Tells me something about his or her worldview, and that there might be others like it, if nothing else. But I do owe a lot--everything from my ability to use a hair-dryer properly to lots of brilliant edits on my stories--to someone else telling me what I was doing wrong and how to do it better.

I think one reason I'm so open to advice is that I know my own abilities pretty well--I know how to listen for ideas I could actually use, people who actually know what they are talking about, and plans I'm capable of executing. I can recognize a blowhard when I see one (though I'll probably hear them out anyway, just in case I am wrong and they can tell me something useful). I also know when, despite any and all useful reasonable advice to the contrary, I just have to persist in the quixotic thing I'm doing and hope it works out (though I'll probably hear everybody out anyway, just in case there is some easier option I haven't thought of).

In short, though I am eager for life to be easy, it rarely is and advice helps only a tiny bit, and only rarely. But I'll take what I can get.

Thus, I am loving all the writerly advice that's suddenly all over the internet. Of course, the irony of the situation is that the only reason I've discovered these lovely lists of advice is that they are driving AJ crazy. And with good reason--there's lots of nonsense on those lists, everything from don't read contemporary fiction to don't have children to how to sharpen a pencil.

But even though I know this sort of advice--directed at a general-interest audience, with no specific text or even genre in mind--is usually obvious at best and offensive at worst, I still eat it up like candy. I can glean bits from it, take an interest in the worldview of all these notable writers, and feel centre-of-the-world-ish in that here is a whole article telling people how to do something I already sort of sometimes know how to do. I could certainly get better at writing, and several comments on the lists suggested something new to me, but mainly I enjoy those rare occasions when someone famous totally agrees with me about something. Like this, from Ms. Atwood:

"You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there's no free lunch. Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine."

That said, I'll get back to work in a minute, but first, two genuine pieces advice that come to me via much smarter folks than myself, which I hope will help you:

1) If you never remembers what sorts of fire you are supposed to put water on and what you aren't, baking soda puts out both grease and electrical fires, and water does not. Nor does staring at the flames in terror, hoping they will somehow go out by themselves. (Thanks, Stef, for saving us and allowing me to live long enough to write this post.)

2) Did you know what contact voltage is? It's complicated, and the link sorta explains it, but basically it's electricity hiding in everyday metal objects on the street, just waiting for bare skin to brush against it so it can give a nasty shock. Yeah, sounds like sci-fi, apparently real, and much more dangerous for the traditionally barefoot dogs than for people. Toronto Hydro advises humans and canines both to avoid walking on metal grates or personhole covers, and just never to touch any metal on the street. Easier said than done, and highly terrifying overall, but probably good advice if you can take it.

Be careful out there!
RR

Oscar Derby!!

2010-02-26T22:37:00.002-05:00

You are playing this year, aren't you? Go over to A Place and enter your picks before you forget. I've even seen some of the movies this year, which makes me more of a shoe-in to win than usual. Go right now! It's fun and it reminds you of the movies you've been meaning to see--what more could you ask for?

RR

"How to Keep Your Day Job" in Room Magazine

2010-02-25T17:57:00.002-05:00

Hmm, I seem to have gotten confused about when this was coming out, but I'm quite delighted that it turns out to be now! You can find my short story "How to Keep Your Day Job" in issue 32.4 of Room (the issue isn't on the site yet), available now, much to my delight.

I had an awesome day with the teens, in case you were wondering.

RR

Workshop #1: Ideas

2010-02-24T21:06:00.001-05:00

So I'm back to teaching with the very wonderful SWAT program this week, and those who were around for last year's term will know that I am a bundle of nerves and excitement, and massive lesson-planning.

I thought I would put my lesson notes on Rose-coloured this year, in the hope that we could live that bloggy interdependent dream--maybe you guys would find some of my ideas interesting, and at the same, you might have more/different ones that could help me. Or maybe you will find this boring--either way, let me know!*

I should note here that I massively over-prepare, just in case the class is incredibly surely and won't talk and I have to resort to lecturing. This has never happened, and I vastly prefer to run a class by discussion, with a few longer bits of explanation from me. In a typical class, I use about a quarter of what I prepared, sprinkled throughtout the hour. It's a little random, but it works out. Anyway, onwards, any of this material below will come after introductions, a discussion about what they might like to write about, and how to figure that out.

---

Writers constantly get asked in interviews "where do you get your ideas?" It's not a very original question, but I am always interested in the answer--it's rarely straightforward. Sometimes it is--an event in one's own life or in history that seems like it could be molded into a story, a bad book or movie that the author read that made them think "I could do the same thing but better!"

Sometimes it's a character you've created, and think about, and imagine out his or her life, and then you find an incident in the imaginary life you've created that might work as a story. Sometimes you want to capture a feeling you've had, a person you knew, a neighbourhood you've lived in. Sometimes you want to write a story as a caricature or spoof, as revenge (that often works very poorly), as a love note. Sometimes your idea for a story is to try to write the thing a given audience wants to read: your teacher (this also doesn't work well, mainly), a publication, someone you want to date.

Sometimes you have no idea where the idea comes from, you just start writing because you're bored, or lonely, or your teacher told you to, and something comes from nothing and you realize you are writing a story. Sometimes by the time you have a story, you have no idea where the idea came from. The piece I'm currently working on is structured around a set of reworked advertising slogans, but it's certainly not about them. It's set where it is because I had wanted to return to a place I'd created in another story, and make better use of it, but the story's not really about the setting. Now that I'm in the thick of it, I have no idea what led me to these people doing this stuff...though I'm (mainly) glad I got here. It was a long slog to figure out what the story was even about--I didn't really know before I started writing where I was going to end up.

My point? Is that ideas are what you make of them. I think the only thing an idea needs to be to make it a good one is that it's something a writer likes enough to start writing and keep writing. The rest will work itself out on the page (well, *the writer* will work it out, but it'll feel natural).

There are so many good things about being a writer that I don't like to dwell on the negative, but it does drive me crazy when I meet someone at a party and they say, "It's great that we ran into each other because I have the best idea for a story/novel/series of 14 interconnected novels." They have inevitably never written anything before, but after explaining the book to me at length (it's always at length) they say, "It's practically written! I have it all worked out inside my head; I just have to get it down."

"Just" indeed! I would love if the daydreaming out an interesting story to entertain myself on the bus were the hard part, but it isn't. I have never had an idea work out on paper they way it was in my brain. I'm not every writer, there must be some who can do that, but from what I hear, it's pretty rare.

My editor, John Metcalf, says, "Form is content." How you write something isn't just the petty details of getting it onto paper, it's the whole craft.

SO! When you have an idea, if I were you, I wouldn't spend much time worrying about whether it's a "good" idea--the only way to know if it is would be to try it out. Write a little bit, read it over, see if you like it. See if you want to write any more--that's the key to knowing it's a keeper! And if it isn't, don't worry--ideas are one thing the human mind is very good at producing. People find them everywhere.

RR

*Um, this post took so long to write that my first class is now 12 hours away, so if you send me good ideas I will work them in next week. Next week I will also plan better.

Groups and Challenges

2010-02-23T12:03:00.000-05:00

In Writer Guy's review of Century as part of Canada Reads Independently, he wonders if he's right in calling CRI a "challenge." I'm sure it's fine to call it whatever one likes, but I much prefer a term I've learned from my bookfriends on GoodReads--a "group read." To me, that implies better what I think these projects intend: to get people agreeing to read something as a group so they can then talk about it. So fun and friendly.

"So why aren't you participating in any of these group reads, RR?" would be a reasonable question to ask, at least lately. It's true--I love book conversations and though I'm not the fastest reader, I'm fast enough to read a book purely for the sake of participating in a conversation. I used to quite often. But I can't quite get committed lately. Maybe it was the demanding, structured reading in grad school that's put me off. Maybe it was a few book-club related incidents--a club-wide insistance on reading "challenging" books that weren't "too easy" or "light"...which ended with me miserably hauling myself through a couple books that no one else liked, or indeed, bothered to read.

I think these sorts of group reads a project like Kerry's, or in fact Canada Reads itself, seems very fun indeed--as warm an invitation to conversation as one could hope for. I love the idea of a group of people focusing their reading so they can share it. All I can say is I really hope to get it together for next year.

Meantime, I'm trying one of the less-structured options of group reads, one where participants don't read the same book but engage in the same kind of reading and then share thoughts on that. One that appeals (because I was already sort of doing it privately) is a retro-reading challenge. Rereading has been a hot topic on The Literary Type lately, and now over at Free-range Reading, Mark suggests the Retro Reading Challenge. Ok, fine, it's got the word "challenge" in it, but it still seems pretty fun and friendly to me:

"So here’s the idea, which I’m calling the Retro Reading Challenge, and I hope you all will play along. The idea is to pick a book that you read and adored years and years ago, then reread it now and write a review of it to capture your impressions. Did you still love it? Did you see flaws (or strengths) that you missed the first time? Did you have an “Oh God, what the hell was I thinking?” moment?"

I might not quite be able to comply with all the rules--the book needs to have been something I read only once, at least 15 years ago--but I *might* have Mostly Harmless only once, in my early teens--it wasn't in the giant omnibus that I owned as a kid, since it didn't come out until 1992. And it's way darker than the others, so it's conceivable it wasn't on my reread list. And it fits in nicely with my don't judge Eoin Kolfer too harshly project, which has been going on since fall (I'm halfway through *So Long and Thanks for All the Fish* right now, if you're curious) and will end when I read *And Another Thing* and try not to hate it for not being written by Douglas Adams.

SO! Rambling aborted, I will read *Mostly Harmless* and review it as part of the Retro Reading project. Yes. This is my plan. Baby steps.

RR

Rose-coloured reviews True Romance

2010-02-21T21:14:00.001-05:00

There are better movies in the world than True Romance, as written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott, but there are very few I like as much. And after close to a dozen viewings, I'm pretty sure that though TR is not the best movie ever, it is very very very good.

The film starts in Detroit where a lonely loser named Clarence tries to pick up a girl in a bar, failing when he suggests going to a triple feature of martial arts movies. He goes anyway, alone, and there succeeds in picking up another (much prettier girl). They have fun, have pie, have sex, and then have a poignant conversation on the billboard frame that adjoins Clarence's bedroom window. In this conversation, the girl, named Alabama, admits that a) she is a call girl and b) she has fallen in love with Clarence.

One of the many reasons I love this movie (we'll get to them) is that it combines real urban grit with the hyper-intensity of (Tarantino's favourite) pulp romance. There's so much realism in the portrayal of Detroit, of people's speech and snacks and clothes--but it's all just a bit more intense, dramatic, hyper.

This film is not for everyone. If you try watching it, at least get to Alabama's speech on that billboard frame below an SUV advert: in the dark and breath smoking in the cold, wrapped in a duvet and sniffling tears, incredibly unsexy and rapturously earnest as she exclaims, "I am not what they call Florida white trash!"--if you are unmoved there, you are probably not going to enjoy the rest of the movie, at least not in the heart-pounding-joy way I do.

Because it's pulp, the plot is propulsive, a freight train. However, because Tarantino is a pretty awesome writer (in my opinion) the characters are well-fleshed out, and every bit of dialogue, no matter how much it moves things forward, also illuminates the person who says it. I don't even know why the film got such an amazing cast, because TR came out a year before *Pulp Fiction* and QT wasn't super-famous yet, but there are no bad performances here. Maybe director Tony Scott had something to do with getting the performers and getting such great work out of them. He's an action guy, I'm seeing as I read over his filmography just now--I've seen none of his other work. But it makes sense--the fight scenes in TR are really sharp.

The first one is Clarence vs. Alabama's former pimp, Drexl, a scene that's darkly funny, elegantly choreographed and brutally shocking. The aftermath of this battle--one of those coincidences that happen only in movies--sends Clarence and Alabama on the run, in terror for their lives and in search for a big payoff.

They wind up going to LA to visit Clarence's old friend Dick Richie, a great hapless loser, struggling actor and surprisingly helpful guy. Anyone who ever caught this movie while half asleep on an airplane or a friend's couch remember's Dick's roommate, Floyd with his honeybee bong and rasta hair--consummate goofball performance.

But the cast is huge, and all the performances are great. I do have to admit that, other than a few micro-lines from extras, Alabama is the only woman in the picture. Which is odd, no doubt, but in this role Patricia Arquette gives such a great performance, she carries the day for her gender, I'm pretty sure. She's a sexpot much of the time, and Clarence is embodies the nerdboy living a fantasy very well, but I am always impressed every time I see Alabama's fight scene--totally tough, totally terrifying, brilliant (and it's against James Gandolfini!)

The violence is terrifying, the performances are stellar, the dialogue is razor sharp, but I really do love this movie for the romance (full disclosure: I've been watching it almost every Valentine's Day since I was a teenager). Unlike so many many many romantic movies, the romance isn't a will-they-or-won't-they until the final clinch--from the half-hour mark on, this is a couple whose love is the *only* thing they can count on. The action springs from a threat brought by the foolish bravery that love inspires (that's one way of seeing it, anyway), but the love itself is never in question, no matter how much blood and suffering comes their way. Which I think is much more romantic than most anything in the "rom-com" category.

That bloody love is underlined by Hans Zimmer's stunning score of xylophone and marimba. Please go to that link and listen--even if you think you would hate the movie you might like the music. It's seriously lovely, kind of a martial waltz, that's the best way I can think of describing it.

And that's what the movie is--a very violent bit of beauty. In the final shootout, pillows get caught in the cross-fire and all the death and mayhem gets covered in a drifting snowfall of white feathers. Gorgeous. Stylized, sure, but in a shockingly believable, achingly heartfelt way.

RR

PSA on the PLR

2010-02-20T15:27:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I received my first statement and cheque from the Public Lending Rights Commission. I was very excited, and not just because money had come in the mail--I love evidence that *Once* is out there in the world, doing it's thing (getting read) totally independent from me. In this case, the PLR statement tells me that *Once* is in some libraries.

What the Public Lending Rights Commission does is survey a sampling of libraries and give writers whose books are found in that sample get a little payment for the use their work is getting. It's a bit of a numbers game--even a semi-popular book might happen not to be in the several of the libraries sampled--but it's the best way anyone's found to pay authors for library usage, short of auditing all the libraries in the whole country.

Most published (with an ISBN) creative works and general-interest nonfiction is eligible for the survey, and thus for payment--if the author registers. If you go to that link above, it'll start you on your way to completing the registration--you've got until May to do it this year.

The money's not astronomical, but it's always nice for it to just show up like that. Even better, though, I like the acknowledgement of myself as a writer and *Once* as a book. I don't know about most writers (though I have my suspicions) but I myself am very insecure and prone to authorial existentialism--"Who am I fooling, calling myself a writer?" and so forth. Not that the PLR or any kind of money in the mail proves anything at all; I know plenty of talented writers who don't have a book (yet). But I do like these professional forms to fill out with "Rebecca Rosenblum, author." and I grab all that I can get, even if there's no fame or fortune to be had. In this regard (and this regard only) I even like rejection letters: they address me as an writer, in some form or another.

So yeah, what I'm saying is, register for the PLR if you are eligible--it's a good service for book-writers and a nice acknowledgment of your writerliness. And sometimes money comes in the mail.

RR

Stress

2010-02-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

Dear Blog,

I love you, I miss you, I don't have time to write in you right now. All I have time for is freaking out about deadlines, and then soothing the freakouts with yoga binds, Jason Derulo, and reading about editors with a little more wisdom of ages than me! Ok, ok, and Wii-lympics (I am unexpectedly good at the Wii figure-skating).

Also, sleeping on the bus. Surprisingly rejuvenating.

I plan to soldier on, steam ahead, tough it out, and other good heartening cliches, and return to my regularly scheduled constant posting within a week--fingers crossed (sleepily).

RR

Things I Like Today

2010-02-17T12:02:00.000-05:00

1) Spencer Gordon's short story Transcript: Appeal of the Sentence on Joyland (although I did actually like it even more when he read it at Pivot at the Press Club readings--this story should be a podcast!)

2) The lovely new home of Kerry Clare's book site/blog, Pickle Me This, as designed by the crack team at Create Me This.

3) When you are standing looking up into the sky (you need a patch of sky free of buildings or bits of trees, so that all you see is sky) and it is snowing staight down and after you stare up for a while, you lose perspective and begin to feel that the snowflakes are standing still in the air, and you are travelling upwards into the sky. The snow today has been particularly good for that, if you wanna try it.

RR

Rose-coloured reviews The Lizard by Michael Bryson

2010-02-17T08:43:00.001-05:00

Do you miss The Danforth Review, that awesome online literary quarterly that published such a wide range of fiction, criticism and interviews? Yeah, I miss it too, but it's cool to know that (one of) the reason(s) it is currently on hiatus is is in favour of founding publisher and editor Michael Bryson's "struggling attempts at creating literature."

I just finished reading Bryson's third book, a collection of short stories called The Lizard and I think it's worth the struggle. This is a small spare book, 117 pages of generously leaded pages, and spare also in terms of details. One of the ways I think of the short story is as a bright spotlight, trained on the ground. A character approaches it in darkness, then when s/he enters it, is brilliantly illuminated for the time it takes to cross the spotlight, then returns to darkness. The shape of the story is how and where the author trains the spotlight; the character(s)'s actual actions and dialogue just life going forward.

I think the best stories in this collection are the ones that remind me of expertly focussed spotlights. From a man whose relationship is probably disintegrating while his father's love life takes off ("May the Road Rise"--great title) to a guy who sees his childhood friend resorting to violence (maybe) ("Hit"), there aren't a lot of resolutions here, or many answers.

If you are familiar with the term tolerance for ambiguity, you probably learned it in a psychology or education class, but a reader of my acquaintance uses it to describe a reading style. Readers with a high tolerance for ambiguity don't mind not having much backstory in a piece of fiction, provided we have some sense that there is a logical one. In a good story, we're fine with not knowing why things happened, nor what the outcome is--if the author can shape the piece so that it works without those things.

"Six Million Million Miles" was, to me, the perfect story for the ambiguously tolerant (like me), because Bryson counters the randomness of writing any story about a few moments in anyone's life with how random anyone's life actually is. This story is only a couple guys sitting around, talking. They're both around forty, both in relationships that are uncertain, talking about a going into business together as soon as they can decide what that business should be. Then a house down the street explodes.

They worry about it, talk about it, watch the flames shooting into the sky. Then they go back inside because one of the guys' sort of girlfriends has arrived. She has brought someone with her--a date? The evening progresses, the other guy's girlfriend comes over too, there's another explosion, they order some pizza.

What a terrible summary! But this is a beautiful story, so much more as a whole than as the sum of it's parts--I noticed that, reading it over in bits and pieces just now to write this review. The story works because it feels random, just a bunch of stuff that happened over a few hours, but the end I was left with a powerful feeling of how anyone's life is so much more than he or she can understand, let alone explain.

Not every story worked on me with this intensity, but I think that might have been partly my fault. *The Lizard* is an easy book to like, and I think I read it too fast, missing some of the bigger payoffs because I was enjoying the little ones: a toddler falling down in the park, the ins and outs of work in a pet store, a quiet reaction to 9/11.

This is why Rose-coloured reviews are not real reviews--if this were professional, I'd reread immediately and get it all worked out. But since I'm happily unprofessional me, I'm going to mull it over for a while, fill in some ambiguities in my own head, and look forward to when I eventually work my way back to this fascinating book.

RR

The Olympics: Rebecca learns a valuable lesson

2010-02-13T15:20:00.002-05:00

I was going to write a post about my feelings about the Olympics, but then I decided against it. If I had written it, it would have gone approximately like this:

"The 2010 Winter Olympics have begun, and once again I am not paying attention. I consider it impressive that I even knew ahead of time that they were beginning--I didn't know about the Bejing games until a tv at the gym with a million drummers drumming caught my eye. The only Olympic event I can ever remember watching was the 2004 men's hockey finals, and that day I volunteered to take the chair facing away from the tv, since I wouldn't have paid attention anyway. It's not like I hate the Olympics, I just am a very non-sporty person from a non-sporty background. I don't know the names of any of the athletes, nor even the rules to most of the sports, and nor do I care to know. It just seems like a huge amount of energy and time and tonnes of money goes into this event for a tiny group of people to participate in, having nothing to do with life in this country as a whole, and I'm a bit uncomfortable with that."

The reason I did not write that post is that another post occurred to me, one which I'd never write, but I better countless others have done variations on. It goes like this:

"I was walking through the bookstore on my way to the movies, not paying any attention to the books on the shelves. I consider it impressive that I even knew where the bookstore was--I only found it as a shortcut to the theatre. The only literary reading I can remember ever attending, I just stared answered emails on my Blackberry the whole time, since I wouldn't have paid attention anyway. It's not like I hate books, I'm just a very non-literary person from a non-literary background. I don't know the names of any authors nor what a sonnet is, and nor do I care to know. It seems to me that a huge amount of energy and time and tonnes of money goes towards publishing these things for a tiny group of people to read, having nothing to do with life in this country as a whole, and I'm a bit uncomfortable with that."

If the second post must be false--just because some people don't care about literature doesn't mean literature is a waste of time--then likely the first is, too. I remain unconverted, but more supportive, perhaps, of those who strive to be the best at something I don't care about. It's a good thing I'm not the arbiter of anything. To paraphrase Beatrice Hall a bit, "I am not interested in what the athletes are doing, but I will defend their right to do it" (maybe not until the death; also, did you know that the original line is not Voltaire).

This whole thought process has been illuminating. Who knows who I'll empathize with tomorrow?
RR

Rec Department

2010-02-12T12:45:00.001-05:00

Indelible Acts by AL Kennedy is very intense, funny, tart, weird, and definitely sexy. The first couple stories are two of the weirdest (a man has an affair with a woman he meets in a cheese shop, and the sex is so brilliantly good that something cracks open in either his brain or the universe), so it wasn't until I was well into the book that I started to experience a weird sense of vertigo..."This woman writes...like...me!"

I think Kennedy has all kinds of points on me, quality-wise (I've never seen anyone write about sex so grimly and unsentimentally), and we have different interests in many ways (no one in this book appears to have a real job), but we both write stories firmly rooted in character, and sometimes, if what's true to the character is a lack of change or closure, then that's how it wraps up. So I was pretty wrapped up in this book from a technically point of view-- a "how is she going to deal with *that*" attitude--because while if I could just copy brilliant authors, I would, but most are doing such different things I can't use their techniques. Hers, maybe, I can--I do feel like I learned a lot from this read. But, like I said, she's amazing and I was able to enjoy this on a non-technical level and think you could, too!

Have you read the periodic table recently? Highly recommended--I think it's changed since I was in high school--so much more stuff now! I was looking at one that described what people *do* with each element (not the one linked; sorry, I can't find it on the web) and there are quite a few new elements marked "no use", which I think is funny, although we'll probably need'em someday, to fight the aliens or some new plague or something. My favourite is ununoctium, elemebet 118, which does nothing, but is the leader of the pack that starts at ununium and goes all the way up to 8. What *are* they, besides fascintating? Bonus: element 71, lutetium, is used for determining the age of meteorites. HOW DOES THIS WORK??

My short-story, "Do," was published last fall in the Antigonish Review, and is now available as part of the new podcast (#8) of Words to Go. It's a short, sweet, very interesting show, and I'm quite pleased to be a part of it.

RR

Sorts of Love

2010-02-11T08:49:00.001-05:00

One of the (many) awesome things about humans is that everyone knows stuff that is probably at least a little different from what I know, and quite often they will tell me a little bit about what they know. A very knowledgable person can often explain even a complicated concept simply enough for me to understand. Have you ever noticed that--that if you have only a little insight into a thing, it's harder to explain it to someone else, even if you do in fact understand? This is why I like to hear AMT talk about linguistics--she knows so much that she can distill a very tiny drop of perfectly clear knowledge just for me. Most people can do that on whatever topic happens to be their personal domain.

This summer I met a man who explained CS Lewis's The Four Loves to me over lunch. It was fascinating and, as a Christian theory, not something I would have been likely to run into on my own. I'm totally not saying I agree with all this, or even am making much study of it (I could've run out and bought the book, after all, and I didn't) but after a little further internet reading, I thought I'd try to do that hard thing and explain something I only semi-understand to you all.

Why? Um, cause this is cool? And because it's a different way of thinking about things, which is always fun, and because it fits in with the theme of stupid Valentine's Day, which I'm totally getting sucked into despite my best intentions (tip: don't go to Zellers this week!), without being too lame. Also, because I'm hoping other people have a bit more/different insight into this stuff than I do, so we talk about it.

Here we go, very carefully:

C.S. Lewis, the Narnia guy but also very-Christian guy, used this book *The Four Loves to examine how "love," a word we throw around in English about everything from life partners to sandwiches to celebrities ("OMG, I *love* Tina Fey in *Mean Girls*--so earnest and weary!") has a wealth of meanings. To delineate the different interepretations of the word, he used Ancient Greek, which had more than just the one word--four in fact--for that crazy little thing called love.

Storge--The most basic kind of love, the kind both people and animals feel for the ones they around all the time, and/or for some reason need to feel bonded to. If you were a lion, it'd be your pridemates--as a human, for your family, especially one's children. I would think this definition applies to friends of proximity, too--the colleagues you love to chat with, the neighbours you bbq with, etc. I would insert people's cultural identification into this category too, although that's me extrapolating--the generalized, distant love you feel for fellow Canadians (if you swing that way) or people of the same heritage or ethinicity as your family.

The friend who explained this to me used the metaphor of the gaze for all four, but I can't find an equivalent explanation online. To the best of my memory, the storgic gaze is all over the place; it loves what it lights on, when it happens to do so.

Phila is the easiest one to remember. It's friendship, but of a very specific kind, that with a shared interest at the centre of it, something that the friendship is "about." Thus, to continue the metaphor, here both gazes rest upon the same thing. So, people who bond over shared political or charity work, people who always (only) watch the game together, scrapbooking clubs, etc. I think in some ways bloggers engage in phila--we put our interests out into the world in search of others who share them, to begin a conversation about things that matter to us.

Eros--der, that's romantic love. *Not* sexuality, although natch that's part of it, or an accompaniment anyway. This is the love where the gaze of the lovers is focussed on each other, but interestingly (confusingly!), this is also blind love--you love a person *not* for their qualities, intelligence, appearance, ability to listen without judgment, culinary abilities, or kindness to small animals. You just love them, and I guess then you are happy to gaze at them because you do (not, after protracted gazing and examination, you fall in love because of what you see). This conception of love is problematic when combined with, say, eHarmony and similar services that claim that the secret to a great love is agreeing about religion, politics, household chores, sexual taboos, and everything else.

(Rebecca becomes distressed at how little she understands here, takes a break to eat a rice krispie square.)

Agape is where things get pretty Christian. Agape is charitable love, and I'm not sure but I think that maybe with this one your eyes are trained on God. I think it's also God's love for his creation. This is the stuff we do generously, for no reason other than a desire to share, to help, to improve things for someone else.

When my friend was done explaining, I said that this all seemed really hierarchical and too discrete--like, who is to say that a love for a bowling buddy couldn't be agape as well as phila? And he said that it's just a way of explaining--of course all the forms of love are recombinent. Later, I found out that agape love is a big Christian concept as applied in marriage (sometimes I read Christian advice columns--what?)--despite your devotion to your partner (or because of it) you should also do things for them in more general, and holy, the spirit of giving. *And* you should do things together as projects with focus (phila) *and* be comfortable and affectionate with the same house in a creaturely way (storge--I'm sorry, that's a really terrible word). And then beyond marriage, there as many different combinations of love as there are people to have love with...I suppose.

I'm thinking I'm missing a lot--as uncomfortable as I am with the idea of reading Christian philosophy, I think I'm going to end up reading this book. Cause, really, this is so cool, even half-understood. Please chime, if anyone knows something more/different than what I've said here.

Love,
RR

Lynn Coady solves your problems

2010-02-10T08:10:00.000-05:00

Apologies, but I think I'll only be able to manage mini-posts this week--things are a little hectic in my world right now.

But at least I have fun stuff to link you to! I have been enjoying novelist Lynn Coady's "Group Therapy" column in the Globe for a while now--I'm sorry I never read it when the columnist was Claudia Dey--I'm sure she was great, too!

I find it really interesting that us fiction writers (often) build our work around all this insight we allegedly have about how human beings are, but speaking only for myself, I'd be absolutely terrified by, and incompetent at, this gig. It's actual real problems that people send in to the site, occasionally serious ones. But Coady seems to be able to parlay her insight into fiction people into insight into real people, and actually be helpful.

The problems are sometimes a bit sad, but generally they don't pick blues-song type disasters. Then readers write in with their advice and Coady counters with her own. She's funny, very very funny, but she's also pretty insightful and not-mean even when the problems are inane or have obvious solutions.

So maybe you want to tune into her Valentine's Day live chat today at 1pm EST (and if you know what EST means, I wish you would tell me--is that Toronto?) You can write in with your romantic problems (not that you would have romantic problems) ahead of time or during the chat, or be like me and just read it after to marvel at the wisdom.

RR

Print Psychiatry

2010-02-09T12:55:00.001-05:00

On the weekend, I dreamed that I was a verso page, madly in love with a recto. Is that weird? I mean, of course that's weird, you're weird for even understanding that, but...really weird?

There's 1001 what-sort-of-bramble-bush quizzes on the Web, but this one Rosalynn at the Literary Type is pretty special (she has such good taste). It's like a five-minute psychological/typographical analysis, and it's very soothing. Except I turned out to be Courier, when I feel very strongly that my personality is Times New Roman.

Yours in lunacy,
RR

Be nice to everyone week!

2010-02-08T20:55:00.000-05:00

Longtime Rose-coloured readers may know that I hold the wildly unpopular position that Family Day is fascist. I'm less alarmed about Valentine's Day because it's a Hallmark initiative, not a legislative one--if the government gets involved in telling people how to woo, I'm moving to Sweden--but it's not my favourite occasion.

I am certainly very fond of the concepts of both familial and romantic love, and don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating them--I just think that since not everyone finds themselves in a situation where a celebration is possible or appropriate, maybe the government might stay out of it (especially since they're really just trying to keep Ontario businesses from inconveniencing American sister offices by being open on Presidents' Day).

But I'm not going to prevail on this one, and I've (largely) stopped ranting. As you'll see in the posts above, I'm trying to use this week for a more relevant campaign of affection--for strangers and friends and acquaintances, whoever doesn't have a socially prescribed position in my life. Taking out my earbuds at the cashier and saying "How are you?" like I care about the answer (I do!) . Giving my seat on the subway to whoever looks tired. Taking down my garbage early so it's not a hassle for the super. Tipping generously, giving to charity, baking for bakesales (Thursday!), noticing new haircuts, and carrying the heavy stuff--I'm always trying to remember to do this stuff, but this week I'm trying extra.

When I start the "Family Day/Fascism" stuff, friends always point out that I have an awesome family, and I do; I know I'm lucky. It just seems weird that we would have a day where those who are lucky celebrate that, and those who aren't so lucky get to feel extra bad about it. I think maybe my viewpoint is somewhat skewed because I volunteered for several years talking to people who didn't have anyone else to talk to, but I do feel that more people are isolated and lonely in our society than us lucky ones care to think about. And those people might not be feeling so great about the weekend o' mandated emotion coming up. A little niceness might go a long way for them right now--or anytime, really.

Net Noise

2010-02-06T13:18:00.005-05:00

Twitter

118 posts in, I'm still finding Twitter largely pointless. It's just not *enough* for me to care about--Facebook has these big huge profiles and blogs have as much space as you would like, but there's almost no way to determine who you are dealing with on Twitter unless you know them already. And most people *don't* distill well into 140 characters (I count myself in this group)--Twitter is boring because most posts are a) links to articles or other people's twitter posts that I am not going to follow because there is no commentary provided and I don't know where the "tiny url" will take me, b) comments on other people's twitter posts that I didn't read at the time and now can't find (why on earth don't think link the comments to the posts? why?), so the comments make no sense to me, or c) boring.

I've been told that I'm bored by Twitter because I refuse to accept it as it's own medium, and keep waiting for it to be Facebook or a blog (witness the above refusal to call Twitter posts "tweets"--I just can't anymore). Even those Twitter friends of mine who Twitter amusingly, if they (used to) have a blog I keep wishing they'd expand the point (you know who you are).

Someone said that I would like Twitter better if I followed celebrities, and when I said I don't know any celebrities, said I didn't have to. Apparently Twitter is less like Facebook, where you friend people you know in real life in order to keep up with daily adventures and thoughts and share your own (well, that's what I'm doing on Facebook) and more like a blog, where you offer thoughts and opinions to the wide world o'strangers, and see if there's anyone out there who is interested in them.

So I'm trying, and have a (very) few celebrity Twitter recommendations of Twitter feeds you might enjoy. I like the tiny stories of Arjun Basu (although they often strike me as installments of one larger story). I also follow novelist/short-story writer/playwright AL Kennedy, who is very wry and funny about literary celebrity in Britain (she's always unwell, on a train, about to go speak to a conference of people for reasons she does not understand.) And I'm not even sure how this happened, but for a while now I've been following someone named Nerdy Girl, who turns out to be the publisher of This Magazine, Lisa Whittington-Hill, and also is hilarious.

Blogs

I'm still reading Penelope Trunk's blog. I know, I shouldn't, but I think it fills the gap in my life that people with TVs fill with reality shows about sex rehab and how renovating your house can wreck your marriage. She's such a self-righteous, self-important train-wreck, and yet she's not stupid and occasionally makes good points. For example, you could read certain bits of her post of frugality and be reminded of how we all choose our own financial constraints--those who consider life not worth living without a two-car garage will be stuck paying for that, and will have to work accordingly. Those content with a driveway--or a bike--will have more flexibility in their career options and/or more discretionary income.

Great points, and inspiring for those who feel their jobs might become too much at some point (hi!) But then she goes off on how what really matters is having household help so you can devote yourself to work, as well as a flash car to impress clients, and you realize she's a lunatic capitalist. But it still makes for fun reading.

There's better reading afoot in the blogosphere, however. Have you seen Mark Sampson's new(ish) Free-range Reading blog? It's got book reviews and lit news, but a bit unusual for a lit blog is that there's been a couple really interesting posts about journalism (which MS is when he's not busy being a novelist). It's a whole other kind of writing, that journalism thing, and kind of cool to get to read about it from the inside. Also, naturally, he reads good books and writes about them well!

On a more mundanely self-absorbed note, does anyone know how the "next blog" button (up at the top of the screen here) works? I never even noticed it before this week, when the statistics on this site started to say it was referring a lot of people through here. My first thought was that maybe the blog behind me in the queue had gone way up in traffic, but there is no "last blog" button, so I can't go there. Also, I've found that hitting "next blog" several times from the same blog leads you to different ones, so I think my theory is fundamentally false. But I don't have a better one--do you?

RR

Rose-coloured reviews The Bagel House

2010-02-04T07:13:00.000-05:00

Bagels are so often the default food of picky children, harried airport travellers, and breakfast-bar buffets, it's hard to believe that 25 years ago my dad had to drive across Hamilton to Switzer's so that my family could have them. And the kids at my tiny rural school, though not quite mocking, were fairly incredulous about my lunches of "bread doughnuts."

Those were "New-York style" bagels--puffy with a moist crust, denser than bread, still a lot like bread. I don't know if my New-York-born parents even realized there was another kind, and I don't really know if, when I moved to Montreal, I realized I was eating a sweeter (they're apparently boiled in honey water), less salty, denser smaller bagel--with a unique flavour that turned out to be smokiness from being baked in a wood oven. I knew they were a lot harder to cut for the toaster and that they had a wider hole, making it difficult to have a bagel sandwich or really any kind of tidy bagel topping. In the end, though, I also liked them better plain, untopped and untoasted, especially after I discovered Fairmont Bagels near the place I got my hair cut. There, you could buy just one bagel, just hot, and eat it as you walked across the mountain.

Montreal bagels are farther away from the dinner-roll pole, and closer to the soft street-vendor pretzel--I actually remember the Fairmont onion bagels having a bit of kosher salt mixed in with the onion bits--anyone else remember that?

*Anyway,* I'm not much of a bagel-eater on an everyday day--they're more a special-occasion food for breakfast out in a deli (could also be a problem that I don't have a toaster). But I searched out The Bagel House in pursuit of a treat for a bagel-loving comrade, and found it's delightful. The Bayview location (there's several, and I think they also stock a few grocery stores) is just a teeny store with a couple cramped tables, but you can watch a guy flipping bagels in and out of a huge wood-burning oven, the bagels are amazing and not *that* pricy, and you can get tonnes of Jewish pastries you don't see anywhere else. Hamantast in winter is a bit dissonent, it's good to know it's any option.

The first time I went, it was a Saturday morning, unusual for a Jewish bakery even to be open, but this one was packed (note: every time I've been in, the counter staff was exclusively Asian, and the bagel baker African Canadian, but obviously *someone* in the background there is Jewish). There was a lot of quick in-and-out trade--people carrying coffee beans and buying half-dozens with a pot of cream cheese, obviously on the way to a bagel rendez-vous. The tables were all taken up, though, with people (often with kids) eating toasted bagels with a variety of toppings (from Hungarian salami to chopped chicken-liver to a wide variety of fancy-schmancy cream-cheeses.

Which is what the bagel-lover and I did last weekend. We went on a Sunday afternoon, when most people are already safely brunching (but the lady in line in front of us had a bag of Starbucks beans) but there was a still a nice small crowd. I got the most expensive thing on the menu, the classic cream-cheese-n-lox for $5.99, and I was seduced by the "healthy" multigrain bagel. No idea if it was healthy, but it sure was wonderful. Here, look:

(I had to get in that first bite before I bothered getting out the camera.)

These are stellar Montreal-style bagels, crispy-crusted and chewy, with a good hit of sweetness. The cream cheese (just plain) was a bit runny and there was way too much of it, but every place ever over-applies cream cheese--perhaps it is the nature of that condiment. The lox was excellent--obviously out of a package (we could see it in the display case, Nanuk brand) but nicely salty and generously applied.

There are cheaper options--like, say, just a bagel with cream cheese for $2.99. I sampled my companion's onion-with-pesto-cream-cheese (green!) and it was stellar. You wouldn't think the sweet bagel would go so well with the savouries, but it does!

So, I'm recommending this place, is what I'm saying, to the Montreal-homesick and the carb addicted and, yes, the brunchers alike. It's awesome!

I don't know why they have samosas. We didn't try them.

In case you were wondering...

2010-02-02T12:34:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I start off on things, and never let you know how they worked out. Probably, you don't care, but for the sake of completeness--

1) I now mouse exclusively with my left hand on desktop computers (ie., all day). On laptops (ie., at night and on weekends) I occasionally succumb to the lure of the central touchpad with my right hand, but the (fuzzy heartshaped) mouse is placed to the left of the computer. I consider Alzheimer's officially postphoned...for now.

2) I consider January's "writing in the morning"s a failure, but not a dismal one. I *did* sometimes write in the mornings, not every day and never for very long, but as it would otherwise have been time spent asleep, I'm counting this one as a win. But I'm also pushing it forward as a February resolution.

3) My *new* resolution for February will be to limit my cereal consumption to two bowls per day. This will be difficult--I really like cereal.

4) Remember when I was teaching last year and obsessed with my teenaged students? We about to start all that again, as through the graces of the SWAT/Now Hear This program, I have been named writer-in-residence at Jean Vanier high school in Scarborough. If you went to Vanier, know someone who did, taught there, attended an OFSA badminton championship there, anything at all--I want to hear about it. For though I am very excited about this new adventure, I am also very nervous.

5) So the ground hog says, six more weeks of winter (warning: disturbing groundhog-nuzzling picture at that link). I should be sad, but I seem to have pulled out of my seasonal-affective funk from early January. Now I’m just really grateful that it’s been so dry and nothing is slippery underfoot. If that keeps up…well, I guess it can stay cold. If, you know, the rodent says it has to.

6) Remember when I wrote short stories? Well, I actually still do that, I just haven’t mentioned it in a while. Forthcoming RR publications included “How to Keep Your Day Job” in the summer issue of Room Magazine, “Sweet” in the summer issue of Canadian Notes and Queries and “Far from Downtown” in The New Quarterly. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that I’m just thrilled to be working with such amazing mags, and very looking forward to seeing my work inside them.

There, now I think you’re just about up to date…
RR

How I Learned to Read

2010-01-31T12:02:00.004-05:00

I am loving Kerry's Family Literacy Week posts so much that I want to play. However, most of my knowledge of kidlit comes from when I *was* one, so I'll be writing about that. My story actually fits in perfectly with the theme, since it's about family and reading (also two of my favourite things).

All authors seem to have some seminal story about the moment they realized the words on the page made a story, and they could have that story, right then and there, by reading. You see such anecdotes in all the big bio interviews with writers, and they're often tales of dweebish precociousness--"Oh, I couldn't speak clearly or run without a helmet, but I was reading novellas by the time I was in kindergarten." Or preschool. Or out of the womb.

My memory of the early years cuts in and out--I don't think I'm missing much except a lot of apple-juice spills, but dates are distinctly sketchy. I know my mom taught me to read, and I can remember bits of the process, but I can't exactly slot it into chronological time. I never asked about this, blithely assuming that I had been an early reader too--I certainly did well enough in the early grades, although some of those good marks may have been for not eating play dough (anyone who doesn't retain a residual longing for play dough obviously somehow got hold of a can when no one was looking and *ate it all*, thus finally slaking that hunger all children experience).

Anyway! One day, and I think this might have actually been in support of an interview I was doing for *Once*, I asked my mom whether I too, had been a magically advanced, obvious-writer-to-be infant.

"Did I learn to read pretty early?"
"Oh, no, not really."
"Like, only average?"
"I guess you were about...eight or so. I really had to push you, you didn't want to learn."

I was a single-digit illiterate! Oh, the shame! I finally managed to extract from my mother that I had in fact been able to read sentences in grade 1. But those were 40-word stories read aloud to the teacher, and my mom equated being "able to read" with being able to sit alone and turn pages, to immerse oneself in the story.

Which I had actually had no interest in doing, so readily available were adults to read to me. Of course I really liked stories, all stories (but especially those about plucky orphans or Laura Ingalls Wilder)--I just didn't associate them with something I could do on my own. It's funny, trying to remember the experience of learning to read now, because the sense I recall most from childhood reading now is physical--the feeling associated with reading is *snuggly*, because when I was read to I was held in someone's lap, and when my mom began teaching me to read that's where I remained.

I certainly watched television, and actually often with my parents, who liked to keep an eye on things. But I sat alone for that, or at least could. And playing outside or games or whatever (yes, I did occasionally go outside)--those could be independent, solo activities. But reading was interactive, intimate.

So when (apparently the summer after grade 2!) my mom said I was old enough to read chapter books, I had to start by reading the first page of each chapter of *Little House at Plum Creek* and *Charlotte's Web* before she would read the rest to me. I do *not* recall a lightning bolt moment when the words became a story for me--I recall it being extremely hard and *dying* for my mom to take over. But it's still a positive memory, and it is weird that I can recall exactly how my head fit under her chin and my legs sprawled on either side of her knees.

I am not at all suggesting that I was a lazy reader because I was read to too much--that might be impossible, I think. Of course, this is biased, but I am of the opinion that the way I learned to read was the best way possible. It was never a school subject for me, or any kind of subject at all. Reading was just a tool I could use to get at the best things in the world, stories--getting meaddicted to those was a far better goad to learning than any phonics book ever could be.

And by the time I started grade 3, I could read myself to sleep, and have been doing so ever since.

I like this topic, and would love to hear other reader-creation stories--how did you learn to read?

Talking Stories

2010-01-30T11:00:00.002-05:00

Last night at dinner, my friend Scott explained to someone, "Becky writes short stories--short stories are to the point, but you don't always know what the point *is*." Such a good summation of the strengths and weaknesses of stories.

This morning I read Andrew Hood saying in Canadian Notes and Queries that "What the short story can do better than any form is romance the effects of life without having to belabour the causes." He went on to quote Clark Blaise's comment that, "[short story writers] are not in the business of establishing any of the whys... The story traces what lingers after the whirlwind, after the fracture. Or before it. We're not in the business of establishing the reasons...why things happen. They've already happened."

Today is, I feel, a good day for stories!
RR

Lit Bits

2010-01-29T12:03:00.000-05:00

1) JD Salinger, literary hero of many youths (including this one) has died. I haven't read a lot of the coverage, but I have seen a few references to the fellow as the author of "just one novel," and while I loved The Catcher in the Rye as much as anyone (so much!), I am a bit miffed for Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories (one of my lifetime fave short-story collections), and even Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour: an Intorduction, the first half of which I did truly enjoy (and the second...oh dear).

But I can't feel quite as sad as I think I ought to about the passing of such a great author. Of course, I didn't know him personally (though my cousin did meet him once in the library at Dartmouth, a fact I always try to seem unimpressed about, and fail). It's more that I haven't been reading straight along with him--he stopped publishing decades ago, and I haven't read any Salinger for the first time since my teens. Unlike, say, Mr. Updike, we weren't moving along together.

There is a bit of excitement going around that now all his output for the last many years will be revealed and published. I'm not sure that would happen, and anyway, though I greatly hope for something that can stun me like For Esme, with Love and Squalor, I fear a reprise of Hapworth 16, 1924, the last of his published work (in the New Yorker in 1965--that same cousin photocopied an old library copy). I hate that story, though in googling it just now I found some people like. Who knew? It is deeply boring to me. So I am worried that now lots of books will come out by Salinger and I will read them and not like them and be disappointed.

2) From a literary end to a literary beginning: I went with blogger and friend Kerry Clare and her daughter Harriet to Mables Fables in celebration of Family Literacy Week (which is, as it turns out, is not real--it is only Family Literacy Day except on Kerry's blog. But I am still going to most my family-literacy post today or possibly tomorrow, in solidariy!

*Anyway,* our fieldtrip was wonderful, prefaced by cake and punctuated by the stroller blowing down the sidewalk past the store window. Even if you aren't particularly interested in seeing photos of a bookstore (er, but why *not*?) you should click on Kerry's link to see pictures of Harriet, a very lovely baby with great, if over-literal, taste in books!

RR

Rose-coloured reviews Bech at Bay by John Updike

2010-01-26T12:54:00.003-05:00

I first encountered Henry Bech in Updike's first collection of stories about the fellow, Bech: a book, when I was about 10. I had pulled it off my parents' shelves because the name was somewhat close to Becky and, likely, because I was very bored on some rainy day. I flipped around until I encountered the word "orgasm"--one of Bech's mistresses could have one on the New York subway, but only certain lines--and I realized it was not a book I was up to. I put it back wishing I was a kid who went *towards* the dirty bits, rather than being alarmed by them and fleeing.

Imagine my surprise when, last winter, a fellow-writer enthused over Bech, and said I had to read it. Imagine my surprise when I loved it! Bech is such a slow, sleepy, dopey guy in this book, his life largely structure by the success of a book he wrote when he was so young he can't relate to it, and by the baffling, aggressive, subway-orgasm-having women in his life. There's tonnes of lit-gossip in the book--largely about fictional writers, but occasionally Roth or some similar mid century man will turn up. Bech can be a malicious gossip inside his own head, but terribly funny. The character is Jewish, and Updike isn't, and I know some criticism has turned on whether this portrait is a caricature, but I find it too human, too intelligent and funny, for that. The Jewish thing does come up an awful lot, though. We keep get a few too many lines like, "It was hard to tell with Wasp males how old they were; they don't stop being boys." "Bech Presides"

I received the two sequels, Bech Is Back and Bech at Bay (that second link there has the book labelled "family saga"--what??) for my birthday, and read the first last fall and the second just now (I thought this would complete my Bech reading, but apparently there is one other story hiding in The Complete Henry Bech. They always do that with compilations of old work--how annoying! How am I going to get it??)

I really enjoyed *Bech Is Back." It had all his usual staples, my favourite of which is baffled yet sardonic interior monologue while being on literary or "cultural" tours of foreign countries. And *Bech at Bay* promised more of the same, starting with, "Bech in Czech," which is about what you'd expect (oh, that sentence rhymed!) Detractors of these Bech Abroad stories (there are perhaps half a dozen such stories; I'm not sure how many detractors) might claim that these seem to be too much simply Updike's own observations on the book-tour life, thinly veiled in a Jew'd up, less-successful, more-venal form.

I don't, usually, think that--Bech is a pretty well-fleshed, uniquely voiced character. And his work diverges pretty sharply with Updike's (Bech is far less self-referential!) Occasionally, their sensibilities collide and you think either could be narrating, but that's all right--all authors have at least a few things in common with all their characters. Also, then we get passages like this:

"The historical fullness of Prague, layer on layer, castles and bridges and that large vaulted hall with splintered floorboards where jousts and knightly elections used to be held; museums holding halls of icons and cases of bluish Bohemian glass and painted panoramas of the saga of the all-enduring Slavs; tilted streets of flaking plasterwork masked by acres of scaffolding; that clock in Old Town Square where with a barely audible whirring a puppet skeleton tolls the hour and the twelve apostles and that ultimate bogeyman Jesus Christ twitchily appear in two little windows above and, one by one, bestow baleful wooden stares upon the assembled tourists; the incredible visual patisserie of baroque church interiors, mock-marble pillars of paint-veined gesso melting upward into trompe-l'oeil ceilings bubbling with cherubs, everything gilded and tipped and twisted and skewed to titillate the eye, huge wedding-cake interiors meant to stun Hussite peasants back into the bosom of Catholicism--all this overstuffed Christian past afflicted Beck like a void, a chasm that he could float across in the dew-fresh mornings as he walked the otherwise untrod oval path but which, over the course of each day, like pain inflicted under anaesthesia, worked terror upon his subconscious." "Bech in Czech"

Pretty good, huh?

People who know these books are often a bit surprised that I'm such a Bech fan--I mean, they get why I like the language and the structure and the jokes, but why do I like *Bech*? It's the morality that gets a few, but I wasn't troubled even when he cheated on his (very recent) wife at the end of *Bech Is Back*. In the third set of stories, Henry's in his 60s and 70s, dallying with ever-younger women, who are quite susceptible to his charms. It's unlovely behaviour, but he is as often seduced as seducer and I found I bought it--all the dalliances seemed in keeping with the character Updike created, and while a little yucky, I think one of the joys of fiction is finding empathy with people we would not care to resemble, or even know, in real life.

*However*, there was a story in *Bech at Bay* that broke all these rules, and I hated it. It's the second-last in the collection--thus, in the series (except for that lost one in *The Complete*)--and it's called "Bech Noir." Straight from the title, the piece announces itself as a genre spoof, and though it hasn't much to do with Dashell Hammett, it has only slightly more to do with Bech. The piece concerns the same guy we've been reading about straight along--smart but pretentious, shy but vain, lecherous, envious, easily swayed--only now he gives in to his worst instincts and deliberately shoves a critic who had panned his work off a subway platform.

!!!

Not only would the character of the last 2-and-2/3 books not have been capable of doing that, *no one* would have been capable of doing a lot of what comes next--this first success launches a murderous spree that, if not impossible, is at least preposterous. And silly, and totally out of keeping with the other stories in the series.

In truth, if I came upon "Bech Noir" printed alone somewhere and read it having never seen the characters, I would have enjoyed it mildly, as a piece of highly erudite showing-off--a literary author taking a kooky excursion into genre to see how well he does. And that probably *is* what this is--Updike doing an experiment with a character he knows and feels comfortable with.

Obviously, his editors didn't find the disjoint too jarring to keep the piece in--but then again, it is Updike, so who would argue? But it doesn't work, fictionally, to have most of the pieces be seriously realistic fiction, and then have one be a writing-workshop lark! I feel sort of maimed as a reader, as if I had a relationship with someone on the Internet whose photo turned out to be from the Sears catalogue. I invested in Bech as a multi-dimensional, nuanced character, and I feel like "Bech Noir" says, "ha, fooled ya--he's not realistic at all!"

The thing is, you can't even mentally excise it from the canon , because the final story in the collection, "Bech and the Bounty of Sweden" builds on certain events that took place in "Bech Noir." What's interesting here is that the latter story is a return to form--Bech baffled and passive and interacting with the world like human being instead of a plot device. "Sweden" is also very funny and wise, with an ending (thus, the ending of the book) that is just perfect--hopeful and funny and strange and true.

So, what then? A good book with one story I disliked, right--no problem? Except that one story casts doubt on my whole understanding of the fictional project the author was undertaking? Or the project of fiction, period? Or what? Mr. Updike, how could you do this to me?

On the whole, though, it was a pretty good book.
RR

Mark Purvis, 1975-2009

2010-01-25T12:35:00.002-05:00

When I was one, my family moved into a new house. The family moving out had lost their little boy to a car when he ran into the road. He was two.

When I was in grade five, a grade-six boy in my school died in what was either a bizarre accident or a suicide.

Someone in my highschool committed suicide when I was in grade 11, and we made a memorial page in the yearbook though I don't think many people actually knew the deceased--I don't even know what grade he was in--which might have been part of the problem.

About four years back, a boy who had been close to my family died under circumstances I never fully understood. He was two years younger than me.

Twice in past few years, I have come across "in memoriams" in my university alumni magazine of names I recognize--one a friend of friends, one a student politician. Both died in accidents in the mountains, years and continents apart.

Those above are, until now, all the people I know in my own age group who have died.

I met Mark Purvis when we were both involved in the short-lived Free Biscuit Theatre project (apparently no web-legacy remains) in 2007-2008. I joined despite not being an actor or theatre person because I thought writing words for someone to say as opposed to read would teach my something.

It did, but I also get pressed to perform, to serve shooters at a fundraiser, to do movement exercises and generally go way outside my comfort zone. I also got the great pleasure of shutting up and listening in presence of people who were educated and passionate about something I had only ever seen from the outside.

Mark was foremost in that regard--a dedicated actor who wasn't serious about much else. He had endless energy to try *anything* anyone suggested--I never saw him perform as a clown, but he loved that as much as the "serious" parts I did see him in. He played Mathias in the play that's linked there, *The Bells*, a massive and demanding and very bizarre role he did for Free Biscuit. He was wall-to-wall amazing and the production brought tremendous accolades (to be fair, all the Biscuits were outstanding, but Mark had the starring role).

Mark also had a fairly strong math and spreadsheet ability, gained in various dayjobs. He volunteered to use his not-much-loved gifts to do the Free Biscuit bookkeeping. He never complained about the extra work, and I'm pretty sure he used his control of our funds to make sure he was never paid at all for his performance in *The Bells*.

I didn't really know Mark all that much--we hung out every few weeks for a year--but I always felt really amazed at how seriously he took me, and how much he wanted to help with my sad attempts at at performance. Once, he and his girlfriend took an entire evening to go through my 10-minute monologue over and over again with me until I no longer (quite) wanted to die at the thought of doing it in front of an audience, and I know they listened seriously and intently every single time.

Once, a bunch of us went out to the suburbs to see Mark perform in an outdoor Shakespearian festival. When the performance got rained out, we repaired to Crabby Joe's in a not-ironic-enough urban gesture, where Mark regaled us with crazy, hilarious, filthy stories. I was so proud when we realized the couple at the next table had stopped speaking to each other entirely, the better to overhear.

Once, Mark and his girlfriend had a miniperformance at their place because they had built a *stage* in their living room (with lights!) Mark comforted me about my terror of performing by telling me the story of the time he met William Shatner.

This is a memorial to a person I didn't know well--perhaps not even a friend but rather one of those wonderful acquaintances that make life joyful. I feel lucky to have met him, and shocked that he passed away. It is terrifying to me that someone could be my own age and no longer alive--I'm not nearly ready.

Of course, no one is ever ready. All we can do, I think, is as Mark did: everything we can for everyone we meet in the moment that we are.

RR

Bits

2010-01-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

I have no major theme or connective tissue for today, just a little things I've been thinking of and would like to share with you. Please do not attempt to take them as a whole; they certainly do not come to more than the sum of their parts. I'll try to visually separate everything on the page for you.

--------------------

I like rules. Maybe more than a so-called creative person should or is expected to, I enjoy being told what to do. I gleefully tell potential employers that I take direction well, and I really mean it. My friend P calls this my desire to "outsource my thinking," and she's spot-on--I appreciate it when someone will bother to form a plan or opinion where I have none--saves me the trouble, and provides the illusion of an ordered universe. Obvious, this won't work well with things that matter a lot to me (ie., my writing, my clothes, what I'm going to eat), but I am really appreciative of advice (or imperitives) on such low-stakes issues as where to put the butter dish, when to send thank-you notes, and where I may wear my hat.

Yep, I'm an etiquette junky. When I was a tiny, I somehow picked up the Emily Post Book of Etiquette a great aunt had given my mother for high-school graduation (in a much much different edition than pictured here). And I've been a lifelong devote to her newspaper columns, and now the family (there's dozens of'em) have a website. Lately, when I've been feeling blue or harried or as if the world just weren't up to the white glove test, I've been turning to the Post family's Etiquette Daily blog, and it's been making me feel better. I thought I'd share my story, and the link, in case it might make you feel better, too.

--------------------

Kerry Clare wrote this amazing post I think you should read, called Escape the Ego. Don't be alarmed by the fact that it seems to be about a book called Eat Pray Love--I'm not sure what that is either, but I'm wary enough of the title that I'm not going to Google you a link (sorry!). Anyway, the post isn't really about that book--it's about why we read, and write, and what happens when we do. And it contains this beautiful paragraph:

"...I read, I think, to break it down and enable me to see the world in miniature, as manageable. Which, however conversely, is to be able to look at the big picture and regard it all at once, perhaps for the very first time. Fiction is a study in the hypothetical, a test-run for the actual. An experiment. What if the world was this? And we can watch the wheels turn and this bit of sample life run its course to discover. And I don't mean that literature is smaller than life, no. Literature is life, but it's just life you can hold in your hand, stick in your backpack, and I'm reassured by that, because the world is messy and sprawling, but if you take it down to the level of story, I am capable of some kind of grasp. Of beginning to understand what this world is, how to be in it."

To which I say, yes. Also, wow.

--------------------

Paul Quarrington has died, another hard blow in a rough week for CanLit. I hadn't, in truth, read much of Quarrington's work, but I was a big fan of his live performances--a great reader, a great speaker, a surprising good singer (I saw his band, The Pork Belly Futures play in Winnipeg because I was all alone and it was either that or stare at my hotel-room wall--and they were brilliant!!) He had a wonderful big warm presence, and an off-the-cuff joy in performing. I actually went to so many Quarrington events, and just ran into him randomly at so many litsy things, that he started smiling and saying hi to me, even though he had no idea who I was. I was in the process of working up the nerve to introduce myself, and now I am not going to get to do it. Which is sad. But I will be reading the books.

------------------

And so ends another miscellaneous week. Hope this finds you well!
RR

An end to villainy

2010-01-21T22:19:00.000-05:00

This is not a new year's resolution, because I was working on it in 2009 too, but something I've committed to in my fiction is to try never to write villains. Why? Because villains aren't people. Well, no character in fiction is an actual person, much as I like to relate to them. Better explanation: villains are not characters that act like real people--they exist purely to thwart other characters, for reasons of plot, not emotion, context, or necessity. When they are done kicking the babies, chopping down the old-growth forest and eating the last cookie, they go into the cupboard and shut themselves down until the author needs them to go cause more havoc. That's a reference to Vicki, the human-like robot on Small Wonder). When the family wasn't interacting with her, she was in a cupboard, switched off, mindless and inert. Like Vicki, villains have little motivation or inner life; they aren't really characters, because they exist only to act out the designs or wishes of others. When Vicki is not being seen by others, her own consciousness stops--she has no opinions of herself until she is flicked back to life for a new interaction.

Which is, of course, fine in certain sorts of writing--often in genre stuff, children's stuff--who wants to know what the black-hatted cowboy or Gargamel should be so industriously evil?

But that's not the sort of stories I'm interested in writing--I really am trying to mimic how real people actually are (sometimes I have less interest in real settings or plot elements--witness stories about urban flying lessons and cheerleaders from other planets). And I guess this is a personal assumption, but I don't think people, even assholes, generally perceive themselves to be assholes. I mean, some people just *are* but I don't think *they* think they are. Like the lady who shoves me out of the way to be first in line at the newly opened cashier at Metro--an unqualified loser move, but I very much doubt that her interior monologue says, "Ok, time for an unqualified loser move!" She thinks about her kids waiting at home for her, or maybe I cut her off somewhere else in the store and she's getting revenge, or maybe she's so absorbed in her thoughts of her next manicure that she doesn't even see me.

I don't actually care--I'm just annoyed for a moment and then I get distracted by a recipe magazine in the checkout stand and that's the end of it. And I don't have to care, being just a human, but as a writer I think I would--have to give any character occupying my stage a reasonable point of view, because nobody actually hops out of bed in the morning thinking, "Bwa, I'm a bitch." Everyone thinks they've got their reasons. I think many of them are *wrong* in their reasons, but they still have them.

Anyhow, that's how I see the world, so it bugs me when I read about characters that don't seem to have a real moral compass. I don't at all mind characters that are immoral or amoral (lots of people are) but I need a writer to either show me how that works internally, or at least strongly imply that there is a way it works. Maybe it's been too many novels about vengeful ex-wives cutting the power supply and crazy employers extending work hours, but these villainous type characters often seem like a shortcut to manufacturing tension in a plot where none really exists.

I've definitely wrestled with this in my own work--sometimes I don't know why a minor character did some jerky thing and I don't really care, and then I realize that the whole section reads really false--manufactured plot. So I go back and think through the backstory and often have to change things, because no one except the truly deranged would spend that amount of time and energy trying to mess with someone for no apparent gain. So I write it differently--sometimes I take the villain out of the story, sometimes they get a little nicer, sometimes they remain total jerks but they get some logical motivations for their jerkiness. Once I wound up flipping the whole story to write it from the "mean" person's POV. Some of these villains are pretty interesting, when you get to know them.

RR

Life, the Universe, and Rhetoric

2010-01-17T19:11:00.002-05:00

This isn't a word I use a lot but I've felt fairly confident in its place in my vocabulary since undergrad. But, like I said in the vocab post earlier this week, once I *think* I know what a word means, why would I ever look it up unless someone challenges or corrects me? Which is not precisely what happened in that post, but a few people I think might be smarter than I did mention they were impressed that I am comfortable using such a word...which immediately made it uncomfortable.

So let's do it: here's how I use the word rhetoric on the rare occasions on which I do:

Rhetoric is presentation or argumentation of an issue, theory, or concept. Rhetoric is *not* synonymous with the thing itself; it is synonymous with the words used to present that thing, from a given point of view, in a given style, and from a given agenda. For example, the rhetoric around breast cancer from the "pink ribbon campaign" has a personal, gently feminist tone and focuses a great deal on personal empowerment, separate from medical intervention. My rhetorical presentation of PC brand dulce de leche banana cream pie involved a lot of religious, divine-revelation-style language, but really it is just a pie.

Ok, that's how I've been using it--let's see if I'm right. To do this, I turn to M. H. Abrams's A Glossary of Literary Terms, the source of most of my knowledge that doesn't come from The New Yorker, Facebook, or something someone told me that I sorta half remember.

Mr. Abrams uses a lot of history, including figures like Aristotle and "the Roman rhetorician Quintillian" (no idea, and I'm not even going to link, because I would have no idea if I'd got the right link or not). Eventually he distills down to "In a general sense, then, rhetoric can be described as the study of language in its practical uses, focusing on the effects of language, especially persuasion, and on the means by which one can achieve these effects on auditors or readers.

Whew. So I think this means I've got it about right. More or less. If anyone feels like chiming in, to add or critique, feel free--my advice by itself is not worth a whole lot, at least not on complex topics like this. On simple topics like, for example, whether you should buy the book and/or the pie mentioned above, you should totally listen when I say: yes, both, resoundingly!!

There are too many colons in this post.

RR

Week-ender

2010-01-15T07:41:00.002-05:00

Thanks so much to all who chimed in (or even thought chimeful thoughts) on my vocab-rant last post. I don't think anything on Rose-coloured has ever garnered 11 comments. Thanks for letting me know/reminding me that word definitions are whatever most people understand it to be, my last subhead was defeated by its own cleverness, and the rules of grammar do not apply to David Mamet--I'm feeling considerably more chilled out about things now.

Except rhetoric--comments from smart people indicating that they don't understand that word have undermined my own confidence that I understand it! So, coming soon: a post about rhetoric.

But today promises to be the busiest day ever, so not today. Today I'm just enjoying about simple things like: a) it's sufficiently warm in my apartment (example of the simple joys in my life: I got out of the shower and didn't want to die), b) my headache from yesterday went away, c) the video below, and c+) the fact that I may have learned to embed it correctly (we'll see), d) that if I can just make it through the busiest day ever, I get to Skype with far-off friends, and tomorrow, someone is going to make me sweet-potato soup (Rose-coloured philosophy: hooray for sweet potatoes! I recognize as a philosophy that needs work).

I have noted that not everything in the world is good. Accidentally watching the news from Haiti last night on the gym left me near tears on the elliptical trainer, I am so sad about the loss of P.K. Page, and I think certain friends are having some tough times these days.

I'm not saying that this video ameliorates any of that, but I do think it's very funny and it's only 47 seconds long. 47 seconds of distraction is worthwhile, I think. (Thanks, Ben, for the link!)

RR

Vocabulary Rant: Winter Edition

2010-01-13T08:34:00.001-05:00

Remember last week when I was miserable? I read a lot, and every time I came across some vocabulary error I went on a (silent) rant about whatever it was being basic knowledge and who were these writers who didn't even know the definition of "savory"??

Of course, that's nonsense--vocabulary's hard, because once you think you know a word, why on earth would you look it up to confirm the definition? If the word is esoteric, you might not even use it in conversation often enough for someone who knows better to hear it and correct you. You are stuck with this erroneous impression for life, perhaps...

I've carried mistakes around unvoiced for years, only to be blown away when, for example, my TA couldn't understand what I meant when I said "re-TOR-ick" and another student had to step in and say, "I think she means rhetoric," as if I were an over-precocious child or perhaps a trained monkey. Er, ahem, that was a bad day.

Anyway, this is a (modestly) good day, and I am ready to assert some things about some words in the hopes that it'll help someone and, if I get anything wrong, some kind commenter will step in quickly to set me straight and save me from years of further errors. You'd do that for me, wouldn't you?

I'm going to skip over where I found these errors, as the works in questions were actually pretty good and I don't wish to embarrass anyone (as that oblivious TA did to me!!)

You can't call sweets "savory," because they are sweet. Foods that are savory have a predominant flavour of herbs, spices, salt, or some combination thereof. They are what one eats for appetizers or the interesting part of main courses (the potatoes/bread/pasta are the bland part). When someone is having a potluck and realizes that all the guests are bringing cakes and cookies and they say, "We have too many sweets and not enough...not-sweets," what they mean is savory. In this context, sweet and savory are opposites--fruits, candies, cakes'n'pies, etc. are never savory--the issue I came across was a fruit being described that way, which sounds horrid (imagine a salty spicy strawberry!) I think the confusion arises from the verb "to savor" , one definition of which is to enjoy a flavour. That flavour can be anything, sweet or savory, so you see how people could think anything worth savoring could be described as savory but, sadly, it's not.

I'm using American spellings here, because those are the dictionary references I could find online. In Canada, it should really be "savoury" and "to savour".

Bemusement means confusion, not amusement...or am I confused? I was taught ages ago that bemusement is a kind of gentle confusion, often with some ironic tolerance built in--you can be bemused by your toddler's insistence on putting toys in the fridge, but you can't be bemused in the chaos after a car accident (well, I can't). But then while I was fishing for online definitions for this post, I came across this one, which seems to imply that bemuse *can* be a 50-cent synonym for "amuse," as I often hear it used. Is this a commonly accepted definition--anyone know?

That which you choose, that or which, makes a difference. This one breaks my heart, because it is such a useful nuance of language and I'm pretty sure it's going to die out. I recently lost an argument with a teenaged friend about why *not* spell "all right" as "alright"--my argument, because we already have a perfectly good way of spelling it and the new way does not add any new angle to the word, nor even save all that much energy not typing the second L and the space. His argument was, well, people often do, and are perfectly well understood. Then the example of "hoodie" for "hooded sweatshirt" came up, and that's an evolution I rather like, as the slang word for a sloppy article of clothing seems so appropriate, plus the word reflects how people actually talk, and does save a lot of typing time.

So, fine, I accept "hoodie" as an addition to the language, and "alright" as at least not much of a subtraction, but losing the that/which distinction leaves us poorer, I think. And I do think it's going, despite many people's adherence, because fellow *editors* ask me about this one, and though they listen and even write it down when I explain, they always end by saying, "Thanks. I never remember that one," as if it were impossible to learn and not much of a loss, anyway. But here it is, one more time, with feeling:

Use that with no comma to introduce a restrictive clause--thus, to limit the statement to being about some part of a larger group. For example, to say, "Lorna thought about the sex she had with Steve that was great," is to say, she thought about *some* of the sex she had with Steve, the times that were great, but not the other, less stellar, times.

On the other hand, use which with a comma to introduce a non-restrictive clause--that is, a clause that adds extra information about *all* of the topic at hand, and doesn't separate out a subsection as different. Thus, to say, "Lorna thought about the sex she had with Steve, which was great," says to us that Lorna is thinking about all the times she and Steve had gotten together, and by the way, it was always great.

You see there's a big difference here, right? Both for Lorna (and Steve!) and for the reader. If you run into this baffling construction--"Lorna thought about the sex with Steve which was great"--who the hell knows how good their sex lives are?

Sometimes I get the impression that people think grammar rules are just snobbery, like rules about what fork to use for the shrimp--a way for people who know to feel that they are better than those that don't know. And frankly, on really tough days, sometimes the grammar that I do know (which is certainly not all of it) is all I have to cling to. In truth, when it comes to Latinate rules like not ending a sentence with a preposition, it really is just rules for the sake of rules, but when it comes to Lorna and Steve, I think sentence construction does matter and is worth thinking about!

I would love to know, oh Rose-coloured readers, does anyone observe the that/which distinction anymore? Don't be afraid--it's 21 C in my apartment today, so I can take the bad news if it happens that you don't!

Thanks for reading--it felt really good to get all that off my chest!
RR

Rose-coloured Reviews The Weather Indoors

2010-01-11T12:21:00.000-05:00

Thanks to all that provided such kind and useful advice on my indoor-weather predicament. I have to point out that, while I do doubt that my building-provided thermometer is accurate, it does say that the Rose-coloured Ranch is only a degree or two lower than the legal minimum of 21 C, and for a mysterious shining moment when I was not there but the building manager was, actually above it.

I'm pretty sure it's colder than that--I am not *such* a whiner. But reading the stories in the comments section and hearing them from other friends reminds me that I am *kind of* a whiner. My apartment has never been 12 C by any thermometer, I have never been able to see my breath inside, and all my plants are still living. I should count my blessings. So I appreciate both the advice about ovens, showers, and thermometers (which I'll likely use) and the reminder to buck up.

That said, it *does* seem a little more pleasant at my place now. This could be a morale issue, as I spent a delightful weekend abroad, but I do think it's warmer. Last night, when I returned home, if I happened to put a foot on the floor with only a sock on (my slippers sometimes fall off) it is not so terribly distressing. Mind you, I still slept rolled like a taquito in a fleece blanket (you wrap yourself standing up, then inch-worm under the normal covers) clutching a teddy bear whose floral-sachet heart can be heated in the microwave for warmth and aroma therapy. But having done all those things, I was quite warm and comfortable.

Perhaps I will be able to move on from this chilly period in my life and I actually post about a book soon. Just in case, I think I'll bake a cake tonight and leave the oven on a little extra.

RR

Better

2010-01-09T14:56:00.002-05:00

The promised improvement report: I am feeling a good bit better about the world today, owing in large part to have found somewhere else to sleep last night where I didn't have to wear a hood to bed. This is not a permanent solution, I know, but I'll work on one of those next week. It may involve an oil drum; stay tuned.

In keeping with my theme of devastating literature, yesterday I read Joyce Carol Oates's Where are you going, where have you been? and may never get over it. What she achieves in this story is amazingly harrowing, and then you pull out of the story and feel like you've gone so far from reality, but really you haven't at all. Bizarre, amazing, and not for the timid--you were warned.

Warmly,
RR

Everything is terrible

2010-01-08T08:04:00.000-05:00

Examples of everything:

--Building manager's inspection of my apartment finds that it is not illegally cold. But last night, before bed, teeth were chattering! Mine! Indoors! That should be illegal.
--This morning, my bus rear-ended another bus.
--A tiny but important little bit'o'code on my computer was devoured in the night. Now I can do everything but the thing I need to do right now. (note: this was fixed almost immediately after I wrote about it by a kind colleague, but that's not the point. The point is what is the universe's *deal* that it would do that to me?)
--Hot Friday night plans: avalanche of tax forms.

Although everything is, in fact, terrible, that expression is not mine. There is actually a website called Everything Is Terrible (you should have known) filled with alarming/sad/hilarious found footage. I've only seen the cat massage video, which I think has been doctored to make it even more disturbing than it was originally (ie., very) but it's an interesting concept.

I'm just gonna put my head down for a little bit now. Oh, no, wait, I'm going to do this mountain of work.

RR

PS--I will try to post something rose-coloured on the weekend. As soon as this migraine receeds a little.

Dark Materials

2010-01-07T12:08:00.002-05:00

It wasn't intentional, but as soon as the holidays were over I started reading and watching much darker stuff than in late December. Though it wasn't the plan, but it's worked out to kind of suit my mood--it's freezing in my apartment (and outside of it), the war with UPS rages on, and I have way too much work. Also, I miss the days when everything was about tinsel instead of to-do lists--where are you, oh halcyon days of late December??

But of course, if something's going to be sad, it helps a lot if it's also darkly funny and searingly realistic. I went to see Up in the Air because it is being marketed as a snappy romantic comedy and (sue me) I like those. But though there are a few rom-com type scenes (a groom with cold feet, a cra-zay party where everyone gets drunk and lets their feelings show), those wind up looking strange and out of place in the midst of all the dark and searing.

This film is about a man named Ryan (played by George Clooney) who is hired for a day or a week by companies who want to fire some of their employees but management can't a actually face doing it. Ryan describes losing a job as one of the worst days of most people's lives--and in this film, you get to see that, over and over. Many of the dozens of newly fired folks are played by real people who actually *have* been recently let go. They improvise their lines, and the pain apparent made me want to look away, and unable to look away.

So the film is about how people relate to their jobs, how Ryan relates to his job, and to the women around him. He mainly *doesn't* relate to people in non-business relationships, until he meets a sexy lady in a bar, and that relationship somehow lets him engage with people like his sisters, his vulnerable young colleague, etc. So you see how this could have been an inspiring little love story, but I have been running around begging people not to see it if that's what they're hoping for.

The gooey middle of the story ends soon enough and the ending is a one-two punch that left my companion and I sitting like blast victims as the credits rolled and everyone else left the theatre. *Up in the Air* is a very good movie, but brace yourself.

There certainly are flaws in that film, despite my love for it. On the other hand, though in many ways grim, Denis Johnson's short story collection Jesus' Son is pretty pitch-perfect. Such immense clarity and respect he brings to even descriptions of suffering that I was really awed my the book, though again, I often wanted to look away. These are linked stories--they all have the same narrator, a young junkie of no fixed address with a string of unhappy girlfriends and a flexible relationship with violence.

The stories are likely what you'd imagine them to be, tales of deals gone wrong, confusion, suffering, gore, all with the hazy chronology and causality that comes from telling stories on chemicals. But there is an incredible beauty in these pieces, too, which comes partially from the narrator's fractured viewpoint and partially from the circumstances he finds himself in, quite unlike what most of us will ever see. I saw the film version ages back (it was pretty good, I think) and the most memorable part involved Jack Black as a strung-out hospital orderly, and a patient with a switchblade in his eye. That incident is found here in the story "Emergency," similarly striking but much quieter, much more ordinary in its strangeness and impossible beauty.

This is from the last piece in the book, "Beverly Home." The 20 pages of the story feel epic as the narrator takes a job in a nursing home, dates a dwarf, goes to AA, struggles to live what he imagines a real drug-free life would be:

"One day, too, when I'd passed through the lot and was walking along behind a row of town houses on the way to the bus stop, I heard the sound of a woman singing in her shower. I thought of mermaids: the blurry music of falling water, the soft song from the wet chamber. The dusk was down, and the heat came off the hovering buildings. It was rush hour, but the desert sky has a way of absorbing the sounds of traffic and making them seem idel and small. Her voice was the clearest thing coming to my ears."

So many people talk about how amazing this book is that I was daunted to read it--book almost never live up to that sort of hype. I am so glad this one did.

I'm, uh, gonna maybe do something cheerful now.

RR

12 sentences

2010-01-06T08:46:00.000-05:00

Another way people of the blogosphere (do I overuse that word?) are recapping the year is by posting the first sentences from the first post of each month in 2009 together, to see if they form a narrative. Mine don't, but it was fun for me to cruise through all my old posts and remember all those good times. Also, to realize that I write really really long sentences; gotta work on that!

12 random bits of 2009:

These 365-day units do not necessarily break off at useful points--I'm having trouble encapsulating the past year or imagining the next one because I'm in the *middle* of so many things.

So you live in an apartment for ages, get used to all the tricks of the door locks and the shower faucet, keep your shorts available during the winter because you know the heat is unpredictable, realize there is a tiny bloodstain on a floortile here or there and don't worry about it because it's probably yours, tape things to every available surface, install splitters on the phone jack and a power bar on the electrical jack and generally just assume that the place is your domain and you know it cold.

Saturday February 28, 2009, dawned a bit watery, but the dawn did come before 7 am (only the third day of the year that we got light before 7!) and by the time sun was fully in the sky, the flimsy cloud cover had delicately burnt off or blown away, leaving us with a ravishing yellow and blue to breakfast by. In

As you might have been able to glean from the occasion dysphoric comment here at Rose-coloured, or my eye-rolls in person, my current manuscript is not coming together as well as I'd like.

I'm reading reading reading student stories this week, and they are *good*!

This is week is one with way too much fun in it, such that of the events below, I'm only actually able to attend a couple.

Colour vapour labour odour realize analyze vapourize glamour (but glamorous) jewellery ageing cheque judgment lasagna gonnorhea etc.

I started thinking about story (and poem) submissions to literary journals when a friend said she was going to start sending some out.

Joyland Stories will soon be a part of the daily dose of aweomse that is CellStories, a site that sends cell phone and Blackberry (etc.) users a new short story every day (you can also read the stories at the link above).

Mr. Turner is an important author for me (although really also for Canada) for various reasons, not least his was one of the first literary readings I ever saw, and at said reading, the very first pornographic film I ever saw.

Reminder that Amy Jones, Kathleen Winter and I are reading tomorrow at the Drawn & Quarterly store in Montreal, 211 rue Bernard West, at 7pm.

The Advent Books blog is up and running.

RR

New month's resolution

2010-01-05T12:41:00.000-05:00

So I couldn't come up with any new year's resolutions. That makes me sad, because I love new year's resolutions. Hooray for opportunities to improve--I have lots of ways I need to improve! In past years, I have made 10 little resolutions to work on throughout the year, with a midyear review on my birthday (in case I decide some resolutions are stupid and decide to junk them).

But this year I can't think of anything I want to work on all year. In truth, that's often what's wrong with me--some resolutions get "resolved" early in the year because they are specific (ie., last year I resolved to learn one word in Japanese a week until I went there, and I did, and then I went there, and that was that) and others drag on because they are too open-ended (become braver was the other resolution--wtf was I thinking?? how?? and how will I know if I have??)

Even if they are good specific-but-long-term plans, by the time I get to the end of the year both my world and myself are usually completely different and I no longer want to do the thing I resolved to do. I think a large part of my problem with life, actually, is that I don't realize that everything changes all the time.

So this year I have resolved to resolve a new thing for each month. If it works, great, that can be part of my lifestyle, and I'll resolve something new for the next month. If it sucks, oh well, I'll junk it and have something new for the next month. I guess I could also renew a resolution for a second month if need be, but Penelope Trunk says it only takes three weeks to make a new habit, and I'm giving myself an extra week for cushion.

My January resolution is to start writing in the mornings, at least a little bit. Tonnes of writers swear by this habit, but I've always been a little brain-dead in the morning. I'm totally a morning person, I'm happy to get up and do things and even chat with you (very few people want to chat with me early in the morning, it turns out), but I don't feel I come up with great insight before 9am very often.

So what I usually do with my early mornings is go to the gym, but this winter I have been feeling that if I have to leave the house at 5:45 and walk in slush and cold and blackness to the gym every morning, I might die. Serious, this is a creaky old person sensation, and it's not good.

Thus I've been going to the gym in the evenings, which cuts into my writing time, so the logical thing would be...there you go. I tried it this morning--it was a little disorganized and not my best work by far but it's a try. Three weeks less a day to go!

Happy new year!
RR

Hearts and stars to 2009

2010-01-04T21:06:00.001-05:00

Ok, I'm lagging behind but I am still thinking about 2009 and trying to think of an appropriate tribute. Just to be clear, this was a year I liked *very* much, but I don't think all the highlights are blog-appropriate (every cookie I ate and person I hugged and time a civil servant was extra nice to me could get dull, not to mention unwieldy). So I'm concentrating on bookish highlights--they are, after all, often the most interesting parts of my day.

Books read: 69 (ha!)

Books written: 1/2 of one (hiatus'd); 1/2 of another (promising!)

Regrets regarding the first of those: none that I wrote it, none that I stopped (right now, at least; I'm a little moody on this subject)

Best reading experience: Tongue by Kyung-Ran Jo over the course of two days in July, while lying in the grass in various public parks in Toronto. This was very much not the best book I read in 2009--in fact I have a lot of problems with it that I'm dying to discuss (any takers?) But it certainly is suspenseful and I was very eager to find out what happened, and I had nothing to do but keep reading in the glorious sunshine, interrupted only by bathroom breaks, eating on patios and conversations with my equally bookish companion. There aren't many better weekends, I'd say.

Best CanLit in-joke that I actually got: In the novella "Gator Wrestling" in Leon Rooke's The Last Shot. This is a stellar piece, even if you never get the joke--it's just the sprinkles on already overwhelmingly delicious frosted cake. Conversely, there are likely many jokes I didn't get in books I've read this year--but how good were those books to start with?

Most hated short story: "Pain Continuum" by Harold Brodkey. I *love* a lot of Brodkey's stories--even the notorious cunnilingus story, "Innocence" but he has a slew of first-person-narrator-experiencing-torture marathon stories that make you hate the narrator, the torturers, the author, the world and yourself. I think he had an artistic ambition with this story, but I don't care: I loathe it.

Best reading (as audience): Spencer Gordon, "The Sentence," Pivot at the Press Club. I think this would be a great piece on paper (but I'm still waiting for it to published so that I can confirm that) but Gordon's voice and the audience's warm reception made this incredible to listen to.

Best reading (as reader): the Metcalf-Rooke reading in Montreal at Drawn and Quarterly. Fantastic lineup, amazing venue (when else I am going to be onstage in a graphic novel store?), all in my old town. As to my own performance, I felt more thoroughly that I didn't suck than usual, which in my self-conscious universe counts as a win!

Best book launch accessory: Amy Jones's mixed cd for her launch for What Boys Like. What a good idea (and good music!) (and a good book!)

Worst disappointment: Closing announcement of Don Mills McNallly Robinson. I'd pinned a lot of hopes on that lovely space. So sad.

Best literary reading food: Really fat and enormous dates at the launch of Marta Chudolinska's Back and Forth graphic novel.

Best conversation about writing: About 72 short stories, with Camilla Gibb and Lee Henderson as we debated and decided on the stories for The Journey Stories 21. A warm, empassioned and literate conversation that lasted all day in a big sunny room, with sushi.

I could go on and on--it was a really good year. Buy you get the gist, I'm sure--and we all have a year to get on with!

So pure

2010-01-02T14:04:00.003-05:00

Hey, the Puritan's back! For those who didn't know it well enough to know it had gone away, *The Puritan* that paused in publishing 16 months ago was an originally Ottawa-based print journal, and as of today is a Toronto-based online journal. A new online space for awesome stories, poetry, and interviews--hooray!

Thanks to the staff there for putting this (back) together, as well as publishing my little story, If This.

RR

Two thousand and what?

2010-01-01T20:12:00.002-05:00

I was going to recap this past week of vacation at some point, but then I realized that I should also do a 2009-in-review post, and then people started going on about the end of the *decade* and now I am just utterly overwhelmed.

I've been reading other people's lovely 2000s retrospectives instead, happy that some people can do this right. A lot of them are fairly personal, even if they are on blogs focussed on reading or writing or whatever (my interests are pretty narrow in scope). Which only makes sense--ten years is a huge meaningful block in anyone's life, and it's hard not to get emotional thinking of what's been wrought in that time, even if a lot of good books got read in there, too.

Though I never particularly felt that the aughts had any kind of decadey tone, that might be because they were the first decade in which I was semi-functional in the world (there probably are people who are fully conscious agents in their own lives before they turn 21; to them I say, bravo). So to me the aughts are not just a decade where certain things happened--it's the decade when *everything* happened.

This was driven home to me last night when the party discussion turned to where we spent Y2K New Year's. I spent mine at the City of Hamilton's outdoor celebration, because the band featured wasHoneymoon Suite, which was a (semi-ironic) favourite band of mine and my friends. I was visiting my parents outside of Hamilton on break from my third year of university.

If present Rebecca could somehow go meet me in the past, my younger self would probably only say, "How did you get your hair like that?"

I had no idea then how my life would go, and no idea how I *wanted* it to go, so I really don't think I would have known how to ask a pertinent question. But I would have been really impressed with future self for getting my hair (mainly) under control.

And looking back, I still can't form a meaningful narrative looking at the decade as a whole. Having this blog, and doing some interviews and profiles when *Once* came out last year, really put this in perspective for me. I can make certain events and relationships seem to cohere into a logical arc by extracting them from the long silly series of events that is my life and putting them only in the context of each other.

But to me, and I think to most people in the process of living, there is no narrative--just the things that happened, and what we did about them. It's the act of writing (ah, this post has a point!) that creates a story, whether or not the events are true--the selection of what to leave in and what to omit, how to frame, what tone to take, whose point of view to honour. This blog in certain ways is the story of my life over the last 3 years, but it's highly biased since I do all the telling, and I leave most of what doesn't really pertain to reading and writing (usually) (for example, an edited version would include boring stuff like what I ate at every meal, dumb stuff like that time I got stuck in the back of the couch, and incriminating stuff like how I tried too hard to pet this cat that she went ballistic and tried to eat me).

I found a really interesting little section in the journal Ars Medica about how to write about real life:

"...[In reading fiction] we sometimes encounter unprocessed details...that have specific, charged meaning for the teller but are unclear to the reader. These pieces in many ways resemble journalling or therapeutic writing. The author is too close to the events or uses personal code and shorthand, which leave gaps. As a result, we are not fully invited into the experience. Stories of trauma and loss are often fragmented, because they remain so for the writer and have not yet been crafted through the personal and creative steps that render them coherent and universal.

"Writing personal narratives may indeed be healing, but to be literary there needs to be distance, and "observer's eye" that allows us to to see the full picture."

So that's what I lack, I think--the observer's eye that allows be to see my life from beyond my own headspace, to really think in terms of my own fictional self as living a story. And this is why I don't write much autobiographical fiction--I'm bad at it. I know the details and their import so I leave them out, I get stuck on a particular "truth" and thus can't make the story truly resonant with people other than myself.

The blog is an opportunity to try to craft mini-narratives that still sorta stick to the truth, but you might have noticed that I don't often do that--Rose-coloured consists much more of essay/opinion/rant-type writing, or else snatches of contextless dialogue, rather than actual beginning-middle-end type stories from my own life. Those are just too hard--how to find an "ending" to my anecdote when I'm still alive.

So I find it weird to be looking at my life in a ten-year chunk--no narrative seems available. 10 years ago I had a roommate, I lived in Montreal, I was writing a weird novella, and my favourite food was probably chocolate macaroons. Are those the salient details of me at that point? Who knows? I don't even know the salient details of my life now, and I certainly don't know how to take the relatively simple but to me wonderful, baffling, sad, exciting, and scary events of the last ten years and make it seem like I had a plan, an arc, or even a clue.

How does anyone ever write their autobiography?

And thus, to begin 2010, apparently this is a post about why I write fiction.

I hope your next 10 years, and mine, are wonderful and baffling.

En vacances

2009-12-30T09:38:00.003-05:00

I thought that I might not have the time or internet connection to blog during vacation, but here I am with both of those. What I lack is anything to blog in regard to. It is funny to get through a day without writing or editing or talking to people about writing, or even eavesdropping on people on the bus (somehow, I consider that part of my work). As it turns out, this vacation thing is very pleasant. There is currently a blizzard going on where I am (Charlottetown, if you are curious), which limits activities to reading, eating, talking, and playing cards. Also, napping, which is not really an activity but does fill gaps in the day quite nicely.

Lulled on sleep and sugar, I am unable to come up with much that's interesting to say. I have learned that PEIslanders are very friendly and call Gin Rummy "Queens" but it's still fun, that I probably have some kind of chronic sinus issue that I need a professional to look into and if possible destroy, that I like lobster as much as I suspected I would, and that the innovators issue of the New Yorker is pretty good but they still shouldn't have done away with the winter fiction issue.

I swear to you, that's all I've got. I...uh...I'm gonna go work on a story now. And then maybe commute to nowhere, just feel a bit more like myself. Either that or take a nice midmorning nap.

RR

Still festive, mainly

2009-12-27T09:17:00.003-05:00

I had an awesome Christmas, and I hope anyone else celebrating did likewise. I was given a new watch to replace the one that broke a month ago, so everyone I normally hang out with will now stop being plagued by me reaching for their wrists every (approximately) five minutes. I also got a zillion awesome books, peanut-butter bonbons, pickled carrots, a scratch-n-win Bingo that won me $3 (which I immediately blew on a second card, which won me nothing), slippers, a cloche hat (just like Virginia Woolf!), a tiny table, and dozens of hugs.

I also got another sinus infection!! This was not a gift but rather, I suppose, just payback for so much awesomeness. I still resent that I spent most of *Sherlock Holmes* yesterday a) sleeping or b) trying not to vomit (I didn't--win!), and thus have no idea what happened. But I still think it was a very good movie anyway. And the more I consider it, the more I actually think that this incident was the result of my over-the-counter sinus medication, because as soon as I stopped taking it the desire to puke and lose consciousness went away. So now I'm medication-free and largely functional, and if I can just get on a plane and travel across the country, I am pretty much guaranteed more hugs, plus naniamo bars. So that is today's goal.

So I gotta go pack, instead of writing a year's end list of best somethings or worst somethings, but I was likely not going to get around to doing that anyway. Thank goodness Maisonneuve did one of books and let me contribute.

I hope you guys have a great fake-boxing day tomorrow, and who knows--if I have a little downtime in my travels, I may yet get you a list of best/worst somethings, or possibly a picture of me in a cloche hat.

RR

Festive farewell

2009-12-23T12:44:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to send a quick Merry Everything to y'all out there in blog land. I'm mainly dependent on the kindness of others for internet this holiday season (I am currently stealing wireless from somewhere to write this post) so likely there won't be much action on Rose-coloured for the next week or so, although I can never really keep away from the interwebs entirely. But certainly, I wanted to wish all who care to celebrate a merry Christmas tomorrow, and to those who don't, a very nice day!

I don't know if any of you would have run into this, but my short story, "Christmas with My Mother" just got released as an audio download from Rattling Books Earlit Shorts 4. It was very weird to hear my work in another's voice--brilliant, because Janet Russell gives the story a gentle and nuanced interpretation--but very strange since the only place I'd heard those words before was inside my own head. Add to that the fact that I wrote the story over a year ago and hadn't even looked at in six months and the whole thing was something of a shock. I actually squirmed at the awkward moments in the story as I listened and once laughed aloud at a funny part (immodest? sure, but I also think that writers who don't find their own funny parts funny should stop writing them.

That story is also included in this year's Best Canadian Short Stories, which also came in the mail yesterday--merry Christmas to me! So there's two ways to get that story, should you care to. I would like to point out that, despite the title seeming to perfectly coincide with the season, this is very much not a Christmas story, and might not be ideal reading for those of you cuddling down to read in the glow of treelights (or it might be exactly appropriate--depends on how you like your glow). But just FYI.

Other than that, there is very little literary going on around here, but lots that is good--family, old friends, a cake made almost entirely out of pudding, that ornament of a stocking I made in grade 2, 90s nostalgia music, and many hugs. That's how I like my glow--I hope yours is however you want it to be.

Merrily,
RR

Rose-coloured and Mark review Milk Coffee Pocky

2009-12-22T12:36:00.004-05:00

Back in the summer when Scott first loaned me his tape-recorder, I field-tested it by doing a joint-review of Twix Java with novelist Mark Sampson. We enjoyed ourselves and the candy, and that particular post was oddly popular according to my site meter. So I thought it would be fitting that before I give Scott back his recorder in January (good news, Scott...), we close out this tape-recording epoch with another coffee-confection review verbatim conversation transcript. I bring you me, Mark, and Milk Coffee Pocky (purchased at T&T West Edmonton Mall.

RR: This is the second review of a coffee-chocolate confectionary product by myself and novelist Mark Sampson. Hello, Mark.

MS: Hello.

RR: Thanks for doing this with me.

MS: Oh, it's great to be back.

RR: Hold this.

MS: Certainly.

RR: Ok...mic me, not the candy.

MS: Hello, candy!

RR: So this is...Pocky, Milk Coffee...most of the rest of the label is in Japanese. There's a picture of a cow--

MS: Licking his lips.

RR: And "+Ca" which is...calcium?

MS: Probably calcium, yes.

RR: And there 170 calories per 33 gram serving and...nobody cares about this. Ok. [crinkling noise, male laughter] Anything to add?

MS: No, I think you've pretty much covered it.

RR: Inside the box is a little foil bag with no English on it. A pocky is--would you like to describe a Pocky?

MS: Certainly. So it's basically a stick of cookie that has been dipped in milk chocolate. Or in this case, I guess, coffee chocolate. Or some kind of coffee related milk product. Right?

RR: Exactly right. We are now going to each try a Pocky...stick.

MS: All right.

[chewing sounds]

RR: This tastes a shocking amount like coffee with milk and sugar.

MS: Pretty much, yeah.

RR: And like a little bit of biscuit.

MS: It's like someone dropped a cookie in your coffee.

RR: But fished it out really fast, because it's still crispy.

MS: Exactly.

[chewing]

RR: There's not a lot of chocolate going on, actually.

MS: No, I don't--

RR: Maybe it's not really chocolate.

MS: I don't think there really any chocolate involved here. I think it's just coffee-flavoured...milk...

RR: Goo.

MS: Yeah. That the cookie has been dipped in.

RR: This is not--I mean, I haven't tried all the Pocky flavours, but I've tried a number--this is not my favourite...There's nothing wrong with it.

[chewing]

RR: It's just kinda--

MS: This is a popular snack though in Asia. When I was living in Korea, over there it's called Pepero and it has its own holiday, November 11--

RR: Ha!

MS: --because it looks like the sticks, the 1 1 1 1.

RR: But nothing to do with the war?

MS: Not at all. It's all about candy. But a very popular snack over there, but it's pure chocolate on top, not any of this coffee business.

RR: Yeah, chocolate or the more elaborate chocolate, like two layers of chocolate and one is white. I forget what that one is called but that kind of Pocky is really my favourite.

MS: Yeah, this one is I would have to say a bit disappointing by comparison. I kind of want that chocolaty explosion.

RR: Or at least more of the sugary goodness...as opposed to--this is quite substantially pretzel. Like the stick is a pretzel without salt, which is really not a bit draw for me...it's more of just a method of getting to the candy.

MS: Right. Basically it's holding the candy for you.

RR: Exactly--it's very tidy because you don't have to have your fingers on the melty part. So I mean, Pocky is genius, but this is just not...

MS: It's subpar Pocky.

RR: I mean....this is six. I'd say six. It would pass, but...

MS: Out of ten? Yeah, I would say six. It passes, but...like a C-.

RR: It's inoffensive. If this was exactly what you wanted, I'd say more power to you.

MS: I think this is what weird Japanese children would have. All the regular children would have the milk chocolate Pocky, but then there'd be the outsider who would have this. And probably stand by it.

RR: Oh yeah. And there's also tomato...I think it's tomato Pepero, not Pocky [note: later research reveals that in fact it's Tomato Pretz that I'm talking about]. But, again...you know, I think a fringe member of the popular crowd could have Milk Coffee Pocky, but you'd be alone on the playground with the tomato stuff.

MS: I think so.

RR: I also notice that neither one of us has reached for a second.

MS: No. We haven't.

RR: So I think that is worth noting.

MS: Not to say it's bad, but it just doesn't...knock our socks off.

RR: I'm gonna offer it to some other people--if we don't eat anymore--and see if anyone likes it. [note: this effort was an utter failure, as *no one* would take me up on the offer, which I found odd. It's not *that* strange a flavour--everyone knows what coffee is!!]

MS: You could take a poll.

RR: A Pocky poll!

MS: A Pocky poll.

RR: So. Yes, and thus ends the epoch of audio reviews. Mark may return in some different format in later Rose-coloured Reviews, but I'm giving back the recorder so I'm afraid in terms of transcribed conversations, this is goodbye.

MS: This is goodbye!

RR: Goodbye, Mark!

MS: Goodbye, Rebecca!

Public Service Announcements

2009-12-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

In case, you know, you need to know:

...how to cope with UPS. When you call UPS, there is no option in any menu to speak to an agent, but if you decline to press any buttons, even for English or French or to enter your tracking number (interesting: if you don't choose a language, you get English) they will eventually tell you that you can't speak to anyone unless you have tracking number, so call back when you've got one. Then a long pause that sounds like it might be permanent, then the weary voice of the autoprompt, asking "So do you still want to speak to an agent?" Say "yes" and the voice recognition software will direct you to an actual competent and (somewhat) sympathetic human. Man, that was tricky--but worth it.*

...what to give for a holiday gift. There's great recommendations (and little bios of their sources so you can check for cred [they all have cred]> at The Advent Book Blog. I recommended a book last week, and now that the person I was giving that gift to has received it, I can link to my recommendation.

...how do something nice. Could you be persuaded to give blood? I know many people can't because of low iron or certain prescriptions in their systems or other health problems, but if you can I think Canadian Blood Services could really use it this holiday season. I base this guess on the fact that last week, the gentleman donating in the chair next to mine experienced the briefest of dizzy spells, and *five* nurses were all over him like a bad suit--cold compresses, elevated legs, fans, cookies, ecetera! They were really really nice, but you just got the feeling they were a little underworked. A few more donators would keep the nurse/donator ratio a bit more even. I know nobody likes needles, and I personally loathe the whole process, but I feel SO GOOD afterwards, knowing I did something for someone (3 someones!), plus awesome karma for the day. I mean, just a few short hours after making this donation, I found a tambourine on the sidewalk!!!! Karmically amazing.

...describe people that are just too hyper. When someone described a potential project (going to see Sherlock Holmes on Boxing Day) as likely to be pandemonium, I said approximately, "Don't worry, we'll deal with the pandemaniacs."** He responded, "That's not a word," but I think it is now, and it's a pretty good one. I give it to you.

Hope that helps!
RR

* I just received the package, so I guess this is a win. But it took a week, four delivery attempts, one formal complaint, plus me saying morosely after I'd registered the complaint, "Can you write on it that I'm very sad?" (no, they can't), so I am not feeling very victor-like.

** What I actually said was dumber than the above, but the neologism was the same, and this is my blog and I'm allowed to edit the past if I choose...right?

Rose-coloured Reviews The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

2009-12-18T12:52:00.000-05:00

I am rereading my old Hitchhikers' omnibus partly in response to Rosalynn and Catherine's dialogue on rereading. I used to reread like crazy--there are books on this earth that I have read close to 20 times--but as I age, more and more I feel the cold hand of mortality on my shoulder as I read, and I fear I won't get to read all the books I want even once in my life, and this stops me from doing much rereading.

Thus, a lot of books are frozen in my mind the way I read them and thought about them when I was a whippersnapper--I say something's "brilliant" but don't take into account that my 15-year-old mind may have been easier to impress than it is now.

I loved the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series with all my tiny geeky heart when I was a teenager. So when I found out that, after Adams's death, some totally other person was writing a sixth book in the series, I was incensed. I could say, "Those books are perfect, Adams was unique, and this is a terrible idea." But I hadn't read those books in at least a decade, so what did I know?

So the other reason for rereading is to have some context by the time Eoin Colfer's book, titled *And Another Thing*, comes out in paperback. I want to read it, certainly, and give it a fair shake--not wrapped up in nostalgia.

I first came upon these books because I picked up the fourth title in the series (it was originally a trilogy that overspilled its limits). I read it because it was called So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and in those days I picked up any book with a funny title and read almost everything I picked up. (Other hits from that period include Elvis Jesus Coca Cola, Lady Slings the Booze, and The Paper Grail).

Of all those "funny title" reads, I loved *Fish* the most, and so went back to the beginning and read the whole series, and then the scripts for the radio show on which it was based (those made little sense to me; too much British humour, perhaps?), all the other books Adams wrote. And I watched the old film based on the book/show (the new one makes a lot more sense, by the way) and tried to get the old BBC tv show based on same, though I think by that point even my adolescent geek enthusiasm tapped out.

So it was in at least one sense very very nice to go back once more and read the old omnibus introduction, which endeavours to set the record "firmly crooked" in explaining the books' path to creation. I probably could have read it more objectively if parts of the intro hadn't been my grade 11 drama monologue, which I had (and apparently still have) memorized.

Then into the story--you know that story. Arthur Dent being sleepy and baffled, Ford Prefect being suave and fatalistic, saving Arthur while the rest of the earth is destroyed by a race called Vogons from a distant plant because they are creating a hyperspace expressway.

And their adventures therewith: cruising the galaxy, they run into Ford's semi-cousin, Zaphod Beeblebrox, erstwhile president of the galaxy, and the pretty lil thing he picked up on earth, Tricia McMillan (whose name he has condensed, naturally, to Trillian). And their impossibly weird spaceship, the Heart of Gold, and Marvin the Paranoid Android, their robot. And the contented doors, and...oh, it's all so funny and silly and great.

I love all these characters so much that the nostalgia followed me into the present reading--it took me a while to start reading like my 31-year-old self. The first clue that I could be critical was when I noticed that Ford Prefect's name was explained twice (he's an alien seeking to blend in on earth, and chose a name that seemed to him common among dominant lifeform, but turned out to be the name of a British subcompact car). A little editorial drop that has survived 20 years of re-issues...or maybe Adams worried readers wouldn't catch the joke.

Whatevs. Adams is *such* an imaginative thinker that it's totally natural, no matter what your age, to fall under his spell. The flights of fancy are thrilling, like a ship that runs on an Infinite Improbability drive: in can do anything, provided it is told exactly how improbable that thing is. The book, *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* exists in this fictional world to calm and instruct the characters, but it is also a pretty top-heavy expositional device. Every time Adams wants to insert some new crazy planet/lifeform/foodstuff he just makes up, he has one of the characters read about it in the guide and the narrative reproduces the whole page of info. It's really funny, so one is often distracted from the fact that that's bit sloppy storytelling, doncha think?

Although this is a book by, for, and about adults, there is a ring of adolescent idyllicness and naivete here that I don't think I am importing. Everyone is always moments away from death, but no one (besides a sperm whale) dies onstage. Of course, all of earth and its inhabitants are destroyed, but this is treated as a rather larky bad moment rather than a soul-destroying tragedy for the two remaining Earthlings.

People occasionally make fun of me for taking *So Long...* as my favourite Hitchhikers' book. They dismiss it as the "romantic one", but the fact is it is the only book in the series in which man-woman relationships make even a touch of sense (this is not a critique, but just a note: everyone in this version of the galaxy appears to be heterosexual). In this first book (the one that I am ostensibly reviewing here, in case you forgot), Trillian is the woman who travels around with Zaphod and "tells him what she thinks of him." The relationship is left at that, but she did leave her home planet to be with him. I wonder if they're snogging?

But I am being pennyante--this isn't photorealist stuff, it's semi-satire. Not satire of science-fiction but using the form of sci-fi to satirize real-life (I think). It's sharp and believeable, within it's own parameters, with a few (not all) well-drawn characters. The only other complaint I could possibly level against the book is that because this first book was based on several in a series of radio plays, it doesn't quite have the structure of a self-contained book. The five books perhaps somewhat have a single structure, but not quite that either--they basically all blur into one hilarious episodic adventure.

I've already started reading the second book in the series, *The Restaurant at the End of the Universe* (always with the good titles, Adams--my favourite books of his are actually the Dirk Gently books: *Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency* and *The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul* [possible the best title in the history of books]). I'm finding as I try to write this review, I'm finding that bits of *Restaurant* are getting mixed up with the first book in my mind and I've got to be careful to reference the right book.

For example, I wanted to tell you that possible my favourite conversation-quashing line was in this book, but it's actually in *Restaurant*--I'll share it anway:

"Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal."

Nuff said.
RR

Randolinquent

2009-12-16T12:48:00.000-05:00

Written on the back of a bus seat in Wite-Out pen:

"F*ck the free world!"

But not the dictatorships?

RR