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
Showing posts with label CanLit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CanLit. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Friday, December 4, 2009
Canada Reads Report
I don't know a lot about...stuf that happens...unless that stuff a) happened in my living room or b) someone came to my living room (or invited me to theirs) to tell me about it. This is not helped by the fact that I can't really listen to talking on the radio. Here's my terrible secret: I have a hard time listening to a voice without looking at its source. Great for being an attentive conversationalist, lousy for radio listening. Music, no problem, and inane chatter I can maybe drift in and out of as I mop the floor, but to listen to a newsreport, an audio book, or a dialogue about books, I would pretty much have to sit down and look at the radio, or at least close my eyes.
So I don't, which is why I used to always miss everything about Canada Reads: things that happened on the radio and involved talking were not for me. But then some of my favourite blogs started covering it, and last year I (felt I) had a really good sense of the process despite never listening to the actual show.
This year, however, no one is all that excited about the list, so I think my sense of the process is about to go away again. But I can't help but be excited that one of my favourite books of all time, Douglas Coupland's Generation X, is on the list. I know it's no longer as cutting edge as it was when it was first published, 18 years ago, I know a lot of people have already read it--but in my mind, good books don't get old, and they don't get used up.
Do they?
I am one of the youngest members of Generation X (1961-1981, according to Wikipedia) so maybe I don't exactly relate as those more embedded in it do. But I think even those who came before 1961 or after 1981 can relate to loneliness, career disorientation, the wish for less, and the feeling that stories and friends can save your life. That last bit is pretty much my philosophy of life.
It's true I read this book really young, and it is possible that I imprinted on it as a baby goose does on its mother, or sometimes a human or a feed trough. I read the review in Sassy Magazine (that literary bastian) and it impressed me enough that I recognized the book later that year when my parents said I could have a book from Barnes and Noble on our trip to Manhattan (that was before B&N was a commonplace thing). I actually got two, that and Trainspotting (a book I consider even less of a "novel" than GenX). Both books have stuck with me through countless rereads, but I admit that I did start with them during an impressionable period in my life.
But my last read of *GenX* was only a couple years ago, and for a grad school class, and it was still as funny and wistful and lovely as I remember. And looking at the structure with a more grad-school critical eye maybe even made me appreciate it more. I love the tales that form the much of the "novel" that is *GenX*. This year's Canada Reads list has no short story collection on it, but the nested narratives of Coupland's book come pretty close, and I love that formal envelope-pushing.
I've heard this a time or two, but surely people don't really think the book is shallow, do they? Perhaps it is confusion akin to those around Calvin and Hobbes's mystification over colour photos of a black-and-white world--*Gen X* is a deep searching warm and funny novel about a shallow world--I mean, the liposuction fat and trinitite and stuffed chickens are just...detritus.
Aren't they?
Maybe I'd better watch the radio show.
RR
So I don't, which is why I used to always miss everything about Canada Reads: things that happened on the radio and involved talking were not for me. But then some of my favourite blogs started covering it, and last year I (felt I) had a really good sense of the process despite never listening to the actual show.
This year, however, no one is all that excited about the list, so I think my sense of the process is about to go away again. But I can't help but be excited that one of my favourite books of all time, Douglas Coupland's Generation X, is on the list. I know it's no longer as cutting edge as it was when it was first published, 18 years ago, I know a lot of people have already read it--but in my mind, good books don't get old, and they don't get used up.
Do they?
I am one of the youngest members of Generation X (1961-1981, according to Wikipedia) so maybe I don't exactly relate as those more embedded in it do. But I think even those who came before 1961 or after 1981 can relate to loneliness, career disorientation, the wish for less, and the feeling that stories and friends can save your life. That last bit is pretty much my philosophy of life.
It's true I read this book really young, and it is possible that I imprinted on it as a baby goose does on its mother, or sometimes a human or a feed trough. I read the review in Sassy Magazine (that literary bastian) and it impressed me enough that I recognized the book later that year when my parents said I could have a book from Barnes and Noble on our trip to Manhattan (that was before B&N was a commonplace thing). I actually got two, that and Trainspotting (a book I consider even less of a "novel" than GenX). Both books have stuck with me through countless rereads, but I admit that I did start with them during an impressionable period in my life.
But my last read of *GenX* was only a couple years ago, and for a grad school class, and it was still as funny and wistful and lovely as I remember. And looking at the structure with a more grad-school critical eye maybe even made me appreciate it more. I love the tales that form the much of the "novel" that is *GenX*. This year's Canada Reads list has no short story collection on it, but the nested narratives of Coupland's book come pretty close, and I love that formal envelope-pushing.
I've heard this a time or two, but surely people don't really think the book is shallow, do they? Perhaps it is confusion akin to those around Calvin and Hobbes's mystification over colour photos of a black-and-white world--*Gen X* is a deep searching warm and funny novel about a shallow world--I mean, the liposuction fat and trinitite and stuffed chickens are just...detritus.
Aren't they?
Maybe I'd better watch the radio show.
RR
Friday, July 17, 2009
Oh, look!
I don't usually link to blogs that haven't been going for a while, in case they don't continue, but I'm too excited to wait to tell you that The New Quarterly has a blog now, The Literary Type. And really, I have no doubt that TLT will thrive with all the good energy and talent that lives at TNQ behind it, and with their wonderous managing editor Rosalynn Tyo at the helm.
Yay!
The flower said it wished it was a bee
RR
Yay!
The flower said it wished it was a bee
RR
Thursday, March 26, 2009
For the love of little magazines
I tend to stay away from anything remotely political in public forums, not because I am not opinionated but because I am so pathetically ill-informed that I can almost always be counted on to have it all wrong. Already today I've been baffled and upset about Gaza and the seal hunt, and it's not even tea-time yet.
But just in case anyone misinterpreted my blog-silence on the manner of the proposed funding cuts to small-circulation periodicals in Canada--including the lovely "little" mags that constitute so much of my reading--I am opposed. I'm pretty sure I couldn't possibly have that much wrong.
For further wisdom, read John Barton's piece on the Globe's website. Mr. Barton, editor of the Malahat Review has been working amazingly hard to protest these cuts, and he expresses better than I ever could exactly what would be lost if our little mags disappeared:
"These magazines provide an essential service to the nation as incubators of creative innovation....
"To quote Phyllis Webb from her aptly titled poem Pain, little magazines “throw a bridge of value to belief.” Who can say which unsung contributor will some day be the toast of the world? An editor's job is to support writers by giving them a chance."
We can only laugh at these regrets
RR
But just in case anyone misinterpreted my blog-silence on the manner of the proposed funding cuts to small-circulation periodicals in Canada--including the lovely "little" mags that constitute so much of my reading--I am opposed. I'm pretty sure I couldn't possibly have that much wrong.
For further wisdom, read John Barton's piece on the Globe's website. Mr. Barton, editor of the Malahat Review has been working amazingly hard to protest these cuts, and he expresses better than I ever could exactly what would be lost if our little mags disappeared:
"These magazines provide an essential service to the nation as incubators of creative innovation....
"To quote Phyllis Webb from her aptly titled poem Pain, little magazines “throw a bridge of value to belief.” Who can say which unsung contributor will some day be the toast of the world? An editor's job is to support writers by giving them a chance."
We can only laugh at these regrets
RR
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
On We Struggle
By 7:15 today, I had showered, brewed tea, broken a ceiling lamp (I think it really broke itself; normal on-turning shouldn't result in it shorting out like that) and written two letters. By 8, I had read two short stories, gotten dressed, and decided that the skirt I'd chosen didn't really go with my sweater. When I tried to take it off, I discovered that I'd done up the hook and eye wrong (again, I'm thinking not really my fault--who know you could go wrong with those?) and *couldn't* get the skirt off. This was the point at which I considered going back to bed, but five extremely despondent minutes later, I was able to change skirts (I still don't know what went wrong). Keep in mind that neither skirt was the right answer to most questions fashion could ask: the one I had on was made of sweat-wicking technical fabric and slightly too big (but not big enough to slide over my hips or shoulders while fastened, we learn), and the one I wanted to wear is extremely elderly with the pockets completely torn out, so that things placed in them reappear immediately on the floor.
By 8:30, I was dressed and out the door, downstairs filling out the repair-request for my broken ceiling lamp. When it was done, I went over to the super's mail slot and inserted...the two letters I'd written! I looked down at my repair request, still in my hand, and was sad, but put that in too; why not? Then it seemed like a good time to spend a few minutes staring at the wall, thinking about my retirement villa on the moon. Will I be allowed to have pets, I wondered. A kitten seems like such a good companion for the elderly. But how do felines react to zero-gravity?
Finally my super arrived, and I told him my sad story, at which he nodded unhappily, because he does not understand English. He has never admitted this to me, and he appears to read and speak it fine, so I keep talking to him and he keeps nodding. Aural English is tough to master, I know. Finally he opened his door and I pointed to his mail basket. He pulled out my repair slip and stamped and addressed letters and I said, "Ah, those are mine," and we both regarded them thoughtfully for a while. Then I very gingerly took them out of his hand and said, "Thank you! I'm so sorry!" He smiled a little, and then broke into a grin when I said, "Goodbye!"
I still think today could recover and be a good day, but it will take some focus. Think about how people are really pulling together over the proposed funding cuts for literary journals and other mags with smaller circulation. Think about weather in positive degrees. Think about kittens.
And if all else fails, there's always poets.
Now everybody kiss
RR
By 8:30, I was dressed and out the door, downstairs filling out the repair-request for my broken ceiling lamp. When it was done, I went over to the super's mail slot and inserted...the two letters I'd written! I looked down at my repair request, still in my hand, and was sad, but put that in too; why not? Then it seemed like a good time to spend a few minutes staring at the wall, thinking about my retirement villa on the moon. Will I be allowed to have pets, I wondered. A kitten seems like such a good companion for the elderly. But how do felines react to zero-gravity?
Finally my super arrived, and I told him my sad story, at which he nodded unhappily, because he does not understand English. He has never admitted this to me, and he appears to read and speak it fine, so I keep talking to him and he keeps nodding. Aural English is tough to master, I know. Finally he opened his door and I pointed to his mail basket. He pulled out my repair slip and stamped and addressed letters and I said, "Ah, those are mine," and we both regarded them thoughtfully for a while. Then I very gingerly took them out of his hand and said, "Thank you! I'm so sorry!" He smiled a little, and then broke into a grin when I said, "Goodbye!"
I still think today could recover and be a good day, but it will take some focus. Think about how people are really pulling together over the proposed funding cuts for literary journals and other mags with smaller circulation. Think about weather in positive degrees. Think about kittens.
And if all else fails, there's always poets.
Now everybody kiss
RR
Friday, January 2, 2009
I win!
Yes! I have read The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories in its entirety: all the introductory materials, biographical and copyright notes, and every word of every story. Ask me anything; I'm full to bursting with Canadian short stories!
My relationship with this book is *intense*--I read it pretty steadily, if not quickly, for over a month, sprawling by a day into a second calendar year. The relationship is pretty physical, too; since my reading is done in myriad locales and often in transit, I've been carrying this book on my person quite a bit. Once it's on you, you don't forget about the PBCSS, for though the kitchen scale says it weights only two pounds, I suspect strongly that my kitchen scale is broken and it weighs six or seven.
Oh, it's been epic, the affair of PBCSS and I: I ordered the first copy from the library, got curry on the pages, took it on a Via train, a Greyhound bus, several Go trains and busses, and more TTC subways, streetcards and busses than you can imagine. Then the library recalled the book, I ordered a new copy, got chocolate on the pages, got back on the trains and busses. To impress a writer I admire, I carried the anthology (and many other things) down 22 flights of stairs and across town. I read it in a bar, in bed and at my desk; I told everyone I was reading it (and no one cared). I used it to flatten wrinkles when I was to lazy to iron, to start a conversation and to end one.
And now I win, because I've read it all and I can STOP CARRYING IT AROUND.
Actually, I won by reading. I have no regrets--the PBCSS is not pure pleasure, but the vast majority of the stories contained therein *are* pleasures, and I really enjoyed reading them, even when my wrists were throbbing from holding the damn thing upright.
It's not that I disagree with my comrades at the Salon des Refuses: it is deeply dismaying that so many brilliant story artists have been left out of the collection, and that they are so many of them stylistic innovators speaks of unhelpful blinkering. It was in fact only my reading of the Salon issues of *The New Quarterly* and *Canadian Notes and Queries* that made me want to read the PBCSS. Reading 20 brilliant and wildly different stories back to back, with appreciations and background notes was such a joyful education that I thought maybe I should think more about anthologies (which I hadn't really thought about at all outside of school).
I read (I think) everything that was published about the Salon, almost always agreed with the agitators without anything interesting to add, got interviewed more than once without anything interesting to say (someday those tapes will surface), and finally I read the damn PBCSS. When I did, I was thrilled by the stories, but my feelings were truly hurt, and hurt on behalf of my heroes and mentors in the world of short stories, by some of the editorial comments. That this anthology was trying to "open up and make more interesting the definition of the short story" by calling memoir and novel fragments into the fold, rather than by paying homage to the artistry and innovation of people were actually working in the form made my hair puff up. But that's already been discussed, many times in many places.
I did come up with some criticisms of my own that no one else mentioned, maybe because they are not interesting. Nevertheless, I'll share them:
--who decided not to date the stories? and to put the bio notes at the end, in story order, *separate from* the copyright notes, which are then in alphabetical order? Call me crazy, but I care who the people are wrote these stories, when and where they were writing, and at what point in their careers these pieces were published! The bio notes also seemed not to have been proofread (the main text of the book was fine)--a weird oversight--there were actually a couple lines missing at the bottom of pages.
--why is there more than one piece by several authors? no explanation is offered, and while with Alice Munro none is needed, the others are...really random.
--how, I wonder, do Munro, Mavis Gallant and Merna Summers feel about being the only three of our "literary mothers and fathers" in the book's last section who aren't dead?
--alarming that the anthologist would suggest that short story writers are "singing in pure voice simply because they feel there is a need for music, a need for song." You show me a writer of *anything* who doesn't feel he or she has something to say, and I'll show you someone who should get out of the business.
--Only *one* section of the book is introduced as containing stories that leave readers with "[o]ur view of the world altered, darkened or enlarged; certain faiths have been strengthened, others have been shaken loose...[and feeling that] something else, equally arresting and believable, is more than likely going to happen very soon." What, one wonders, are all the other stories trying to do?
These are, I think, real issues, yet they won't really matter to the average college English student, book-group member, auto-didact storyphile, who will look at the stories that have been recommended or assigned, read and delight, and then maybe read the next story and delight in that also.
Because, despite some questionable curation and a few duds, the vast majority of these stories are very very good!! Many I'd read before, but it'd been too long and I was thrilled to see "Gypsy Art" and "Joe in the Afterlife" and "The Lonely Goatherd" again, and so very many others. And there were so many to me *new* stories in this collection, "Vision" and "The Friend" and "Catechism." It was such a joy to go from strength to strength like this, to find the stories lighting each other up. "And the Children Shall Rise"!! "Horses of the Night"!!
The reason, I think, that it's so shocking that certain stories are included in the PBCSS for reasons of PCness or quirkyness and not quality is that *most* of them *were* chosen for quality, and the juxtoposition is jarring. Adrienne Poy's "Ring Around October" is tepid, but hardly appalling, until you place it next to Caroline Adderson's brilliant "And the Children Shall Rise." Then you see a problem.
Despite its many flaws, despite the fact that I'm upset by some of the suppositions that the editorial notes make, I feel that most of the stories themselves succeed in what should have been the book's goal: the glorification of innovative, intelligent, artful, heartful, tightly controlled and deeply resonant short story writing in Canada. I'm happy to be a tiny part of that project, and I look forward to the next, better, more comprehensive and respectful anthology that will come next from Canada's wealth of talent. I hope the bruise on my hip from carrying this one in my bag will have healed by that point.
The starmaker says it's not so bad
RR
My relationship with this book is *intense*--I read it pretty steadily, if not quickly, for over a month, sprawling by a day into a second calendar year. The relationship is pretty physical, too; since my reading is done in myriad locales and often in transit, I've been carrying this book on my person quite a bit. Once it's on you, you don't forget about the PBCSS, for though the kitchen scale says it weights only two pounds, I suspect strongly that my kitchen scale is broken and it weighs six or seven.
Oh, it's been epic, the affair of PBCSS and I: I ordered the first copy from the library, got curry on the pages, took it on a Via train, a Greyhound bus, several Go trains and busses, and more TTC subways, streetcards and busses than you can imagine. Then the library recalled the book, I ordered a new copy, got chocolate on the pages, got back on the trains and busses. To impress a writer I admire, I carried the anthology (and many other things) down 22 flights of stairs and across town. I read it in a bar, in bed and at my desk; I told everyone I was reading it (and no one cared). I used it to flatten wrinkles when I was to lazy to iron, to start a conversation and to end one.
And now I win, because I've read it all and I can STOP CARRYING IT AROUND.
Actually, I won by reading. I have no regrets--the PBCSS is not pure pleasure, but the vast majority of the stories contained therein *are* pleasures, and I really enjoyed reading them, even when my wrists were throbbing from holding the damn thing upright.
It's not that I disagree with my comrades at the Salon des Refuses: it is deeply dismaying that so many brilliant story artists have been left out of the collection, and that they are so many of them stylistic innovators speaks of unhelpful blinkering. It was in fact only my reading of the Salon issues of *The New Quarterly* and *Canadian Notes and Queries* that made me want to read the PBCSS. Reading 20 brilliant and wildly different stories back to back, with appreciations and background notes was such a joyful education that I thought maybe I should think more about anthologies (which I hadn't really thought about at all outside of school).
I read (I think) everything that was published about the Salon, almost always agreed with the agitators without anything interesting to add, got interviewed more than once without anything interesting to say (someday those tapes will surface), and finally I read the damn PBCSS. When I did, I was thrilled by the stories, but my feelings were truly hurt, and hurt on behalf of my heroes and mentors in the world of short stories, by some of the editorial comments. That this anthology was trying to "open up and make more interesting the definition of the short story" by calling memoir and novel fragments into the fold, rather than by paying homage to the artistry and innovation of people were actually working in the form made my hair puff up. But that's already been discussed, many times in many places.
I did come up with some criticisms of my own that no one else mentioned, maybe because they are not interesting. Nevertheless, I'll share them:
--who decided not to date the stories? and to put the bio notes at the end, in story order, *separate from* the copyright notes, which are then in alphabetical order? Call me crazy, but I care who the people are wrote these stories, when and where they were writing, and at what point in their careers these pieces were published! The bio notes also seemed not to have been proofread (the main text of the book was fine)--a weird oversight--there were actually a couple lines missing at the bottom of pages.
--why is there more than one piece by several authors? no explanation is offered, and while with Alice Munro none is needed, the others are...really random.
--how, I wonder, do Munro, Mavis Gallant and Merna Summers feel about being the only three of our "literary mothers and fathers" in the book's last section who aren't dead?
--alarming that the anthologist would suggest that short story writers are "singing in pure voice simply because they feel there is a need for music, a need for song." You show me a writer of *anything* who doesn't feel he or she has something to say, and I'll show you someone who should get out of the business.
--Only *one* section of the book is introduced as containing stories that leave readers with "[o]ur view of the world altered, darkened or enlarged; certain faiths have been strengthened, others have been shaken loose...[and feeling that] something else, equally arresting and believable, is more than likely going to happen very soon." What, one wonders, are all the other stories trying to do?
These are, I think, real issues, yet they won't really matter to the average college English student, book-group member, auto-didact storyphile, who will look at the stories that have been recommended or assigned, read and delight, and then maybe read the next story and delight in that also.
Because, despite some questionable curation and a few duds, the vast majority of these stories are very very good!! Many I'd read before, but it'd been too long and I was thrilled to see "Gypsy Art" and "Joe in the Afterlife" and "The Lonely Goatherd" again, and so very many others. And there were so many to me *new* stories in this collection, "Vision" and "The Friend" and "Catechism." It was such a joy to go from strength to strength like this, to find the stories lighting each other up. "And the Children Shall Rise"!! "Horses of the Night"!!
The reason, I think, that it's so shocking that certain stories are included in the PBCSS for reasons of PCness or quirkyness and not quality is that *most* of them *were* chosen for quality, and the juxtoposition is jarring. Adrienne Poy's "Ring Around October" is tepid, but hardly appalling, until you place it next to Caroline Adderson's brilliant "And the Children Shall Rise." Then you see a problem.
Despite its many flaws, despite the fact that I'm upset by some of the suppositions that the editorial notes make, I feel that most of the stories themselves succeed in what should have been the book's goal: the glorification of innovative, intelligent, artful, heartful, tightly controlled and deeply resonant short story writing in Canada. I'm happy to be a tiny part of that project, and I look forward to the next, better, more comprehensive and respectful anthology that will come next from Canada's wealth of talent. I hope the bruise on my hip from carrying this one in my bag will have healed by that point.
The starmaker says it's not so bad
RR
Monday, September 8, 2008
Eden Mills Recap
Yesterday morning, Kerry Clare and I set off for the Eden Mills Writers Festival, to listen to the readings, buy the books, be short-listed for the Eden Mills Literary Contest (KC's story "Stillborn Friends") and to read at the Mill (RR's story "ContEd"). It didn't start to rain until we were at the rental car place, and it didn't start to pour until we hit the 401. I'm actually a fine driver (far better than you'd think if you know me socially, I'd say) but the 401 becomes whitewater in a downpour, and I am not that much *better* than fine. At least white-knuckling the highway took my mind off my terror about doing the reading.
But we didn't die under the wheels of a semi, and instead arrived in the still-pouring downpour, and sloshed into the, you guessed it, outdoor festival venue. By the time I'd signed in, it was pretty close to my cue to read, but there was of course still time to sneak by the Biblioasis tent and see, for the first time ever, my book.
I knew what it looked like, since I spent three years writing the thing and saw every version of it, and the cover mock-ups, the advanced reading copies, etc. I knew it would be there, since Dan (Wells, Biblioasis publisher) had promised to bring copies. It really should've been a zero-suspense moment, but, um, it was absolutely thrilling. There was *Once*, out in the world, separate from me and all the people who have been working so hard on it--a big stack, looking pretty much perfect, and ready to be taken away and read. Something about the thought that the book is now fully self-contained, that anyone, strangers can read it if they feel like it, is what really hit me at that moment, I think.
Dan put a copy in my hands and hugged me and a photographer took my picture, and someone asked me to sign a copy, and my mentor Leon Rooke suddenly appeared to congratulate me, and I hugged him, and hugged Kerry, and somehow got out from under my umbrella and got wet...
I think, once in a while, something can be exactly as good as you dreamt it would be.
And then I went down to the Mill, which is a lovely setting to read in. There is a hill facing the water, a natural amphitheatre looking out across a tiny inlet to another spit of land where the stage-tent and microphones were set up. Of course, with the downpour ever increasing, all that surrounding water seemed a bit much, and I was rather alarmed crossing the slick-boarded bridge to the stage. But fellow readers Elspeth Cameron and David Chariandy were spell-binding enough to make me forget all the splashing and chill under my umbrella. Almost more amazing than anything was the fact that people stayed to hear me, the last reader. After 40 minutes in the deluge, when I walked to to the podium, perhaps 50 or 60 soggy people peered at me through the curtain of water, waiting patiently to hear what I had to say.
And I didn't die under the wheels of a semi! Or fall into the water, or make any egregious stumbles in my reading. It was probably the most audible reading I've ever given--I'm getting louder! And...and...I read it out of the actual book! Hooray!
Whew. It was all gleeful after that. Stars of the afternoon included Mariko Tamaki, Paul Quarrington, Shari Lapena, Laurence Hill and, of course, Leon Rooke. Another star: the sun! It came out and was lovely warm for most of the afternoonn. My clothes got dry, even my feet. And we were fed dinner in the community centre, served by adorable children so eager in their work that they would sometimes watch you take the final bite of your salad with their hands on the rim of the plate. Hilarious!
And then, after getting briefly stuck in the mud of the parking area, we drove home. I was very very tired and over-stimulated, a state in which it is my preference to drive 20 kilometres under the speed limit. And it is a testament to Kerry Clare's truly wonderful spirit that she neither attempted to decapitate me with one of our Eden Mills Mix cds (which would've been a tragic loss of both me and music), nor closed her eyes and let me get away with disrupting traffic. And we didn't die under the wheels of a semi, or even ding the rental car, thanks mainly to Kerry's gentle guidance, and then we were home.
I am very lucky in my friends, and in many things.
My best friend Leslie said / oh she's just being Miley
RR
But we didn't die under the wheels of a semi, and instead arrived in the still-pouring downpour, and sloshed into the, you guessed it, outdoor festival venue. By the time I'd signed in, it was pretty close to my cue to read, but there was of course still time to sneak by the Biblioasis tent and see, for the first time ever, my book.
I knew what it looked like, since I spent three years writing the thing and saw every version of it, and the cover mock-ups, the advanced reading copies, etc. I knew it would be there, since Dan (Wells, Biblioasis publisher) had promised to bring copies. It really should've been a zero-suspense moment, but, um, it was absolutely thrilling. There was *Once*, out in the world, separate from me and all the people who have been working so hard on it--a big stack, looking pretty much perfect, and ready to be taken away and read. Something about the thought that the book is now fully self-contained, that anyone, strangers can read it if they feel like it, is what really hit me at that moment, I think.
Dan put a copy in my hands and hugged me and a photographer took my picture, and someone asked me to sign a copy, and my mentor Leon Rooke suddenly appeared to congratulate me, and I hugged him, and hugged Kerry, and somehow got out from under my umbrella and got wet...
I think, once in a while, something can be exactly as good as you dreamt it would be.
And then I went down to the Mill, which is a lovely setting to read in. There is a hill facing the water, a natural amphitheatre looking out across a tiny inlet to another spit of land where the stage-tent and microphones were set up. Of course, with the downpour ever increasing, all that surrounding water seemed a bit much, and I was rather alarmed crossing the slick-boarded bridge to the stage. But fellow readers Elspeth Cameron and David Chariandy were spell-binding enough to make me forget all the splashing and chill under my umbrella. Almost more amazing than anything was the fact that people stayed to hear me, the last reader. After 40 minutes in the deluge, when I walked to to the podium, perhaps 50 or 60 soggy people peered at me through the curtain of water, waiting patiently to hear what I had to say.
And I didn't die under the wheels of a semi! Or fall into the water, or make any egregious stumbles in my reading. It was probably the most audible reading I've ever given--I'm getting louder! And...and...I read it out of the actual book! Hooray!
Whew. It was all gleeful after that. Stars of the afternoon included Mariko Tamaki, Paul Quarrington, Shari Lapena, Laurence Hill and, of course, Leon Rooke. Another star: the sun! It came out and was lovely warm for most of the afternoonn. My clothes got dry, even my feet. And we were fed dinner in the community centre, served by adorable children so eager in their work that they would sometimes watch you take the final bite of your salad with their hands on the rim of the plate. Hilarious!
And then, after getting briefly stuck in the mud of the parking area, we drove home. I was very very tired and over-stimulated, a state in which it is my preference to drive 20 kilometres under the speed limit. And it is a testament to Kerry Clare's truly wonderful spirit that she neither attempted to decapitate me with one of our Eden Mills Mix cds (which would've been a tragic loss of both me and music), nor closed her eyes and let me get away with disrupting traffic. And we didn't die under the wheels of a semi, or even ding the rental car, thanks mainly to Kerry's gentle guidance, and then we were home.
I am very lucky in my friends, and in many things.
My best friend Leslie said / oh she's just being Miley
RR
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Talking Salon (again, still)
Nota Bene Books
Intersection
The Globe and Mail
Thirsty (in response to the Globe)
Seen Reading
Resurrected / livin in a lighthouse
RR
Intersection
The Globe and Mail
Thirsty (in response to the Globe)
Seen Reading
Resurrected / livin in a lighthouse
RR
Monday, August 18, 2008
You might wanna
1) Attend the launch of the book in the preceeding post--this advertisement was supposed to come at the end of my *The Killing Circle* review, but in my excitement I forgot. See the link for full deets, but quickly, it's tomorrow night at 8:30 at the Gladstone, and it's gonna be awesome.
2) Donate school supplies to kids in need via the Salvation Army and Sleep Country. It's always good to give, but this is especially fun because it enables the school-deprived to indulge in coloured pencils and theme binders, and to finally find a good home for the very expensive scientific calculators we were forced to buy in grade 11 (it's official: logarithms are no longer relevant to my life).
We can reach the sea / they won't follow me
RR
2) Donate school supplies to kids in need via the Salvation Army and Sleep Country. It's always good to give, but this is especially fun because it enables the school-deprived to indulge in coloured pencils and theme binders, and to finally find a good home for the very expensive scientific calculators we were forced to buy in grade 11 (it's official: logarithms are no longer relevant to my life).
We can reach the sea / they won't follow me
RR
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Rose-coloured Reviews The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper
In this review, I *will* make an effort, but my feints at objectivity are probably going to be even lamer than usual. For something actually insightful, try The Walrus or Pickle Me This.
Though I'm not much of a reader of serial-killer thrillers, I did really love this book for craft of language, for plotting, definitely for voice. But if Mr. Pyper started experimenting in the former of toaster-oven instruction manuals, I'd probably take at least an interest in that, too. I've been a fan since I read his first book, a collection of short stories called Kiss Me (click on the link just to see the book cover, my favourite book cover ever), way back in 2000 (it came out in 1996--I'm always behind). In truth that collection of literary fiction remained my favourite of his for a long time, as the mystery/thrillers he wrote after, though very very good, never resonated with me as deeply. Until The Killing Circle came along and blew everything else out of the water.
Full disclosure: when I found that this novel centres on a writing group and their teacher, I was very very alarmed. I love writing about writing and about learning to write (ooh, Lynn Coady's Mean Boy), but I also love *learning to write,* and to this end, once took a class *from* Andrew Pyper. He was a great great teacher, and my work came really far in those three months, but there were still a lot of moments in that class that could easily be parodied, if one were searching for material. I've stayed in a wonderful writing circle with three of my classmates, and we all thought, uh-oh.
Of course not. Although this book is about the profound ambiguity between story and life, it's also about the trouble that lies in store for (or from) those who cannot tell the difference. The authors *in* the story lie to themselves and to others about the definition of fiction, but the author *of* the story has an amazingly assured hand.
Much has been made about this book being a roman a clef to media politics in this city and this country. The central character, Patrick Rush, works at *The National Star* and the leader of the writing circle is "Conrad White"--hee? I don't know much about newspapering and I never did figure out who the snippily successful managing editor at the paper was, let alone Mr. White. Easier to enjoy were some of the broader jokes, about "The Quotidian Award...awarded to a the work of fiction that 'best reflects the domestic heritage of Canadian family life'...A rainy-day parade of stolid farmers and fishermen's widows," as well as the endless reality programming about transforming your neighbours' homes.
Those sort of jokes are quite fun, but parodies and veilings of reality are, in this book, far less interesting than the stuff that's simply real: things about the city of Toronto, and how writing works. Pyper wrote a groovy article in the Star about city as character in this book, and it truly is one. The alleys that Patrick runs down away from shadowy figures are not just scary-novel devices but actually real alleyways I know and love, off Queen near Palmerston, others closer to the lake. The Rosedale subway station and the nearby ravine. Kensington. All these places are both instantly recognizable and suddenly terrifying as they make their transition from real-world to fictional-world.
And that's the brilliant thing about the book--it's actually about that process, how writers bring bits and pieces of reality to fiction and transform it into something not more or less but entirely different from the sum of its parts. Writing is a huge act of faith, I think it is and I guess you sort of have to in order to do it. Author Pyper gives the writer his or her due, but character Patrick gives the writer far more, something close to godlike incantatory powers--"Waiting for a way to tell the one true story that might bring back the dead." And it is in this obsessive over-estimation of the lessons on writing that put the book into terror territory.
It's wrenching, I gotta say. Gory, but also psychologically very very weird and disturbingly intimate. The central character is not violent, but he's not a lovely person at all times, either, and the crimes for which he is culpable, and his justifications for them, give us weird insight into the mind of the murderer. And that freaked me the hell out. If the prose weren't so good (and, just when you're white-knuckling the spine, so funny) and the story so tightly plotted and surprising, I would not have made it to the dark dark ending. This isn't "my kind" of novel, but the really good writing is beyond genre, and I think *The Killing Circle* qualifies.
I can't talk much about the plot, because most everything is a twist or a turn that affects everything but you don't see it coming. Or at least, I didn't see *anything* coming; possibly if you are more familiar with serial-killer fiction (I hear there's lots) you might not be so startled by everything. I can't necessarily recommend this book to you; it's creepy and sad and certainly does not redeem one's faith in mankind. It's gripping, though, and you could learn a good bit about writing by reading it.
Maybe try only reading it during the day.
Don't wanna see it on my windowsill
RR
Though I'm not much of a reader of serial-killer thrillers, I did really love this book for craft of language, for plotting, definitely for voice. But if Mr. Pyper started experimenting in the former of toaster-oven instruction manuals, I'd probably take at least an interest in that, too. I've been a fan since I read his first book, a collection of short stories called Kiss Me (click on the link just to see the book cover, my favourite book cover ever), way back in 2000 (it came out in 1996--I'm always behind). In truth that collection of literary fiction remained my favourite of his for a long time, as the mystery/thrillers he wrote after, though very very good, never resonated with me as deeply. Until The Killing Circle came along and blew everything else out of the water.
Full disclosure: when I found that this novel centres on a writing group and their teacher, I was very very alarmed. I love writing about writing and about learning to write (ooh, Lynn Coady's Mean Boy), but I also love *learning to write,* and to this end, once took a class *from* Andrew Pyper. He was a great great teacher, and my work came really far in those three months, but there were still a lot of moments in that class that could easily be parodied, if one were searching for material. I've stayed in a wonderful writing circle with three of my classmates, and we all thought, uh-oh.
Of course not. Although this book is about the profound ambiguity between story and life, it's also about the trouble that lies in store for (or from) those who cannot tell the difference. The authors *in* the story lie to themselves and to others about the definition of fiction, but the author *of* the story has an amazingly assured hand.
Much has been made about this book being a roman a clef to media politics in this city and this country. The central character, Patrick Rush, works at *The National Star* and the leader of the writing circle is "Conrad White"--hee? I don't know much about newspapering and I never did figure out who the snippily successful managing editor at the paper was, let alone Mr. White. Easier to enjoy were some of the broader jokes, about "The Quotidian Award...awarded to a the work of fiction that 'best reflects the domestic heritage of Canadian family life'...A rainy-day parade of stolid farmers and fishermen's widows," as well as the endless reality programming about transforming your neighbours' homes.
Those sort of jokes are quite fun, but parodies and veilings of reality are, in this book, far less interesting than the stuff that's simply real: things about the city of Toronto, and how writing works. Pyper wrote a groovy article in the Star about city as character in this book, and it truly is one. The alleys that Patrick runs down away from shadowy figures are not just scary-novel devices but actually real alleyways I know and love, off Queen near Palmerston, others closer to the lake. The Rosedale subway station and the nearby ravine. Kensington. All these places are both instantly recognizable and suddenly terrifying as they make their transition from real-world to fictional-world.
And that's the brilliant thing about the book--it's actually about that process, how writers bring bits and pieces of reality to fiction and transform it into something not more or less but entirely different from the sum of its parts. Writing is a huge act of faith, I think it is and I guess you sort of have to in order to do it. Author Pyper gives the writer his or her due, but character Patrick gives the writer far more, something close to godlike incantatory powers--"Waiting for a way to tell the one true story that might bring back the dead." And it is in this obsessive over-estimation of the lessons on writing that put the book into terror territory.
It's wrenching, I gotta say. Gory, but also psychologically very very weird and disturbingly intimate. The central character is not violent, but he's not a lovely person at all times, either, and the crimes for which he is culpable, and his justifications for them, give us weird insight into the mind of the murderer. And that freaked me the hell out. If the prose weren't so good (and, just when you're white-knuckling the spine, so funny) and the story so tightly plotted and surprising, I would not have made it to the dark dark ending. This isn't "my kind" of novel, but the really good writing is beyond genre, and I think *The Killing Circle* qualifies.
I can't talk much about the plot, because most everything is a twist or a turn that affects everything but you don't see it coming. Or at least, I didn't see *anything* coming; possibly if you are more familiar with serial-killer fiction (I hear there's lots) you might not be so startled by everything. I can't necessarily recommend this book to you; it's creepy and sad and certainly does not redeem one's faith in mankind. It's gripping, though, and you could learn a good bit about writing by reading it.
Maybe try only reading it during the day.
Don't wanna see it on my windowsill
RR
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Rebecca Reviews Muriella Pent
Note on the reviewer--I have for some time being trying to write a real book review. I have a *lot* of trouble expressing opinions. This is not to say I'm not opinionated, but I get stuck fast, especially when I feel I might be judged or, horrors, argued with. I generally avoid making objective statements about things that are important to me, and here you know we're talking about books. I think books are one of the most important things in the universe, and I greatly fear getting them wrong.
*However*, books are stronger than I am, I'm sure--they can stand a little misjudgement. And if I would presume to write them, I would presume also to understand something about how they work, and by what criteria they might operate. So I wanted to try a review, and I've been on the lookout for a book I thought I might be able to work with. I chose Russell Smith's Muriella Pent for a few reasons, mainly that I liked it a lot. I thought it would be easier to find interesting, witty, insightful things to say about a piece of fiction that is itself interesting, witty, and insightful. That's a cheat, and I know real reviewers don't have that perogative--one of the many reasons why I am not one. I also thought it'd be useful to review something by a writer whose back-catalogue I'm familiar with. I've actually read *all* Smith's other fiction books (though not his fashion writing) and am likely by any standards a fan. So this whole process is wildly biased, but hey, it's a start.
Ok, a review of *Muriella Pent* in 1500 words of semi-astuteness. Ok. Ok, go!
Muriella Pent is a wealthy fiftyish widow. Her children are grown, and she lives alone in a stuffy gated community, trying to fill her days with gardening, which proves unsatisfying, and the local arts council. Muriella once had some artistic ambitions, and she sees the council as an opportunity to learn as well as help.
Besides Muriella, there are three other points of view: Brian, a fellow council member who has just finished his BA in English; Julia, the daughter of one of Muriella’s friends, who also knows Brian from school; and Marcus Royston, a poet from the Caribbean that the council brings to Toronto for an artistic residency. Due to funding cuts, the only actual residence available for the residency is in the maid’s quarters of Muriella’s enormous house.
There’s the premise, and it has a fair amount of interest. Marcus, who has lived through a revolution, and its grinding bureaucratic aftermath, still believes in the purity of the artistic impulse. His journal writing and poems—inserted between chapters—convince the reader that he is the real deal, but his drinking, womanizing, and disrespect of political agendas quickly alienates the desperately policitically correct council. Royston—and, one can imagine, Smith—is disgusted by the idea that artistic quality can only be measured its usefulness in achieving social aims: “building community” and “giving voice to the voiceless” are some of the disdained ideas.
There’s a lot of ideas in this book. Debates at meetings of the embattled council, bantering between honour students, diary entries of urban observation are disturbing and hilarious, by turns or in tandem, but they don’t move the plot at any great clip. A set piece of a public library press conference features a homeless man eating all the cheese (“The man had a raincoat which was still largely coherent…”), a paraphrase of comments that Jane Jacobs made, and one more nail in unpopular poet’s coffin, but in terms of pure plotting the book could have done without it. In terms of pure plotting, the book could have done without most of its best moments, actually.
So MP is not a plot-drive n book then. I think it is on the razor-sharp edge between satire and emotional realism, and I think that’s why it’s awesome. To write a decent satire, you have to both love and hate your subject—a straight lampoon is one laugh only. The characters in MP are intellectually and sensually vivid, in contrast with the world they live in, which is full of pretension, posturing, aggression and stupidity. The wild and wide digressions are the best bits, full of bite and sympathy both. Early on, we have a car full of people so tense they are vibrating, all snarking and vying for attention while poor Muriella struggles to merge on the 401 in rush hour. Later, the horror of running into someone you know at the video store and being judged by whatever you happened to have in your hand:
“I like Catherine Deneuve,” she said softly.
“Why?” said Jason.
“Why? I don’t know. Why do you like any actors?”
“Well, usually when we like things,” Jason said a little too loudly, “we are able to articulate some reason…”
The characters are the heart of the book, and I think most of them are remarkable achievements. Before reading, it wasn’t the scathing commentary on arts funding that worried me, but rather the idea that a white, fortyish guy would be writing from the POV of a middle-aged woman, a twentyish woman, and a Caribbean-born man of mixed race. I think Smith does a credible job on all counts, though not flawless. Muriella is probably the most diverse, most sympathetic character he ever created—she’s sweet and self-conscious and not without irony, yet she’s obsessed with her clothes and she calls people lovey (I didn’t think people other than Mrs. Thurston Howell did that). When Smith re-released his pornographic novel, Diana, I heard him speak about how he wrote that book in part to learn about writing about women from within a female body, about sex from a woman’s point of view. You can see those lessons put to good use here—Muriella fully inhabits her body, fully wears her clothes. She even feels her grief over her husband’s death in her body. Sometimes it’s too much, though, this embrace of female physicality, especially with Julia’s character. She’s so so so beautiful, and every other character wants to sleep with her, so she doesn’t get a lot of other characteristics. Actually, that’s not fair—her intelligence and willful self-neglect, self-destructiveness, are evident, but given short shrift. Julia actually quotes from her own diary at one point, which is an unenjoyable narrative shorthand for she’s very bright and insightful, see?
I could have used a little more time on Julia’s mind instead of so much on her nipples—“She did not put on a bra…to show off a little,” “The top was thin as film, and tight across her small breasts,” etc. Neither Julia nor Muriella wears a bra. In fact, no woman in this novel who neither morbidly obese nor a tool of the patriarchy chooses to be so “unencumbered.” This is fantasy: Toronto is the most over air-conditioned place I’ve ever been, and the subways are crowded—and I found it distracting.
Marcus Royston is a complicated and nuanced creation. He’s pathetic and sympathetic, passive aggressive and irresponsible. You like him, but he drinks too much and sleeps with everybody and calls himself a poet while writing little poetry. His sad patience (he winks at his favourite prostitute as he walks towards his boss’s office the day he knows he’ll be fired) and his observations on the seasons (end of October: “baths are drawn, doors are closed”) show a real poet at work, and the actual poems here are pretty damn good. But there isn’t enough of his point of view for me, especially in the second half of the book. It’s more Muriella’s story all along, and Brian and Julia take up more and more space. Marcus kind of gets shifted to the side, a catalyst spent in causation, burning out. We don’t know what his life entailed before coming to Toronto—people don’t ask him a lot of questions, and his note-taking is limited to present-day observation, and poetic musing.
The fourth POV character is Smith’s stock-in-trade—Brian, the literature and video-game loving, pretentious, self-conscious jerk/sweetheart who sees “nothing but humiliation” in pretty girls, and wants to write “such a novel of sadness and devastation” as revenge for that humiliation. He’s funny and awful and totally familiar, especially when bantering with his best (only?) friend, Jason. If I could write young men this well, I don’t know that I’d ever bother doing anything else. You don’t see Tiger Woods knocking himself out on the soccer field, you know? Listen to this, and I mean really, read it aloud and listen:
“Why are you wearing that hat?”
“What’s wrong with my hat?” Jason touched it front and back without both hands as if straightening it in a mirror. He looked very serious and Brian laughed.
“Does it come with spurs and chaps, or a little badge? Is it Halloween?”
“What’s your ambient name?”
“I have other hats, you know, you could wear, like a medieval helmet, with a visor, it comes with a whole suit or armour, and a shield, you could walk around like that if you liked. Or how about a hobo costume, with overalls and the stick and the little bundle in a red handkerchief?”
“Shut up,” said Jason. “Chicks like hats like this.”
I know boys like that, though honestly, most of them are not quite as funny.
Four points of view, two countries, one mansion, two basement apartments, a drunken party, some sexual dalliances, some cameos from previous Russell Smith books (yep, am a fan), too much booze and a lot intellectual posturing: could you forgive me for saying that I think this novel is a beautiful tribute to Canadian ideals not quite working out? We Canadians haven’t quite nailed down what our literature or our country should look like, what we actually mean when we say “Cultural Mosaic,” or why we keep segregating ourselves culturally—the comments on “Little Malta” are pretty emblematic—when we like the idea of unity so much. The way these characters ebb and flow and refuse to define themselves is very definitely Canadian to me. And by the end of the book, all characters are shaken and surprised and, mainly, expanded by the mixing up that comes from going beyond cultural definitions and engaging in real life. Pretty impressive for a work of fiction.
Oh my goodness, reviewers work hard. I’m spent.
That's not my name
RR
*However*, books are stronger than I am, I'm sure--they can stand a little misjudgement. And if I would presume to write them, I would presume also to understand something about how they work, and by what criteria they might operate. So I wanted to try a review, and I've been on the lookout for a book I thought I might be able to work with. I chose Russell Smith's Muriella Pent for a few reasons, mainly that I liked it a lot. I thought it would be easier to find interesting, witty, insightful things to say about a piece of fiction that is itself interesting, witty, and insightful. That's a cheat, and I know real reviewers don't have that perogative--one of the many reasons why I am not one. I also thought it'd be useful to review something by a writer whose back-catalogue I'm familiar with. I've actually read *all* Smith's other fiction books (though not his fashion writing) and am likely by any standards a fan. So this whole process is wildly biased, but hey, it's a start.
Ok, a review of *Muriella Pent* in 1500 words of semi-astuteness. Ok. Ok, go!
Muriella Pent is a wealthy fiftyish widow. Her children are grown, and she lives alone in a stuffy gated community, trying to fill her days with gardening, which proves unsatisfying, and the local arts council. Muriella once had some artistic ambitions, and she sees the council as an opportunity to learn as well as help.
Besides Muriella, there are three other points of view: Brian, a fellow council member who has just finished his BA in English; Julia, the daughter of one of Muriella’s friends, who also knows Brian from school; and Marcus Royston, a poet from the Caribbean that the council brings to Toronto for an artistic residency. Due to funding cuts, the only actual residence available for the residency is in the maid’s quarters of Muriella’s enormous house.
There’s the premise, and it has a fair amount of interest. Marcus, who has lived through a revolution, and its grinding bureaucratic aftermath, still believes in the purity of the artistic impulse. His journal writing and poems—inserted between chapters—convince the reader that he is the real deal, but his drinking, womanizing, and disrespect of political agendas quickly alienates the desperately policitically correct council. Royston—and, one can imagine, Smith—is disgusted by the idea that artistic quality can only be measured its usefulness in achieving social aims: “building community” and “giving voice to the voiceless” are some of the disdained ideas.
There’s a lot of ideas in this book. Debates at meetings of the embattled council, bantering between honour students, diary entries of urban observation are disturbing and hilarious, by turns or in tandem, but they don’t move the plot at any great clip. A set piece of a public library press conference features a homeless man eating all the cheese (“The man had a raincoat which was still largely coherent…”), a paraphrase of comments that Jane Jacobs made, and one more nail in unpopular poet’s coffin, but in terms of pure plotting the book could have done without it. In terms of pure plotting, the book could have done without most of its best moments, actually.
So MP is not a plot-drive n book then. I think it is on the razor-sharp edge between satire and emotional realism, and I think that’s why it’s awesome. To write a decent satire, you have to both love and hate your subject—a straight lampoon is one laugh only. The characters in MP are intellectually and sensually vivid, in contrast with the world they live in, which is full of pretension, posturing, aggression and stupidity. The wild and wide digressions are the best bits, full of bite and sympathy both. Early on, we have a car full of people so tense they are vibrating, all snarking and vying for attention while poor Muriella struggles to merge on the 401 in rush hour. Later, the horror of running into someone you know at the video store and being judged by whatever you happened to have in your hand:
“I like Catherine Deneuve,” she said softly.
“Why?” said Jason.
“Why? I don’t know. Why do you like any actors?”
“Well, usually when we like things,” Jason said a little too loudly, “we are able to articulate some reason…”
The characters are the heart of the book, and I think most of them are remarkable achievements. Before reading, it wasn’t the scathing commentary on arts funding that worried me, but rather the idea that a white, fortyish guy would be writing from the POV of a middle-aged woman, a twentyish woman, and a Caribbean-born man of mixed race. I think Smith does a credible job on all counts, though not flawless. Muriella is probably the most diverse, most sympathetic character he ever created—she’s sweet and self-conscious and not without irony, yet she’s obsessed with her clothes and she calls people lovey (I didn’t think people other than Mrs. Thurston Howell did that). When Smith re-released his pornographic novel, Diana, I heard him speak about how he wrote that book in part to learn about writing about women from within a female body, about sex from a woman’s point of view. You can see those lessons put to good use here—Muriella fully inhabits her body, fully wears her clothes. She even feels her grief over her husband’s death in her body. Sometimes it’s too much, though, this embrace of female physicality, especially with Julia’s character. She’s so so so beautiful, and every other character wants to sleep with her, so she doesn’t get a lot of other characteristics. Actually, that’s not fair—her intelligence and willful self-neglect, self-destructiveness, are evident, but given short shrift. Julia actually quotes from her own diary at one point, which is an unenjoyable narrative shorthand for she’s very bright and insightful, see?
I could have used a little more time on Julia’s mind instead of so much on her nipples—“She did not put on a bra…to show off a little,” “The top was thin as film, and tight across her small breasts,” etc. Neither Julia nor Muriella wears a bra. In fact, no woman in this novel who neither morbidly obese nor a tool of the patriarchy chooses to be so “unencumbered.” This is fantasy: Toronto is the most over air-conditioned place I’ve ever been, and the subways are crowded—and I found it distracting.
Marcus Royston is a complicated and nuanced creation. He’s pathetic and sympathetic, passive aggressive and irresponsible. You like him, but he drinks too much and sleeps with everybody and calls himself a poet while writing little poetry. His sad patience (he winks at his favourite prostitute as he walks towards his boss’s office the day he knows he’ll be fired) and his observations on the seasons (end of October: “baths are drawn, doors are closed”) show a real poet at work, and the actual poems here are pretty damn good. But there isn’t enough of his point of view for me, especially in the second half of the book. It’s more Muriella’s story all along, and Brian and Julia take up more and more space. Marcus kind of gets shifted to the side, a catalyst spent in causation, burning out. We don’t know what his life entailed before coming to Toronto—people don’t ask him a lot of questions, and his note-taking is limited to present-day observation, and poetic musing.
The fourth POV character is Smith’s stock-in-trade—Brian, the literature and video-game loving, pretentious, self-conscious jerk/sweetheart who sees “nothing but humiliation” in pretty girls, and wants to write “such a novel of sadness and devastation” as revenge for that humiliation. He’s funny and awful and totally familiar, especially when bantering with his best (only?) friend, Jason. If I could write young men this well, I don’t know that I’d ever bother doing anything else. You don’t see Tiger Woods knocking himself out on the soccer field, you know? Listen to this, and I mean really, read it aloud and listen:
“Why are you wearing that hat?”
“What’s wrong with my hat?” Jason touched it front and back without both hands as if straightening it in a mirror. He looked very serious and Brian laughed.
“Does it come with spurs and chaps, or a little badge? Is it Halloween?”
“What’s your ambient name?”
“I have other hats, you know, you could wear, like a medieval helmet, with a visor, it comes with a whole suit or armour, and a shield, you could walk around like that if you liked. Or how about a hobo costume, with overalls and the stick and the little bundle in a red handkerchief?”
“Shut up,” said Jason. “Chicks like hats like this.”
I know boys like that, though honestly, most of them are not quite as funny.
Four points of view, two countries, one mansion, two basement apartments, a drunken party, some sexual dalliances, some cameos from previous Russell Smith books (yep, am a fan), too much booze and a lot intellectual posturing: could you forgive me for saying that I think this novel is a beautiful tribute to Canadian ideals not quite working out? We Canadians haven’t quite nailed down what our literature or our country should look like, what we actually mean when we say “Cultural Mosaic,” or why we keep segregating ourselves culturally—the comments on “Little Malta” are pretty emblematic—when we like the idea of unity so much. The way these characters ebb and flow and refuse to define themselves is very definitely Canadian to me. And by the end of the book, all characters are shaken and surprised and, mainly, expanded by the mixing up that comes from going beyond cultural definitions and engaging in real life. Pretty impressive for a work of fiction.
Oh my goodness, reviewers work hard. I’m spent.
That's not my name
RR
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Joy
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about short stories, which *may* have had a "persecuted" air to it. Which was in reaction to things I'd read and heard, but that was also somewhat selective listening. Obviously, short stories have many defenders and protectors--thanks to all who wrote to me to say so! I felt much better, and more inclined to look on the bright side.
And there is much brightness, including the speech Lynn Coady made at Luminato, pointing out the artistic experimentation permitted in short stories (I wish I could reproduce it, but of course I can't. This is why everything in the universe should be written down.) And then there is Emily Schultz's new pro-story website, Joyland. Commmitted to keeping the living art of short story, and international, and cool, Joyland's first story is actually one of Coady's (and it is alive, and cool, and very funny and weird). One of mine, "Black-and-White Man", will actually run there in September--I feel priviledged to be a part of the party.
Other joyful news from the land of writing, though not particularly story-focused:
--novelist, book-reviewer, cat-lover, friend-of-mine Lauren Kirshner writes as beautifully and warmly on her new blog as we all knew she would.
--writing, reader, friend to all things bookish Julie Wilson is bringing her crazy-cool literary voyeurism to the youths with Seen Writing, a workshop for teens with poetry readings, on-the-spot writing exercises, and reader models that (cough) you might know. This event is part of the The Scream Literary Festival, which has too many great events to name.
Obviously, the fate of literature, in its myriad forms, is in little danger. Not that we shouldn't all be vigilant and all...
He could not know another tiger
RR
And there is much brightness, including the speech Lynn Coady made at Luminato, pointing out the artistic experimentation permitted in short stories (I wish I could reproduce it, but of course I can't. This is why everything in the universe should be written down.) And then there is Emily Schultz's new pro-story website, Joyland. Commmitted to keeping the living art of short story, and international, and cool, Joyland's first story is actually one of Coady's (and it is alive, and cool, and very funny and weird). One of mine, "Black-and-White Man", will actually run there in September--I feel priviledged to be a part of the party.
Other joyful news from the land of writing, though not particularly story-focused:
--novelist, book-reviewer, cat-lover, friend-of-mine Lauren Kirshner writes as beautifully and warmly on her new blog as we all knew she would.
--writing, reader, friend to all things bookish Julie Wilson is bringing her crazy-cool literary voyeurism to the youths with Seen Writing, a workshop for teens with poetry readings, on-the-spot writing exercises, and reader models that (cough) you might know. This event is part of the The Scream Literary Festival, which has too many great events to name.
Obviously, the fate of literature, in its myriad forms, is in little danger. Not that we shouldn't all be vigilant and all...
He could not know another tiger
RR
Monday, April 28, 2008
Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere
Who knew that there was such a title, although it's clear to me now that it's an important role. I'm so delighted that there is such an election, because that means there's lots of people blogging about poetry and the world in poetic terms, as there should be. But for me, there's only one poetic blogger on my radar, and that's rob mclennan. So no disparagement meant to the other nominees, who are probably also quite brilliant.
But if there's someone who has got to speak for poets in the blogosphere, I hope it can be rob, because I've never seen a blog that creates such a sense of commitment and community, such wide-ranging and warm interest and encouragement. It speaks to the blog's space of generosity that a fiction writer such as myself never feels out of place there. rob's blog makes it feel like writing is worthwhile, whatever your form.
I'm sure these things don't matter *that* much in the scheme of life, but it *is* national poetry month, so if you are so inclined, maybe vote?
I could kick your ass / yeah, you in the looking glass
RR
But if there's someone who has got to speak for poets in the blogosphere, I hope it can be rob, because I've never seen a blog that creates such a sense of commitment and community, such wide-ranging and warm interest and encouragement. It speaks to the blog's space of generosity that a fiction writer such as myself never feels out of place there. rob's blog makes it feel like writing is worthwhile, whatever your form.
I'm sure these things don't matter *that* much in the scheme of life, but it *is* national poetry month, so if you are so inclined, maybe vote?
I could kick your ass / yeah, you in the looking glass
RR
Monday, March 3, 2008
Fair's Fair
1. What was the last Canadian book you recall reading?
Diana: A Diary in the Second Person by Russell Smith
2. Where did you find out about it, and where do you find out about Canadian books to read in general, if in fact you do?
I found out it was available again when the This Is Not a Reading Series launch was announced, but there's been rumours about this book for years. That's atypical, though—in general, I read on recommendation--I don't listen to every recommendation, but nor do I very often read without when.
3. Where did you get the book, and where do get Canadian books in general, if in fact you do?
I bought that book at the launch, as I wont to do if I go to a launch, but that's not that often. In general, I read books from the library or receive them as gifts. If I want to make a point of buying a particular book, I often order direct from the publisher.
4. Who is your favourite Canadian author? Bonus points--Why?
This is a fairly inane question, I know, I know--depends on the day, the genre, the mood. But it does give an idea when I say Munro, Pyper, Smith, Atwood, Rooke, Lyon, Copeland, doesn't it?
A thousand different voices,
RR
PS--I'm using these answers to try to pull together something coherent to say at a CanLit-y panel tomorrow. When in doubt, ask your friends!!
Diana: A Diary in the Second Person by Russell Smith
2. Where did you find out about it, and where do you find out about Canadian books to read in general, if in fact you do?
I found out it was available again when the This Is Not a Reading Series launch was announced, but there's been rumours about this book for years. That's atypical, though—in general, I read on recommendation--I don't listen to every recommendation, but nor do I very often read without when.
3. Where did you get the book, and where do get Canadian books in general, if in fact you do?
I bought that book at the launch, as I wont to do if I go to a launch, but that's not that often. In general, I read books from the library or receive them as gifts. If I want to make a point of buying a particular book, I often order direct from the publisher.
4. Who is your favourite Canadian author? Bonus points--Why?
This is a fairly inane question, I know, I know--depends on the day, the genre, the mood. But it does give an idea when I say Munro, Pyper, Smith, Atwood, Rooke, Lyon, Copeland, doesn't it?
A thousand different voices,
RR
PS--I'm using these answers to try to pull together something coherent to say at a CanLit-y panel tomorrow. When in doubt, ask your friends!!
Sunday, March 2, 2008
CanLit Queries
If you felt like answering some or all of these quicky queries about CanLit, it would really be helpful, and interesting, to me!
1. What was the last Canadian book you recall reading?
2. Where did you find out about it, and where do you find out about Canadian books to read in general, if in fact you do?
3. Where did you get the book, and where do get Canadian books in general, if in fact you do?
4. Who is your favourite Canadian author? Bonus points--Why?
Thanks!
RR
1. What was the last Canadian book you recall reading?
2. Where did you find out about it, and where do you find out about Canadian books to read in general, if in fact you do?
3. Where did you get the book, and where do get Canadian books in general, if in fact you do?
4. Who is your favourite Canadian author? Bonus points--Why?
Thanks!
RR
Monday, February 25, 2008
Panel in Peterborough
I know that most (both?) Rose-coloured readers are, like me, carless people who don't live in Peterborough. However, if you are there a week Tuesday, you might consider stopping at Trent to hear a panel discuss Shut Up He Explained, by John Metcalf, and how it fits/shapes the future of Canadian writing.
As an "emerging writer" in Canada who was deeply affected/inspired by that book, as well as being edited by it's author, I am part of said panel. How exciting, and how terrifying. I hope to have come up with some modest insights to share by next week.
Even if I don't, the discussion will still likely be great, and even if you can't make it, I urge to check out the book. On it's own, *Shut Up* will still tell you a great deal about where CanLit is, has been, and might go.
Below are the details. Sorry I can't duplicate the nice poster sent to me by Trent, just cut'n'paste the text.
Roundtable with John Metcalf ~
Library ~ Champlain Writer in Residence
Emerging Scholars on
The Future of Writing in Canada:
Life After “Shut Up He Explained”
Tuesday, March 4th 2008
~ 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ~
A.J.M. Smith Room, Bata Library
Jonathan Bennett ~ Christopher Dummitt
Michael Fralic ~ Lewis MacLeod
Rebecca Rosenblum ~ Dan Wells
Moderated by Adrian Kelly
Anyway anyway anyway / you wanna
RR
As an "emerging writer" in Canada who was deeply affected/inspired by that book, as well as being edited by it's author, I am part of said panel. How exciting, and how terrifying. I hope to have come up with some modest insights to share by next week.
Even if I don't, the discussion will still likely be great, and even if you can't make it, I urge to check out the book. On it's own, *Shut Up* will still tell you a great deal about where CanLit is, has been, and might go.
Below are the details. Sorry I can't duplicate the nice poster sent to me by Trent, just cut'n'paste the text.
Roundtable with John Metcalf ~
Library ~ Champlain Writer in Residence
Emerging Scholars on
The Future of Writing in Canada:
Life After “Shut Up He Explained”
Tuesday, March 4th 2008
~ 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. ~
A.J.M. Smith Room, Bata Library
Jonathan Bennett ~ Christopher Dummitt
Michael Fralic ~ Lewis MacLeod
Rebecca Rosenblum ~ Dan Wells
Moderated by Adrian Kelly
Anyway anyway anyway / you wanna
RR
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