Postal excellence

Today's mail was extra good: 1 magazine, one letter, one holiday card, one return-to-sender misaddressed holiday card (the only down note, to be hand-delivered on Saturday), and 2 copies of the fall issue of The Antigonish Review (the issue is not yet online) containing my flash fiction, "Do."

I am so delighted to see it there, and it is a story I am quite proud of, but it is somewhat jarring reading as it was written a few years back and is *much* different from what I'm doing these days (how much flash fiction are you seeing from me lately, really?) It's nice to be reminded that I have a little bit of range, though it's sequential--I can no more go back to doing what I was doing in 2006 than I can skip ahead to whatever I'll be up to in 2012 and see how that goes. I can only hope the cycle repeats, one of these days.

Anyway...hope you enjoy the story, and the whole of a very attractive-looking issue (mine was in *3* layers of shrink-wrap--it's like they *knew* about the slush-storm!)

RR

Submit, all ye who enter

I started thinking about story (and poem) submissions to literary journals when a friend said she was going to start sending some out. I've been doing that for a few years now, and our conversation made me realize how much I've learned since then. I thought maybe I could help someone out a little with that learning curve, if in fact anyone in need of help is reading this.

1. Where to submit?

Journals you like--if you like what they do, the odds are higher that they'll like what you do. Don't know any journals well enough to make that assessment? Go read some. This needn't be all that expensive or time-consuming; you don't need to subscribe, but one issue from the newsstand or library, or a serious peruse of the mag's online archive (if it has one) would really help you decide if it's worth your time to submit--and worth the editors' time to read your work.

Ok, ok: If you are extremely talented and extremely patient, you can get published without reading the journals you submit to--you're just going to wind up sending a lot of inappropriate places and getting a lot of nos first. Some journals only take a certain genre, or style of writing... Also, every journal I can think of wants new, fresh voices (show me the journal that is after "staid and tired" writing) but exactly how edgy they want writing to be, how fractured, how weird or funny or linear is various. Those are style issues that could cause perfectly good writing to get rejected because it doesn't fit the journal's aesthetic.

A great list of litmags, as well as contests and calls for submissions, is available from the generous folks at [places for writers] (no, I don't know what what the brackets are about, but it's still a great site). The Canadian list there is a little weak on genre magazines; there's a few science fiction ones, but I don't see any for mystery or horror. I think those are perhaps more common in the states, but genre and American publications are two areas I know little about. Sorry.

2. Paid or unpaid?

Doesn't matter in the slightest. Many perfectly good journals don't pay, or pay in copies, or in beer, or in love. If you would like to do this writing thing long term, it would help to become comfortable with that. Here's why: If you should ever keep track of all the hours spent writing and rewriting a given piece of creative work, and then divide that into whatever you end up getting paid when it's published (and I would strongly discourage you from doing this), nothing any journal could ever offer you is likely to approach minimum wage. And since any amount of money isn't really going to be right, maybe $0 is only just as incorrect as any other amount.

The one thing writer payments guarantee is that the journal has the respect of subscribers, advertisers and/or granters to some substantial degree. Money doesn't promise that it's a good journal, but it does indicate someone thinks it is. So it can be harder, if doubt your own judgement, when you find a non-paying journal that you like the look of, to know what anyone else thinks of it. Ask around, maybe read a couple issues (so you know it's not a fly-by-night)--good work is usually known. Submit to journals you respect, that you'd be proud to appear in, and that oughta be that.

The one exception to the money-doesn't-matter rule is when you are working towards applying for grants. Both Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council require writers to have a certain number of publications paid in cash (no copies, beer, or love) in order to be eligible for grants. If you plan on seeking grants, this is something to be aware of.

3. What about this simultaneous submission thing?

I'd get more rejections if I could send the same stories to multiple journals at the same time (that's what a simultaneous submission is, der). But many journals don't allow that, which is I think a rather author-unfriendly policy, but it's not my ball; I can't play by my own rules. Several journals I admire and would love to be published in have that rule, so I suck it up and let them hold my story for 9 months before they reject it and I am free to send it elsewhere.

Not an ideal situation, but better than a) not submitting to journals I admire or b) lying. I have to admit, the tales of simultaneous-submission renegades getting blacklisted/scorned/never published again/shunned at parties are vague and apocryphal, but I still think honesty is the way to go, if only for it's own sake, and the sake of keeping your submission tracking chart (mine's in Excel) clean.

If you should screw up and, despite the Excel chart, send something to two places by accident (I've done this; Excel is confusing), just write and withdraw one; no need to admit the gaffe and say why, as long as you do it promptly.

4. Are you ready for rejection?

I was terrified to submit to professional publications--and didn't--for 10 years. There were several reasons for this, but basically it boiled down to the fact that I wasn't ready to have my work read by strangers, whether by hundreds of subscribers to a journal, or by a single editor flipping idly through her in-box. I didn't think my work was good enough to stand up to criticism, but also my own little ego wasn't tough enough to accept rejection and use criticism effectively.

Rejection stings. It makes you doubt your work, your ability to select the correct forum for your work, your ability to judge, and is also just sad and annoying. I used to lose a couple days' writing time every time I got a "no", but now it's down to only a couple hours. The time away from the story actually often gives some distance and insight, and by the time I get the no I might have already figured out what's wrong with it, and other times I haven't at all but the kindly feedback in the rejection helps me do so. And yet other times I've felt that it was the editor's loss and I immediately sent the story elsewhere. In all events, the story is exactly what it was before it got rejected, and if it's not good yet, I generally have faith in myself that I'm capable of making it that way.

Don't submit until you feel that way. I have been alarmed recently to get several form rejection letters that said, "This rejection does not mean you're not a good writer," and in one case (jokingly???) "...a good person." What kind of rejection responses are those journals getting if they feel they need to include this? Writing is very personal and very important if you do it right, but to keep doing it, one needs at least a little distance. If everyone who ever wrote anything dumb and/or was misunderstood by others let it crush them, there would be no writers left. I get more than 20 rejections a year (not counting grant applications, contest entries or dating)--I can't afford the time to be blown apart by them.

5. What if I hear nothing?

Most journals have an ETA on responses published in their submissions guidelines, and though it's hard, it's pretty much good manners to wait until that time has well and truly passed before emailing to ask what they've done with your beautiful story (ie., if they say they'll get back to you in 6 months, try to get more than a day past that before you email...if possible).

Most editors or assistants or interns will actually go figure it out and tell you if your work has passed to some higher level of editorial deliberation, or if the rejection is in the mail, or what. Occasionally the work is lost, and they have no record of receiving it, which makes that 6-month wait really sting. Even more occasionally, I get no response at all to my query. In that case, I wait a week and then send another note withdrawing the submission, which usually goes unacknowledged, too. Strangely, when this happens, I have twice gotten a rejection letter for the story about two months later. Quel bizarre.

Sidenote: do as I say, not as I do: write down how long you are supposed to wait (three months, six months, whatevs) before querying, and then query after that long. Don't be like me who carefully logs story submissions, then forgets about them for months and feels like a giant loser writing to a journal to admit I lost track of a story I love for an entire year. Yes, this happens to me.

6. How should I format my work?

I'm not touching this; almost every journal has a very similar set of formating guidelines with one little wonky thing, often to do with headers/footers. Do whatever they say; seriously, it's respectful and proves you're not outsmarted by MS Word. If there's actually nothing given, ok, fine: use the default settings and font on your computer, double-space for prose and single for poetry, your name and the page number on the tope right of every page. Use white paper and envelopes; resist the lure of stickers.

Oh, and be really respectful about maximum word counts. You don't get far in the editorial community without being able to eyeball a wordcount in 15 seconds, no matter what spacing is used.



I hope that helps...I actually have no idea if it does or not. If I've left out something crucial, or am actually doing everything all wrong, please let me know!! It's fun and exciting and crushing and thrilling to have work in the world and although this post somehow got monsterously long, it's really not that stressful. Highly recommended, really!

Then begin again
RR

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

What the last 10 years have taught me

What I mainly did on that dock, as I said, was read *The New Yorker* fiction issue, which I had been waiting for with avid enthusiasm (because I can't read magazines out of order, natch). Obviously, I was rabid for the stories, but I had also been forwarned by Facebook friends that there was an article on teaching creative writing that I would want to see.

The piece turned out to be a review by one of my favourite critics, Louis Menand, of a book called The Program Era by Mark McGurl. I haven't heard more about McGurl than what Menand wrote, and I have little intention of reading the book (beyond the vague miasma of "oh, yeah, I should probably read that" that I feel about most books). So on the one hand, it's pretty presumptuous and glib for me to respond to the article. On the other hand, Menand's piece is one of *The New Yorker*'s rambling "Critic at Large" pieces, which encompasses a lot of general thoughts on the issue. So maybe I'm responding to those general comments. Or, on yet another hand, this is a blog, and maybe presumptuousness/glibness is the least of the worries of the blogosphere.

So!

The book, and to some extent the article, deal with the rise of the university creative writing class and degree, and simply the increasing presence of the "certified" writer on the lit scene. It was indeed edifying and maybe mildly shocking to see how many names got listed here (nice to see Bharati Mukherjee's name in *The New Yorker*, whatever the reason). An interesting thesis of the book, and one that Menand deals scantly with, is how creative writing programs shaped the evolotion of later-20th-century prose--in fact, the subtitle of the book is "Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing."

Menand has concentrated much more on the ever-scandalous question, also inherent in McGurl's work, "Can creative writing be taught?" Both offer lots of fascinating "well, maybe" answers, well worth reading at least in the short review form. I've written about this here before, and so I'll add only my usual quotation of the immortal Judith Viorst--help helps--plus: Creative writing classes, and eventually an MA in the subject, helped me so much with my writing. The classes gave me the discipline, focus, friends, inspiration, connections, snack foods, mentors, party tricks, informal workshop groups, cold terror, and cheerful ambition to take the writing I was already doing to the next level. If that's not learning, I don't know what is.

But I also know there are other kinds of learning, and this is something Menand leaves to the very last paragraph. This is moving, but I think it elides something else:

"I stopped writing poetry after I graduated, and I never published a poem—which places me with the majority of people who have taken a creative-writing class. But I’m sure that the experience of being caught up in this small and fragile enterprise, contemporary poetry, among other people who were caught up in it, too, affected choices I made in life long after I left college. I wouldn’t trade it for anything."

The majority of people who take a creative-writing class in undergrad don't continue to write after graduation, he says. Well, I don't have the stats, but judging by the folks I know, that sounds about write (ahaha. I actually wrote that accidentally.)

So, maaaybe, if impermanent writers--elective takers, dabblers, interested experimenteers-- is who is in the classes, Menand and McGurl are missing the boat. Maybe what creative writing classes in universities do is not (only) shape the national fiction style or create silken prose out of sow's ears, but *teach 20-year-olds to think creatively and write coherently*. Transferable skills if ever there were.

I think this issue is actually larger than creative writing; it stems from a larger misunderstanding of liberal arts education, although I don't know that one is mine or society's. When I was wee, but after I figured out that being intelligent was not a profession, I asked my liberal-arts-professing father what he taught people to do--like, medical school taught people how to cut open bodies and fix them, and police school taught people to shoot guns. My father's response was that his sort of teaching wasn't about learning to *do* a thing; he taught people how to *think* about things in a certain way, and then they could apply that way of thinking how they liked.

Revalatory, when you're ten and trying very hard to learn to do a lay-up and spell "persimmon." (And the author will allow that she may recollect her childhood as slightly more Socratic than it actually was.)

I have a BA Hon. in English Literature and an MA in English and Creative Writing, and I swear to you, I use what they taught me every day of my life. No, no one has asked me about Grendel, Tess, or semiotics today. And yet, the skills of close and careful reading, of contextualizing what I read with as much related material as possible, of reasoned and elegant essay arguementation, and of clear and relentless questioning of whatever I think I know--well, thank you, liberal-arts education.

Of course, as you can see by my Facebook friends above, conversations about the nun's priest or Samson Agonistes are likelier to happen to me than perhaps to most. But I really do believe that folks in advertising and marketing, in law and government and even medicine are able to use reading and writing skills they picked up in liberal arts classes. Not to mention the endless insights into the human condition we are given in reading about humans, in fiction or in non-fiction. And the ability to not only answer questions but ask them intelligently. And to empathize with people so foreign to us they actually don't exist.

Most people know that learning to think in different ways is always to the good. But I worry they don't prioritize that good. Having TA'd a little, and generally being around academic life, I do worry about the vocationalization of university education. I worried that my Effective Writing students wanted only to work on resume cover letters and mission statements that would translate directly into career skills, rather than work on the whole craft of writing and then make the cognitive connections in the work world for themselves.

I did actually go to vocational school too, so please know I don't knock that course at all. It was interesting and stimulating and my publishing certificate leads more or less directly to me being able to eat food and sleep indoors in a relatively entertaining fashion. But those skills I learned there are rigid, specific, and date-able. Every time I switch software platforms, style guides or subject matter, I start over...not from square one perhaps, but certainly from a square nearby. Vocational skills are generally like this: welders certified to do stick welding have a fundamentally different skill than those who do pipe welding. The skills may have much in common, but you can't just extrapolate one to the other; you have to go back and learn again.

Which is, as I said, a fine way to learn, but fundamental different than the fluid (or, admittedly, amorhphous) skills of the liberal arts education.

What a very long way of saying I think that evaluating university creative-writing programs by the famous writers they've produced does many students a disservice. I spent this spring trying to teach 90 teenagers how to write a short story, and although I can see perhaps a dozen of them pursuing the craft, I truly truly believe many of those kids were a least a little smarter for having tried it. I think creating strong introductory creative writing classes, as well as Intro Psych, Philosophy and Film, can help a lot of people think a little bit different, and better.

But then, I would think that.

The eventual downfall / is just the bill from the restaurant
RR

Post-cottage miscellany

That orange chair is where I've been more or less steadily the past few days, chatting with old friends, petting the dog, reading The New Yorker fiction issue (oh, Jonathan Franzen, you've done it again!), eating cookies, and periodically staring up in stunned silence at the beauty around me. So *that's* what people like about cottage weekends. Now I know.

But I am, as ever, glad to be back in the 416. Happy things that greeted me upon my return are phone calls from friends, emails from same, my beloved indoor toilet, a nice review in Gloss, and the news that Canadian Notes and Queries new website is up, with tonnes of good stuff, including my first ever published review. I'm pretty proud.

My little review is the smallest reason to go get a copy of--or subscribee to!!--CNQ. It's a great journal and full of things to make you think. As Dan points out, putting your name on a subscriber list to a litmag is, these days, pretty much a political act, tantamont to signing a petition in favour of keeping small creatively and critically engaged communities alive and funded. So if there's a journal you believe in and you can possibly afford it, put your name down.

I was helpless as a chess piece/lifted up by someone's hand
RR

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

Rose-coloured Reviews "The Limner" by Julian Barnes

I like to think I'm an astute enough reader to recognize a good story even if it is one that doesn't appeal to me personally. I'm sure there are flaws in my judgement, things I judge to be objectively bad when in fact it's just my subjective taste talking, but I do try on that front. Conversely, I try not to let personal pleasure in a story ellide it's objective flaws. For some reason, the latter task feels tougher than the former.

Julian Barnes's short story, The Limner, in last week's New Yorker was delightful reading. It is a Victorian period piece about a travelling artisan, an self-trained portrait painter (that's what a limner is). It's lovely, detailed in the specifics of the back and front of house relations and authentic in how only the most "Christian" of clients would treat a travelling artisan as a guest in their homes rather than a servant.

There's also lots of subtle visual description in this story, doubly emphasized because the protagonist is both a painter and deaf. We get the intricacy of the claw-foot piano and the customs officer's waistcoat button as Wadsworth works to portray them on the canvas, the limner's mare "shook her tail against the flies, or impatiently raised her neck." Barnes does an admirable job of making these elements not just visual beauties but technical challenges of the painter. Barnes is also does much detailed work on facial expressions, because this is principally how Wadsworth understands human communication. Deaf since 5, he has never learned to lip-read or speak, so he relies on notebook to both send and receive communication.

But really, with most people, Wadsworth can "could silently perceive their meaning": he observes the attitudes of their faces and bodies and divines their hearts, their true values.

Sounds a bit fairy-tale-ish, or at least morality-tale-ish doesn't it? This isn't *exactly* relevant, but if you have worked with recent grade-school-level pedagogical materials, you'll know it's considered unhelpful for young students to read stories like this, stories that imply a disability in one area confers a perhaps semi-supernatural gift in another. The stereotype of the moral-superhero parapalegic is just damaging and silly as the stereotype of the dumb blond or viscious jock.

The stereotypes and stock characters are pretty thick on the ground in Barnes's story, though: in addition to the moral and perceptive deaf artist, there is Mr. Tuttle, the customs officer who poses for his portrait. He's a customs officer and ungenerous, argumentative, undignified, self-important--shock! And a garden boy who is simple and sweet, "an elf with eyes of burnt umber."

The resolution of the story is nearly contained in the fourth paragraph. We know in the first that the customs officer is awful, Wadsworth deaf, devout and humble. Then, we learn "And then there had been that incident on the third evening, against which he had failed—or felt unable—to protest. It had made him sleep uneasily. It had wounded him, too, if the truth were known." An action against the child by the customs officer, we learn straightaways too, and what to be done about it?

I won't, I guess, reveal what exactly, but suffice to say that no character goes against type or expectation, and that the end is quite satisfying in a fairy-tale way. It was very pleasant reading both because I like Victorian fiction (yes, yes, me, your high-school English teacher and your great-aunt Elsbeth) and because I like fairness. And the level of detail and colour was high and lovely.

But really, I think that's all there was--nothing surprising or challenging or at all beyond the level of pleasant. Which is really hardly what I'd expect from a *New Yorker* short story. A momentary pleasure, quickly forgotten. How shocking.

I did my best to make it / when the call came down the line
RR

Honours

*Once* was chosen as one of Quill & Quire's 15 Books of the Year, an extraordinary honour, especially when you consider what other books are on the list--I was particularly thrilled that Claudia Dey's Stunt was included, since it's one of *my* favourite books of the year.

Of course, with this honour comes an attendent one, which is Least-Suave Performance by a Female Author at a Newsstand. Sorry, Jeff and staff, I did try to be cool. It's just not in me.

Are we human / or are we dancer?
RR

"The Great Canadian Novel is a collection of stories"

So says Andrew Hood in The Storytellers, an article by Quentin Mills-Fenn about our books in Winnipeg's Uptown Magazine. I think Andrew nailed the best quote of the piece, but the whole article's pretty good!

After twelve/just as well
RR

The What that Is Up

For subscribers and newsstanders alike, the Fall issue of Maisonneuve is out and about. I've only just got my copy and flipped through, but there's an article on extreme grooming, a new book section, photos and profiles of people encountered outside a courthouse, and my story, "Massacre Day." I am pleased to be among this eclectic and intelligent collection. Enjoy!

I'd say that woman has a halo
RR

Rose-coloured Reviews the July 21st New Yorker

I hear there's been much anger over the cover of the July 21st New Yorker, which is a satire of the way certain right-wing American media elements caricature Barak and Michelle Obama as Muslim extremists. Yeah, I didn't get it at first either—I didn't even recognize who was being depicted, and didn't much about it at all. After the joke was, at length explained to me, I didn't think it was very funny, and certainly not interesting or incendiary enough to be worth the negative reaction it's gotten (Fred agrees with me, which always makes me feel smart). But everybody has an off-day, judgement-wise, no one got hurt and, as Mr. Obama says, "that's why we have the First Amendment."

But I love the New Yorker a lot, so when they disappoint me I do feel sad. But really, when I'm sad, reading the New Yorker is a good distraction. So I read the issue as a distraction from the cover, and I was no longer disappointed.

In the most direct counterpoint to the cover is Ryan Lizza's 18-page The Political Scene profile of Obama, "Making It: Where Barak Obama learned to be a pol." There were some interesting anecdotes about his early years as a community organizer in Chicago, and his later-early years forming and breaking alliances in local and state politics. Obama doesn't always come off looking like a saint, which apparently is a surprise to some people, but really, I sort of knew he wasn't Marty McFly, tumbling into the race for the most powerful political office in the world by accident. And, well, I think that's better if he's going to *get* the most powerful office in the world and then do something effective and good with it.

"Making It," I should say, was *wicked* boring: a clothes-line narrative strung with endless detail. I read it all--18 pages of city council meetings is not too much to ask for someone I'd vote for if I could—but really, not much effort was made as concision, or interest: didn't the candidate ever tell a *joke*?

Much better: a fun and accessible Annals of Science piece on physics's outsider artist Garrett Lisi, Patricia Marx on shopping in Shanghai, and Yoni Brenner's "Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers" ("6. For a taste of the U.K., fry up mini-servings of fish-and-chips. Take it to the next evel by wrapping them in small pieces of newspaper, which, oddly enough, all seem to be printed with unfavorable reviews of Jeff's novel").

Best of all is the short-story "Yurt" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. This story, about an elementary-school teacher who leaves her teaching post for Yemen and returns a year later, refreshed and pregnant, is very funny and very wise in the ways of late twenties thinking which, deep though my love is for the New Yorker, is wisdom I've often longed for in it's pages. I was very glad to learn that the narrator—and really central character—of this piece will have her own book come fall, *The Miss Hempel Chronicle*.

So we see, as usual, that you can't judge anything by its cover though really, of course people do. And knowing that they do, we should still work pretty hard on those damn covers.

Anyone perfect must be lying
RR

Stories and Poems

"Look, there are more people playing 'Grand Theft Auto' this very second than will ever buy whatever book you’re talking about. No one cares, dude."

"That’s no reason to …."

"Hey! Loser! In about ten years nobody will be reading books! It’s over! Deal with it!"

--Michael Carbert, writing in "The Urquhart Disaster", Maisonneuve Magazine

I admire the folks at Maisonneuve for, among many other things, continuing to care about stories and books in the face of mounting distractions and dissausion. So I take it as high praise indeed that they'll be publishing my story, "Massacre Day," in their next issue. I'm very excited, and will certainly let you know when it's on the newsstands.

Other people working hard for the cause of words, this time poetry, are all the poets and volunteers at The Scream in High Park, culminating tonight in what, we hope, will be beautiful weather, out in the park. But really, I'm going rain or shine: Claudia Dey! Dani Couture! And a whack more talented folks!

Finally, this is neither story nor poem, but it made me laugh a lot--"My Airline" by David Owen: "You may no longer hum or do any form of beadwork."

You're all ladidah/but I know who you really are
RR

Non-internet reference

It seems silly to say that a short story in the New Yorker is good. It's become almost tautological that the New Yorker publishes good stories, but they aren't *always*, actually, and not always to everyone's taste, and certainly as rarely brilliant as anything is in this world. But Annie Proulx's "Them Old Cowboy Songs" truly is brilliantly to my taste, and I recommend it heartily despite the fact that the piece isn't online. It's in the May 5th issue (I'm behind, I know) or else in her new collection, not out in North America until September 9 (the reason the piece isn't online?)

So this is pretty much just a tease unless you are also behind on the New Yorker. But I wanted to share, because though I read very little bad fiction these days (I'm learning to choose carefully) this is still something rare.

Have to get used to it
RR

"Naturally Unpopular"

"Auchincloss was a disaster from the start. He had no friends. He was a failure both as an athlete and a scholar, but, more than that, he was, as he later put it, 'naturally unpopular,' possessing that indefinable but unmistakable quality that signals to his peers that a boy is to be ostracized and tormented. He was sneered at, called Rebecca for the Jewish appearance of his nose, kicked and shoved."
--From "East Side Story" by Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker February 25, 2008

What You Could Read

I know everyone adores playing "1000 Things We Like," but I thought I'd post about something else for a change. Like some things that I have been reading that you might like.

For example, I would suggest reading Prism International. If you live in Ontario, this will be very hard, as they did not send our province any fall issues for some reason, but that's the issue I'm recommending you order it because contains the beautiful story "Some Light Down" by S. Kennedy Sobol. It was my privilege to read that story in very early form, and it was heart-stopping then, and it's thrilling to me now to see it having evolved so far. Of course, this means S. Kennedy and I know each other, but we didn't when I first read the story, so you should take my word when I say it's brilliant.

Another recommendation I have for the literary-minded is Jim Munroe's mega website, No Media Kings. If you move in Toronto indie circles, you may have heard the name Jim Munroe before even if you've never read his books or comics, seen his movies, been to his shows or readings, or played his video games. I once had a strange job wherein (a) I often had no work, (b) I was not allowed to read books or magazines, (c) I was not permitted to surf the internet unless the sites pertained to books. These rules made no sense, but I got around them in large part thanks to Mr. Munroe, who bills his site as an "indie culture site." Basically, if you work in one of the above media and don't want to let your get caught up in corporate R&D, promotion, editing, distribution, etc., Jim will tell you how to do it yourself. Even if you are willing to go a little corporate, there's still useful reading on the site--for authors, there's stuff on grant-writing, touring, etc. that's very practical, friendly, and go-go-go. There's stuff on there that's not at all practical unless you are the dynamo that is Jim Munroe--book tour via bicycle, for example—but it's very entertaining.

Of course, all this partically obscures the reason I was curious enough about the guy to google him in the first place, which is that he is a pretty good novelist. I read his first book, Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask when I was a kid and got hooked. That was his first book, published with HarperCollins Canada, the experience that so annoyed him that he declared himself the anti-Rupert Murdoch, or, I guess The King of No Media (heh). He went on to write a number of novels: *Angry Young Spaceman, Everyone in Silico, Roommate from Hell* (all available at the above link) and to publish and distribute them himself. No small feat, though it helped I'm sure that the novels were good (if you like semi-sci-fi and silliness, and PCness--I do). Still the sheer number of hours, and the force of will to overcome not only self-doubt but the logistical nightmares... Impressive.

I interviewed Jim Munroe in the summer of 2003 for a school project (would that that transcript still existed--stupid dead hard-drive). He did it because I emailed him and said if he talked to me I'd buy him lunch. He wrote write back and said ok, showed up when he said he would, and tried to pay for his own sandwich, so obviously I was more than a little impressed. I guess there's bias all over this post, really, but still, these are reccommendations worth checking out--it's not my fault I've met so many talented people.

Smoking the same damn cigarettes
RR

To The New Yorker--all my love

Nobody needs another tribute to the utter definition of a venerable magazine, The New Yorker. It's been around since 1925, everybody's heard of it and probably has an opinion on it, and it's even got it's own hater blogs (which I will not link, even though the one I read was pretty funny). And yet I love it, passionately. It's the only magazine in my life; it's the only magazine for me.

I really don't think it's a strange choice for my sole subscription, though I get occasional comments: why don't you read a Canadian magazine or a magazine more relevant to your industry or a freakin' daily so you wouldn't always be mystified by what's going on in the world.

These are all valid suggestions, but they are made by people who don't read the way I read (like a lunatic) and who have room in their lives for more than one periodical.

I don't.

I don't like to skim, I don't like to skip, and I don't like to miss anything. If it's worth reading, to me, it's worth reading the whole bloody thing. If I took a daily newspaper, I would probably have to quit my job and devote myself to it full time. One New Yorker, read in full earnestness, takes about a week of trips to the gym, if I keep up my cardio, if I don't miss any days. And that's what I do.

Not because I am insanely obsessive, although I am, but because I love it. I grew up with the New Yorker. First I just read the panel cartoons, then I read the movie reviews, then I started into the prose and I've never looked back. If you are going to let any mag filter the world for you, better pick one with high standards. Two of the stories on my top-ten list a few weeks back I originally read in the New Yorker--Haruki Murakami's "Sleep" when I was just 10 or 11, and had no idea whether Haruki was a man's or woman's name, or if what grownups did at night *wasn't* eat chocolate and read *Anna Karenin." I pretty much hoped it was.

If you start early enough with any reading material, it will form it's own ideal reader (this is true of just about anything, I suppose; it's how you explain families). I love the New Yorker because I know the people who write it and I care about what they say, and actually what they are up to. It's been more than five years since I got my own subscription to the magazine; that's the point at which I felt up to committing to every word, pretty much the point from which I date my adulthood (semi-facetious). But now I *know* these people, because I read their thoughts on movies and music and Iraq and whaling. I really care about Louis Menand's criticism of the next book, because he was so dead-on about the last 12. And I don't follow baseball except when I'm actually at the dome, but I read all of Roger Angell's commentary, and I sort of follow.

Tunnel vision, not ideal, broader horizons, don't have to read every capsule review, blah blah blah. Someday. For now, it could be worse.

Let the last thing that I give you be a smile
RR

I don't know

Order and Reality

Those are two things we probably need more of or less of, respectively or in concert. I'm not sure. Those who know me know that I'm a far bigger fan of the first than the second: I know where all my books are, even those I haven't and won't need in years. I could probably guess how much money is in my wallet within a dollar or so, how much food is in my fridge to the nearest onion, whose number I have in my phone book, etc. I like being on top of my game, such as it is, knowing what's going on. The more knowledge I have of my little world, the more I feel the world is manageable, and therefore ok.

So it is curious, then, how much I do not like to read nonfiction. I want to read and write novels and short stories about other people's little worlds; I do not want to read about the big world as a whole. My current theory as to why is because I'm never going to get a grasp on everything in the whole big world. I've got complete control over my hard-drive, my spice rack and my wallet--they are available to me to be exhaustively known, and then confidently ignored. Possibly, there is a feeling in the back of my head that if I tried to read about, say, the oil trade, I would not be able to understand more than a near tenth of any article, and then my obsessive tendencies would take over and I would be found a year from now, body crushed under an avalanche of back-dated New York Times.

Perhaps not. But I do know I like manageable things that I can completely consume. And that is why the one form of non-fiction that I let into my life is The New Yorker. Let's be honest, it's where I get all my information on the world that I don't glean from conversation or fiction. I don't watch television, I don't read the newspaper and I change the radio station when the talking comes on.

Are you going to stop reading this blog?

Please don't. I like you.

The New Yorker is a truly fantastic magazine, and it covers political, environmental and cultural issues about as exhaustively as a WASPy American weekly ever could. It's quite dense for 90 pages a week, but if I read seriously on the cross-trainer an hour a day, I can read every word of every article and review (I skip the capsule reviews of live shows in "Goings on about Town," because there's no way I'm going to see them). Then the magazine is fully consumed, I know as much as I'm going to know about the world that week, which is actually not all that much in the scheme of things. But I know everything about The New Yorker that week. I like that.

This strangeness was driven home to me yesterday when I turned to Elizabeth Kolbert's article. Normally Ms. Kolbert writes about global warming and other environmental issues. She is very thorough and passionate, but sometimes I find her writing a little...technical. I seem to recall her describing molecules. Fascinating, but not my bag. And then this week, our relationship changed (I feel very close to all the regulars at the magazine. This probably also not a good sign about my personality). Her article "Stung" is about an obsession of mine that predates TNY or having my own spice rack or wallet or anything: bees.

As a child, I loved bees and ants. An incipient obsessive, I loved learning about their perfectly ordered societies, rigid life roles and hierarchies. They lived in little cells! They had life roles assigned to them from larval stage and they *never did anything else*. (You know what else I liked as a child? Feudalism.) As I devoured the article, I thought fondly of my illustrated insect guides, my "pet" ants (country children do not have ant farms; I played with ant hills in the yard). Kids are weird, kids are obsessive. Some grow out of it, some don't. At least I don't wish I was a bee anymore. Much.

Possibly this is all twitter, and definitely self-involved, better left to for a consciousness-raising seminar (uck, how I would hate that--so unmanageable). But reading matters a lot on this blog and it has long been a sticking point for some (hi, Scott!) that I don't read nonfiction ever. Isn't it interesting that there is a solid psychological reason why not?

Or maybe it's just that I'm actually an insensitive person and don't care about global warming. Either way, you should really read the bee article. It's interesting and bees are awesome and Kolbert, when she's not writing about the end of civilization, is hilarious.

I can't stand up / for falling down
RR

Influenza

When I was very young, I read indiscriminately--Christopher Pike, Louisa May Alcott, J. D. Salinger, Joanna Spyri, Francine Pascal, whatever you handed me. This is not terribly different from how I read now. However, the stuff one reads when one is very young is far more likely to become deeply embedded one's literary consciousness, and resurface again and again, perhaps especially if one takes to writing for oneself. Or perhaps it's just me.

Anyway, my literary foundations are equal measures literature and tripe. Sometimes when I read my own writing, I can hear faint echoes of things I thought were brilliant when I was ten. Some I still do admire--it's hard to shake that early hero-worship. And it's really really hard to convince myself that I'm not John Updike, or that it's not at least worth trying to be.

Anyway, an influence far more viral, though less venerated, than Updike is Sassy magazine. At least, it was in the years between 1990, when I discovered it at Hy & Zel's (don't tell me you don't remember "the supermarket drugstore") and 1994, when it was purchased by the Peterson Publishing company rapidly transformed into Teen's "If boys don't like you, what's the point?" twin.

But until then, great days. The fact that I was in grade school, a member of the Fido Dido fanclub, buying magazines at Hy&Zel's because of Sunday shopping laws, and growing prize-winning squash for the fair did not seem to me to be in conflict with the Sassy ethos of Doc Martens, dyed hair and alternative music. CGBG sounded good to me, and so did Manic Panic, vegan, Olympia, indie, and all those other nice words they used.

It was the words that got me; they do it every time. I never really got the bands they promoted, the clothes, the makeup, (though I did get myself some Manic Panic at one point--chaos ensued). I liked the magazine for the way it seemed to be written as a girls club where all the writers wrote primarily for each other as audience. Readers like me, who didn't live in New York and didn't know underground from inground, were welcomed to the readership like partygoers being ushered into the room.

Linguistic jokes, like using "rilly rilly" to be emphatic about something silly, "alterna" as the just-a-bit-better adjective to alternative, "yo" as emphasis...I loved being in on those jokes (note that those are things I still do--worrying?). I also started writing, for the high school paper, as editor of the yearbook, in letters, emails, um, this blog, as if I were part of a large and unruly staff of writers. Ever since I made my first PA announcement from "We here at Yearbook Central" I have liked that tone. So much so that when the magazine first altered and then (swiftly) folded, I didn't know what to aspire to. Would my "staffer" status eternally be imaginary?

Apparently so. I think Sassy did change women's magazines--it made them self-conscious, more willing to use the first person pronoun in articles, to refer to writers' lives, complexions and sexual experiments, to make the content about the character as Sassy did. But the love for the reader gradually leeched out of it, and made those articles just little exercises in self-empowerment--"oh, I'm so embarrassed about it, let me tell you, and tell you, and tell you." As I say too often, self-consciousness is the new ego. If you constantly talk about how embarrassed/inadequate/confused you are, you are still talking about yourself. Not that I see anything wrong with that--is Rose-coloured an unself-conscious venture? Hardly. But I really did think there was something community-building about Sassy, and I loved that. The idea of writing in concert, not necessarily sharing every opinion but sharing a voice, is quite alluring to me. It probably wasn't as great as I imagined--I was, after all, a hick kid, and anybody who didn't have to take the school bus every day had some mystique to me. But I still rilly do think about Christina and Margie and Jane and Mike and Diane--when I put on the Docs I got when I was 23, or the Hole cd from when I was 21, or a lot of eyeliner, anytime.

And I still want to be John Updike.

I'll tell you about the Manic Panic sometime.

I'm floating in and out of disco
RR