Let freedom reign!

Given that the Tories feel the long gun registry represents wasteful and unconscionable interference by the govt, I assume they will next be supporting marijuana legalization, abandoning their opposition to things like gay marriage, stripping anti-terror laws of anything that undermines the justice system and legal protections, stop muzzling their own scientists (not to mention their own MPs and bureaucrats), drop all moral or ideological objections to instances where potentially "controversial" art receives public funding, and making a formal apology to all those detained during the G20.

That's the shortlist, but it's probably where they'll start. Right?

(What's so funny?)

Andre Alexis, c'est moi

There are many, many things upon which Andre Alexis and I disagree (one might say furiously), but on this, he and I are like two bitter, occasionally impulsive, and potentially career-damaging peas in a pod:

"i hate the literary community so much, i hate its “careful you might insult so-and-so” very much. so much that i’d love to be something other than a writer. vomiting things up on a blog allows me to contemplate a desired outsider-ness. a good thing, a helpful thing, in the end."

As for the rest of that comment, in which AA takes about 800 words to say "sometimes it feels good to talk shit about your cultural enemies online," well, birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, literary writers gotta literaryize.

(I am reviewing Alexis's new book for a easily guessed daily newspaper, btw. Coming soon.)

Topsy Turvy

Some say that one of the great things about the Internet in general, and social media in particular, is discovering who else shares your own deeply felt cultural enthusiasms.

Those people are wrong:



In my best Captain Kirk: "Jiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnn!!!"

Sappy-go-lucky

I plan to write about this here at greater length later on in the week, but having seen the new Mike Leigh movie last night (with Leigh in attendance: my pants are still peed), I can only say this: lengthy, autumnal films that employ cello-laden soundtracks, gardening scenes to represent the passing of time, and nothing but long scenes of dialogue in kitchens and living rooms, and that focus on slightly self-satisfied older couples and their desperately lonely friends, should not be so fucking entertaining.

Uncorking the imagination

Got another good email from a publicist:

Authors Reveal Step-by-Step Plan for Wine Tasting Party at Home

All authors have such a plan: it's called "alcoholism."

Hell, defined

Tell me about the war book, Grampa

Steve Galloway, in the process of reviewing Alison Pick's Far To Go in the Globe, writes this:

It’s very popular these days to declare historical fiction irrelevant, a wallowing in nostalgia, rife with over-moralizing and easy answers. Perhaps this is occasionally true, even often true, but this position strikes me as intellectually lazy, and dismissive of the obvious fact that everything that’s ever happened is now history. To suggest that writing about the past is somehow dismissive of the present is the literary equivalent of teenagers rolling their eyes when grandparents try to tell them what things were like when they were children.

The teenager believes that everything he needs to know about the world is happening right in front of him, that what he sees at that moment is all there is or ever will be. The grandparent is trying to tell him something about the world as it once was and therefore is now – the past is a story that exists in its connection to the present.

Now, being one of the people who argues that historical fiction is very often "rife with over-moralizing and easy answers," I have to admit I'm a little surprised to discover that this is the "popular" opinion these days. And not only that, this position is "often true."

(I am also surprised to discover that it is also "often true" that historical fiction is "irrelevant." I would not go that far myself, but hey, facts are facts.)

But then, having been told that my opinion is both often true and the popular one, I am informed it is also intellectually lazy, the equivalent of the arrogant, impatient, baseless certainty of a teenager.

I'm confused: if it's often true, how is it intellectually lazy? Am I lacking in the mental energy and stamina required to believe something that is very often not true? And really: when did this impatience with the middlebrow sentimentalities that so often form the basis of historical fictions become the popular position? As far as I can tell, the people expressing this impatience tend to be a small minority of cranky reviewers, writers, and readers - and often all three in one. (Hello.)

Now, I will readily concede that there is probably a lot of opposition to historical fiction that comes in the form of simply not caring about any time other than one's own. There are enough readers out there who won't bother with books that don't describe the comings and goings of their own narrow, self-absorbed cohort. But that's not my own feelings toward historical fiction, and nor is it the position of a number of writers who have argued that literature should be more concerned with engaging with the present, less so with revising or unearthing the past. Not solely concerned, just more so than it is at the moment.*

The paradox is that a lot of readers and critics (like myself) who argue for more contemporary-minded fiction spend a lot of their time reading books written decades, if not centuries, ago. And that is because what these readers and critics are looking for are not books that grapple with their own times in some way (though that's nice to have once in a blue moon), but books in which an author grapples with his or her own times. Which is why some novels written a hundred years ago feel so much more alive and fresh and contemporary than last year's historical doorstop.

There is no substitute for the feeling of reading someone who is writing their own society into literary existence, who is writing into a void, as it were, and having to do most difficult thing, which is establish a point of view in relation to a world that is still in the process of coming into being.

* The reign of the historical fiction in Canada has weakened slightly in the past decade, and there seems to have been a bit of a peasant's revolt in the form of a lot of very sharply contemporary (or at least non-historically minded) novels appearing and getting some attention, but that reign is far from over.

Is our children yearning?

Given my day job, I get a lot of kid/book/literacy-related e-mail, most of it instantly disposable.

But every once in a while, there is a gem - an unintentionally dirty, greasy gem - such as the message I got this morning that asked,

Is Lap Reading to Children Still Important?

(The answer to that question is: of course! Cuz all kids like a happy ending.)

A Labour Day at the races

Thanks to my daughter - that is, thanks to my unrelenting efforts to fill my children's heads with the ripest fruits of klassic komedy - Charlie Chaplin has reared his bechapeaued head in my life after a few years' absence. (My son currently prefers Mitchell & Webb, and I went through a period of finding Chaplin too sentimental, especially as compared with Buster Keaton*.)

It being Labour Day, I should probably post something from Modern Times, but I would much rather post this, a short that I still think about every once in a while, and have done so since I first saw it in the Concordia University library AV department nearly two decades ago [pause for stunned silence] while skipping an evening class. The set up and premise is so dead simple - some people just love to get in front of a camera - and he doesn't exactly stretch the idea very far, but I find there is something hypnotically funny about the bit. (It also, I think, anticipates much of the satirical hay made in the past few decades about the lengths ordinary people will go to to get on TV.)







*I still get impatient with some of Chaplin's later reflex sappiness and heart-tugging, but am more willing to see that all as merely the inevitable excesses of genius. Isn't that big of me?

ADDED: And by "sappiness I am impatient with", I don't mean the ending of City Lights, which even a UFC champ would tear up over. That's the good stuff. (Talking to myself, now...)

In the land of the blind, the four-eyed man is king

PM Harper starts wearing glasses. The Toronto Star sends out a reporter. Hilarity ensues.

From the article:

So what is motivating Harper?

Allergies? Astigmatism? Fatigue? Focus group?

No one could or would answer that question — or even share the make and the model of the glasses, despite a valiant attempt by Harper press secretary Andrew MacDougall, who said he “scoped” them but discovered no brand name.

“I don’t know and I don’t care!” Geoff Norquay, former Harper director of communications, said with incredulous laughter that did not stop until the short conversation was over. [Emphasis added.]

As much as I detest the man, I'll give this to Harper: he has a way of making otherwise intelligent people look completely ridiculous. (See: Martel, Yann.)

Victor Wulpy prepares to countersign

"Victor, the perfect lion, relaxing among Evanston admirers while he drank martinis and ate hors d'oeuvres, took in the eager husband, aggressively on the make. and the considered the pretty wife - in every sense of the word a dark lady. He perceived that she was darkest where darkness counted most. Circumstances had made Katrina look commonplace. She did what forceful characters do with such imposed circumstances; she used them as a camouflage. Thus she approached Wulpy like a nearsighted person, one who has to draw close to study you. She drew so near that you could feel her breath. And then her lowering, almost stubborn look rested on you for just that extra beat that carried a sexual message, It was the incompetency with which she presented herself, the nearsighted puzzled frown, that made the final difference. Her first handshake informed him of a disposition, an inclination. He saw that all her preparations had been set. With a kind of engraved silence about the mouth under the wide bar of his mustache, Wulpy registered all this information. All he had to do was countersign. He intended to do just that." -from "What Kind of Day Did You Have?" by Saul Bellow

(Latest in a series of Random Passages I Like From Things I'm Reading. If I can't be bothered to write anything clever on this site, I might as well offer up bits from writers who are more than clever.)

If you worked here you'd be bored by now

Great news! There's a job out there that's perfect for any journalist willing to hole up in a chilly backwater country: The Wall Street Journal is looking for a bureau chief. That sounds pretty impressive, and you can tell the position's a prestigious one by the fact that they are advertising on JeffGaulin.com, right next to notices that Alberta Health Services are seeking a Communications Advisor, Youthink is seeking a High-school liaison, and Voice of Pelham (in beautiful and presumably typographic-rich Fonthill, Ontario) is seeking an Ad Builder.

From the notice:

Canada, despite its low-key reputation, is a fascinating economic story; it is one of the few robustly-growing developed economies, thanks to its mining and energy sectors, which have attracted much international interest, including from China. The strong Canadian dollar is of special interest as the Journal and wires ramp up global forex coverage. Multicultural and land-rich, Canada is also a font of features, both quirky and socially resonant.

In other words, we're a little boring, but we're economically stable, thanks to all the shit we have buried underground that real countries like China want to scoop up and make millions off of. We've got lots of people from other countries and lots of space, we're loaded with "features", and we're all a little goofy. (I have no idea what "socially resonant" means.)

I'm thinking of snapping up the job myself, especially since my ad building days are over (bad back), and the cops have threatened to pick me up if they catch me high school liaising again.

Send in the clowns

Is it a full moon? I go months without a comment on this dumb site, and then all of a sudden I've got me a troll.

They're sort of fun to kick in the belly, but I feel a little guilty about picking on the poor thing.

ADDED: Just so's we're clear - trolls are not people wishing to tear a stripe off me or make fun of dumb things I say - those people are welcome; the more clever the putdown, the better - rather they are sad, obsessive idiots who can't understand jokes, but know jokes are being made, and so respond with the verbal equivalent of a wet fart and a pirouette that ends with them tripping over a chair. And since they are trolls, they will always pick themselves up from the floor, pull the sodden underwear from the cracks of their asses, and say, "Had enough, sir?"

(If you be really, really quiet, you might even spot one in the comment thread to this post. Shhhhh...)

Gone Readin'

Headline from the NYTimes Fashion & Style section:

E-Books Make Readers Less Isolated

Isn't that a strike against them?

[tk]'s turn in the spotlight

This site gets cited at the Torontoist site.

Rex Murphy to Muslims: take off the mosque!

In the National Post, Rex Murphy - who, as I may have noted before on this site, looks like the twin brother Tom Hanks tried, only partly successfully, to eat in the womb - has a go at the dreaded Ground Zero Mosque. You know, the one those bastard muslims are planning to built RIGHT ON THE ASHES OF THE TWIN TOWERS. Or, a little bit over, but still in sight of Ground Zero. Or not in sight, but within a short walk. Okay, it's two blocks away, but still: it's a mosque!

On the matter of the Islamic centre set to be built near the site of the downed Twin Towers...

Hang on, the towers were "downed"? It is still strange to see the Manhattan skyline without the World Trade Center hovering there above it.

Anyways...

On the matter of the Islamic centre set to be built near the site of the downed Twin Towers, I dismiss utterly what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to fear — that Americans will carry the mark of intolerance unless they permit the building to go forward.

From 9/11 onwards, from the White House to main street, Americans have made it sunshine clear that the attacks of that day were not going to warp their country’s values, were not an occasion for raining abuse or vengeance upon America’s Muslim citizens.

It was an occasion to rain down missiles and cluster bombs on many non-American Muslims, but abuse? Never. Well, sometimes. Actually, a lot, but at least the country's values were not warped and everything was kept "sunshine clear." (I usually associate sunshine with brightness, not clarity, but Murphy's the big-time writer here, so oh well.)

George W. Bush himself, with the full weight of his office (and, I’d add, at some political risk to himself) was without stint in proclaiming Islam a “religion of peace.” He even went to a Washington mosque to underline solidarity with American Muslims and their peaceful co-religionists all over the world.

Bush then, of course, declared war on two predominantly Muslim countries within a couple of years, but let's move on...

Which strips all force from Bloomberg’s lukewarm pleadings that there is now, a near decade on, the need for a 13- or 15-storey homage to Islam but a shadow away from ground zero, to supply some sort of architectural instantiation or proof of that tolerance.

Mr Bloomberg, your lukewarm pleadings have been stripped of all force! And some of their heat, making them utterly cold pleadings! That's right: we stripped them of all force, then left them on the counter to cool - they are now gazpacho pleadings, and nobody likes that.

But Rex is right: When it comes to Ground Zero, mosques must be kept more than a shadow away. (In this case, "a shadow" equals "two city blocks" - this form of distance-charting probably meant more in the days when the WTC was floating up there throwing shadows on our eyes.)

How tolerant America has been on this issue is further shown in the near insouciance and ease which which the proponents of the Ground Zero mosque (as it’s become known)...

... by bigots opposed to the mosque or cynics intent on whipping up said bigots, but go on...

...make their proposal. They think it’s the most normal, casual thing in the world to propose such a building next door to the greatest terror operation ever unleashed in America, executed by Islamist fanatics in the dead heart of America’s greatest city, and involving the murder of thousands, the desolation of families, unspeakable mental and physical sacrifices by first-responding fire and police personnel — not to mention the cataclysmic financial repercussions the destruction was also designed to achieve.

Don't those Muslims know that 9/11 was very bad? More to the point, do they know that it was very, very bad? I would not be at all surprised if those gentlemen were not aware that it was, in fact, very very VERY bad. Don't they know that when bad things happen, all activity stops for a decade? There are people in New York still waiting to resume Central Park chess games that were interrupted by the attacks. It's the first rule of horrific terrorist acts: you can't do anything afterward. Except invade countries not related to the attack. Other than that: nothing. Don't even warm up dinner. 9/11 is like the eternal Sabbath - keep the lights out and don't use tools.

It is an almost boundlessly tolerant city and society — New York and America. But we must make a note on this point: A tolerance is being, and has been, shown, toward Islam, which Islam emphatically does not show to other creeds in regions or countries where Islam is predominant. In some Muslim places, a mere Bible in a suitcase is an indictable offence.

Rex was doing okay until this point - and by "okay" I mean, he had not gone full-on ignorant and offensive - but arguing that "we" don't have to be nice to "them" in our countries (which are really also "theirs" since they are all US citizens) because "they" are not nice to "us" in their countries is a bit of a dead-end. Some muslim societies do a lot of things we don't plan on adopting. Anyway, I'm sure he will move on from this point.

What is the numerical gap, I wonder, between the number of mosques in Western, nominally Christian cities, and the number of Christian churches or cathedrals in predominantly Muslim ones? In New York alone, there already are at least a hundred mosques. How many Catholic cathedrals, shinto shrines or Buddish temples in Saudia Arabia? On the subject of religious tolerance, that grand old rancid imperialist Kipling is still au courant: East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet.

Oh, that is his point. We don't have to live up to our ideals because they don't live up to... our ideals. Makes sense.

Islam has a voracious appetite for tolerance when it is the suppliant; when it is, so to speak, a sojourner among the infidels. It is aggressively, even imaginatively, vigorous in availing of the democratic rights of societies to which some of its followers have migrated. It has acquired an admirable expertise in taking advantage of the institutions and practices of host societies, from politics and the media, to protests and the courts, which aid the full pursuit of those rights.

Islam is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is also like the Mafia. So why do they think we're intolerant? (Interesting intellectual exercise: substitute "Judaism" or "Zionism" for "Islam" in that paragraph to make your own Nazi propaganda!)

This commendable agility finds no mirror in most Muslim societies. Tolerance received or enjoyed by Muslims in the West does not seem to awaken a concordant impulse to afford a reciprocal tolerance from Muslims to other religions in countries where Islam is dominant.

They suck, so we should get to suck, too. Never mind that we're talking about actual U.S. citizens, here - they are the wrong kind of citizens, so fuck 'em.

So, again, America has nothing to prove in this domain. And if New York authorities are going along with this proposal because they are afraid what people outside America might think, they are being, needlessly, both callow and cowardly.

As opposed to being needfully callow and cowardly. I'm just guessing, but maybe the authorities are going along with the proposal because it has every right to go ahead. Because there is not reason to stop it other than "Islam = 9/11".

But if the Islamic centre is built; and if it is to be, as professed, a bridge to understanding and reconciliation, there are a few tests we could apply — a few thoughts or suggestions for what might reasonably be found in such a strategically placed building, shadowed as it will forever be by the spectral dust of 2001.

There's that shadow again, though now it is filled with spectral dust. There may be some ghostly ashes, too. Spirit powder? Otherworldly detritus?

For example, a mosque in deliberate proximity to the scene of the Ground Zero slaughter will surely — unavoidably — have a section, a room, or a display, perhaps a miniature museum, on the events of that horrible day — giving some interpretation on what happened and why: what that day said, and did not say about Islam.

Maybe even a little miniature plane that flies into a miniature twin tower, except instead of a massive fireball, all that comes out is a little flag that says, "Do Not Want!"

Could there not be, for example, photographs of the 19 fanatic terrorists? They could be presented in some sort of stylized rogues gallery: Here are those who plotted and executed evil jihad against America.

How about "Wanted" posters? Oooo, that'd be so cool. Maybe one of them Muslims can work something up on Photoshop - though, come to think of it, those guys are so backwards, they probably still use CorelDraw...

Underneath, there could be a statement of categorical condemnation: These were a band of betrayers and corrupters of Islam, who did perverse deeds in Islam’s name. We Americans, Muslims all, in this holy place condemn and scorn their deeds and motives. Maybe this could be accompanied by some work of art to commemorate the dead — those who died in the attacks themselves, and those who died during the attempt to rescue people within the towers.

You know, I don't think I'll be calling on Rex Murphy for interior decorating tips anytime soon - that dude is grim. Or maybe pictures of a few thousand dead people next to a group of nasty terrorists and a plaque noting that terrorists are bad is exactly the kind of thing that'd spruce up my living room.

If it is to be in the vicinity of 9/11’s wreckage, it must pay respectful and felt homage to 9/11.

Just like the "Check out these twin towers!" display at Thunder Lingerie and More.

A mosque, that by its installations and presentations, derided the mischiefs done in Islam’s name, which in its declarations and stated understanding of 9 11 actually turned out to be a thorn in the side of fanatic Islamists everwhere, would be a worthy adjunct to the precincts of the now absent twin towers. It would be a work of understanding.

Just like all those churches with whole sections dedicated to the "mischiefs" done in the Christianity's name.

So, maybe the question now is not “Should it be built?” But, “What is to be built?” And if those who speak of understanding and reconciliation are serious, following a few of the suggestions here, or others from people much closer to this affair than I, could disarm all criticism and reproach. This should be, in this sense, if it goes ahead, the most American mosque ever.

As American as apple pie, baseball, gun-and-liquor stores, and racially motivated lynchings.

If instead, it retains a purely claustrophobic Islamic character...

Ha, cuz you know, so many North American mosques are located in basements - that's what he means, right? "There is no god but Allah, just like there is no goddamn headroom in this place!"

... if it is just an Islamic centre physically very close to where the towers once stood...

In other words, if it they build what they want, and not what muslim-haters want...

....but intellectually or civically remote and aloof from its all important site, it will be a failure.

EPIC Mosque FAIL!

... if it rejects any show of explicit condemnation or does not offer tokens of memorial, then I think the case of the critics will be immeasurable strengthened: that is, that this project is a none-too-subtle provocation, a tacit baiting of an already wounded America, and — worst of all, a kind of gaming of that precious tolerance to which it makes a spurious and offensive appeal.

In other words, if the mosque is not built according to the express wishes of bigots and cynics, the terrorists have won.

Is this a good time to note that there are not only two mosques already in the neighbourhood, but one in the PENTAGON as well? And that the U.S. has enshrined freedom of religion in its founding document? And that said freedom does not come with a proviso stating that one's place of worship must be decorated like the basement of a disaster fetishist?

Perhaps if someone were to mention these facts to Rex, he might revise his opinions, inshallah.

These self-flogging scars are starting to heal a little

After a year or three of painful, halting forward progress - frequently interrupted by boring life dramas and sudden losses of faith and direction that resulted in tens of thousands of words being assigned to the "Scraps" folder, the name of which barely conceals the true nature of its contents by putting an "S" at either end - Unloveable Novel #2 has finally passed the 80,000-word mark and is still purring along happily. The end is in sight at last. (After which comes the painful, but still much more enjoyable, period of rewriting and editing.)

Not all that impressive a feat, I know, but after a couple of annos horribilis, I will happily take what I can get.

As the King of Swamp Castle knows, sometimes you just gotta keep building until one stands up.

(And even better: Unloveable Novel #3 is already starting to percolate and accumulate random jottings. Hurrah.)

Karma is a Hitch

Is is it so wrong that I cannot manage to care at all about Christopher Hitchens' current battle with cancer? Having recently read (and reviewed) his memoir - along with too many of his flatulent, boorish essays and columns, too many of which hew to no moral or political standard beyond impatience, Hemingwayesque man-of-action fetishism (what used to be called "existentialism"), and a searing desire to always be seen as "tough-minded" - I find the current widespread lighting of candles for this asshole to be more than a little rich.

Yes, yes: it would be nicer for all those who (for whatever reason) do love him for him to pull through, and death-by-cancer is always a nasty business, but really - this is Christopher Hitchens we are talking about. It's hard to work up any sympathy for a man who saw nothing amiss (and certainly nothing to apologize for) in the clumsy, bloody, illegal, unprovoked, and utterly stupid destruction of an entire country. This is a man who likes to align himself with Orwell, but who has done little more than hump the leg of Orwell's corpse - when he is not shitting in its moustache.

Which really just goes to show that I am even less of a Christian than he is.


NB: the original title of this post - as you can see from its URL - was "Am I going to have to choke a Hitch?", which is funnier, but less relevant.

More hygienic

"Why, she wondered, was Edward always trying to get her into soapy water? It must have some connection with his days at boarding school; he probably thought it more hygienic to do it in the bath.

She didn't know why she felt so despairing inside. All the big issues were over and done with - it wasn't likely now that she'd get pregnant and even if she did, nobody, not even her mother, was going to tell her off. She didn't have any financial problems, she didn't hanker after new carpets. She didn't hanker after anything - certainly not Edward with a block of soap in one hand and that pipe spilling ash down her spine."

- from Injury Time, Beryl Bainbridge (1977)

I haven't been around here as much lately, I know - blame life and the realities of paying rent - but I do sometimes find time to embarrass myself @nathanwhitlock, so join me there, if'n you like.

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

My review of Alice Munro's newest is over at the CNQ site, which was also recently the scene of some minor theatrics I had a dirty hand in.

ADDED: A few months ago, at a Harbourfront thing I was hosting, I spoke to Douglas Gibson, who is Munro's editor at M&S. Within minutes, I was thoroughly embarrassing myself by outright begging the man to make sure she wrote another book. I felt like a middle-aged Rush fan buttonholing Geddy Lee's accountant at a party. Sad.