Fetherling's footnotes

The best group of footnotes in George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975 - 2005 (on p. 88):

17 Sarah Sheard (b. 1953), novelist, author of Almost Japanese
18 Douglas Gibson (b. 1943), McClelland & Stewart publisher
19 Lee Harvey Oswald (1939 - 1963), alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy

The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte

My review of Sam Lipsyte's latest in The Toronto Star:

There is a very good reason to read a book about unlikeable losers. Books like that can be very, very funny. And Lipsyte is a very funny writer. The one thing he is constantly doing — even when he maybe shouldn’t, at least not so much — is being funny.

You Will Be To Blame

"I was tired from the drive - all the way up to Dalgleish, to get him, and back to Toronto since noon - and worried about getting the rented car back on time, and irritated by an article I had been reading in a magazine in the waiting room. It was about another writer, a woman younger, better-looking, probably more talented than I am. I had been in England for two months and so I had not seen this article before, but it crossed my mind while I was reading that my father would have. I could hear him saying, Well, I didn't see anything about you in Maclean's. And if he had read something about me he would say, Well, I didn't think too much of that write-up. His tone would be humorous and indulgent but would produce in me a familiar dreariness of spirit. The message I got from him was simple: Fame must be striven for, then apologized for. Getting or not getting it, you will be to blame." - from "The Moons of Jupiter"

If I were ever to start a tumblr, it'd be called "Alice Munro Just Killing It."

The new new escapism

The New York Times drops a bombshell:

"There is a reason for our attraction to these shows other than that they simply entertain us. 'Downton' and today’s other quality television series also promise a welcome escape from a muddled, technology-addled existence."

Also applies to movies, novels, poetry, music, friends, children, bike rides, food, alcohol, sex, masturbation, and sleep.

J.K. Rowling's Casual Vacancy has much casual brutality

My review of a new novel by a promising up-and-comer in the Toronto Star.

A taste:

The obvious thing for [Rowling] to have done would have been to write a kind of methadone novel for Potter addicts, something that bridged the gap between the world of Hogwarts and our own. No one would’ve begrudged her writing a mystery story, or a work of castle-heavy historical fiction, or even a work of grown-up fantasy (i.e., wizards with sex lives and drinking problems). Instead, she has written a book that plants its flag right in the middle of some very dark territory, where curses abound, but spells are non-existent. Readers looking for a little of that old Potter magic will be shocked by the new novel’s numerous scenes of drug abuse, marital discord, domestic violence, and unbridled despair. It’s the equivalent of Raffi making a late-career swerve into death metal, or Mr. Dressup doing David Mamet.

Welsh and Brooks

Just flew down from the Fortress of Solitude to offer this review of Irvine Welsh's Skagboys and Ben Brooks's Grow Up in lieu of something good. They say you should start an idle car at least once every couple of  months just to make sure the engine can still turn over.

Back to the fortress.

Captivity: 118 Days in Iraq and the Struggle for a World Without War by James Loney

My review of James Loney's Captivity appeared in the Toronto Star yesterday.

One of the enduring myths of contemporary Western society is that we are a culture desperate to be tested. We are a fatted, decadent, overly complacent bunch (the myth goes), which makes us yearn to be stripped of our comforts (at least for a little while) to see how we hold up under pressure.

Comfort is inauthentic; stress and fear and adrenaline are “reality.” How would you act in an extreme situation? How strongly held are your ideals, and how quickly would you abandon them in order to survive?

The problem is that in reality, a true testing of one’s ideals never yields a clean result. When push becomes shove, and shove becomes kick, ideals splinter and multiply. Every breath becomes a test, and we often only survive to be tested again.

Get the whole scoop here.

Review two-fer: The Meagre Tarmac by Clark Blaise and A Description of the Blazing World by Michael Murphy

Two reviews of mine appeared this weekend - the new Clark Blaise in the Toronto Star and Michael Murphy's debut novel in The National Post.

Read the Blaise review here and the Murphy review here, if only to confirm that I am not filling this endless blogging hiatus with wine, women, and song.

The Use and Abuse of Literature by Marjorie Garber

I haven't exactly been riding this blog and putting it away wet lately - in fact, I only just realized I hadn't posted this review of Marjorie Garber's The Use and Abuse of Literature, which ran in the Toronto Star last weekend.

Here's a taste:

The jacket copy for Garber’s book positions it as something polemical, even reactionary, in the vein of E. D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy (1987) and Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education (1991), but if anything, it is a witty and fleet-footed argument against literary polemics. In fact, for the first few chapters, it’s a little tough to work out what ultimate point Garber is trying to make. There are seeming digressions into scholarly disputes of the past, the use of literary allusions, the rise of graphic novels, the idea of a literary canon and even a brief look at some of the other books that use the phrase “the use and abuse of …” in their titles.

Eventually, however, it becomes clear that this digressive method is the message: Literature is not something about which one should write manifestoes, but something that needs to be seen as uniquely welcoming to contradiction and a diversity of thought. It also becomes clear that Garber sees both the “use” and the “abuse” of literature as two sides of the same coin — the inevitable distortions of meaning merely create new meanings.

And here's the whole thing.

Are You Married to a Psychopath? by Nadine Bismuth

Interrupting my long winter's nap* here to note that my review of Nadine Bismuth's Are You Married to a Psychopath? ran in the Toronto Star yesterday.

A taste:

Though most of these 10 stories feature young, urban women whose sense of self-esteem relies heavily on the whims and fancies of their male counterparts, Bismuth’s fiction is far too scathing, intelligent and clear-eyed to be considered Chick Lit. There are no Cinderellas here, no Prince Charmings, no problem-dissolving baby bumps and no happily-ever-after.

Bismuth is singularly interested in laying out the problems faced by fallen women in a fallen world, but makes no guesses as to where redemption may lie. She is doing literary forensics, not spinning fairy tales.

Read the whole thing here.


* the semi-bitter, semi-sweet irony being that I have probably slept less in the past few months, thanks to daily pre-dawn novel-writing sessions, than I have at any point in my life - other than those times when my kids cut teeth. As with that teeth-cutting, I hope all this pain, frustration, and fatigue results in something bright, hard, and useful, but the odds are against me.

Gone but not forgotten

Back soon....ish.

Apocalypse for Beginners by Nicolas Dickner

My review of Nicolas Dickner's second novel in the Toronto Star.

A wee sniff:

It’s getting harder and harder to make the end of the world seem interesting. Familiarity breeds contempt, even when it comes to the something as big as the apocalypse.

Indeed, among the more recent depictions of the end of days — and there have been so many, usually with war, plague, zombies, ecological disaster or some combination of all four playing a role — only a precious few have treated it with anything close to seriousness or dread. At a time when publishers are offering up tongue-in-cheek zombie survival guides and post-apocalyptic cookbooks, a work like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is an anomaly. (And even that was seen as approachable enough for Oprah viewers.)

Montreal’s Nicolas Dickner, in his second novel, eschews neither comedy nor gravitas in his own take on the end of the world, but the register he sticks to most faithfully is boredom. His is a story in which the concept of apocalypse is more a source of personal frustration than anything else. Unfortunately, his book enacts that frustration and boredom a little too faithfully.

Thee whole thing.


[Edit: Corrected the spelling goof in Dickner's name.]

The Symbol of Overly Grand Metaphor

The film itself may end up being the most brilliant thing since the last most brilliant thing ever, but the trailer for Tree of Life looks like a high-budget parody of a credit card commercial. ("For all those times when you look back on your family, with their strange habit of only doing and saying things that were thematically significant, and wonder if maybe there is more to life than a bunch of pretty images and some warmed-over metaphors, there is Mastercard.")

It's like a David Attenborough documentary being raped by Oprah's Book Club. I only say this because I just read, for the four thousandth time, that this very trailer is proof there is hope for cinema yet. This looks like the kind of Serious Meaningful Art that can't stop telling you it is Serious Meaningful Art. The difference between this and porn is that porn tries to space out the money shots a little.

I'll give Mallick this: the trailer actually manages to be hokier and less subtle than the film's title. (And this is from someone who has been raving to all who will listen about a movie entitled Another Year...)

Beauty & Sadness by André Alexis, with extra sadness

My review of André Alexis's Beauty & Sadness gets the full-page + cartoon treatment in the Toronto Star.

A wee taste:

It’s hard not to think, while reading André Alexis’s Beauty and Sadness, that its author got the title back to front. What moments of beauty there are in this intriguing, odd and occasionally perplexing mix of short fiction, literary essays and personal memoir are thoroughly drenched in sadness. In the book’s introduction, Alexis, who is in his early 50s, writes that “I have come to a time in my life when leave-taking, death, and change have begun to seriously impinge on my imagination.”

Read the whole thing here.


ADDED: Just as night follows day and drunk-dialing leads to grief, Mr Alexis has offered his own lower-case thoughts on my thoughts on his thoughts in the comments.

Are you feelin' it?

The parts of my mind not currently occupied with visions of dancing sugarplums have been taken hostage by this new novel, which I am determined to have done-ish* by very early 2011 - as in end of January, if things go swimmingly. So allow me a brief digression on the subject of the supposed war between feelings and craft in the making of fiction....

From the Dept of False Dichotomies:

"I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing, speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings." - Jack Kerouac

To which I say: exactly... exactly the opposite of all that.

Or, less glibly, I say: I like feelings in fiction, too! (Whatever "feelings" means, but let it stand for now.) However, I have discovered that, for myself at least, the feelings that come across in fiction that has not been put through a process of "revisions and endless rehashing, speculation and deleting" are the most obvious ones, the most superficial, the least interesting. The people I am interested in writing about do not spend their days endlessly emoting, which may mean I need to find more interesting subjects, but if it doesn't, then those people's feelings need to be teased out through much careful work, not violently harvested with a rusty spork. We'd all like the people around us to be emotionally honest and authentic and in touch with their feelings, etc, but in the real world, and especially in this country and this culture, feelings often get hid. So it's down to detective work, not the kicking down of random doors.

There's more life and pleasure in unholy mess to inert precision, but I'd rather not have to choose between the two, preferring to abide by the old Led Zeppelin ideal of "tight but loose."

Now, back to it.


* that is: done, but for the fretting, re-revising, re-working, and the slaughter of all darlings who ignored previous evacuation orders.

*****

Also, if you really prefer raw, unrehearsed FEELING, there's always Nicolas Cage:

Constant commentary by the wayside

Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle, despite being one of the my absolute favourite rekkids, is one I am usually hesitant to proselytize on behalf of, because it's an either/or, hate/love kind of rekkid, and even I hate the idea of an avant-whimsical take on Americana. But as with most great art, what doesn't work in theory, can utterly astound in practice. Or just grate on your nerves. This one does the former for me. That it does the latter for most people is absolutely not a sign of poor taste or philistinism or anything like that - a lot of very wise music-minded people can't stand the thing. It just does what it does, regardless, mincing around in its own little world where Charles Ives writes ballet for B'rer Rabbit.

Here is the man in a NYC radio studio just this year, showing again why Song Cycle can only be loved or hated:

I ain't got time to read

Here is Sarah Palin on her current reading habits:

“There’s nothing different today than there was in the last 43 years of my life since I first started reading. I continue to read all that I can get my hands on — and reading biographies of, yes, Thatcher for instance, and of course Reagan and the John Adams letters, and I’m just thinking of a couple that are on my bedside, I go back to C.S. Lewis for inspiration, there’s such a variety, because books have always been important in my life.” She went on: “I’m reading [the conservative radio host] Mark Levin’s book; I’ll get ahold of Glenn Beck’s new book — and now because I’m opening up,” she finished warily, “I’m afraid I’m going to get reporters saying, Oh, she only reads books by Glenn Beck.”

First of all, this is all bullshit, but not just because everything that comes out of Palin's mouth is bullshit (though that is true), but because Palin is someone with a schedule crammed with daily interviews, fundraising, conference calls, strategy sessions, and meetings with image consultants and political managers. She must also put aside time to promote her new eight-part infomercial, as well as turn out to support her daughter on that dancing show. When all that is done, and there are no animals to shoot or fish to be snatched out of the water bare-handed – you know, like a grizzly would – then Palin must also squeeze in a minute or two to help raise her large family, which includes a toddler with special needs. Filipino nannies are not exactly thick on the ground up there in Alaska.

You can call her a cynical, thin-skinned, corrupt, hypocritical, and ideologically thuggish embarrassment spurred on by nothing more than greed, self-regard, and a vampire-like hunger for attention – but don't call her idle. She is busy, busy, busy, and as such, probably has precisely zero time to read anything longer than a tweet or a Facebook update.

As an author and an all-around books guy – with all the petty resentment, agoraphobia, and sense of entitlement that implies – I should now be expected to chuckle haughtily at Palin's claims of well-readedness. But here's the thing: I don't care if Palin doesn't happen to read any hefty tomes in the five or six minutes of free time she has leftover in a day. I have a part-time job, zero public stature, and only two (blessedly healthy) kids, and even I cross myself at the sight of a book that pushes the 400-page mark. (Thanks a lot, Mr Foran...) If someone with as busy a schedule as Palin's can't actually find the time or energy for the collected letters of her supposed political heroes, that's entirely understandable. I've been meaning to re-read Anna Karanina for a while now, but every time I pull it off the shelf, some part of my mind says fuck that shit and reaches for something slimmer.

Palin's a liar, sure, and a pretty bad one, but why does she feel she needs to lie in the first place? Well, because we demand that politicians display such cultural signifiers. Books = smart. Books = gravitas. Books = seriousness. Witness (and I swear I will try not to reference this here anymore) Yann Martel's ongoing unilateral book club, which might as well be re-titled Haught or Not? Just as we want our leaders to demonstrate some level of cultural hipness (What does Ms Palin think of Bieber's big win at the AMA's? What's on her iPod? Does she think Glee has fallen off this season?), we want the other side of the coin covered, too. We want fireplaces and wingback chairs and leather-bound volumes and Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

This speaks to an enormous amount of cultural anxiety, as well as at least a small serving of class-lensed elitism. The fact is, books also = a certain amount of spare time. I am certain that Palin has a team of researchers combing the letters of Reagan and Adams for possible quotes to be used in interviews and speeches, but cozying up with them herself at the end of a long, long, Alaskan day? Bullshit. My guess is that most high-profile politicians feel they are doing well if they can put aside the briefing notes long enough to read Get Shorty for the fifth time while on a red-eye to Los Angeles.

And so what? Obviously, I think anyone who is so politically influential should read widely and be familiar with modes of thinking that can only be achieved through long immersion in perfect-bound texts, and I like the idea of a politician who sees reading serious books as a necessary component of being in a position of power, but I don't actually expect them to be sitting up until 5 am with a flashlight under the bedsheets, tracing the fall of the Roman Empire or Leopold Bloom's progress across Dublin, even as half-a-dozen morning show hosts are warming the mikes for them.

That Palin would try to represent herself as a voracious reader is a laughable and not at all surprising. That we should care either way is just kind of dumb. There are, after all, many other reasons to despise her and everything she stands for than just her non-existent reading habits.

Feelin' Groovy

Here's some excerpts* from the self-help book I'm writing called Take It Slow: The Wisdom of Gaspereau Press, which I should have done by next year. Or the next. Or the one after that - don't rush me!

• From the chapter on Raising Kids: "This is risotto, not mac & cheese! Tell them to sit outside and take in the wonder of the sky while they wait. And if you miss the birthday party, well, there's always one next year."

• From the chapter on Finances: "Monthly rent payments are an abomination. They turn what should be a gift - a living space, a home - into a kind of regular shakedown. Landlords must learn patience. Instead of cheques, offer them roasted chestnuts, or fresh apples straight from the tree."

• From the chapter on Friendship: "A true friend knows that, even if you have not called them or sent them an email in a long time, that you still speak them them every day in your heart. And they would know that expressions of condolence for a dead parent or partner are meaningless - death comes to us all in the end."
  

• From the chapter on Sex: "One must never be trapped into an artificial quid pro quo framework when it comes to orgasms. The essential question is the quality of the orgasms, not their even distribution. Sexuality is not socialism."

• From the chapter on Publishing: "A book is only ever perfect in the conception, in the idea. So if, say, you are unable to get finished books into the hands of readers, know that this will only preserve this perfection for them. The book will always be the book they want, and never the book they have. To have the anticipated object in their possession can only be a kind of disappointment. In this way, NOT publishing books is the best way to ensure their eternal perfection."

* I've already posted these on my Facebook page, but hey: why waste comedy gold on mere friends?

"I mean, when you've loved and lost the way Alice has, then you know what life's about"

You know what the title of my book should be? Yes I Can, If Alice Munro Says It's Okay.

I had to forcibly put yet another of her books aside the other night because every time I read or re-read one of her stories, and then try to do some of my own writing, a tiny, limo-driving Bruno Kirby pops up in my head saying, "I would never tell you this, but... this, this is a fad."

The Big Fog

I took the kids out for a late-night walk last night specifically to see the fog, which was so thick at its peak, we could barely see the houses on the other side of the street.

Here are some photos people have posted to give you and idea of how truly cool it looked here. (Some of those shots are from my neighbourhood, or close enough.)

It all looked like something out of a horror movie - like, say, The Fog. Or even The Mist, for that matter.

Needless to say, I had a little hand clutching at mine for most of the way.