Me and Malcolm Gladwell

For those of you into that sort of thing, the new issue of Fashion magazine contains a short interview I did with zeitgeist trawler and afro enthusiast Malcolm Gladwell on his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

If you do come across it, please note how cleverly I was able to write the piece without ever letting slip what I actually thought of the book.*

That’s called “paying the rent.”





* let's just say it took me a few days to get the smell of snake oil out of my clothes...

Where I sat

My (old) desk space gets profiled on, well, Desk Space.

NB: the links throughout the piece are like little Easter eggs...

Major General

I'm pretty sure I've already used this site to proselytize on behalf of Buster Keaton in general, and The General in, uh, particular. But who cares. It's a movie that is nothing but pleasure for me, and one that rewards multiple viewings. As Gary Giddens notes in this essay on the new re-issue of the movie on DVD, it's far less broad than the rest of Keaton's oeuvre, the humour deeper.

If I had the time or the patience, I would write a long essay about the movie, and about Keaton, and about the many hours I've spent watching his stuff without even cracking a smile – too busy simply marveling at the ingenuity of even the most minor gag. As some who knew me back when I was in the deepest throes of Keaton-worship (bolstered by Chaplin-mania, which is headier but less lasting), I used to go on at length about the need for the revival of the silent comedy.

And then Mr. Bean hit and I figured it was taken care of.

(Also, I started having kids, and many minor and pointless obsessions had to be put on the backburner – at least until they were old enough to share them with me...)

But in the meantime, here's Giddens on The General:

Those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, when television was awash in classic movies (Million-Dollar Movie, Shock Theater, The Late Show, and Silents Please were among the first schools in cinema—just ask Scorsese, Spielberg, or Coppola), are aghast to find that our children are often reluctant to watch black-and-white films, let alone silent ones. Especially those deemed to be among the greatest ever made. The imprimatur of the experts turns pleasure into obligation, and suddenly the notion of sitting through a comedy that had for decades convulsed audiences takes on all the promise of reading The Merry Wives of Windsor—the most annoying and witless of Shakespeare's plays, yet once upon a time thought to be a riot.

Still, for anyone who has never seen a silent picture or, worse, seen only speeded-up pie-throwing excerpts, Kino International has an offer you can't refuse: a spotless new transfer of Buster Keaton's 1926 epic, The General. Kino initially released a DVD of The General in 1999, which looks like every other version I've seen in theaters or at home—the focus is soft, and the tinted film stock is faded, scratched, and jumpy. The new edition, part of a two-disc set (most of the extras concern the historical basis for the story), is pristine, sharply focused, stable, and gorgeous.

Gorgeous is important, because The General is a peephole into history and by any definition an uncannily beautiful film. Indeed, for a first-time viewer, I would emphasize the beauty over the comedy. Many people are disappointed when they first see The General because they have heard that it is one of the funniest movies ever made. It isn't. Keaton made many films that are tours de force of hilarity, including Sherlock Jr., The Navigator, and Seven Chances (all available from Kino). The General is something else, a historical parody set during the Civil War.

The comedy is rich but deliberate and insinuating. It aims not to split your sides but rather to elicit and sustain—for 78 minutes—a smile and sense of wonder, interrupted by several perfectly timed guffaws.

Who can bear Mark Steyn?

What with all the "look at me: I'm a novelist!" and "golly, my humble little book got a review somewhere!" and "schweet: I get to read my book aloud in the vicinity of authors people have actually heard of!" around here, there has been a serious neglect of unserious commentary on idiots like Mark Steyn.

Well...

I still have none, but only because the good people at Sadly, No! have once again eviscerated the man much more thoroughly and funnier than I could have. (Take a deep breath before clicking that link: it is NSFW, or rather, NMFSFW.)

I'll only add that this is just the latest in a long line of Steyn spewings that display a particular obsession, one I have noted before.

The In Crowd's in my Outbox

I wasn’t aware of this before, but as an official participant in the International Festival of Authors, I am entitled to a list of all the e-mail addresses of all the other participants.

Whether this is for the purpose of continuing an angry backstage argument about Henry James, to make a shamefaced apology for a late-night tryst (and/or to arrange another one), to send a long, jokey, self-deprecating message about how “a blurb from you would be great, and of course I would reciprocate the minute my book’s a bestseller, LOL,” or to secure admittance to the Order of Freemasons, I have no idea.

But my list arrived in the mail the other day. I’m in.

Mood ring band, vol. 1

Roy Orbison, Chet Baker, Robert Johnson, Marianne Faithfull's recording of The Seven Deadly Sins, "Something's On Your Mind" by Karen Dalton, Connexions by Alex Lukashevsky, "Hello Walls" by Faron Young, and, finally, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra.

I'm younger and older than that now

Sign that I'm young: my neighbours were playing what I took to be that new Fleet Foxes record, but when they turned it up, it was revealed as Neil Young's Harvest Moon. Much prefer the Foxes.

Sign that I'm old: while talking to a high school senior writing class a few weeks ago, I tried to explain the necessity of editing by referring to the making of Star Wars. Only half the class had seen the movie.

Tolle tale

It's a sure sign that my blog well is temporarily dry when I am linking to something I assigned to myself. Nonetheless, go here to read my review of Oprah-approved nü-age guru Eckhart Tolle's first "book" for "kids."

Every silver lining...

I know we're supposed to be all "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" right now, but "Superstition" is a much better song, and while it may not be completely relevant this week, it soon will be again.

Here's Mr. Wonder just killing it on Sesame Street – watch the whole thing:

Hope a dope

Obama's acceptance speech was so good, it got me drunk.

No idea whether the man will be able to live up to even a small fraction of the expectations that are now on him, but America is a country that lives on symbolism, and it has just been given a massive injection of positive symbolism for the first time in, like, forever.

The Last Man on Earth

I've been curious about it for a while, but I finally got a chance to watch The Last Man on Earth, the 1964 film starring Vincent Price that was the first film adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, later remade as The Omega Man and, well, I Am Legend. (I think Ridley Scott tried to make a version with Arnold Schwarzenegger....)

Given the presence of Vincent Price, the year of the movie, and the fact that my wife bought it at a dollar store, I wasn't expecting a whole lot. It's isn't exactly cinematic gold, but I ended up being impressed. Being very much a neophyte in the land of horror movies (and zombie movies in particular – though the original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favourite films, period), I probably should have known how many narrative and visual motifs were taken from this one. I knew Romero was inspired by it to make Night of the Living Dead four years later, but the lifting goes a lot deeper. The opening shots, for example, are very close to the opening of 28 Days Later. Empty city, cars on the sidewalk, bodies everywhere, etc. The biggest lift is the overall tone, however. Unlike Omega Man, and like all the genuinely great zombie movies, this isn't man vs. ghouls, this is man vs. the patently obvious fact that he is fucked. There's not a single moment of levity in the movie. (Not intentional, anyway – like I said, it's not cinematic gold.)

Interestingly, Price doesn't camp it up at all here. Maybe one semi-demented laugh, but it's germane to the character and story. And there are at least two genuinely creepy moments.

It's also pretty unrelentingly brutal, sometimes even gratuitously so. It has no narrative rhythm, just lurching from awful thing to awful thing, and feels about twice as long as it is. But still, it's miles above Omega Man, and on some levels (none of them technical, obviously), just as good as I Am Legend. It's a clumsy movie, but it feels oddly more clear-eyed than the Will Smith one. A lot more cold-blooded – the ending is irredeemably bleak, and has nothing to do with Bob Marley.

There you go. Happy halloween, all.

Trailer below:

How Fiction Works by James Wood

My review of James Wood's latest in the Toronto Star.

AWOT in Prairie Fire

The novel just got reviewed in Prairie Fire magazine:

Though his prose is uncluttered and straightforward, he breathes fresh narrative life into the most mundane details ... His dialogue, often spiced with sarcasm, is bang-on ... There are those readers who will balk at a book like this, saying, "I live domestic realism every day. Why would I want to read about it?" Which explains the popularity of fantasy. But, for those who don't flinch at honest portrayals of the way we live, this is as good as it gets.

I can read, I can talk - UPDATED

Just a reminder that I'll be bigshotting it at this year's International Festival of Authors.

Here's where to find me:

Oct. 24 8pm (Brigantine Room) - Reading (w/ Rohinton Mistry, Richard Russo, and Owen Sheers)

Nov. 1 noon (Brigantine Room) - Round Table (w/ Amanda Boyden, Bill Gaston, Paul Quarrington, and Nathaniel Rich)


ADDED: As part of their IFOA forecast, EYE Weekly gives me the nod as the "Best New Local Reader" (and sticks my big, bald head at the top of the article).

Blast from the present

Here's something: a homemade video by an old friend of mine, J. Ball, aka Hopeful Monster. Along with the ultra-lo-budget shots of lava lamps, space cartoons, and J himself songing along with his own sing, there is footage from one of only two-ever shows by the Fat Horses, a country-gospel band that J. put together nearly ten years ago. At around the 2:20 mark, you can spot yours truly behind the drum set – with a full head of hair, no less. I didn't even know this footage existed.




One great thing about that footage is that you can see what the Gladstone Hotel ballroom in Toronto looked like before it got hipified.

Fun song, too.

(Oh, and for CanRock trivia buffs, many of the people on stage went on to play much bigger rooms than the Gladstone, in bands like Broken Social Scene, Deep Dark United, Old Soul, and the Lullabye Arkestra. The horn section you see is now Feist's horn section, I think).

Buzzcock block

I hate it when good bands do this. (The performing part, not the reissuing part, which can be great, if it isn't treated as a mere cash-grab.) Beyond the fact that you are supposed to be musicians, not self-revivalists, it just feeds into the Classic Album mentality that freezes art into place and panders to middle-aged boys with static tastes and cash to burn.

Subcontract it all to a cover band, if you just need the cash.

Pleased to meet me [UPDATED]

Whoa:


"I’ve told them a hundred times: put 'Spinal Tap' first and 'Puppet Show' last."


[Spelling fixed. That's right: I misspelled "whoa." I really did.]


UPDATE: one of my older brothers has sent me the correct version of the sign...




That's more like it.

From the archives

Here's something I found buried deep in my computer. I don't remember the context – I'm not even 100% sure I wrote it. I think I was trying to imitate some of the things Ken Sparling wrote for Gordon Lish's The Quarterly from way back. (Or maybe this is something by Sparling I wrote out, who knows?)

The only thing I can say is that I must have written it when my own first kid was about a year-and-a-half old, maybe two. That puts this at about eight years old. I can also say that I didn't follow my own advice.

"Good Advice"

Don’t write about kids. Don’t do it. Don’t write about parents, either. Don’t write about people wanting kids. Don’t write about people having kids and not wanting them. Don’t write about people getting kids. Don’t write about people losing kids. Don’t write about kids losing their parents. Don’t write about kids. Don’t write about groups of kids. Don’t write about kid-groups. Don’t write about families. Don’t write about parents doing stupid things. Don’t write about the stupid things done by people who never became parents. Don’t write about grown up kids. Don’t be stupid.

Don’t write about other people’s kids. Don’t, do not, write about your kid. Don’t write about how much you adore him. Don’t write about the stupid, cruel things you think and do despite your adoring him. Don’t dedicate the book to him. Don’t think that makes it any better. Don’t think you can get away with any of this.

I think it at least proves that I've always been a bit of a prick, only now I have a blog to demonstrate this publicly.

Fire's burning, fire's burning...

And so, with depressing predictability, some nutjobs, egged on by a few radical/cynical clerics, have firebombed the home office of the U.K. publisher who plans to put out The Jewel of Medina. This is the novel that was dropped by its U.S. publisher for fear that some nutjobs might do something crazy – like firebomb their offices.

Just as depressing is the thought that, yet again, a book that is, in all likelihood, a middlebrow snorer, has become a symbol of free expression.

To be glibly philosophical about it, it's some small consolation to know there are people out there who think books are still important enough and dangerous enough to be worth throwing Molotov cocktails at.

AWOT @ WOTS

This coming Sunday, I'll be doing a thing at the Toronto edition of Word On The Street in Queen's Park. Not entirely sure what I'll be doing yet – some combination of reading and genial blah blah blah, I'm guessing. I'll try to keep it lively, whatever it is.

What I do know – and what I'm more excited about, frankly – is that Alex Lukashevsky will be reforming The Weeklongs (one time only!) to perform the odd little piece of music he composed specifically for the launch of my novel, lo those many months ago. He has also arranged a version of one of his own songs to perform.

This is all happening at 4:30 on the EYE Weekly stage at the east side of the park. Come one, come all. There'll be books for sale, as well as (I think) copies of Alex's most recent CD.

Speaking of Alex, Owen Pallet (a.k.a. Final Fantasy, a.k.a. the guy who done did the strings for Arcade Fire, etc.) just released an EP of six of Alex's songs, all performed by a full-on orchestra. The results are a little surreal, though I haven't yet heard the whole thing. I think it's great for Alex, and I hope it leads more people to his stuff, but I worry that the orchestral versions remove some of the tight corners and pointy elbows that are integral to the songs. Alex's music can be a hard sell because it revels in its musicness to an occasionally uncomfortable degree. Even having listened to his stuff for years (including a brief period finding myself musically way over my head playing drums in his band, Deep Dark United), there's still a few a few floors on his particular tower of song that I tend to bypass. But that's the point: it doesn't all have to taste like chicken. Alex doesn't present fully formed musical vignettes (however great that can be when done right) or multiple variations on a single theme (ditto), but rather turns the whole process – songwriting, performance, recording – into a kind of continuous workshop, with all the attendant hazards. (I am furiously resisting words like "journey" and "search" and "exploration" due to the anal-clenching that occurs just typing them, but there it is.) Too much Cassavetes can leave you yearning for something a little more composed, idiomatic, and singular in intent, but there has to be room for the kinds of raw power and engagement that only occurs when you take off the leash, or the apron strings, or whatever metaphor of restraint you prefer. And some of Alex's shows – solo and otherwise – are among the most wig-flipping musical performances I've ever seen.

Which is all to say that you should come out Sunday afternoon. There'll be balloons for the kids.

ADDED: Alex and I both pick a favourite in this week's EYE Weekly.