October 13th, 2011
Rose-coloured reviews *Real Life* by Sharon Butala
Real Life by Sharon Butala is the 10th book I’ve read for the Off the Shelf reading challenge. Like many books on this list, I read it because it was starting to get embarrassing that I hadn’t. Not so much the specific book as the author: Butala has a strong reputation as a serious writer, for “writ[ing] with scrupulous honesty and without a lick of pretension.” (so says *Books in Canada*)
She does and, though I had some serious problems with the book, I too am in awe of Butala’s subtle, wry, taut prose. I felt the best story in the collection was “Light.” The story is about Lucia, a fairly average middle-aged woman who leaves her city, her home, and her husband to stay with her developmentally delayed, polio-crippled sister during her–probably final–struggle with cancer. During their time together, she cares for Elaine matter-of-factly, with no obvious tenderness but a great deal of love. Nevertheless, the gap between their lives and their minds is so great that there is little connection, almost no dialogue.
At home, her husband George misses her, but tries to support her in her task. He’s a professor, and lends her books to help pass the long hours of vigilance, but balks when she asks him for books about the Holocaust. He gives in almost immediately, though, and eventually explains to her the difference between the Holocaust narratives she’s reading, and the ones he suggests: “‘Those books will tell you the story…[b]ut none of them are works of art, and they have in common a failure to express the full scope of what happened…The books on this list will help you…’ he hesitated ‘come to terms,’ he added finally, shrugging, as if such a thing were hardly possible.”
And that’s the crux of the story–the inevitably failed struggle to understand true suffering from the outside. Lucia never really understands Elaine’s feelings, and through the story seems to move towards the knowledge that she can’t. “Now Lucia can’t bring herself to try to talk to Elaine about her impending death, and she hates herself for her desire, which she can no longer deny, that Elaine should give up this fight she can’t win.”
Empathy is so hard, is what I think this story is really about, and the more obvious where we should place our sympathies–those who suffered and died at the hands of Nazis, Elaine who was dealt a bad genetic hand thrice over–the more distance we have to cross to do so. That’s how I read the story, anyway, and also gorgeous evocation of love in all it’s horrible imperfection.
Though I enjoyed the rest of the book–the other 9 stories–a good deal, in a way “Light” points up some of the things I found troublesome in the others. Because Elaine is so delayed, illiterate, and often struggling to breathe, the lack of dialogue in that story is appropriate, and serves to emphasize the loneliness of dying. However, almost all the stories in the collection are grounded in the interior monologue of a single character, and this works sometimes better than others. In “Night Class,” Christine spends a great deal of time alone, driving to a far-off university outpost, but even before she takes the job she is so deeply ensconced in her own–admittedly persuasive–viewpoint that she neglects others with almost unforgivable ease. That story makes perfect sense in terms of POV, however excruciating it actually is to read (very, but that’s an achievement, too).
However, if I were the sort of person who put down books unfinished, I might’ve done it after the first and title story, concerning a woman whose ex husband suddenly reappears decades after their divorce. You find, extremely gradually, that there was a complex and heart-rending series of events at the root of their split. But this all comes out slow-fade memories from the much older woman, and I felt like we never get to hear anyone’s real feelings or motivations for what they did. I mean, I didn’t–I couldn’t put together from the tense and grim conversation in a coffee shop decades later where the connection between these people ever existed, much less what truly severed with it.
Lack of connection is what was truly problematic for me in this collection. Many of the stories were really single-character pieces, someone thinking through situations and insights alone in her own head. They might think *about* other people, but never actually engage with them. This worked when there was a true impediment to connection, as in “Light” or “Night Class;” people devastated by their inability to interact with other humans are much more relatable than characters like Jenna in “Saskatchewan,” who doesn’t seem to try. Jenna is a writer from a small town in the title province, “has a real cowboy for a husband,” writes semi-successful books for a publisher in Toronto, but dreams of more praise, a bigger readership, more than somewhat success.
The story concerns Jenna’s time on a literary prize jury–topical now as ever–and reads like autobiography. I say that not because the description of Jenna above almost exactly matches the bio on Sharon Butala’s webpage–that’s too simple. I think it’s autobiography because of how boring it is. There are no other developed characters besides Jenna, no meaningful relationships, no real sense of an adult life at all–just a single interior monologue and a single focus of interest. Despite the fact that the story takes place months after the adjudication (there are many retrospective stories in this book), it is Jenna’s only real focus other than her thwarted ambition. Her husband, her friends, her day-to-day life, whatever it is she actually writes about–all is elided from the story.
Which is exactly like how I feel reading memoir in which the memoirist wants to talk about one specific bit of her life while keeping the rest perfectly private–she constructs a false wall around the experience being focussed on. It ends up being an empty experience, at least for me. I didn’t care about cranky Jenna and her interior monologue, and if the story was some kind of story a clef I couldn’t guess what real event it was based on. Anyone know? The book came out in 2002, so prior to that. I certainly couldn’t understand or imagine the experience of the locked jury–we get no dialogue or sense of the characters of the other jurors, nor of the scorned author. The end of the story seemed to be trying to unlock some of the mystery, but I couldn’t parse it. Maybe it’s me?
What I’m saying is that Butala is extremely good, but her blindspots are substantial, and so are mine, and they are exactly at odds. A lot of the stories in this book were in the “not my thing” category, but the pieces that cracked through were utterly sublime.
July 27th, 2011
When Stories Die
I am usually willing to rework a story for nigh on forever if I want to save it–if I’ve changed every word but the heart is the same, I consider it saved still. But I just had to go through my entire freaking hard drive for a piece I’d forgotten the file name for (I found it, amazingly) and I realized how many stories I just kind of quietly forget about so I don’t have to face the fact that they are failures and I can never fix them. I tell myself I’m just taking a break and will come back and solve the problem, but I never do, and the stories live quietly forever on the hard drive, ill-conceived and awkwardly paced and all the rest.
It’s worse when I am actually staring at a story that I subjectively like, but objectively I know that there is not enough worthwhile substance there to save–to save it would mean a heart transplant, making it a different story, and what I should really do is start again. I do it, but I hate it.
Here’s a couple paragraphs–maybe the only good ones–from a story called “Wives.” The piece is truly not very good–glib and maudlin, both, and upon rereading also really skirting what I wanted to say. It deserves to rest in piece–let this be its memorial.
The setup is that some men have escaped from the waiting room while their wives are intensive care, and gone up to the hospital roof to blow off steam by having wheelchair races.
~~~
The grips felt slick and cutting to Grey’s soft palms. He had to lean his whole weight into the first turn, but he got it. On the second turn he lost sight of Collin in his peripheral vision. He was winning.
“Fuck, Collin, knock it off,” he heard Mees bellow, then footsteps pounding on the sticky gravel of the roof.
Grey turned to see what had upset Mees. Collin hadn’t turned, that was it. He was continuing on towards the edge of the roof. It was a sizable concrete lip, a foot, maybe, and there was no real likelihood that a wheelchair could roll up and over it, but still it was startling to see Collin’s long stringy arms thrusting his chair towards the sky’s edge.
Startling enough to send Mees sprinting to tackle him just as the chair tipped up on the concrete. They both hit the gravel hard, Collin on his back in the chair, Mees draped on top of him.
July 22nd, 2011
Rose-coloured reviews *London Fields* by Martin Amis
Martin Amis’s London Fields is a novel about murderee constructing her own murder. But a 470-page (my edition, anyway) book, like this one is, is going to be about a lot of other things, other people. There are four central characters, and a good dozen secondaries whom we get to know well, plus a dozen minor characters after that that we at least recognize. The most central of the centrals is Nicola Six, the best named character ever, who is gorgeous, at the end of men, and wanting to die–in her own way, though not by her own hand. She befriends three men–Keith Talent, a London cheat (what it sounds like–small-time hustler) who wants to be a darting champion; Guy Clinch, a rich and titled father with a difficult home-life; and Samson Young, a would-be novelist whose one failing is his complete inability to make anything up.
That last is a fun little po-mo conceit–the novelist decides to write the novel of Nicola’s murder, because it is unspooling in front of him, no making-up required. Sam weaves in and out of the action, sometimes directly addressing the reader, or a future editor, or a rival writer. Sam comments on the action throughout and also, because he knows all the constituents, is sometimes a part of it. I’m even now trying to work out exactly the ways he might’ve been–could’ve been unreliable. I’m not really sure.
Sam is a fascinating character, though–the best-fleshed in the novel. He is American, in London because he has traded flats with another, much more successful writer, Mark Asprey. Through living in Asprey’s home and reading various notes and articles he has left about, Sam grows to loathe him both professionally and personally. But he has other problems–the novel he wants to write is deadline to his publisher and he has another deadline, too: he is dying. It is never explicitly said what disease is killing him, but various physical symptoms plus his unremitting vague references to global crisis caused me to think probably AIDS, or whatever they were calling AIDS in 1989 (when the book was published). Anyone else who has read it want to take another guess?
By a stunning string of coincidences, Sam finds Nicola’s discarded diaries and meets her when he tries to return them. Nicola meets Keith when she stops by his local pub after a funeral. Sam meets Keith when Keith is his driver from Heathrow to London and cheats him mercilessly. I think everyone meets Guy at the pub, too, but I sorta forget. This event happens at the very beginning, and it took me close to two weeks to read the book–long for me in general, though short for me on such a dense book. And it’s super-hard to flip back and double-check something, again owing to density–everything is embedded in a giant paragraph, each paragraph a swirl of useful info about the plot and random ephemera.
I found a lot of the ephemera funny–very funny–but I don’t know what it was doing in the book. Amis’s pet filler topics are: the strategies of competitive darts, traffic in London, unrelieved erections, and ill-behaved children. A single riff on any of these topics–and there’s probably at least half a dozen on each–can go on for over a page, not advancing the plot in any way, or even illuminating character. I guess it adds to tension, maybe, all these little peeves…
No, dammit–I can’t talk myself out of the notion that this book is just too long, and I’m speaking as someone who mainly enjoyed it. *London Fields* feels almost Dickensian at times, as if Amis were serializing it and being paid by the penny. Nicola’s plot is extremely complicated and goes on for ages. I’m not sure how long because the timelines are a bit obscure (it’s often not clear whether it’s the same day or a week later) but it seems part of her plan to leave Guy with a constant erection for over a month. At one point his penis seems to turn gangrenous and he has to start walking with a cane…no, I don’t know if any of that’s actually possible. Anyway! The point is, I was like, “Wow, this is so messed up, I wonder what purpose it serves–must be so clever and obscure. I can’t wait to get to the end.” As the book went on and Nicola’s actions got more bizarre, I read faster and faster, wanting to find out why, why, why.
I can say without wrecking it that there is no why for *many* of the events in the book–not for Nicola’s endless sexual tease of Guy, nor Guy’s bizarre embargo against masturbation. The novel’s crisis is a rat’s nest of plot fragments and characters with no clear motivation. And the climax is, yes, incredibly bizarre and moving, but part of me wanted to scream, “This could’ve happened 200 pages ago!!”
What saves the book, in the end, is Amis’s incredible joy in writing. This book is an indulgence–it seems pretty clear to me that he wrote if for fun and fun is what he had. That’s no bad thing, though, since he shares the fun. The rants about double-parking in London are as witty and entertaining as traffic rants can be, though that’s a limited sphere. The best writing is reserved for the kids–Keith has a baby daughter who is an angel, and Guy has a toddler who is a terror (poetic reversals much?) and all the riffs on both kids are fine and fizzy writing (though, in the case of Guy’s son Marmaduke[!] often disgusting: I have to admit I laughed when he “swamped himself with ordure” but still–ugh).
So…I liked *London Fields* just fine…I simply have no idea what the rave reviews referring to the novel being such a comment on modern times, so intellectual, so “nourishing”–I worry that I’ve missed a great deal of the content of the book. I really just thought it was funny. Anyone who wants to explain the rest, feel free.
This is my ninth book for the To Be Read Reading Challenge–3 books in the next 5 months should be no problem (famous last words??)
May 9th, 2011
Rose-coloured reviews CoverGirl Natureluxe foundation
Warning: I suspect that this post is not going to be of interest to many. I’ve often thought it would be fun to write service pieces for women’s magazines: getting paid to write zippy little articles about how I made use of some lovely free sample the magazine would give me. But I actually have plenty of free samples, due to a boring and impoverished period a few years back when I put myself on every mailing list on earth. So I thought I’d give the form a try here, just to see if I like it. Also, as you might guess, I still haven’t fully settled into my new at-home lifestyle, and now there is something baffling wrong with my neck. Thus the paucity of posts, so I’m just glad I’ve gotten myself to my desk long enough to write this.
I do not normally wear foundations. I think a lot of females got into the habit of foundation in early adolescence, when so many people’s skin goes crazy. Mine didn’t, actually–I only got the occasional zit throughout high school, so I never bothered with cover-up. And this remains the case–I think if you don’t use up your lifetime alottment of zits in youth, you’ll just keep getting them once in a while forever, at least in my case, well into your thirties. So while I don’t have amazing skin, it is largely fine and I am very lazy and cheap, and therefore I do not wear foundation.
Except when it comes in the mail at a time in my life when I am looking for distractions. Natureluxe foundation came in two tiny packets in the mail last week. I tried the “Aspen” first (will there be a follow-up post about the “Maple” packet? Probably not.) It was immediately apparent that I am not aspen-complected–the goop out of the packet was several shades fairer than my actual face. However, since it was already there, I rubbed it in and strangely it blended ok. The subtitle of this stuff is “liquid silk foundation” and it is actually very silky. There was a lot in the packet, and it took me four uses over five days to use it all up. By the fifth day, it was a bit thick and gritty, but I think if you were to actually pay money for the stuff and it came in a bottle with a lid, that wouldn’t happen.
I applied a really small amount the first time, and the stuff was thin and runny, but the coverage was actually really amazing. As I say, I believe my skin to be fine, but it was shocking to see all the veins and shadows around my eyes disappear, all the little blotches and colour variations and ghosts of zits past. When I finally had it all worked it in, my face was completely monochromatic except mouth and eyes–without depth or shadow. Successful foundation, I guess, but slightly creepy.
What this pushed me to do is I suppose what the CoverGirl people want–I put on more makeup. Blush, eye-shadow, even mascara gave my face back some depth, and I felt I looked more or less normal, and not like I was about to star in a musical.
I spent the day, and the several subsequent, watching people closely for their reactions to my miraculously even skin tones. There were none; even those I asked about it couldn’t go much farther than “You look very nice!” Which just goes to show what I always believed about most beauty products–they are far more for the wearer than the viewer. I actually felt kind of glam with my smoothed-out aspen-coloured skin, and if that helped me enjoy my day more, I’d probably go out and buy Natureluxe. But otherwise–no one cares.
Oh, I should note that it was easy to get this stuff off with cleanser and a washcloth at the end of the evenings–a very important plus in the makeup world, in my book anyway. It really is nice to wear, too–my skin didn’t get that naked burny feeling after it was off (I have had some bad makeup experiences). Really, it’s a nice product and I think many people would like it, though I personally remain too cheap and lazy to do more than use the free samples.
EDIT: It turns out I’m a “maple,” almost exactly. The effect is not as spooky when the skin tone matches, it turns out. You know, I might actually buy some of this stuff…someday. But first I have about 4 more uses in the packet.
April 25th, 2011
Rose-coloured Reviews *Away from Her* by Alice Munro
The movie tie-in paperback of *Away from Her* is cagey about what it actually is. It took me to the very fine print on the copyright page to determine that it’s a recovered, retitled copy of Hateship Friendship Courtship Loveship Marriage from 2004. Which I always thought was a bit much as a title, so perhaps the editors were always dying to make the switch, and the film coming out gave them a shot.
The other difference about the film tie-in copy is that Sarah Polley, who adapted and directed the film, wrote the intro. Now, I like Polley’s acting a great deal, and though I’ve not seen her work as a director, I’ve heard that’s very good too. But whenever I’ve heard/read her speaking in her own voice, in interviews or essays, I’ve thought she sounded like a nitwit, and this foreword is no exception. I’m not sure how her revealing that her love-life in her twenties was a dreary cliche helps us to understand or appreciate the stories. Especially when she has censored almost all that would be specific or emotional or interesting about her anecdotes, to protect her privacy, I guess. The impersonal-personal is my least favourite form of writing.
I understand that we all read fiction through the prism of our personal experiences, and that good fiction can offer a measure of self-help. But it seems so limited to read through that prism *only*; couldn’t Polley have said *something* about art?
I don’t know the order of the original book, but this version leads with the title story, and it is as good–in fact much better than–Polley says. (The story too, has been retitled, from “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which is good because I don’t understand in the least what that title would mean.) Polley calls it “the greatest love story I’d ever read,” and the story in part is about the endurance of love. But it’s also about the weird turns and uncomfortable moral machinations love can have us take, the comprimises that seem necessary yet we never fully forgive ourselves for.
The story, in case you haven’t read it or seen the movie (I honestly feel like I’m the last one) is about a bright, vivacious, elderly woman named Fiona who seems to be slipping in to Alzheimer’s disease (the disease isn’t, I believe, named in the story), and has to be institutionalized by her devoted husband, Grant. The story of this sad arrangement is realistic and touching, but what’s far more interesting is Grant’s reflections on his treatment of Fiona earlier in their marriage–his dalliances and indiscretions–and his negotiation with her once in the institution, where she appears to forget who he is.
Munro’s stories are really impossible to summarize–they’re long, but they wouldn’t make sense one word shorter, so I’ll leave it at that for “Away from Her.” It’s as moving as Polley tells us, but it’s also morally squirmy and terribly complicated–you’ll think about it for days, or weeks.
The original title story, “Hateship, etc.” is my favourite in the collection, despite the odd title and some other issues. It’s about housekeeper in her midthirties leaving her post and moving out west to pursue a chance at love. I couldn’t quite guess the period–I suspect this was obtuse of me–1950s, maybe? Anyway, a lot of class consciousness plays into the story, and the narration roams freely from one perspective to another, so we see all the levels and angles. Munro is so widely, wildly good–I can’t imagine being about to just drift from one POV to another without seeming awkward or jarring, but she does it at least 4 times in this story, and it seems the most natural thing in the world.
The story, about 2/3 of the way through, becomes excruciating–I almost had to put it down, my terror for the main character was so intense. I’m glad I didn’t; Munro always has a strange twist to share, and I was really delighted with how things came together at the end. However, and one almost never says this about this author, it was not terrible realistic, the ending anyway. I don’t care, I loved it, but I was surprised.
And then, after these two wildly different stories come the other 7, which I thought were very much like each other and very different from either of the other two. In “Floating Bridge,” Jinny is weak from chemotherapy but forced to drive around town in a hot car while her husband Neal indulges his infatuation with a young offender he’s been teaching, and whom he has now hired to work in their home. “Family Furnishing” has a narrator who violently disapproves of her aunts and uncles marriages, full of gender roles and grim silences. In “Comfort,” Nina’s husband is so obsessed with a political battle that he has nothing left to say to his wife.
And so on. Over and over, in this book and really throughout Munro’s ouevre, hetrosexual relationships betray and humiliate: men are stodgy, judgmental, and selfish (“Post and Beam”) and women are pathetic and desperate for approval (“Nettles,” another favourite from this collection, though it did make me squirm at the protagonist’s utter pathos). Munro is unsparing in her grim portrait of the way men and women–especially women–sacrifice bits of their lives adding up to the whole, just to get and keep a mate.
It’s been a while since I read a Munro collection, and since the last one I’ve read several by Mavis Gallant. If Munro and Gallant are the twin stars in the Canadian short-story firmament, I’m starting to think that my horoscope is more Gallantian. There is, I’m convinced, no disparity of talent between the two of them, nor can I really call it a disparitity of kindness–both seem to extend a measure of patience and generosity towards the characters while never sparing them a glaring exposure if that’s what the story demands. And yet…Gallant’s humour can soften some of her hardest truths, while the reverse seems true for Munro–she uses humour to mock:
“I had known this man before I left my marriage and he was the immediate reason I had left it, though I pretended to him–and to everyone else–that this was not so. When I met him I tried to be carefree and to show an independent spirit. We exchanged news–I made sure I had news–and we laughed and went for walks in the ravine, but all I really wanted was to entice him to have sex with me, because I thought the high enthusiasm of sex fused people’s best selves.”
Ouch! The fact that the mockery comes in the first person–many of these stories are written from a point of view of long retrospect–seems to make the vitriol less poisonous, but to me doesn’t really. And yet there is an elegance to Munro’s savaging of dimwitted youth–the mysteries of what is autobiographical and what isn’t, as well her perfect and surprising ways of situating the stories in time. This is a favourite: “In a hotel room in Vanvouver, Meriel as a young woman is putting on her short white summer gloves.” How lovely, and how efficient an opening.
But I still don’t much like Meriel, and I can’t necessarily decipher her motivations, which is true of so many of Munro’s young women. The retrospecitive narration often implies that the women can’t understand their former selves, either, and the men don’t care to do so. A theme of this collection seems to be youth as a foreign country, and that’s a hard one for this reader to work with. I am close enough to being young to think I remember it well, and it wasn’t such a bingo cage as Munro makes it out to be. It’s hard to take seriously women who marry seemingly at random and then resent their husbands “…she admired his thick shoulders, his bull’s neck, his laughing and commanding golden-brown eyes. When she learned that he was a teacher of mathematics she feel in love with what was inside his head also. She was excited by whatever knowledge a man might have that was utterly strange to her. A knowledge of auto mechanics would have worked as well.”
The fault is mine, for I certainly know that in the 50s and even later, there were many women who married at 18 for sillier reasons. But I am me, now, and I can’t help but thinking Meriel is an idiot, and if she feels so badly done by in her marriage she should just get a divorce.
So. I guess what I’m saying is that Meriel’s story–”Post and Beam”–is a very good story about a character who is very realistically rendered as a person I would not want to talk to if I met her. Which is a good an accomplishment as any.
I’m just saying that reading so many such stories in a row can be a little hard on the soul. But maybe my soul needs the expansion and I’m certainly not sorry I read any of these fine, demanding short stories.
This is my 6th book in the Books to Be Read challenge. More to come!
April 21st, 2011
Rose-coloured reviews the launch party for *And Also Sharks*
Jessica Westhead is the author of the acclaimed novel Pulpy and Midge from 2007, and a new collection of short stories, And Also Sharks, which launched yesterday evening at Toronto Underground Cinema.
Jessica is also a warmhearted, endlessly engaged and generous presence on the Toronto literary scene, always organizing something cool and cheering others on to do likewise. Her launch party was a chance not only for those of us who adore her and her work to show our support (and you should have seen the crowd), but for Jessica’s generosity to find a new expression, as an expert hostess. I’ve never seen a writer work so hard to make her book launch not just a sale opportunity or a validictory address, but a fun and delightful evening for all who attended.
The Toronto Underground Cinema is at the back of a mall in Chinatown. It’s badly marked from the street, and once inside the (mainly defunct) mall, you have to walk down a long hallway, the floor covered in kraft paper for some reason. Then there’s a flight of stairs, and the smell of popcorn. You turn around on a landing and suddenly you can see a milling crowd of chattering friends at the bottom of the stairs–and those down there can watch new arrivals cruise down the stairs, as if at the Oscars. It’s really neat–and the space is huge, spiffy, and adorned with tentacles coming out of the wall(??)
It was nice to see the author all dolled up for the occasion, at the bottom of the stairs giving and receiving hugs. After I’d gotten mine, I milled and chatted for a bit, then went to the photo area, where Jessica’s husband Derek Wuenschirs would take your portrait (with a very professional setup!), then photoshop it onto the cover of *And Also Sharks* as a keepsake souvenir. See Kerry and Stuart‘s photo for an adorable example.
After that, there was buying a book–of course–and picking up *And Also Sharks* swag like a button, a bookmark, and some blue-raspberry shark gummies. The table was run by the folks at Type Books, and was very well-stocked and well-organized. They even took credit cards!!
The movie theatre’s concession stand was also running, serving soda and popcorn, as well as wine and beer. I can’t figure out from the website if the Underground is usually licensed, or this was a special thing for the night, but either way, the crowd seemed quite appreciative.
And, then! As if that weren’t enough, we all filed into the theatre for a speech from Marc Cote of Cormorant Books, *And Also Sharks*’s publisher. He was genuinely enthused, and funny, and then he very gallantly helped the author of the evening onto the stage.
Jessica introduced the two book trailers she and many talented others put together, which were both wonderful. After the trailers, she gave a series of heartfelt thanks for the help with the evening and book, which made you realize how much planning had gone into the launch: the folks at the theatre, the photography setup, the specially selected music, the trailers, etc., etc. You could see why the evening was so great–because great people worked hard to make it so.
And then, in my opinion, the best part: Jessica gave a short, stellar reading from her story “Coconut.” Then we applauded hard, and all filed back out to the foyer (actually, I think some stayed to watch a silent version of *Jaws). Some left, some joined the long but friendly line for autographs (I did), some got further librations. I know the party raged much longer into the evening, but I had to depart. What a great time!
A book launch is such a great chance to for an author to celebrate his/her work, as well as share it with others, but I’ve noticed a trend towards the less-is-more launch, lately–mainly chatting and drinking, with a quick set of thank yous and a mini-reading, totalling perhaps 5 or 10 minutes. This is lovely if you are good friends with the author and his or her other friends; rather awkward if you’re just a fan or someone who saw a Facebook invitation and thought the book looked interesting. It’s also a bit anticlimatic for those of us who need to take a bus, a subway, and a streetcar to arrive at most downtown events (cough). The thing I loved about the *And Also Sharks* launch is that it was for everyone–friends and fans and people who just turned up wondering what all the fuss was about. You were able to get a good idea of what both book and author are like, and make a fairly well-considered decision at the book table, if so inclined. And it was tonnes of fun and the author made it charmingly clear she was glad each of us came.
But the best part is now I get to read the book.
January 18th, 2011
Rose-coloured reviews *Jenny and the Jaws of Life* by Jincy Willet
This book was loaned to me–rather forcefully–by my friend M, and the introduction by David Sedaris is about how the book is so hilarious that he also proselytizes for it and pushes others to read it, or simply reads bits aloud to them.
Strong praise indeed, for I consider Sedaris one the best and funniest…actually, I’ve never been able to pin down what he does. It is essayist? Memoirist? Well, he’s pretty much the funniest *writer*, of anything, I know of. For him to write an intro and blurb for a book–let alone a bout that came out in the 80s and was being re-released in England in 2006 (??) seemed like a pretty big deal. And really, my friend M is pretty sharp, too–she spotted this perfect-condition hardcover on the sidewalk in a box!
I did not find this book all that funny, but I liked it anyway. Isn’t that weird? Usually, if I find the marketing inaccurate, it’s because the book isn’t good and I just hate the whole thing, but this is a great weird disturbing book. I found it flawed at certain points, but really riveting, inventive, striking…and yes, some bits made me laugh.
My favourite story in the collection was probably the first, “Julie in the Funhouse.” It’s about a man whose sister is murdered by her teenage son and daughter. Hahaha, right? It is true that both the man and his sister are of an ironic turn of mind, and flashbacks of them together and some scenes of him by himself are mordantly funny, but just funny in the fabric of the story, which is very much like the fabric of life. I culled through looking for a “hilarious” passage in this story, but the laughs when they come are pretty modest, in keeping with the tragic subject of the story.
But enough about baffling marketing–it’s a brilliant, achingly sad story. I think Willet’s real gift is an ability to go towards melodrama asymptotically, closer and closer without ever touching. She’s able to pull of huge scary subjects, like the murder one above, or “Under the Bed,” which is probably the best story about rape I’ve read. And yes, that one has it’s small wry laughs–probably more than most rape stories, but that’s only because it’s more realistic than most rape stories. The humour is only in keeping with the ironies of life. Even “Justine Laughs at Death,” which is a sort of paranormal take on sexual violence winds up being affecting, even exciting, and quite witty. It’s about a guy who is the single concentrated personification of all sexual violence, and what happens when he encounters the single concentrated personification of all women. You couldn’t really find a “bigger” story to write, but she does it (I think; I can see folks disagreeing with me) with minimum porteneousness and maximum inventiveness–it’s a wild story.
And that may bea flaw of Willet’s–she’s incredible with wild situations, and she can make things work that you’d never think possible, but she does best in elevated or extreme moments; sometimes the more ordinary stuff rings false or if not false then too heavily stylized, conceptualized to be real. “The Haunting of the Lingards” is about a “perfect marriage,” in which the couple had one argument early in their relationship, 16 more years of perfection, then the argument resurfaces and destroys them. However, the pages of the story are almost entirely devoted to the first and second fights, and the subsequent fallout from the second. The other 16 years are described in a quick summary of neighbourly envy, which in the face of no other evidence seems untrue–it seems like the narrator has lied to us and the Lingards were *never* happy. But what would be the point of that lie–then the story makes no sense. The concept behind the story–spiritual belief can never be successfully debated or explained, even for love–is far stronger than the story itself. The characters feel like props made for the purpose of explaining an idea.
A few of the more quotidian ones do in fact work quite well, so maybe my thesis isn’t going to fly. “My Father at the Wheel” is a lovely emotional set of postcards from a girl growing into a woman, and all the times her father gave her a life somewhere. A very simple, no-fireworks story that is genuinely moving.
Willett is also an interesting author–she published this book, then mainly stopped writing to raise her son. When Sedaris pushed for the republish 16 years later, the publisher asked her to finish the novel she’d been plugging away at so she could publish that too, which got her back into the game. You can read a nice interview with her here–sharp lady. Apparently she’s got a new book out lately, which I think I’d probably like to check out.
This is the second review for my To Be Read reading challenge–10 more to go!
January 10th, 2011
First Drafts Are So Embarrassing with Jessica Westhead: Notebook Love
Mainly Rose-coloured is a solo exercise–I think of stuff to do, then I do it, then I tell you about it (challenges, resolutions). Or I do stuff, then tell you how I liked it (reviews). Or I just rattle on endlessly with no real point (almost everything else). On rare occasions, I ask other folk to do stuff with me, and those usually wind up being the coolest posts. As with FDASE–I started posting some of my embarrassing first-draft material, as well as how I cleaned it up, and asked if anyone else wanted to share. And what’s cool is, some do! For example, today, talent novelist and short-story writer and generally lovely human, Jessica Westhead–take it away, Jessica!
Notebook Love
Since taking Lynda Barry’s life-changing workshop, “Writing the Unthinkable,” in 2008, I have embraced handwriting as the best possible route to a first draft. And in becoming a passionate paper convert, I have re-embraced the humble notebook. Over the years, I spurned notebooks for random scraps of paper—I’d write ideas on those, and if I didn’t lose them, I’d round up a bunch and transcribe their contents into a big Word file. And more often than not, the ideas would die there. I’d forget about them, or, even if I did revisit these onscreen bits and pieces later, I’d feel disconnected from them. Which was all very disheartening.
But notebooks! I recently had the epiphany that the notebook is for writers what the sketchbook is for artists. This may sound ridiculously obvious, but it was a revelation to me. Not everything I write down has to be publishable! It’s all practice! I even have a little shelf of filled-up notebooks in my office at home:
Over the past few years, for short-story writing, my process has been first to get new ideas down in my notebooks, either through solo writing; in other super-inspiring workshops such as Stuart Ross’s Poetry Boot Camp or Sarah Selecky’s Writing Practice classes; or during meetings of a writing quartet I’m part of with the brilliant Sarah Selecky, Grace O’Connell, and Sarah Henstra (we call ourselves “The Jupiter Group”), in which we take turns hosting and giving each other writing exercises. I don’t commit anything to a computer file until I have a rough beginning, middle, and end figured out in a notebook. Once I do, I transcribe that story outline into Word, and then I go back to my notebooks to find ideas to fill it out. And voilà—a first draft!
That’s how I wrote “Everyone Here Is So Friendly”. It began as a writing exercise I gave myself, and, much to my delight, quickly evolved into a full-fledged story. Then I revised it with feedback from The Jupiter Group, and submitted it to The Puritan, where it was eventually published.
Here are my notebook pages where “Everyone Here Is So Friendly” originated:
I should mention that this was an ideal scenario—by no means do all my stories announce themselves so immediately and insistently. In general, though, this is how notebook writing works for me, and why I love the old-fashioned pen-on-pages method so much.
(Thanks, Rebecca!)
***
It’s RR again, just to thank Jessica for playing along and sharing her cool work (not really embarrassing at all, come to think of it). And also to say, if anyone else would care to share their first drafts and/or process proceeding from first drafts, they would be very very welcome. I should point out, because I know my audience, that it FDASE posts don’t have to be fiction just because it’s what I do–poems, articles, essays, or really anything you’ve revised is fine.
January 4th, 2011
New Year’s Resolutions and Reverb 31
What central story is at the core of you, and how do you share it with the world? (www.reverb10.com)
I was right that Reverb kind of went beyond my energy for self-reflection–I’ve been dragging my feet on this last prompt and my resolutions. I think I give up on the prompt–stories have endings and I do not like to see things in my life as ending, just changing (or, even better, staying exactly the same for ever). I think I am in the middle of my story and therefore can’t really narrativize to accurately. Or at least, that’s my excuse.
Ok, resolutions–these aren’t too creative (see above self-reflection exhaustion) but I think they’ll do me.
Resolutions Everyone Makes
1. Eat healthfully. Duh. I don’t see a year coming when I think I could get away with constantly eating Menthos and Tostitos. Specifically, I’m doing another 2-week detox as of today, and unless this one goes way better than the last, thereafter junking the detox concept entirely. Following that, I’ll just try to eat like a normal healthy person.
2. Beyond the health factor, I’m going to especially try to learn some new recipes–I get into food ruts. I don’t actually think I can manage more than one new recipe per week…maybe not even that. Let’s say…3 a month.
3. Exercise. Again duh. The specific aspect of this one for now is that I’m going to try to swim more, something that I love and forget about for years at a time. This one is subject to reevaluation, because I don’t currently live near a pool, but post-move, I might. Let’s say again, 3 swims a month, maybe.
4. Eat KFC popcorn chicken. In high school, this was the holy grail of junk food, but I have shunned it for years, based on rumours and heresay and the strong social stigma attached to being seen in a KFC. But no more–sometime this summer, I shall consume the unhealthiest of all foods once more. But only once.
4. Move. This has been on my agenda before, but never so firmly. This time, with feeling: before April 1, I will live somewhere else. Moreover, I will pack up/purge my stuff, get the appropriate stuff to Goodwill, transfer the phone/hydro/internet/mail, hire movers, and whatever the other million moving things are–without having a meltdown or being a jerk to anyone. My previous moves have been so stressful that I have declined friendly helpers for fear that I would be mean to them–I really have to get past this.
5. Return emails promptly. If it’s just a question that needs an answer (that I know), in less than a day. If it’s a social, so-how’ve-you-been email, less than two weeks. Also, take better measures to remove self from mailing lists and filter spam–I imagine less nonsense email will help me answer those that actually matter in a more timely manner.
6. Floss. You are probably not still reading this, but I need to be reminded of flossing. I have permanent retainers, which make flossing an evil nightmare, but I am not magically exempt from gum disease. How about…at *least* every other night?
7. Help. I have been the beneficiary of lots of niceness in the literary community–people have made me feel welcome, offered me cool opportunities and the chance to sit at the table with the big kids. However, though I feel myself an eternal bug-eyed kid, I have in fact been around a while, and perhaps could help out others. As someone pointed out recently, I have a responsibility to try to perpetuate the open friendly writing community that I want to live in. I’m not really sure what form this could take, but I’m open to whatever opportunity knocks (and suggestions).
8. Give to charity. In case you were wondering, I did manage to make up for my charitable failure–the money eventually went to Pen Canada, which I’m happy about, and a few other worthies. This is actually most organized I’ve ever been about giving, so resolution #8 is just a reminder to keep it up.
9. Don’t do everything. I cannot attend a lot of the fun events I want to and I need to stop fretting about it. I don’t live in the heart of downtown, work a lot, commute a lot, etc.–no one minds the excuses except me. I’m sure no one 9well, very few) minds when I can’t make it out to things–I should just accept that and get some sleep.
10. Write a new book. Well, part of one, anyway.
December 15th, 2010
Reverb 14
What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it? (Author: Victoria Klein)
Toronto transit.
So yesterday, I got as far as to decide what I wanted to write about, but then I had to leave and actually take transit. This is what happened:
My first bus is notoriously unreliable–sometimes you wait 20 minutes and then 3 of them show up. I’m sure you know; there are lines like this all over the city. Anyway, I only need to go 4 stops on that line, so when there is no bus in sight I walk, which I did last night. It was snowy and cold, but not as cold as in the morning, so I was more or less ok.
Then I got to my second bus line–this one normally totally reliable and frequent, which is a good thing because the distance I need to go on it is totally unwalkable. Except, last night it didn’t come for 25 minutes. By that point, I’d lost feeling in my nose and toes, and a little bit of faith in my sympathy for my fellow human beings. The two people behind me in the crowded bus shelter had the loudest voices and the most obnoxious relationship on earth–of course, the people behind me always do. But what *was* their relationship? Because it was too dark to read and my iPod wires tend to freeze in the cold, I had plenty of time to contemplate this. A couple? Maybe, they were around the same age, but I don’t think I’d order *my* partner to blow his nose (but maybe that’s just because he’s pretty well on top of things and doesn’t need my intervention). Brother and sister? They sure did bicker a lot; my favourite part was the screaming (but at least brief) argument over how much sugar was too much in the cup of coffee they were sharing (why? why?), which resulted in packets of sugar being thrown at my feet. Then, for a while, the male left the bus shelter and wandered around in the snow, which the female stood where she had been left and wailed, “Get back in the bus shelter, get back in the bus shelter!”
The man beside me attempted to say a couple things to me in a sympathetic tone of voice, but between the wind, the yelling behind us, and his thick accent, the only word I could make out was “fuck.” I smiled pacificistically at him.
By the time I wished I was dead, the bus came. Of course it was packed–by my count, at least 5 scheduled busses hadn’t arrived. I determinedly slithered my way to the back. Something makes Toronto passengers very reluctant to move back–when you ask them, they always say, “I don’t mind standing here, I’m getting off soon.” But *I* am going nearly to the end of the line, and I do mind. After only a few stops, I got a seat at the very back, by a window. I couldn’t look out, because it was coated in grime. I tried reading for a while, but something weird was going on–the bus was moving very slowly and jerkily, stopping and starting. Were we stuck in traffic? It was hard to concentrate. Finally I tipped my head against the window (toque providing some cushion) and fell asleep.
When I woke up, I had no idea how much time had passed, and because I couldn’t see out, I didn’t know where we were, either. I kind of panicked, unreasonably–there is no where that bus goes that I don’t know well or couldn’t deal with, but it was weird not to know where I was. I finally stood up in my seat, panicking the guy beside me with the giant grocery bag in his lap, and looked out the front window–we’d gone about six blocks. We were still stuck in some sort of mystery traffic-jam, the likes of which I have never seen in that part of the world before. I actually couldn’t even see traffic around us from where I sat, I just know that we were going 10km/h with frequent stops–for all I know, we were stuck in quicksand or molasses.
So we staggered along, I read a bit of the New Yorker, and the guy beside me ate two bags of salt’n'vinegar chips in rapid succession. When we finally got to my stop, I had been in transit for a grand total of 90 minutes, about twice as long as it usually takes. I got off with the same two people I’d been waiting with. I overheard them talking about which bus they would take next (those poor people–where were they going?) but then they walked right past the stop. I have absolutely no idea what was going on with those two.
And after all that…I STILL say I appreciate the TTC. For one thing, I still got to my appointment (only 3 minutes late) and there wasn’t any other way for carless me to do so–the TTC is not annoying enough to cancel out being able to go anywhere in the city for $3. And although if I win a car in Roll-Up-the-Rim or something, I would probably be pleased, I wouldn’t have really wanted to driving in all that…whatever was going on with traffic. Also, the people I was travelling with, the crazy ones? I’m *really* glad they weren’t in charge of 1000 pounds of hurtling steel and glass. On the bus, they could only damage eardrums.
Because I’m getting older, so are my friends, and I hear more transit-bashing than I used to. Common threads are: “There are too many weirdos on TTC” “I hate having to brush against strangers to get around them” “You could get bedbugs from sitting in a subway seat” “People always try to talk to me on transit” etc., etc. So much of the negativity I hear about transit basically boils down to: strangers are bad, being alone in one’s car is good. Which may well be true…for some people, people who lead lives with a lot of people in them already. For example, I drove when I worked at a fast-food joint, and was pretty happy to spend that time alone with the radio. But now I have in essence two jobs that both involve being all alone for hours at a time, and I crave strangers. I crave people, eavesdropped conversations, strange ideas–maybe not brushing up against people, certainly not bedbugs, and likely not an extend conversation on nose-blowing technique. But it’s what I’ve got, so I’ll take it and hope it gives me some insight into the world.
Maybe I’m just trying to make the best of the situation; after all, I really did sort of want to die during the above debacle. If I do win that roll-up-the-rim, I might never look back. But as long as things continue as they are, I don’t mind; I think the TTC makes my life more interesting. Also, if I drove, I couldn’t sleep on the way.
