November 13th, 2007

Metabooks

So I’ve been polling semi-seriously on this readers reading readers thing, and I’ve found a good number of books about the act of reading–not surprising, writers are told to write what we know, and that’s what we know. So we have characters reading Great Expectations in Mr. Pip and characters reading (I believe, I haven’t read it myself) the seven complete novels of Jane Austen in The Jane Austen Book Club, while the characters are reading everything and nothing in Italo Calvino’s brilliant (I believe; I have read it and loved it, but my friend J once threw it across a room) If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller.

But but but…would I sound ungrateful to the nice and well-read people whoe helped with this list if I said these are none quite what I meant. This is reading as *plot*, which is wonderful, but I wanted reading as *character*–what and how characters read developing who they are. I only got a couple of those: Anna cutting the pages of her French novel in Anna Karenin and, my favourite of the whole game, the March girls reading and interpreting Pilgrim’s Progress in Little Women. Isn’t that a lovely one? Not only because *Little Women* is one of my most favouritest childhood books, but also because it’s a small little anecdote in a novel that’s about million other things. It’s just a fun (and yes, semi-moralistic, but all of a piece) incident that shows how the sisters work together, how they imagine, how they believe and think things in their world work. I think my point is that books are, yes, sometimes monumental and life-altering and the single burning ember of our consciousnesses…but mainly not. Mainly books are part of the fabric of our lives and our selves, the gentle background hum that, along with food and friendship and warm socks, make our days.

An illusion to me now
RR

November 12th, 2007

So cute!

Hey, do you guys know my adorable friend Corinna? Did you know she’s famous? She made a how-to video and it’s on the internet. I’m going to break my “No Christmas in November” rule to post it here: Corinna Decorates with Pinecones!!!.

If I had an aeroplane I still wouldn’t make it on time
RR

November 8th, 2007

Readers reading readers

I am thinking about metaness today, hence the previous post. Partly because I am headed to my brother’s this evening to watch 30 Rock, that hilarious tv show about writing a hilarious tv show. We’re trying to use the structure of the sitcom to help us write our own (sadly, no link [yet]), but also watching the sheningans of the writers gives us (me, anyway) about how writing as a team might go, or at least things we could throw at each other. And then, mentioning the story “Sleep” yesterday put me in mind of the fact that that was a story, in large part, about someone reading, which is very rare.

Insightful Kerry posted this about how important it is to see characters in fiction working if we are to fully imagine their lives, something I so utterly believe. I have been wondering what else that is normally left out would be good to have in? We never see the housework, but perhaps the times in people’s lives most worth immortalizing in story are not the weeks and months when the stove was always sparkling. And maybe the events of novels and short stories often preclude a lot of leisure time for reading, television watching, movie attendance. God knows, a week in which I finish three books is not one you want to read a story about (or even a blog post).

But writers are word creatures and we build our lives as well as our fictions out of words, and I think characters can’t help but reflect this. Yet I am having trouble thinking of concrete incidents of this–who wants to help me make a list of books read by fictional characters? Or even tv shows watched by them–I very much enjoyed in the current New Quarterly when Amelia Defalco’s characters in “Monuments” watched rented episodes of Monty Python and Kids in the Hall as an excuse for time together. That wreaks of real life. Where else have I seen that?

On the other hand, writing about writing, whether on the page or on the screen, gets boring real fast. Writers are self-absorbed creatures, I know, and so I try to tread lightly on interests of my own that might not be anyone else’s. Some can pull it off, of course: Roth’s Zuckerman, Henry on Bosom Buddies and everything Aaron Sorkin ever wrote (think about it: tv sports writers, speech writers, tv comedy writers).

But is this sort of thing charmingly meta, insight into a delicate craft, or solipsism? As a girl who will, in 2008, attempt to finish a novel in which one of the central characters is a playwright, I do not know if I wish to push this question too far…

But a list of readers you’ve read about, that I’d like to see.

I wanna talk to you
RR

PS–And then there was of course, Black’s Books, the best (and only) tv show ever set in a bookstore. Every now and then on that one, someone actually read something, too!

Think about It (iv)

metafiction: writing about writing
metadata: data about data
metacognition: thinking about thinking
metalanguage: words about words (even more elegant: metalingual)

November 7th, 2007

To The New Yorker–all my love

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

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

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

I don’t.

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know

November 6th, 2007

Furthur Bibliomania

More surprising insights as I continue to observe my books in their new, alphabetical habitat! I have never had too too much interest in books as objects, though I like to have them around me and to *read* them of course, but their actual bookness, when strewn around on the shelves at random, was not that interesting to me. Now, however, when I see Fieldings Helen and Henry together at last, I realize that in fact they both did usher in very new (and different) eras for the comic novel.

Also, I did alphabetize my nonfiction as well, separately (controversial choice?) and put my religious texts in there too (controversial choice?) Generally I was going by author, or editor if a collection of essays, but I tried alphebtizing the Bible (can’t think of an appropriate link, you’re on your own)by title. But B put it so far away from the Torah, under T, that I switched it to “author” and put them together under G for God, which put them neatly between John Gardner’s Art of Fiction and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones which, while we’re blaspheming, could make a nice stern Old Testament God vs. warm and fuzzy New Testament God juxtoposition. And for still more sacrilege, I could point out that I realize the deity himself did not author these texts, but he did dictate or at least instigate them, according to some sources, and so I think they ought be alphabetized under his name, much as I would do if I ever owned an as-told-to celebrity biography, which of course I never would.

I have been able, thus far, to make less of the contrast between Christopher Pike and Harold Pinter but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

I know you’re not my ideal
RR

November 5th, 2007

Disturbing mental processes

This morning, whilst getting ready for work, I followed a train of thought that cannot be produced here (not because I cannot remember; because it was too stupid) and arrived at an unexpected station: the reason that the 1980s cosmetic kit brand was bizarrely called Caboodles is because it is a kit and the name is reference the other half of the idiomatic expression, “the whole kit and caboodle,” which as far as I can tell, actually means nothing. I wish to emphasize that I was not *trying* to figure this out, I just somehow did. And while I am obviously concerned about the trivia my mind sees fit to pursue, it is also obvious that I find this information at least somewhat interesting, as I am after all reproducing it here for your dubious benefit.

Now that I have utterly discredited myself, I would like to recommend that you see the film Michael Clayton if you are at all interested in watching a slow legal procedural with a) no romance, b) no buddy banter, c) very little action (a car does blow up [twice]). I am not certain why I liked this movie, it is not my bag at all, but I really did think it was sharp and interesting and, above all, well-written.

Also long past the point that everyone else noticed, I have finally seen a movie with George Clooney that I could understand (*Oh Brother Where Art Though?* remains utterly inpenetrable to me) and realize that he is both talented and attractive. Who, when he was Jo’s concert pianist boyfriend Rick on the *The Facts of Life*, would have guessed? Even better was Tilda Swinton–in a movie full of (nuanced, interesting) archetypes, she played a character I have never seen before, and I think she did it brilliantly.

The plot (in the narrative and diabolical senses) concerns a bad pesticide and the lawsuit of the people it harmed, but this isn’t *Erin Brokovich*, thank goodness, and there are larger issues at play than “bad corporations are bad!”

I just love the way a good movie makes me feel–like the world has more pockets and reaches than I knew about before.

We’re coming off of the sidelines
RR

November 4th, 2007

Book Breakdown

The list in the previous post caused no end of drama around here, you may be surprised to learn. In writing it over the course of a few days, I tried to find a number of the physical books that the stories were in, either to double-check the title or just for the joy of rereading them. And I couldn’t find several, which made me slightly crazy. This has happened to me before, and I think been posted about. In fact, it happens to me fairly often and the reason is *my books were in no order!* None. When I acquired a new book, I stuck it where it fit, and if I took something down, I rarely even put it back in the same spot. Thus, when I wanted something I could rarely find it immediately, or sometimes at all. It’s a terrible plan. What have I been thinking?

When I was a child, I organized my books by height, tall picture books to tiny mass market paperbacks. Around age 10, I realized this was stupid, and somehow threw the baby out with the bathwater, deciding all systems of book organization are stupid!! I’ve worked in both bookstores and libraries, I *know* this isn’t true in institutions, but somehow for a personal collection, it seemed pretentious to have a system.

Until this weekend, when I realized I was being an idiot, and took every book off the shelves, covered myself in dust and then lemon polish, separated out the reference books and periodicals and books I actually hate, and alphabetized the rest. It took a long time, and I inhaled a lot of polish, and listened to a recording of Beckett while I did it, so it made me a bit insane (especially since I never did find one of the books I was looking for!! I think I know who has it,though) Possibly such a state of mind is over fertile for revelation, but I did have several in the process, which I will now share with you in my lemon-hangover state:

1) I am still fresh enough from school that you could look at my shelves and get a false impression of my tastes. Not that I don’t like Turgenev, but he’s a bit over represented, considering.
2) Neither Alice Munro nor Diane Schlomperlin are on the list in the previous post, which is clearly a horrendous oversight.
3) I own a huge amount of Beckett, and that recording is fricking creepy, and that guy was a genius, but I’m really glad I don’t know him.
4) Also creepy: I came across the work of a poet I once knew, never particularly famous, and not now either, at least according to Google. Anyway, this was an acquaintance who I discovered was involved with another acquaintance whose personality didn’t much match, and that relationship mystified me for a long time. Since I barely knew either of them, I couldn’t ask about how they operated (and the question I really wanted to ask, “How do you stand each other?” I probably couldn’t have asked of anyone). So I wrote a little story about them to explain it to myself. It was a pretty good story, actually, and over the years I’ve built on it, written perhaps half a dozen stories about those characters and gradually forgotten they were based on anyone at all. Going back to those poems now, I realize that there was once a real person here, but the person I’ve imagined could never have written those poems, and is now wholly my own creation, even though when I picture the physical body of the character, it’s that real poet in my mind’s eye. Creepy or what?

You know what I’m going to do now? *Go outside*. I really think that will help!

I’ve been double-crossed now / for the very last time
RR

November 2nd, 2007

10 Short Stories Meme

Everybody’s doing it, first the Guardian, then Kerry Clare, then The Shakespearian Rag then me. You should tpo–your ten favourite short stories. As distinguished from the ten *best* short stories, because what a lunatic proposition that would be. I think in fact these are just the ten that are most in my mind lately, and this list would be completely different if I’d written it last year or, indeed, yesterday. And it’s not in any order, natch.

1. Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
2. The Dead by James Joyce (hmm, those two in common with Mr. Beattie)
3. The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpra Lahiri (in common with Ms. Clare)
4. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now by Andrew Pyper
5. Full by Lorrie Moore
6. Cosmic Gnomes (or possibly A Short Meditation on Tenth Grade Love) by Sharon English
7. Sleep by Haruki Murikami
8. A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger
9. Here Come the Maples by John Updike
10. Mama Tuddi Tried by Leon Rooke

And I’m already frustrated, having just written this list and still able to change it, at not being able to include any of Grimm’s Tales, or by David Sedaris, because those aren’t generically correct, and not Faulkner’s “Rose for Emily” because the story itself is actually annoying to me, it’s just *how* it’s done that’s so cool. And I also suspect myself of liking the Hemingway story where he is dying of gangrene even better than “White Elephants,” only I don’t know the title and am too lazy to look it up. So we see that lists are imperfect things. But if you do one of these, I’d love to see it.

The hardest part of this is leaving you
RR

November 1st, 2007

“…a woman who is always cold is given an unexpected gift.”

The Journey Prize Stories 19 is available as of today across Canada. Across Canada!!

Threes across the board
RR