March 10th, 2009

On We Struggle

By 7:15 today, I had showered, brewed tea, broken a ceiling lamp (I think it really broke itself; normal on-turning shouldn’t result in it shorting out like that) and written two letters. By 8, I had read two short stories, gotten dressed, and decided that the skirt I’d chosen didn’t really go with my sweater. When I tried to take it off, I discovered that I’d done up the hook and eye wrong (again, I’m thinking not really my fault–who know you could go wrong with those?) and *couldn’t* get the skirt off. This was the point at which I considered going back to bed, but five extremely despondent minutes later, I was able to change skirts (I still don’t know what went wrong). Keep in mind that neither skirt was the right answer to most questions fashion could ask: the one I had on was made of sweat-wicking technical fabric and slightly too big (but not big enough to slide over my hips or shoulders while fastened, we learn), and the one I wanted to wear is extremely elderly with the pockets completely torn out, so that things placed in them reappear immediately on the floor.

By 8:30, I was dressed and out the door, downstairs filling out the repair-request for my broken ceiling lamp. When it was done, I went over to the super’s mail slot and inserted…the two letters I’d written! I looked down at my repair request, still in my hand, and was sad, but put that in too; why not? Then it seemed like a good time to spend a few minutes staring at the wall, thinking about my retirement villa on the moon. Will I be allowed to have pets, I wondered. A kitten seems like such a good companion for the elderly. But how do felines react to zero-gravity?

Finally my super arrived, and I told him my sad story, at which he nodded unhappily, because he does not understand English. He has never admitted this to me, and he appears to read and speak it fine, so I keep talking to him and he keeps nodding. Aural English is tough to master, I know. Finally he opened his door and I pointed to his mail basket. He pulled out my repair slip and stamped and addressed letters and I said, “Ah, those are mine,” and we both regarded them thoughtfully for a while. Then I very gingerly took them out of his hand and said, “Thank you! I’m so sorry!” He smiled a little, and then broke into a grin when I said, “Goodbye!”

I still think today could recover and be a good day, but it will take some focus. Think about how people are really pulling together over the proposed funding cuts for literary journals and other mags with smaller circulation. Think about weather in positive degrees. Think about kittens.

And if all else fails, there’s always poets.

Now everybody kiss
RR

January 13th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews “The Limner” by Julian Barnes

I like to think I’m an astute enough reader to recognize a good story even if it is one that doesn’t appeal to me personally. I’m sure there are flaws in my judgement, things I judge to be objectively bad when in fact it’s just my subjective taste talking, but I do try on that front. Conversely, I try not to let personal pleasure in a story ellide it’s objective flaws. For some reason, the latter task feels tougher than the former.

Julian Barnes’s short story, The Limner, in last week’s New Yorker was delightful reading. It is a Victorian period piece about a travelling artisan, an self-trained portrait painter (that’s what a limner is). It’s lovely, detailed in the specifics of the back and front of house relations and authentic in how only the most “Christian” of clients would treat a travelling artisan as a guest in their homes rather than a servant.

There’s also lots of subtle visual description in this story, doubly emphasized because the protagonist is both a painter and deaf. We get the intricacy of the claw-foot piano and the customs officer’s waistcoat button as Wadsworth works to portray them on the canvas, the limner’s mare “shook her tail against the flies, or impatiently raised her neck.” Barnes does an admirable job of making these elements not just visual beauties but technical challenges of the painter. Barnes is also does much detailed work on facial expressions, because this is principally how Wadsworth understands human communication. Deaf since 5, he has never learned to lip-read or speak, so he relies on notebook to both send and receive communication.

But really, with most people, Wadsworth can “could silently perceive their meaning”: he observes the attitudes of their faces and bodies and divines their hearts, their true values.

Sounds a bit fairy-tale-ish, or at least morality-tale-ish doesn’t it? This isn’t *exactly* relevant, but if you have worked with recent grade-school-level pedagogical materials, you’ll know it’s considered unhelpful for young students to read stories like this, stories that imply a disability in one area confers a perhaps semi-supernatural gift in another. The stereotype of the moral-superhero parapalegic is just damaging and silly as the stereotype of the dumb blond or viscious jock.

The stereotypes and stock characters are pretty thick on the ground in Barnes’s story, though: in addition to the moral and perceptive deaf artist, there is Mr. Tuttle, the customs officer who poses for his portrait. He’s a customs officer and ungenerous, argumentative, undignified, self-important–shock! And a garden boy who is simple and sweet, “an elf with eyes of burnt umber.”

The resolution of the story is nearly contained in the fourth paragraph. We know in the first that the customs officer is awful, Wadsworth deaf, devout and humble. Then, we learn “And then there had been that incident on the third evening, against which he had failed—or felt unable—to protest. It had made him sleep uneasily. It had wounded him, too, if the truth were known.” An action against the child by the customs officer, we learn straightaways too, and what to be done about it?

I won’t, I guess, reveal what exactly, but suffice to say that no character goes against type or expectation, and that the end is quite satisfying in a fairy-tale way. It was very pleasant reading both because I like Victorian fiction (yes, yes, me, your high-school English teacher and your great-aunt Elsbeth) and because I like fairness. And the level of detail and colour was high and lovely.

But really, I think that’s all there was–nothing surprising or challenging or at all beyond the level of pleasant. Which is really hardly what I’d expect from a *New Yorker* short story. A momentary pleasure, quickly forgotten. How shocking.

I did my best to make it / when the call came down the line
RR

November 21st, 2008

Honours

*Once* was chosen as one of Quill & Quire‘s 15 Books of the Year, an extraordinary honour, especially when you consider what other books are on the list–I was particularly thrilled that Claudia Dey’s Stunt was included, since it’s one of *my* favourite books of the year.

Of course, with this honour comes an attendent one, which is Least-Suave Performance by a Female Author at a Newsstand. Sorry, Jeff and staff, I did try to be cool. It’s just not in me.

Are we human / or are we dancer?
RR

October 3rd, 2008

“The Great Canadian Novel is a collection of stories”

So says Andrew Hood in The Storytellers, an article by Quentin Mills-Fenn about our books in Winnipeg’s Uptown Magazine. I think Andrew nailed the best quote of the piece, but the whole article’s pretty good!

After twelve/just as well
RR

October 1st, 2008

The What that Is Up

For subscribers and newsstanders alike, the Fall issue of Maisonneuve is out and about. I’ve only just got my copy and flipped through, but there’s an article on extreme grooming, a new book section, photos and profiles of people encountered outside a courthouse, and my story, “Massacre Day.” I am pleased to be among this eclectic and intelligent collection. Enjoy!

I’d say that woman has a halo
RR

August 4th, 2008

Rose-coloured Reviews the July 21st New Yorker

I hear there’s been much anger over the cover of the July 21st New Yorker, which is a satire of the way certain right-wing American media elements caricature Barak and Michelle Obama as Muslim extremists. Yeah, I didn’t get it at first either—I didn’t even recognize who was being depicted, and didn’t much about it at all. After the joke was, at length explained to me, I didn’t think it was very funny, and certainly not interesting or incendiary enough to be worth the negative reaction it’s gotten (Fred agrees with me, which always makes me feel smart). But everybody has an off-day, judgement-wise, no one got hurt and, as Mr. Obama says, “that’s why we have the First Amendment.”

But I love the New Yorker a lot, so when they disappoint me I do feel sad. But really, when I’m sad, reading the New Yorker is a good distraction. So I read the issue as a distraction from the cover, and I was no longer disappointed.

In the most direct counterpoint to the cover is Ryan Lizza’s 18-page The Political Scene profile of Obama, “Making It: Where Barak Obama learned to be a pol.” There were some interesting anecdotes about his early years as a community organizer in Chicago, and his later-early years forming and breaking alliances in local and state politics. Obama doesn’t always come off looking like a saint, which apparently is a surprise to some people, but really, I sort of knew he wasn’t Marty McFly, tumbling into the race for the most powerful political office in the world by accident. And, well, I think that’s better if he’s going to *get* the most powerful office in the world and then do something effective and good with it.

“Making It,” I should say, was *wicked* boring: a clothes-line narrative strung with endless detail. I read it all–18 pages of city council meetings is not too much to ask for someone I’d vote for if I could—but really, not much effort was made as concision, or interest: didn’t the candidate ever tell a *joke*?

Much better: a fun and accessible Annals of Science piece on physics’s outsider artist Garrett Lisi, Patricia Marx on shopping in Shanghai, and Yoni Brenner’s “Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers” (“6. For a taste of the U.K., fry up mini-servings of fish-and-chips. Take it to the next evel by wrapping them in small pieces of newspaper, which, oddly enough, all seem to be printed with unfavorable reviews of Jeff’s novel”).

Best of all is the short-story “Yurt” by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. This story, about an elementary-school teacher who leaves her teaching post for Yemen and returns a year later, refreshed and pregnant, is very funny and very wise in the ways of late twenties thinking which, deep though my love is for the New Yorker, is wisdom I’ve often longed for in it’s pages. I was very glad to learn that the narrator—and really central character—of this piece will have her own book come fall, *The Miss Hempel Chronicle*.

So we see, as usual, that you can’t judge anything by its cover though really, of course people do. And knowing that they do, we should still work pretty hard on those damn covers.

Anyone perfect must be lying
RR

July 14th, 2008

Stories and Poems

“Look, there are more people playing ‘Grand Theft Auto’ this very second than will ever buy whatever book you’re talking about. No one cares, dude.”

“That’s no reason to ….”

“Hey! Loser! In about ten years nobody will be reading books! It’s over! Deal with it!”

–Michael Carbert, writing in “The Urquhart Disaster”, Maisonneuve Magazine

I admire the folks at Maisonneuve for, among many other things, continuing to care about stories and books in the face of mounting distractions and dissausion. So I take it as high praise indeed that they’ll be publishing my story, “Massacre Day,” in their next issue. I’m very excited, and will certainly let you know when it’s on the newsstands.

Other people working hard for the cause of words, this time poetry, are all the poets and volunteers at The Scream in High Park, culminating tonight in what, we hope, will be beautiful weather, out in the park. But really, I’m going rain or shine: Claudia Dey! Dani Couture! And a whack more talented folks!

Finally, this is neither story nor poem, but it made me laugh a lot–“My Airline” by David Owen: “You may no longer hum or do any form of beadwork.”

You’re all ladidah/but I know who you really are
RR

May 20th, 2008

Non-internet reference

It seems silly to say that a short story in the New Yorker is good. It’s become almost tautological that the New Yorker publishes good stories, but they aren’t *always*, actually, and not always to everyone’s taste, and certainly as rarely brilliant as anything is in this world. But Annie Proulx’s “Them Old Cowboy Songs” truly is brilliantly to my taste, and I recommend it heartily despite the fact that the piece isn’t online. It’s in the May 5th issue (I’m behind, I know) or else in her new collection, not out in North America until September 9 (the reason the piece isn’t online?)

So this is pretty much just a tease unless you are also behind on the New Yorker. But I wanted to share, because though I read very little bad fiction these days (I’m learning to choose carefully) this is still something rare.

Have to get used to it
RR

March 1st, 2008

“Naturally Unpopular”

“Auchincloss was a disaster from the start. He had no friends. He was a failure both as an athlete and a scholar, but, more than that, he was, as he later put it, ‘naturally unpopular,’ possessing that indefinable but unmistakable quality that signals to his peers that a boy is to be ostracized and tormented. He was sneered at, called Rebecca for the Jewish appearance of his nose, kicked and shoved.”
–From “East Side Story” by Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker February 25, 2008

January 5th, 2008

What You Could Read

I know everyone adores playing “1000 Things We Like,” but I thought I’d post about something else for a change. Like some things that I have been reading that you might like.

For example, I would suggest reading Prism International. If you live in Ontario, this will be very hard, as they did not send our province any fall issues for some reason, but that’s the issue I’m recommending you order it because contains the beautiful story “Some Light Down” by S. Kennedy Sobol. It was my privilege to read that story in very early form, and it was heart-stopping then, and it’s thrilling to me now to see it having evolved so far. Of course, this means S. Kennedy and I know each other, but we didn’t when I first read the story, so you should take my word when I say it’s brilliant.

Another recommendation I have for the literary-minded is Jim Munroe’s mega website, No Media Kings. If you move in Toronto indie circles, you may have heard the name Jim Munroe before even if you’ve never read his books or comics, seen his movies, been to his shows or readings, or played his video games. I once had a strange job wherein (a) I often had no work, (b) I was not allowed to read books or magazines, (c) I was not permitted to surf the internet unless the sites pertained to books. These rules made no sense, but I got around them in large part thanks to Mr. Munroe, who bills his site as an “indie culture site.” Basically, if you work in one of the above media and don’t want to let your get caught up in corporate R&D, promotion, editing, distribution, etc., Jim will tell you how to do it yourself. Even if you are willing to go a little corporate, there’s still useful reading on the site–for authors, there’s stuff on grant-writing, touring, etc. that’s very practical, friendly, and go-go-go. There’s stuff on there that’s not at all practical unless you are the dynamo that is Jim Munroe–book tour via bicycle, for example—but it’s very entertaining.

Of course, all this partically obscures the reason I was curious enough about the guy to google him in the first place, which is that he is a pretty good novelist. I read his first book, Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask when I was a kid and got hooked. That was his first book, published with HarperCollins Canada, the experience that so annoyed him that he declared himself the anti-Rupert Murdoch, or, I guess The King of No Media (heh). He went on to write a number of novels: *Angry Young Spaceman, Everyone in Silico, Roommate from Hell* (all available at the above link) and to publish and distribute them himself. No small feat, though it helped I’m sure that the novels were good (if you like semi-sci-fi and silliness, and PCness–I do). Still the sheer number of hours, and the force of will to overcome not only self-doubt but the logistical nightmares… Impressive.

I interviewed Jim Munroe in the summer of 2003 for a school project (would that that transcript still existed–stupid dead hard-drive). He did it because I emailed him and said if he talked to me I’d buy him lunch. He wrote write back and said ok, showed up when he said he would, and tried to pay for his own sandwich, so obviously I was more than a little impressed. I guess there’s bias all over this post, really, but still, these are reccommendations worth checking out–it’s not my fault I’ve met so many talented people.

Smoking the same damn cigarettes
RR