July 13th, 2008

Bread

I like to make sourdough bread. I learned as a kid in 4-H, from a leader who gave me some starter she had gotten from her mother, who had gotten it for her wedding sometime in the 1950s.

My folks thought it was a good idea that I work hard at bread-making, especially my father, who used to live in San Francisco. Among my grandmother’s recipe books, my mom found some that approximated that style. The recipes were much more complicated than the kids’ ones we got from 4-H–they took a couple days of risings, some attention to detail, and a fair amount of upper body strength to kneed it. My bread pretty often sucked. I would make some for a family dinner, have it turn out rock-hard or else spongy-liquid, and stick the starter in the freezer for six months. When I was high school, I think was more the norm than the exception.

I took some starter away with me when I moved to Montreal, though I can’t recall what apartment I eventually left it in. Before that, I did make bread or biscuits (probably biscuits, they’re easier) for people, not often. When I visited home, I still baked for my folks, though, who were unfailingly appreciative of even my worst efforts. So were the few close friends I baked for, who perhaps knew that I wasn’t overwhelmingly confident amount this sort of thing (or anything) and wanted me to feel better.

I took a fresh supply of starter with me to Toronto. By then, I was getting close to being able to reliably make decent bread, though I have forgotten every ingredient at least once, and had everything that can go wrong (fire alarm, power outage, ingredient shortage) go wrong. But when nothing goes wrong, my bread generally turns out pretty good these days.

I like that, while I’m not a wonderful cook, I don’t know anyone else who bakes bread, so I get the reputation of making the “best” bread. I get a lot of compliments, not so much on the calibre of the food as the fact that I would spend the time and energy doing it. Much better bread is, after all, available in stores.

Which is of course not the point. I like my own bread. I like knowing what’s in it, knowing I made it, and that if someone else made it it would’ve turned out different. I like thinking of all the help I’ve had getting better at this. I like that people know I do it from scratch, so that when I give someone a loaf of bread, they know I am saying, “I like you so much, you are worth this much effort.” And I like doing it. When you kneed dough, you put the heel of your hand on top of the lump, and put your body weight into your shoulders to slide it forward, so the insides of your wrists glide over the floury damp of it. Do you know how that feels? I like how that feels.

I also think the bread tastes pretty good. With a little effort, I could perhaps turn this post into something about how I feel about writing. But, in fact, since I truly do feel this way about bread, I’ll leave it lie.

Here we are now
RR

July 12th, 2008

Photographic Failure

My camera experienced existential doubt in, oh, April, and in a sense really ceased to exist, since a camera that doesn’t take picture is like the tree falling without an audience–what’s the point?

The point is I have no camera. Sorry, focus. That camera that died had a good run, since it was a film camera that I got in (I think) the nineties. Yes, film. I’m not much of a photographer–I rarely even miss the ability to take photos, except on occasions when someone I know does something photogenic, like the Idle Tigers live on stage, be-glittered and brilliant. Oh, last night was very very good, and it did make me sad to be camera-less.

I have been for some time ready to take the leap into digital photography (once more, bravely into 2002!) I even have money set aside to purchase a simple yet effective model. But I can’t *stand* the thought of losing half a day to comparison shopping, learning what a megapixel is or whether I care about them, and why, being chased by Future Shop employees, eventually buying something I saw in the first hour of the jaunt for $20 too much because I’m just so tired, and then getting teary-eyed over the warantee.

I am not a good technology shopper.

Please please, if you know the name and model number of a simple yet effective digital camera, tell it to me and I will go purchase it (maybe also tell me where to go?) Yes, I am outsourcing my thinking on this matter, but really, almost anyone’s going to be better at it than I am.

All this goes also for laser printers.

In the meantime, sometimes I get photographed by professionals, and that’s really both easier and more effective, because this shot here by Donna Santos is far better than I normally look. Also some other lovely authors you might recognize.

Wear your pink petticoat
RR

July 11th, 2008

Rose-coloured Reviews Spice Route

I thought maybe I’d ease into reviewing with something I could have other opinions on, ie., a restaurant. So when I took time out of the whimpering over my proofs to go toSpice Route for Summerlicious I took a notebook and solicited opinions from everyone at the table.

Before I even got to the table though, I was impressed by the big fenced-off patio, the low arch of the door with two wide torches (real flames!) beside it. This place was rumoured to have been a massively expensive renovation, and it sure did look nice. Having heard those rumours, and looked at the street number of the pub next door, I was 99% sure I was in the right place, but technically Spice Route has no sign or number of it’s own. Was I missing it?

I went in and asked for our reservation, which they had–I was in the right place. “I’m 15 minutes late, they’re probably waiting already,” I told the hostess. “Oh, you’re not really late,” she cooed. Oh, so they run by that sort of time-scale here. I apologized to everyone when I found them–15 minutes waiting is still rude by my lights. Then we all agreed that it was weird not to have the name posted outside, and even *removed* from the menus beside the door, though they were otherwise identical to the ones we were looking at.

If this were a real review, I would’ve paid attention to everything on the menu, but I forgot, with my focus on the Summerlicious Menu. Which is pretty wide-ranging and interesting. And they make you order three courses right up front, so you have to put a lot of energy into figuring out your desires.

Those decided, you can appreciate the room–out*stand*ing. Huge and multi-level, plus that awesome patio (I would’ve liked to sit on the patio, but since I was late, I deserved not to get to vote), there’s all kinds of fun things going on: a waterfall, a big sculpture made out of what appeared to be jute rope, flat-screen TVs pasted (probably not literally pasted) flat to the ceilings above the bar, showing underwater cameras of fish and coral. Hella cool, is my astute note on the room.

Of the four first-course options, we covered three–the citrus salad was interesting, the tempura calamari good and abundant (although there was some question as to whether the accompanying “Lemon Scallion Aioli” wasn’t in fact tartar sauce). I can tell more about the Spiced Chicken Lettuce Wraps with Brandied Hoisin Sauce, since that’s what I had–it was adorable! They put the lettuce cups in a tiny bamboo steamer tray. Which makes no sense, but is adorable. They put the sauce in a tiny sake cup. It was hoisin sauce straight out of the bottle, which *is* quite good, but no sign of the rumoured brandying. I think that was just as well.

Ok, the bathrooms: nuts! Instead of a ladies room and a mens room, there was a row of individual bathrooms with their own doors, toilets and sinks, each labelled M or W. They are very very big and lovely, far nicer and larger than mine at home, but they all have uncurtained floor-to-ceiling windows… Ah! Apparently, the windows open onto a cordoned-off alleyway, where the restaurant has installed pretty fountains and grasses and things. Clever, but I betcha it’s gone wrong a time or two. Anyway, so now I’ve peed in front of giant window–great! On the way back to the table, I couldn’t help but wonder about later in the evening when the place becomes a club (it very obviously could be a great one with that layout–the dj booth was up a half level; you could only see his feet!) When the place is crowded and lots of boozy people want to pee, are these large elaborate restrooms really the most efficent use of space? There aren’t that many; I envision massive lines.

The main courses were an interesting variety, but the vegetarian option seemed sort of lame–brown rice and kimchee? I love kimchee more than most things, but as the main component of the dish…weird. I had Indian Spiced Roast Chicken with Naan Bread, Diced Tomato, Onion and Mango Chutney. It was quite good roast chicken–a leg and a thigh, I think, though I’m not too good with poultry anatomy and they dimmed the lights several times over the course of the meal. It wasn’t spicy at all, no more so than a good Sunday dinner roast chicken is, which was a disappointment, and there were either bone splinters or bits of char or…I don’t know, something that wasn’t food that I had to keep spitting out (dead sexy, I know). Like I say, it was dark. But tasty. And good chutney/tomato thing, and good baby bok choy, although baby bok choy had nothing to do with the rest of the meal. It was just the vegetable they were serving with everything. The naan was pretty meh–it’s one of my favourite things on earth when it’s served fresh from the tandoor, and pretty close when it’s at least hot. This tasted like it came out of a package, and anyway, it didn’t really seem to go that well with the dry chicken pieces. Basmati rice as the starch might have been the way to go…

The Mongolian Sirloin Beef with Dry Chili, Scallions, Fresh Ginger and Crispy Rice Sticks that my companions had looked quite good, and was apparently very spicy. I don’t eat beef, but I tried some of the sauce on a cabbage leaf and approved.

It was around dessert that I started to feel as if I were dying. I know, we’re all dying, but I mean at an accelerated rate. I think this was unrelated to the cuisine–I haven’t been sleeping much–but it affect my enjoyment of the three cute little round balls of sorbet that I received. They were tropical flavours, and very nice though I couldn’t identify any of them. There were bits of fruit and “sesame praline” all over and a sprig of mint, all very classy. Also a fortune cookie, which was stale, containing the sage advice “Quarrels can be avoided if you are tactful.”

My friends had the Raspberry Chocolate Brownie with Caramelized Mandarins and Tangerine Cream. They weren’t too interested in the brownie (“it’s not really a brownie,” someone said) but the bits of fruit and cream were appreciated. We also had some fancy teas, which were quite good and came with an elaborate tray of sugars and milks.

So, overall, a win–rather tasty interesting food in a really cool environment, for not all *that* much money. I couldn’t help but think, being the inherently gauche person that I am, that everything we’d ordered is also available at The Pickle Barrel (seriously, everything; check me), and for about the same amount of money, although you’d end up with about 3x as much food. Which is weird, because that lends one to think the better bargain would be PB, but there was exactly enough food at SR. On one hand, I do feel smug when I walk out of restaurant with my little foam tray, thinking I don’t have to make lunch tomorrow, but really, it’s getting hard to do dinner and dancing, dinner and a show, dinner and anything when you are hauling along half your mammoth salmon steak. I though the portions at SR were really elegant and ideal.

A word on the service at SR, which has been remarked on very favourably in reviews. Our waiter was quite nice and adept, and several other staff helped him out, but he was clearly run off his feet. Maybe it was the Summerliciousness of it all, but whatever tables he had been assigned, it was obviously too much. There seemed to be certain set lines he was supposed to say to get us into the spirit, but since he was actually panting at certain points, some spirit was lacking. I felt a bit bad asking for anything at all, though he did manage beautifully despite the over-burdening.

Overall, yay to Spice Route, then, which seems strange to say since I’ll probably never go back. But it was good to go the once.

He could not know another tiger
RR

July 9th, 2008

Proof of art

I am now in possession of the final page proofs of Once, along with an absurdly lovely Advanced Reading Copy. I was really thrilled to get this stuff, waiting to see what the copy-edit looked like and HOLD A BOUND BOOK IN MY HANDS, and yet as soon as it arrived, I felt a strange sensation of doom.

Why? The pages are gorgeous, the copy-edit thorough and sensitive. As someone who has worked for several years in book production, I not only knew ahead of time what to expect, I have made several resolutions over the years as to how I would behave.

My resolutions in terms of dealing with page proofs and copy-edits are myriad but that basically boil down to: don’t be a lunatic. The end of the publishing process, when the manuscript starts to a) look like a book, and b) be more the responsibility of the publishing house than the author, is generally when writers start to lose their minds. They might think their artistic integrity is being degraded by the insertion of a hyphen into the word “email.” They wonder if “couch” shouldn’t really be “sofa,” if the text wouldn’t look better in Verdanah font, if the serial comma isn’t sort of fascist, and, most importantly, if the book doesn’t suck and couldn’t just be rewritten now, in just a few extra days, with a pen over the proofs.

These are, of course, hysterical displacement activities, busywork for a mind that has been deeply immersed in, and totally in control of, a project that is about to float out of range. It’s as good as you could make it, but faced with losing the opportunity for good-making, you lose faith. You fear the unknown, the time-after-book. I think this is why people cry at weddings and graduations.

It’s a legit emotional reaction (well, that’s what I’m going with, anyway) if you recognize it as such. I mean, with all this knowledge, I’m surprised that I’m feeling the hysteria of hating most of the book right now, but I’m not going to displace that hysteria in the above-mentioned ways. I’m sure there are some problems, but who knows if, in my hysterical state, those are the ones I’m seeing right now. I’ve watched tonnes of authors rework paragraphs and pages at the last minute, only to turn in marginally improved, or marginally degraded, work.

So I’m going to get by proofs back to Biblioasis on time, with few disagreements and minimal changes. A bad book is not going to become a good one at page proofs–no margin is that wide, never mind that a production person will come after you with a tire iron. Even though I’m not seeing it right now, I’ll just have to take it on faith that I wasn’t crazy all those months and years I worked on this, and that it’s probably going to be just fine. That’s what I’m going with, anyway.

How could I forget you / how could I forget you?
RR

July 8th, 2008

Vibes

Of course, I exist in a perpetual state of vague well-wishing to all Rose-coloured readers, and indeed, most of humanity–I hope, despite my occasional moments of snark, you have felt the good vibes. But today I shall focus and amplify the wishing of wellness on those who are currently undergoing periodontal surgery. Chin up, my friend–or down, or whatever is most comfortable.

Let’s go down to the fashion show
RR

July 6th, 2008

Onrush

So many lovely new blogs this summer. Shouldn’t everybody be out in the sunshine? Canadians are funny.

Ideal Tigers is the work of musician/scholar/example-to-us-all Ross Hawkins, and it contains examples of all his roles in society, such as this:

“What I want to know is, where have all the fools gone? Where are the jesting ne’er do wells? Where’s Puck? And most importantly, where’s the trickster? In another age, joking might have been a courtly, even stately practice; or it might have been a means of accessing the sacred. Could it really be that pranking now is mostly the business of morons on MTV, office zaniness, or kids beating people up and filming it on their mobile? I hope not, and that’s why I’d be very grateful to be the vicitm of a great divine prank.” (April 1, 2008)

The blog dwells especially on Ross’s one-man dream-factory/band, the Idle Tigers. You could, if you were inclined, see and hear those tigers, this Friday night at the Drake Hotel. It should be the best kind of bizarre.

David Whitton has a blog…website…thing with amusing anecdotes about music, cool/disturbing art (take a real close look at the kissing couple), and most importantly, links to a bunch of his stories. My favourite is “Robin”

“Everyone worked in financial services nowadays. My mom, my dad, my aunts, my uncles, my parents’ friends. Even the Goat worked in a bank when he wasn’t making art films. If you don’t fall off a balcony, you’ll end up in financial services eventually.”

But I’ll let you choose for yourself. I guess this is the other best kind of bizarre. I guess I shouldn’t hierarchize.

Alex Boyd has a new movie-review blog at Digital Popcorn. I can’t much speak to the accuracy of the film reviews, because I have seen exactly one of the dozens he’s reviewed so far (it was Sicko and I agreed with that review 100%). This is another proof of the already impressive thesis that I have crap taste in movies (if I had my life to live over again, I might not see both Harold and Kumar movies, but then again, I might.) But the reviews are a joy to read even if you don’t know the films, because Alex writes like this:

“Some men are cruel and some men are pretty darn OK and just play the harmonica or whatever. And, it’s a pretty darn sad world when the cruel ones get ahead. In the final ten minutes or so the enemy invades, and even our best stock footage doesn’t stop them.” (*From Here to Eternity,” review June 24, 2008)

Even better, he also wrote a beautiful book of poems called Making Bones Walk, which I spent the afternoon reading in the park:

“If I demand of the air that my head turns
back to look at a woman, the air holds my chin,
turns it like a lover.”
from “Shapes of the Air”

There will always be reasons to go out, and reasons to stay in.

I’ll cover you
RR

July 4th, 2008

Everything is alarming: more on stories

I was talking recently with a writer who writes mainly highly technical instructional books. She asked what I wrote, and when I told her, it was clear that stories were not something she dealt with often. However, she is well-read and gracious, and after a moment’s thought she offered me what she had enjoyed about the stories she’d read: that, being so brief, short stories can be event-focused and not bogged down in character development. She mentioned a couple of O. Henry stories that focus far more on *what* happens to the characters than *who* they are.

I was stunned, this being so very antithetical to how I write. Characters are what I care about: who they are, how they develop, what changes them and why. I care about event, too, but only for it’s human affect and aftermath. And yet this woman wasn’t wrong. The story form certainly permits a sort of elegantly epigrammic style (“epigram” sounds reductive, but I don’t mean to be–I just mean a story carefully spun around a precise nut of truth. A story that can be summarized easily.) The stories of O. Henry, and Guy de Maupassant are still stunning after a hundred or so years, and I like them a lot. I don’t know if people still write like that very much, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t; there’s still more to tell.

That’s what I think now, having recovered from my bewilderment of the conversation mentioned above. At the time, I think I seemed confused, and I can only hope I was polite. I think I live pretty far into my own work, and though I *try* to read widely, the authors that I come to most are the ones that I’m trying to learn from, the ones who do what I want to do. It’s good to remember that that’s not all there is, or all that’s good.

And yet I was startled also by a compliment that I received from a woman who’d read a story of mine and liked it, even though she “doesn’t like short stories.” I had a knee-jerk reaction opposite to the one above, that the story is infinitely various and that there is a story to suit the tastes of everyone. Just for a flash, I thought that not liking stories would be like not liking shirts–you just need to find your style.

Nonsense, of course. Short stories *are* infinitely various, but they are various within the parameters of prose sentences occupying no more than about 30 pages or so (that’s as bare bones as I can get on this definition–dare you to strip it more). If your “style” is prolonged engagement, or flashes of intensity, or lots of things that aren’t pages of prose sentences, then you won’t like stories–and if what love is being topless, then there will never be a shirt you really love as much. Which is sad for me, but true nontheless (hmm, I can’t unmuddle this paragraph, so I’ll just add the disclaimer that I really like wearing shirts).

I think the point of this post is that I need to be a bit more flexible and openminded. But also, that people are talking about, and thinking about stories, and that people (besides me) *are* flexible and openminded–short stories may not be everybody’s preferred genre, but a surprising number can appreciate them, if they choose to read.

Oh, good, I’m glad that turned out to be the point of this post, since it’s so positive. I’ll leave it there.

I am the rain king
RR

July 3rd, 2008

Scream scream

Hey, the Scream in High Park starts tonight, with the Alumni Night at Supermarket. I am sad that I can’t go, so maybe you could go instead and tell me about it? It’s going to feature more established poets reading the work of the new generation, which is a pretty cool concept. One the poets being read is Emily Schultz, who will also be officially launching the Joyland site tonight. And the Scream archive launch is happening also. You see why I’m sad.

What I am able to attend, vis The Scream, is the Seen Writing Youth Event. Obviously, I am not youth, so my role will be modest, non-participatory, really a cue to action: a still-life of reading to inspire the young writers (one hopes). If this sounds a little hard to picture, you obviously haven’t been reading the wonderful Seen Reading website, where Julie Wilson spins tales about readers every day. Anyway, it’ll no doubt be cool, so if you know any youth, send’em out!
Saturday, July 5, 2008, 4:30pm – 6:00pm, Tinto Cafe, 89 Roncesvalles Avenue

I’ve been livin’ for ya since the age of 17
RR

July 1st, 2008

Distressing Lack of Narrative

On the sidewalk in front of an apartment building, this morning I encountered a cardboard box filled with mugs, labelled in magic marker, “Free Mugs!” This is not interesting, of course–the box contained the same mismatched promotional and gift mugs that everyone over 20 ends up with unless their house burns to the ground. We are all periodically putting these mugs in boxes and leaving them somewhere labelled “Free!” in the hopes that a teenager or fire victim will be able to make use of them, thereby rendering us un-guilty of “wasting” “perfectly good” mugs.

No surprises there. But the box had a subtitle: “Please do not cherry-pick. Take all (or none!)”

Why?

Aside from being completely unenforceable (I looked up at the building, but no one looked back), what could be the reason for this? Was there, buried in the bottom of the box, one really good mug that did not have the name of a florist on the side, as incentive to take the rest? Was there a unity of form that I was missing? Though I in fact fit into one of the categories on the sign just fine (I wanted “none” of the mugs), something in me suggested that an appropriate reaction to this aggression would be to take just one mug (the one with the orange and yellow and blue flowers) and sneak away cackling.

Why why why?

I actually have stuff I need to be doing and somewhere else I need to be, but I am posting this because it is *really bothering me*. Please send me a logical explanation of this scenario, so I can stop thinking about it. Otherwise, I worry I’ll go back to the box and see if all or none or some other number are there now.

All the lies in the book
RR

June 29th, 2008

Rebecca Reviews Muriella Pent

Note on the reviewer–I have for some time being trying to write a real book review. I have a *lot* of trouble expressing opinions. This is not to say I’m not opinionated, but I get stuck fast, especially when I feel I might be judged or, horrors, argued with. I generally avoid making objective statements about things that are important to me, and here you know we’re talking about books. I think books are one of the most important things in the universe, and I greatly fear getting them wrong.

*However*, books are stronger than I am, I’m sure–they can stand a little misjudgement. And if I would presume to write them, I would presume also to understand something about how they work, and by what criteria they might operate. So I wanted to try a review, and I’ve been on the lookout for a book I thought I might be able to work with. I chose Russell Smith’s Muriella Pent for a few reasons, mainly that I liked it a lot. I thought it would be easier to find interesting, witty, insightful things to say about a piece of fiction that is itself interesting, witty, and insightful. That’s a cheat, and I know real reviewers don’t have that perogative–one of the many reasons why I am not one. I also thought it’d be useful to review something by a writer whose back-catalogue I’m familiar with. I’ve actually read *all* Smith’s other fiction books (though not his fashion writing) and am likely by any standards a fan. So this whole process is wildly biased, but hey, it’s a start.

Ok, a review of *Muriella Pent* in 1500 words of semi-astuteness. Ok. Ok, go!

Muriella Pent is a wealthy fiftyish widow. Her children are grown, and she lives alone in a stuffy gated community, trying to fill her days with gardening, which proves unsatisfying, and the local arts council. Muriella once had some artistic ambitions, and she sees the council as an opportunity to learn as well as help.
Besides Muriella, there are three other points of view: Brian, a fellow council member who has just finished his BA in English; Julia, the daughter of one of Muriella’s friends, who also knows Brian from school; and Marcus Royston, a poet from the Caribbean that the council brings to Toronto for an artistic residency. Due to funding cuts, the only actual residence available for the residency is in the maid’s quarters of Muriella’s enormous house.
There’s the premise, and it has a fair amount of interest. Marcus, who has lived through a revolution, and its grinding bureaucratic aftermath, still believes in the purity of the artistic impulse. His journal writing and poems—inserted between chapters—convince the reader that he is the real deal, but his drinking, womanizing, and disrespect of political agendas quickly alienates the desperately policitically correct council. Royston—and, one can imagine, Smith—is disgusted by the idea that artistic quality can only be measured its usefulness in achieving social aims: “building community” and “giving voice to the voiceless” are some of the disdained ideas.
There’s a lot of ideas in this book. Debates at meetings of the embattled council, bantering between honour students, diary entries of urban observation are disturbing and hilarious, by turns or in tandem, but they don’t move the plot at any great clip. A set piece of a public library press conference features a homeless man eating all the cheese (“The man had a raincoat which was still largely coherent…”), a paraphrase of comments that Jane Jacobs made, and one more nail in unpopular poet’s coffin, but in terms of pure plotting the book could have done without it. In terms of pure plotting, the book could have done without most of its best moments, actually.
So MP is not a plot-drive n book then. I think it is on the razor-sharp edge between satire and emotional realism, and I think that’s why it’s awesome. To write a decent satire, you have to both love and hate your subject—a straight lampoon is one laugh only. The characters in MP are intellectually and sensually vivid, in contrast with the world they live in, which is full of pretension, posturing, aggression and stupidity. The wild and wide digressions are the best bits, full of bite and sympathy both. Early on, we have a car full of people so tense they are vibrating, all snarking and vying for attention while poor Muriella struggles to merge on the 401 in rush hour. Later, the horror of running into someone you know at the video store and being judged by whatever you happened to have in your hand:
“I like Catherine Deneuve,” she said softly.
“Why?” said Jason.
“Why? I don’t know. Why do you like any actors?”
“Well, usually when we like things,” Jason said a little too loudly, “we are able to articulate some reason…”
The characters are the heart of the book, and I think most of them are remarkable achievements. Before reading, it wasn’t the scathing commentary on arts funding that worried me, but rather the idea that a white, fortyish guy would be writing from the POV of a middle-aged woman, a twentyish woman, and a Caribbean-born man of mixed race. I think Smith does a credible job on all counts, though not flawless. Muriella is probably the most diverse, most sympathetic character he ever created—she’s sweet and self-conscious and not without irony, yet she’s obsessed with her clothes and she calls people lovey (I didn’t think people other than Mrs. Thurston Howell did that). When Smith re-released his pornographic novel, Diana, I heard him speak about how he wrote that book in part to learn about writing about women from within a female body, about sex from a woman’s point of view. You can see those lessons put to good use here—Muriella fully inhabits her body, fully wears her clothes. She even feels her grief over her husband’s death in her body. Sometimes it’s too much, though, this embrace of female physicality, especially with Julia’s character. She’s so so so beautiful, and every other character wants to sleep with her, so she doesn’t get a lot of other characteristics. Actually, that’s not fair—her intelligence and willful self-neglect, self-destructiveness, are evident, but given short shrift. Julia actually quotes from her own diary at one point, which is an unenjoyable narrative shorthand for she’s very bright and insightful, see?
I could have used a little more time on Julia’s mind instead of so much on her nipples—“She did not put on a bra…to show off a little,” “The top was thin as film, and tight across her small breasts,” etc. Neither Julia nor Muriella wears a bra. In fact, no woman in this novel who neither morbidly obese nor a tool of the patriarchy chooses to be so “unencumbered.” This is fantasy: Toronto is the most over air-conditioned place I’ve ever been, and the subways are crowded—and I found it distracting.
Marcus Royston is a complicated and nuanced creation. He’s pathetic and sympathetic, passive aggressive and irresponsible. You like him, but he drinks too much and sleeps with everybody and calls himself a poet while writing little poetry. His sad patience (he winks at his favourite prostitute as he walks towards his boss’s office the day he knows he’ll be fired) and his observations on the seasons (end of October: “baths are drawn, doors are closed”) show a real poet at work, and the actual poems here are pretty damn good. But there isn’t enough of his point of view for me, especially in the second half of the book. It’s more Muriella’s story all along, and Brian and Julia take up more and more space. Marcus kind of gets shifted to the side, a catalyst spent in causation, burning out. We don’t know what his life entailed before coming to Toronto—people don’t ask him a lot of questions, and his note-taking is limited to present-day observation, and poetic musing.
The fourth POV character is Smith’s stock-in-trade—Brian, the literature and video-game loving, pretentious, self-conscious jerk/sweetheart who sees “nothing but humiliation” in pretty girls, and wants to write “such a novel of sadness and devastation” as revenge for that humiliation. He’s funny and awful and totally familiar, especially when bantering with his best (only?) friend, Jason. If I could write young men this well, I don’t know that I’d ever bother doing anything else. You don’t see Tiger Woods knocking himself out on the soccer field, you know? Listen to this, and I mean really, read it aloud and listen:
“Why are you wearing that hat?”
“What’s wrong with my hat?” Jason touched it front and back without both hands as if straightening it in a mirror. He looked very serious and Brian laughed.
“Does it come with spurs and chaps, or a little badge? Is it Halloween?”
“What’s your ambient name?”
“I have other hats, you know, you could wear, like a medieval helmet, with a visor, it comes with a whole suit or armour, and a shield, you could walk around like that if you liked. Or how about a hobo costume, with overalls and the stick and the little bundle in a red handkerchief?”
“Shut up,” said Jason. “Chicks like hats like this.”
I know boys like that, though honestly, most of them are not quite as funny.

Four points of view, two countries, one mansion, two basement apartments, a drunken party, some sexual dalliances, some cameos from previous Russell Smith books (yep, am a fan), too much booze and a lot intellectual posturing: could you forgive me for saying that I think this novel is a beautiful tribute to Canadian ideals not quite working out? We Canadians haven’t quite nailed down what our literature or our country should look like, what we actually mean when we say “Cultural Mosaic,” or why we keep segregating ourselves culturally—the comments on “Little Malta” are pretty emblematic—when we like the idea of unity so much. The way these characters ebb and flow and refuse to define themselves is very definitely Canadian to me. And by the end of the book, all characters are shaken and surprised and, mainly, expanded by the mixing up that comes from going beyond cultural definitions and engaging in real life. Pretty impressive for a work of fiction.

Oh my goodness, reviewers work hard. I’m spent.

That’s not my name
RR