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

October 31st, 2007

Hallowe’en

Ok, I’m not exactly the vampire that I planned to be when I realized that I was getting my braces off the week before Hallowe’en. Yesterday I went back to the orthodontist’s to pick up my retainer and they informed me that it is not just for at night, it’s for all the time unless I am eating, brushing my teeth or doing something very very important and enunciation intensive and brief, like my wedding vows or something. I will have to give up grazing on snacks, chewing gum (I whined for a few hours about this as if I were dying. I realized later what a wanker I was being!) and speaking clearly. On the upside, the retainer is in fact nearly invisible. Everyone always *said* the braces were invisible, but they were lying.

I suppose I could’ve invoked some sort wedding-status for the office wide costume constest that just took place, but I was over the wankery by that point, and just dolled myself up in purple glitter cape, purple eyeshadow, purple glitter false eyelashes, black lipstick, with splashes of glitter blood all over my chin, throat and sternum, and went as an orthontically challenged vampire, with my retainer firmly in place and my fangs in the retainer case. My prize (participant!) is a sack of Hallowe’en candy, if anybody needs any candy.

You might have noticed around Rose-coloured many mentions of my lovely friend and blogger, Kerry Clare. It would most likely be Kerry who introduced the very useful word “wanker” to my vocabularly (see above) and, even better, has a new story “The New Peppermint” in the fall issue of The New Quarterly and even though my issue has not arrived yet (me and Canada Post, it’s a love/hate thing) I know it’s brilliant.

What are you dressed as?

Trapped and well-concealed
RR

October 29th, 2007

Back

Sorry about that lull in there, apparently I had things to do other than blog last week, though honestly, in retrospect, I can’t imagine what. Long lost friends (Chrissy Nogo makes a guess appearance!), quality coffee (like cinnamon), Hallowe’en adventures (caramel everywhere!), new friends, scones (courtesy of Kerry—I guess I wasn’t bored. Oh, of course I’ve been writing. And reading, lots of reading.

I just started James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late, which is less like a poem than you’d think from the title. I’m not far in, but so far it’s pretty gritty and funny and dark, and written in the decidedly unpoetic Scottish lower-class vernacular. It really is almost like a another language. I don’t have terrible trouble with it, partly due to my years-ago allegiance to the writing of Irvine Walsh (first I watched Trainspotting dubbed into French, then dubbed into Anglocized English, finally in the original Scottish English. Then I read the book a couple times, then I saw the play. All of these experiences were brilliant, but entirely different.) Also, I live alone, so when the dialect gets particularly challenging I can always read aloud, which clarifies most things.

Still, I’m much slower with this book than most. Even when I understand what’s going on, the words do make you stop and think. For example, you can easily glean in context that Kelman’s characters use the word “weans” to mean “little kids.” But what could the etymology of such a word be? I’ve come up with two hypothoses: a) it’s a slang contraction “wee ones,” or b) it refers to the verb, “to wean,” to accustom a child to food other than (breast) milk… Anybody know?

I wonder, too, does such concentration on constituent parts of the story take a reader out of the heart of the matter?

All the lies in the book
RR

October 23rd, 2007

Another harmless addition

Perhaps because my apartment has no hot water, the rain, and having my folded umbrella spontaneously and violently unfold as I got onto the bus, the open end in the face of the startled bus driver, and the handle in the chest of winded me, I am not in a very good mood. And so I will follow on from yesterday’s candy and candy blog post with another website recommendation that chronicles a (fairly) harmless indulgence: television.

When I left home in 1997 and the thinking-man’s sitcom was having a moment in the spotlight (I hear it’s having another one now—true?) Sports Night, News Radio, I heard Fraiser though I never watched that one. I didn’t limit myself to shows that require actual thought, either; I recall being quite a fan of Dharma and Greg for reasons that now escape me. And then there was the cultural heroin that was Friends.

When I moved to Montreal, I was probably seriously addicted to close to a dozen half-hour wonders. Um, I did actually go out of the house in high school, but mainly on weekends, when there was nothing good on.

Possibly because they were blinded by their grief that I was moving to another province, my parents agreed to a lunatic project: they would tape all the shows I would miss (except Friends—no one has ever wanted to endorse my theory that that show is funny) and I would watch them in an orgy of loserdom over Thanksgiving and winter break. This continued into spring term, when they *mailed* me tapes (and homemade brownies, which my brother had individually wrapped in plastic). I can’t remember where I found a VCR to watch them on.

Anyway, quite obviously, this arrangement couldn’t last, and second year or thereabouts, I was on my own. The “favourite shows” list whittled down fast, and I learned to rely on heresay and memory. I can’t remember quite when I discovered Mighty Big TV, but it was a happy day: a website of meticulous tv play-by-plays. I think a lot of people read shows they’ve actually already seen, just for the very funny, sarcastic recappers MBTV employed, but I eventually came to love it as a tv surrogate. I adored The West Wing for years having seen only a couple episodes—-17 pages of recap is just as good, I felt, except I often forgot what the characters looked like.

After I moved to TO, I gave up on tv in both forms, visual and written, until the day Studio 60 came to town (sidenote: are you noticing a certain shared element amongst my favourite shows? Of my favourite *writers* in the world, only Aaron Sorkin writes for a non-print medium) and then I realized my broken tv wasn’t up to the task. I went in search of my old reliable MBTV and found that it was new, bigger and better, and owned by NBC under a different name: Television Without Pity. Still great, still thorough, still snarky. There are no shows that I am addicted to these days, sadly: even ones I like, I just like when I see them, I’m not worried about Liz Lemon’s life falling into disrepair without me. But sometimes it’s just fun to read about tv. I really do love it, just from afar.

Wow, such happy memories of being well-entertained. I feel better. Thanks for reading!

No room at the Holiday Inn
RR

October 22nd, 2007

Liquor is quicker…

but it doesn’t really taste as good as candy.

I gakked this link fromKate—Candy Blog! Reviews of candy! Some of it’s pretty esoteric, but there’s some classics, too; last week there was a review of Reese’s Pieces. But the site doesn’t exactly serve a pracitical puprose in my life: I don’t buy much candy, or any really. I just enjoy the info—I like to know what’s out there, just in case there’s a candy emergency. It’s entertaining, too—the author is a playwright, articulate and amusing in her candy passion.

Instead of “I don’t buy candy” I used to say, “I don’t eat candy,” but that is such a giant lie. No, I do not need my own package of M&Ms, but I wouldn’t mind *one* of yours (a blue one). I haven’t eaten a full-size Mars bar (my favourite) in a million years, but when the workplace Hallowe’en bucket comes out, there’s definitely a fun-size Mars with my name on it. I find that lots of adults, especially women, feel compelled to say, “Candy? Meh, why would I want that?” for fear of looking, I dunno, immature? Fat? But pass around a Pot of Gold box after dinner, and people will study the map is if they are on an archeological dig.

Candy is special.

As a child, I could never go in pursuit of candy (what is walking distance from my house was: corn), and almost never did it come to me. Hallowe’en candy, yes, from approved neighbours and the also whatever my folks bought for our non-existent trick-or-treaters. Also jellybeans and smarties at birthday parties, and candy canes and jellybeans for Christmas (I really like jelly beans), marzipan and strange “jelly slice” candies for Hannukkah, and gelt at all Jewish holidays. Oh, and one real candy bar of whatever variety I wanted for the annual school hike (it was on the packing list, so my folks *had* to get it for me). The hike was held inexplicably in February. You spend 8 hours basically falling down a snowy hill, and your reward was to unwrap your hotdog weiner from its Saran Wrap at campfire, and then either set it on fire or drop it in the coals, and then eat your Caramilk bar in peace.

But that was it–my candy intake for the year. And it’s kind of engrained in me now, candy is special, for special occasions, you can’t just have it whenever. Except my colleague gave me gumdrops and caramels for brace-off last week, and they are right here in my drawer and…

Candy is dandy. And Hallowe’en is soon!

Incidents and accidents / hints and allegations
RR