March 18th, 2010
Collectors’ Items
I am so pleased to announce that my very first chapbook, Road Trips is forthcoming with Frog Hollow Press. It’ll be out in May–maybe in time for my birthday! The book consists of two stories, “From an Eastern University” and “The Least of Love”, and I am very honoured to have them published in what will no doubt be a beautiful edition, as all FHP publications are. So exciting! If you too are very very excited, you can preorder from the title link above!
An open secret around here is that I have written a great many stories about a character named Isobel, and even thought I was writing a collection about her at one point, although that has not worked out too well (*yet*–I’m certainly not done trying). Anyway, “The Least of Love” is one of those stories. Quite often, people get excited when I tell them certain stories of mine are connected, but other times I explain the connections and they don’t care at all–a story begins on the first page and ends on the last for them, and that’s that. For the sake of those in the first category (if any) I thought I’d list the (published) Isobel stories here–then you can feel free to ignore and read the stories as standalones, or to track them all down and read in order. Or not to read them at all, that’s totally an option too.
These are in the order they happen chronologically in time for the characters, not the order they were written or published in. Places you can find them are beside the titles, should you care to do so.
“Dykadelic”–forthcoming in *The Milan Review” (May 2010)
“Fruit Factory”–*The New Quarterly* 102 Summer 2007; *Best Canadian Stories 2008* Oberon Press; *Once* Biblioasis 2008
“ContEd”–*Coming Attractions 2008* Oberon Press; *Once*; *The Fiddlehead* Summer 2009
“Christmas with My Mother”–*Earlit Shorts 4* Rattling Books December 2009; *Best Canadian Stories 2009*
“Far from Downtown”–forthcoming in *The New Quarterly* summer 2010
“The Least of Love”–forthcoming in *Road Trips* from Frog Hollow Press
So now you know, if you collect these stories, where you can collect them from, including a book that is itself going to be a beautiful collectors’ item.
If you, you know, dig that sort of thing.
RR
March 17th, 2010
Rose-coloured reviews *The Blind Side*
And The Blind Side is a *pretty* good movie. Not, like, amazing or anything, but for a sweet, funny, no-hard-questions-no-hard-answers film, which I am sure was exactly what the makers set out for, this was a great success.
In truth, I knew as soon as I saw the first trailer last year that I would like this movie–I am a sucker for sweet, funny, no-hard-questions-no-hard-answers films. I held out as long as I could.
In case anyone on planet earth doesn’t know this, The Blind Side is about a poor black teenager named Michael, who was taken from his drug-addicted mom at a young age, who has run away from every foster home he was ever in, and is about to wear out his welcome on the friend’s couch he currently occupies.
The friend, Big Tony, offers one last favour–when he takes his own son to a ritzy Christian private school to plead for the boy’s admission, he takes Michael too, and mentions in passing the boy’s troubles. Both are admitted to the school and become, apparently, the only black kids there, although bizarrely, we never see Big Tony’s son (or Big Tony) again. Whatever happened to that kid? And, while I’m at it, who paid *either* boy’s tuition (Big Tony is a mechanic and unlikely to afford one, let alone two, years at such a place).
Ok, unlikely beginnings out of the way, Michael catches the interest of a kindhearted motormouthed student, SJ Tuohy (oh my goodness, that kid is cute, but only in a movie way. A real kid who talked that much would have to be periodically locked in a cupboard). When the family is driving home late one night, they see Michael walking alone in the cold, and SJ’s mom Leigh Ann (Ms. Bullock) stops and demands to know the situation. When it becomes clear that Michael doesn’t really have a situation–walking alone in the cold is pretty much the size of things–Bullock and husband (played by Tim McGraw, who I always thought was a singer, but does a fine job here) take the boy home.
He never leaves, and although he’s silent and awkward and seemingly often quite miserable, he accedes to Bullock’s demands that he accept new clothes from her, to his teachers’ demands that he learn something at school, and eventually to the football coach’s demands that he learn to be a tough, quick, aggressive player.
I’m a little disturbed that the movie presents Michael as basically devoid of volition, or even survival instinct (before Leigh Ann lectures him, he is content to get pummelled on the playing field). Michael Lewis’s book, on which the film was based, is rumoured to give Michael a little more credit for his own success, but since I haven’t read it, I can’t hazard a further guess.
But it doesn’t matter that the film’s Michael has almost no agency, because the Tuohys are *so* nice that anything they would want for Michael is going to be the best thing possible. That sounds like hyperbole, and in real life it would be, but in the movies, people can any way we want them to, and sometimes, it’s nice to see people who are 100% kind and generous, 100% of the time. It’s how I’d be if I could, and since I can’t, nice of Sandra Bullock to do it for me.
These actors are talented, and they make the supermoral Tuohy family as convincing as possible. I liked even the daughter, Collins, who had almost no lines but delivered all that she had with beautiful simplicity. I liked the conversation she has with her mom about whether having Michael in the house makes her uncomfortable. She admits that kids at school give her a hard time, but insists, several times, that it doesn’t matter.
That’s the right point of view, just a hard one to take, especially when you are 17. And we never *see* the kids teasing her–we only see her firm decision to rise above. I suspect part of the reason people (myself included) love this movie is that it makes it seem easy to be good—everything hard (including almost all of Michael’s miserable childhood) happens off screen.
Let us not forget that this film is highly Conservative (I think I’m using that big C correctly, right?) The social workers, the public school system, public housing and drug rehabilitation programs, all have failed Michael. The only solution to society’s ills–bad schools, dangerous neighbourhoods, drugs, poverty, racism, and violence, to name a few–is for very rich people to take it upon themselves to solve them, one sweetly innocent and earnest teenaged victim at a time.
You know what? I’ll stop with the cynicism now, because this is (more or less) a true story, so some people actually did actually did do the things that happen in *The Blind Side* and they must be extraordinary, and certainly inspiring. I just think maybe we should extrapolate much from people who are extraordinary or, indeed, people who own a dozen Taco Bell franchises.
March 15th, 2010
It’s come to my attention…
That some young Canadian musicians took K’naan’s Waving Flag song, possibly the most perfect song to play on the radio in a good while, and made a slightly less good version to benefit victims of the earthquake in Haiti. I thought this idea was genius when I first heard about it, because it’s such a great song about personal empowerment and strength, but a little hazy on the details so it could conceivably work for lots of things (full disclosure: I don’t know what it was originally about). They added some specifics anyway (“out of the darkness / in came the carnage”–oh, dear) and a rap bridge (yikes) but it is kind of cool to hear all those voices rising together at the end. So I recommend you buy the less good version, because it’s a good cause and a song that you really can’t wreck. It’s sort of a superhero song, so maybe it can really do a lot of good for Haiti–look what it did for soccor.
That Rover Arts posted a nice review of the Journey Anthology 21.
That Bonjour Brioche in Leslieville is wonderful. Crowded on the weekends, but seriously, any carb in the place is probably gold. And waitress sometimes talk to each other in French.
RR
Brothers and Sisters
When I was a young whippersnapper student writer, somewhere in later undergrad years, I won a place in a one-day seminar with the novelist/short-story writer Audrey Thomas. It was a cool honour and an interesting day, but the organizers overbooked the workshop a little, and Ms. Thomas wasn’t really able to comment specifically on much of the student work. She may havesaid one or two other small things, but the meat of what she said about my story was how nicely unexpected it was that the close friends in the opening scenes eventually turn out to be brother and sister.
That stuck with me–not so much the compliment, although that was nice, but the pointing out that brother/sister relationships are not the most popular topic for stories, and that may well be because not everyone *has* an opposite-sex sibling, especially one that they are close to. It was a good reminder that I needed to check my work carefully for that sort of autobiographical creep–it may be that almost every one of my main characters in my earliest stories *did* have a close sibling. Maybe.
This goes back to that teenager centre-of-the-earth thing–I wasn’t entirely sure how people without such relationships functioned, and I suppose I suspected not very well, even though I know some people who didn’t, and did (something went wrong with that sentence). I’ve met a lot more people since then, only children, people estranged from their families, people perfectly polite with their sibs but just none-too-chatty, mainly all perfectly functional, and thus I’ve gotten over the urge to give every character a brother or a sister.
But I’m still immensely fond of my brother, and I guess I’d like to see our vibe represented in art a little more. I say this because the two of us just finished watching You Can Count on Me, a film that everyone in the world recommends as a great brother-sister films, and that we both loathed. I’m so disappointed, especially since every critic in the world (see the above link) loved it. Not sure what the misfire was there.
We loved The Savages and even Home for the Holidays was pretty good (I think I liked it more than B. did) but…are there others? Because I really can’t think of any, and would love some recommendations if anyone has any… (yes, I make a point of watching these sorts of things with B.–what, it’s the same as watching romantic movies with your SO, isn’t it?)
I’m probably just blanking out of panic, but I’m having the same trouble with books. Of course there’s Franny and Zooey, and I want to say Holden and Phoebe in Catcher, but that’s kids and I’d actually like adult relationships if possible (being as I’m adult and all). What else… Oh, dear. Maybe I’m having this problem because it’s late. I’ll try again tomorrow, but if you have ideas, please share!!
March 14th, 2010
Rose-coloured reviews *Nikolski* by Nicolas Dickner
I finished a day late (what’s up with that lately?) but I was still able to be really pleased that Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner won Canada Reads. Even though I don’t really know the radio flavour of the debates or what caused the book to rise to the top for that particular group, I enjoyed it immensely and am glad the book will have a wider audience (and another little decal to put on its cover, along with the GG one) thanks to this.
I am glad the book chosen as our national read is such unabashed fun–full of puzzles and confusion and fanciful adventure, and, especially, language that is an electric delight. I often feel a bit of frustration when reading translations, the sneaking suspicion that however good the English version is, it’s a bit…muffled…compared to the original. Nikolski suffered not a bit from that cottony translation-y feel, so a considerable debt is owed to Lazer Lederhendler (what a great name!) for making this translation so crisp and snappy. Read or, really, listen and watch:
“In a few seconds, she will be pinned face down on the asphalt, a knee pressed into her back, and duly handcuffed.
“She swings around 90 degrees and bolts toward the wire lattice. A Frost fense. Good–she knows how this thing works. She grabs the steel mesh and scrambles up as fast as she can. Too late. A pair of hands are clutching the cuffs of her jeans and pulling her down toward solid ground. She tightens her grip and kicks out blindly. The young, aggressive guard holws with pain and lets go.
“Suddenly released from his grasp, Joyce describes an elegant arc over the grid. Sailing head down through the air, she wonders how this is all going to end.”
Isn’t that perfectly lovely?
From what I hear of Canada Reads, we should count ourselves lucky not to have gotten a medicinal winner that bears its Canadianness like a prescription for better nationalism. Nikolski’s set all over the country (except British Columbia, which some of the characters are afraid of), and is gleeful in the place names, the little local details, the histories and topographies, and especially the maps. I could have done with a few fewer descriptions of maps, but Dickner seemed to be enjoying himself so much, so what the heck–it was interesting enough. The cartography theme, the bibliomania theme, the garbage theme, the fish theme–all seem to concentrate on history, signs left behind (ok, except the fish–the fish are just neat). It’s a book that’s thrilled about being a book, that’s thrilled about other books, full of characters who read with joy and enthusiasm. Delightful.
Language, theme, now for the tricky part–what is this book about? Well, there are three central characters, although it’s really hard to tell that for a long time–we get histories and ancestries of half a dozen others who them don’t reappear. In this, as well is in the formally effervescent language, the emphasis on family trees, and wildly implausible coincidence plausibly brought off, Dickner owes a considerable debt to Marquez (oh, go to the link just to see the photo–have you ever seen a sweeter author photo?)
Ok, wait, not influences, plot–what is the book *about*? I, um, don’t know. The three characters, Noah and Joyce in the third person, and an unnamed bookstore clerk in the first, are vaguely connected through a book (Noah and the clerk), family relationships (Noah and Joyce), proximity (all live in the same neighbourhood) and friends (Noah and Joyce). The most seemingly important relationships go unrecognized, though, and mainly the novel is three separate stories with minimal intersection.
Which is kind of awesome–characters move in and out of each other’s lives with minimal fanfare, coincidences are known mainly to the narrator not the characters, and life changes happen in a breath without anyone getting too excited. And what’s amazing is that this book has *no* closure–I actually literally did that thing where you turn the last page over thinking the story is still going, only to get the Acknowledgements. So you flip back, thinking two pages stuck together and then you realize–that’s it. Some lives went on in front of us for a while and they were interesting, and now they will probably continue to go on and be interesting, but not in front of us anymore. We had our share.
If you hate books like that, wait, don’t run away–you could think about it differently. If you just read the book as Noah’s story, it coheres a lot better as a forward-moving narrative (albeit with a lot of digressions). Noah is by far the most fleshed out character–he has loves and longings and career anxiety. His academic career–studying indigeneous prehistory through archeology, introduces my favourite character, Thomas Saint-Laurent, his supervisor. Saint-Laurent is actually an archeologist of trash–he ends the book protesting the destruction of a dump–and is good goofy fun (although why does no one ever point out that all archeology deals with trash, ie., remains and debris??) Noah’s adventures take over more and more of the book, and are pretty fascinating, especially since Noah is such a sweetly baffled, slightly adrift character.
Joyce starts out vibrant and vivid but by halfway through the book she’s figured out her career path and then she just apparently…keeps doing it. We don’t hear much about her for ages, and never about her ever having a personal interaction with a single soul until very near the end, and then it’s only an emergency favour. I do have to quibble with the way women are treated in this book–of five female characters, one is dead as the book begins, three disappear by book’s end, and the other one is enigmatic Joyce. Which is, perhaps, just the way it is sometimes, but none of the female characters besides Joyce ever seems to have a rational explanation for anything she does–certainly, none are offered–and Joyce’s choices all dead-end eventually. These women serve more as the conditions under which male characters must cope, rather than characters in themselves, which, you know, bugs me. Joyce doesn’t fit that mold, being rather a very cool character who wizens away as the story progresses.
That said, I really didn’t do things like tally up female versus male plot action while I was reading–I was quite happily swept away by Niokski, and looking back on said sweeping, I think *Nikolski* deserved the complete attention I gave it. This book is big, weird, ambitious, hilarious, true, and magical–and the fact that it was written by a Canadian about Canada, and was voted for by Canadians, makes me proud to be one, too.
RR
March 12th, 2010
Workshop #3: Setting and real estate
March 10th, 2010
The Baby Zoo
I keep forgetting to tell you guys about the Baby Zoo! This has nothing to do with anything, but it’s something that makes me happy and maybe you’ll like it too.
March 9th, 2010
Falling Behind
I’ve been reading along with Canada Reads Independently and picking up bits and pieces of Canada Also Reads, and somehow began to believe that the CBC’s original Canada Reads was also a long-term, readerly discussion. I thought maybe it had already started, or would start soon, and go all spring. And that at some point in all that, I would get around to reading one book from all these lists, my sole attempted at a shared reading experience, Nikolski (I chose to read this one pretty much because Steven W. said I have to. (Never let it be said I don’t read/obey my comments.)
Apparently, I’ve botched even that, because Canada Reads seems to have started yesterday and apparently will end on Friday, which strikes me as a rather compressed time-frame. So I started reading Nikolski yesterday and though I probably can’t finish it in five days (I’m a little confused so far, and keep having to flip back to see who did what), I hope to have a good enough grasp on it experience an emotion (like happiness! or sadness, perhaps!) if it wins or loses the contest.
I don’t know why I thought Canada Reads lasted months rather than days, and why I am so incredibly out of the loop that I don’t even listen to the radio anymore. I also tried to pick up the phone last night and accidentally dropped it back into its cradle. The person did not call back, and I suddenly really regretted not having call display. Was it you?
I think a lifestyle rejig might be in order.
Yours, reading quickly!
RR
Sad Story Over
I’ve been working on one story since, pretty much, the new year, and I just finally finished a second draft. That doesn’t mean it’s done (hardly!) but it probably has the basic shape and elements the finished story will have. I don’t usually know how stories will end when I begin them–this is what some would call “having a problem with plotting”–but I find if I figure out the characters and their situation well enough, I will find their own logical momentum and there will be a natural next thing for me to write, and a thing after that, until there is a natural point to stop.
March 8th, 2010
That’s what I like
The song with my favourite lyrics ever turns out to be cowritten by Sam Shepard, which of course does not make it any better, but does sort of up the interest factor in Shepard for me. I’ve only read the occasional New Yorker story by him–does anyone want to recommend what play to start with?
Sunshine on tulips! The ones on my dining-room table look like this and are absolutely splendid.
The weather this week! Yesterday was perfect wandering around weather and I hope that’s what you did. And now, we don’t have to panic, because the rest of the week will be nice, too. But then next weekend, it’s supposed to be 5 or 6 degrees and snowy, which makes no sense. But we have five glorious days until then.
Taco King at Danforth and Donlands. I’m linking to a largely negative post because it’s all I can find–but most of those people didn’t eat there, just looked at the pictures through the window. I think it’s great–cheap fast Mexican food that does not come out of a box, bag, or tube (ie., no cheese of the whiz variety). After a lovely delivery experience (embarrassingly, me and my dining companion ordered so much they gave us three forks–we thought at those prices the portions would be small but they weren’t) I went on Saturday to see the establishment. They grill the chicken in front of you and apparently the tortillas are homemade, and everything’s a wicked good deal. Let’s not let prejudice taint a good thing–just because the owners and some of the staff are Asian, doesn’t mean they haven’t learned to do Mexican food extremely well! I’m scared it will close because so many restaurants in that area do, and I’ll be back to Moe’s Southwestern, which is actually good too, but I’d rather have local indy than big American chain if I can.
RR