February 20th, 2010

PSA on the PLR

Yesterday I received my first statement and cheque from the Public Lending Rights Commission. I was very excited, and not just because money had come in the mail–I love evidence that *Once* is out there in the world, doing it’s thing (getting read) totally independent from me. In this case, the PLR statement tells me that *Once* is in some libraries.

What the Public Lending Rights Commission does is survey a sampling of libraries and give writers whose books are found in that sample get a little payment for the use their work is getting. It’s a bit of a numbers game–even a semi-popular book might happen not to be in the several of the libraries sampled–but it’s the best way anyone’s found to pay authors for library usage, short of auditing all the libraries in the whole country.

Most published (with an ISBN) creative works and general-interest nonfiction is eligible for the survey, and thus for payment–if the author registers. If you go to that link above, it’ll start you on your way to completing the registration–you’ve got until May to do it this year.

The money’s not astronomical, but it’s always nice for it to just show up like that. Even better, though, I like the acknowledgement of myself as a writer and *Once* as a book. I don’t know about most writers (though I have my suspicions) but I myself am very insecure and prone to authorial existentialism–“Who am I fooling, calling myself a writer?” and so forth. Not that the PLR or any kind of money in the mail proves anything at all; I know plenty of talented writers who don’t have a book (yet). But I do like these professional forms to fill out with “Rebecca Rosenblum, author.” and I grab all that I can get, even if there’s no fame or fortune to be had. In this regard (and this regard only) I even like rejection letters: they address me as an writer, in some form or another.

So yeah, what I’m saying is, register for the PLR if you are eligible–it’s a good service for book-writers and a nice acknowledgment of your writerliness. And sometimes money comes in the mail.

RR

February 19th, 2010

Stress

Dear Blog,

I love you, I miss you, I don’t have time to write in you right now. All I have time for is freaking out about deadlines, and then soothing the freakouts with yoga binds, Jason Derulo, and reading about editors with a little more wisdom of ages than me! Ok, ok, and Wii-lympics (I am unexpectedly good at the Wii figure-skating).

Also, sleeping on the bus. Surprisingly rejuvenating.

I plan to soldier on, steam ahead, tough it out, and other good heartening cliches, and return to my regularly scheduled constant posting within a week–fingers crossed (sleepily).

RR

February 17th, 2010

Things I Like Today

1) Spencer Gordon’s short story Transcript: Appeal of the Sentence on Joyland (although I did actually like it even more when he read it at Pivot at the Press Club readings–this story should be a podcast!)

2) The lovely new home of Kerry Clare’s book site/blog, Pickle Me This, as designed by the crack team at Create Me This.

3) When you are standing looking up into the sky (you need a patch of sky free of buildings or bits of trees, so that all you see is sky) and it is snowing staight down and after you stare up for a while, you lose perspective and begin to feel that the snowflakes are standing still in the air, and you are travelling upwards into the sky. The snow today has been particularly good for that, if you wanna try it.

RR

Rose-coloured reviews *The Lizard* by Michael Bryson

Do you miss The Danforth Review, that awesome online literary quarterly that published such a wide range of fiction, criticism and interviews? Yeah, I miss it too, but it’s cool to know that (one of) the reason(s) it is currently on hiatus is is in favour of founding publisher and editor Michael Bryson‘s “struggling attempts at creating literature.”

I just finished reading Bryson’s third book, a collection of short stories called The Lizard and I think it’s worth the struggle. This is a small spare book, 117 pages of generously leaded pages, and spare also in terms of details. One of the ways I think of the short story is as a bright spotlight, trained on the ground. A character approaches it in darkness, then when s/he enters it, is brilliantly illuminated for the time it takes to cross the spotlight, then returns to darkness. The shape of the story is how and where the author trains the spotlight; the character(s)’s actual actions and dialogue just life going forward.

I think the best stories in this collection are the ones that remind me of expertly focussed spotlights. From a man whose relationship is probably disintegrating while his father’s love life takes off (“May the Road Rise”–great title) to a guy who sees his childhood friend resorting to violence (maybe) (“Hit”), there aren’t a lot of resolutions here, or many answers.

If you are familiar with the term tolerance for ambiguity, you probably learned it in a psychology or education class, but a reader of my acquaintance uses it to describe a reading style. Readers with a high tolerance for ambiguity don’t mind not having much backstory in a piece of fiction, provided we have some sense that there is a logical one. In a good story, we’re fine with not knowing why things happened, nor what the outcome is–if the author can shape the piece so that it works without those things.

“Six Million Million Miles” was, to me, the perfect story for the ambiguously tolerant (like me), because Bryson counters the randomness of writing any story about a few moments in anyone’s life with how random anyone’s life actually is. This story is only a couple guys sitting around, talking. They’re both around forty, both in relationships that are uncertain, talking about a going into business together as soon as they can decide what that business should be. Then a house down the street explodes.

They worry about it, talk about it, watch the flames shooting into the sky. Then they go back inside because one of the guys’ sort of girlfriends has arrived. She has brought someone with her–a date? The evening progresses, the other guy’s girlfriend comes over too, there’s another explosion, they order some pizza.

What a terrible summary! But this is a beautiful story, so much more as a whole than as the sum of it’s parts–I noticed that, reading it over in bits and pieces just now to write this review. The story works because it feels random, just a bunch of stuff that happened over a few hours, but the end I was left with a powerful feeling of how anyone’s life is so much more than he or she can understand, let alone explain.

Not every story worked on me with this intensity, but I think that might have been partly my fault. *The Lizard* is an easy book to like, and I think I read it too fast, missing some of the bigger payoffs because I was enjoying the little ones: a toddler falling down in the park, the ins and outs of work in a pet store, a quiet reaction to 9/11.

This is why Rose-coloured reviews are not real reviews–if this were professional, I’d reread immediately and get it all worked out. But since I’m happily unprofessional me, I’m going to mull it over for a while, fill in some ambiguities in my own head, and look forward to when I eventually work my way back to this fascinating book.

RR

February 13th, 2010

The Olympics: Rebecca learns a valuable lesson

I was going to write a post about my feelings about the Olympics, but then I decided against it. If I had written it, it would have gone approximately like this:

“The 2010 Winter Olympics have begun, and once again I am not paying attention. I consider it impressive that I even knew ahead of time that they were beginning–I didn’t know about the Bejing games until a tv at the gym with a million drummers drumming caught my eye. The only Olympic event I can ever remember watching was the 2004 men’s hockey finals, and that day I volunteered to take the chair facing away from the tv, since I wouldn’t have paid attention anyway. It’s not like I hate the Olympics, I just am a very non-sporty person from a non-sporty background. I don’t know the names of any of the athletes, nor even the rules to most of the sports, and nor do I care to know. It just seems like a huge amount of energy and time and tonnes of money goes into this event for a tiny group of people to participate in, having nothing to do with life in this country as a whole, and I’m a bit uncomfortable with that.”

The reason I did not write that post is that another post occurred to me, one which I’d never write, but I better countless others have done variations on. It goes like this:

“I was walking through the bookstore on my way to the movies, not paying any attention to the books on the shelves. I consider it impressive that I even knew where the bookstore was–I only found it as a shortcut to the theatre. The only literary reading I can remember ever attending, I just stared answered emails on my Blackberry the whole time, since I wouldn’t have paid attention anyway. It’s not like I hate books, I’m just a very non-literary person from a non-literary background. I don’t know the names of any authors nor what a sonnet is, and nor do I care to know. It seems to me that a huge amount of energy and time and tonnes of money goes towards publishing these things for a tiny group of people to read, having nothing to do with life in this country as a whole, and I’m a bit uncomfortable with that.”

If the second post must be false–just because some people don’t care about literature doesn’t mean literature is a waste of time–then likely the first is, too. I remain unconverted, but more supportive, perhaps, of those who strive to be the best at something I don’t care about. It’s a good thing I’m not the arbiter of anything. To paraphrase Beatrice Hall a bit, “I am not interested in what the athletes are doing, but I will defend their right to do it” (maybe not until the death; also, did you know that the original line is not Voltaire).

This whole thought process has been illuminating. Who knows who I’ll empathize with tomorrow?
RR

February 12th, 2010

Rec Department

Indelible Acts by AL Kennedy is very intense, funny, tart, weird, and definitely sexy. The first couple stories are two of the weirdest (a man has an affair with a woman he meets in a cheese shop, and the sex is so brilliantly good that something cracks open in either his brain or the universe), so it wasn’t until I was well into the book that I started to experience a weird sense of vertigo…”This woman writes…like…me!”

I think Kennedy has all kinds of points on me, quality-wise (I’ve never seen anyone write about sex so grimly and unsentimentally), and we have different interests in many ways (no one in this book appears to have a real job), but we both write stories firmly rooted in character, and sometimes, if what’s true to the character is a lack of change or closure, then that’s how it wraps up. So I was pretty wrapped up in this book from a technically point of view– a “how is she going to deal with *that*” attitude–because while if I could just copy brilliant authors, I would, but most are doing such different things I can’t use their techniques. Hers, maybe, I can–I do feel like I learned a lot from this read. But, like I said, she’s amazing and I was able to enjoy this on a non-technical level and think you could, too!

Have you read the periodic table recently? Highly recommended–I think it’s changed since I was in high school–so much more stuff now! I was looking at one that described what people *do* with each element (not the one linked; sorry, I can’t find it on the web) and there are quite a few new elements marked “no use”, which I think is funny, although we’ll probably need’em someday, to fight the aliens or some new plague or something. My favourite is ununoctium, elemebet 118, which does nothing, but is the leader of the pack that starts at ununium and goes all the way up to 8. What *are* they, besides fascintating? Bonus: element 71, lutetium, is used for determining the age of meteorites. HOW DOES THIS WORK??

My short-story, “Do,” was published last fall in the Antigonish Review, and is now available as part of the new podcast (#8) of Words to Go. It’s a short, sweet, very interesting show, and I’m quite pleased to be a part of it.

RR

February 11th, 2010

Sorts of Love

One of the (many) awesome things about humans is that everyone knows stuff that is probably at least a little different from what I know, and quite often they will tell me a little bit about what they know. A very knowledgable person can often explain even a complicated concept simply enough for me to understand. Have you ever noticed that–that if you have only a little insight into a thing, it’s harder to explain it to someone else, even if you do in fact understand? This is why I like to hear AMT talk about linguistics–she knows so much that she can distill a very tiny drop of perfectly clear knowledge just for me. Most people can do that on whatever topic happens to be their personal domain.

This summer I met a man who explained CS Lewis’s The Four Loves to me over lunch. It was fascinating and, as a Christian theory, not something I would have been likely to run into on my own. I’m totally not saying I agree with all this, or even am making much study of it (I could’ve run out and bought the book, after all, and I didn’t) but after a little further internet reading, I thought I’d try to do that hard thing and explain something I only semi-understand to you all.

Why? Um, cause this is cool? And because it’s a different way of thinking about things, which is always fun, and because it fits in with the theme of stupid Valentine’s Day, which I’m totally getting sucked into despite my best intentions (tip: don’t go to Zellers this week!), without being too lame. Also, because I’m hoping other people have a bit more/different insight into this stuff than I do, so we talk about it.

Here we go, very carefully:

C.S. Lewis, the Narnia guy but also very-Christian guy, used this book *The Four Loves to examine how “love,” a word we throw around in English about everything from life partners to sandwiches to celebrities (“OMG, I *love* Tina Fey in *Mean Girls*–so earnest and weary!”) has a wealth of meanings. To delineate the different interepretations of the word, he used Ancient Greek, which had more than just the one word–four in fact–for that crazy little thing called love.

Storge–The most basic kind of love, the kind both people and animals feel for the ones they around all the time, and/or for some reason need to feel bonded to. If you were a lion, it’d be your pridemates–as a human, for your family, especially one’s children. I would think this definition applies to friends of proximity, too–the colleagues you love to chat with, the neighbours you bbq with, etc. I would insert people’s cultural identification into this category too, although that’s me extrapolating–the generalized, distant love you feel for fellow Canadians (if you swing that way) or people of the same heritage or ethinicity as your family.

The friend who explained this to me used the metaphor of the gaze for all four, but I can’t find an equivalent explanation online. To the best of my memory, the storgic gaze is all over the place; it loves what it lights on, when it happens to do so.

Phila is the easiest one to remember. It’s friendship, but of a very specific kind, that with a shared interest at the centre of it, something that the friendship is “about.” Thus, to continue the metaphor, here both gazes rest upon the same thing. So, people who bond over shared political or charity work, people who always (only) watch the game together, scrapbooking clubs, etc. I think in some ways bloggers engage in phila–we put our interests out into the world in search of others who share them, to begin a conversation about things that matter to us.

Eros–der, that’s romantic love. *Not* sexuality, although natch that’s part of it, or an accompaniment anyway. This is the love where the gaze of the lovers is focussed on each other, but interestingly (confusingly!), this is also blind love–you love a person *not* for their qualities, intelligence, appearance, ability to listen without judgment, culinary abilities, or kindness to small animals. You just love them, and I guess then you are happy to gaze at them because you do (not, after protracted gazing and examination, you fall in love because of what you see). This conception of love is problematic when combined with, say, eHarmony and similar services that claim that the secret to a great love is agreeing about religion, politics, household chores, sexual taboos, and everything else.

(Rebecca becomes distressed at how little she understands here, takes a break to eat a rice krispie square.)

Agape is where things get pretty Christian. Agape is charitable love, and I’m not sure but I think that maybe with this one your eyes are trained on God. I think it’s also God’s love for his creation. This is the stuff we do generously, for no reason other than a desire to share, to help, to improve things for someone else.

When my friend was done explaining, I said that this all seemed really hierarchical and too discrete–like, who is to say that a love for a bowling buddy couldn’t be agape as well as phila? And he said that it’s just a way of explaining–of course all the forms of love are recombinent. Later, I found out that agape love is a big Christian concept as applied in marriage (sometimes I read Christian advice columns–what?)–despite your devotion to your partner (or because of it) you should also do things for them in more general, and holy, the spirit of giving. *And* you should do things together as projects with focus (phila) *and* be comfortable and affectionate with the same house in a creaturely way (storge–I’m sorry, that’s a really terrible word). And then beyond marriage, there as many different combinations of love as there are people to have love with…I suppose.

I’m thinking I’m missing a lot–as uncomfortable as I am with the idea of reading Christian philosophy, I think I’m going to end up reading this book. Cause, really, this is so cool, even half-understood. Please chime, if anyone knows something more/different than what I’ve said here.

Love,
RR

February 10th, 2010

Lynn Coady solves your problems

Apologies, but I think I’ll only be able to manage mini-posts this week–things are a little hectic in my world right now.

But at least I have fun stuff to link you to! I have been enjoying novelist Lynn Coady‘s “Group Therapy” column in the Globe for a while now–I’m sorry I never read it when the columnist was Claudia Dey–I’m sure she was great, too!

I find it really interesting that us fiction writers (often) build our work around all this insight we allegedly have about how human beings are, but speaking only for myself, I’d be absolutely terrified by, and incompetent at, this gig. It’s actual real problems that people send in to the site, occasionally serious ones. But Coady seems to be able to parlay her insight into fiction people into insight into real people, and actually be helpful.

The problems are sometimes a bit sad, but generally they don’t pick blues-song type disasters. Then readers write in with their advice and Coady counters with her own. She’s funny, very very funny, but she’s also pretty insightful and not-mean even when the problems are inane or have obvious solutions.

So maybe you want to tune into her Valentine’s Day live chat today at 1pm EST (and if you know what EST means, I wish you would tell me–is that Toronto?) You can write in with your romantic problems (not that you would have romantic problems) ahead of time or during the chat, or be like me and just read it after to marvel at the wisdom.

RR

February 9th, 2010

Print Psychiatry

On the weekend, I dreamed that I was a verso page, madly in love with a recto. Is that weird? I mean, of course that’s weird, you’re weird for even understanding that, but…really weird?

There’s 1001 what-sort-of-bramble-bush quizzes on the Web, but this one Rosalynn at the Literary Type is pretty special (she has such good taste). It’s like a five-minute psychological/typographical analysis, and it’s very soothing. Except I turned out to be Courier, when I feel very strongly that my personality is Times New Roman.

Yours in lunacy,
RR

Be nice to everyone week!

Longtime Rose-coloured readers may know that I hold the wildly unpopular position that Family Day is fascist. I’m less alarmed about Valentine’s Day because it’s a Hallmark initiative, not a legislative one–if the government gets involved in telling people how to woo, I’m moving to Sweden–but it’s not my favourite occasion.

I am certainly very fond of the concepts of both familial and romantic love, and don’t think there’s anything wrong with celebrating them–I just think that since not everyone finds themselves in a situation where a celebration is possible or appropriate, maybe the government might stay out of it (especially since they’re really just trying to keep Ontario businesses from inconveniencing American sister offices by being open on Presidents’ Day).