March 13th, 2009

Rose-coloured Reviews “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” by Mike Christie

It’s occurred to me recently–this morning, actually–that when I say a short story is weird, I pretty much always mean it as a compliment. I guess I would have to, because the opposite certainly isn’t. You never hear someone say, “What I love about your work is how it completely conforms to my expectations! Way to stay within the paradigm!” A short story has a lot of tasks to accomplish, but I’m pretty sure one is to surprise the reader, somehow, at least a little.

Of course there’s a continuum of weirdness, with some brilliant writers inserting a little frisson into an otherwise tradional narrative, and others choosing to go big or go home. In his Journey Prize longlisted story, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” Mike Christie goes very very big on weird–it’s the 27-page story of a crackhead living in modern-day Vancouver, who is visited and befriended by the ghost or spiritual manifestation of the father of the atomic bomb,J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the two go on a rock-smoking bender together.

If Mike Christie weren’t a sizeable talent, you can pretty much see the above turning into a ghastly mess, rather than what it is, which is a genuinely funny and moving story about the general state of be f*cked-up. Among the above-mentioned tasks assigned to the short story are to move, to entertain, to teach and to challenge, as well as to to unsettle and unnerve, and Christie doesn’t let the weird overwhelm any of his other duties.

The protagonist of the story, Henry, lives in a room “the size of a jail cell” and spends most of his time thinking about, procuring, cooking, and smoking crack. His other interest is reading a grade-10 science book that he found in a dumpster. Henry has a passion for science, and he mocks the kid who trashed the book thinking “September would never come.” Henry knows better, and works hard to learn, in a sweet, sad, drug-addled way–at one point, he tries to memorize the periodic table.

Henry gets beaten up, goes hungry, gets stoned, gets beaten again, and reports it all with the sort of dopey equaminity of born loser who has burnt away all the braincells for bitterness. Even when trying to placate a guy who wants to steal his crackpipe, Henry feels he is trying avoid a “probably already inevitable beating.” Henry exists in such a strange and narrow part of reality–for certainly there are people like him–that when the most famous and troubling dead scientists of two generations ago appears at his window, it seemed a story twist I was willing to go with.

J. Robert, as Henry calls him, is interested in crack-cocaine: the purchasing of it, cooking and smoking and contemplation of it. He wants to perform an experiment with his brain and the drug. And Henry, lover of both the scientific method and being high, is happy to help. It’s, obviously, a strange evening, but Christie’s achievement is not only that it rings true, but that the reader empathizes with the characters, both of ’em. Well, this reader did.

J. Robert also has a few braincells he wouldn’t mind burning away–you can imagine that the so-called father of the atomic bomb might. His wordy, pompous diction matches the delusions of grandeur that go with the crack high perfectly–his speechifying is terrifying and boring and funny, all at once: “Hank, once I tired of your platitudes, now I see you for who you are, a great probing and unflinching mind, steadfast and brilliant in the greatest of fashions, but yet modestly so…”

Christie’s other big achievement in this story is that he made me feel like I know what it’s like to smoke crack, and that’s something I really wanted (come on–if somehow you could get a promise that you wouldn’t get shot or arrested buying it, or addicted or permanently damaged smoking it, you’d do crack just one time to know how it feels, wouldn’t you? it can’t be just me) I don’t know if they’re accurate, but Christie’s descriptions of the chemical ride are wild and visceral, and they put you there: “my brain has a family reunion with some long-lost neurochemicals, and I crouch beneath the party, not wanting to disturb it, shivering and eurphoric next to a dumptster. A seemingly infinite and profound series of connections and theories swamp my mind.”

Most drug stories I’ve read are resolute in their morality one way or another –sometimes people get detoxed (and thus redeemed), sometimes everyone just burns out and destroys themselves (and thus punished) but rarely do you see a writer take on something as loaded as drug addiction and then make it just a part of the plot. One of the reasons I wanted to review this story is because I’m at a place in my work where endings are just so hard to nail down, and the one to “Pork Pie Hat” really does everything I want the ending of a story to do: encapsulate some of what’s happened, and some of what might–or must–happen next; and make it naturally meaningful.

There’s more I’m not mentioning–minor characters and plotlines, the titular hat, the titular song by Charlie Mingus (a funeral song, which seems about right). A big big story, but like all the good ones, only exactly as long as it needs to be.

Nothing matters when we’re dancing
RR

March 12th, 2009

The Kids Are All Right

A few people have asked me how my residency at a local high school is going–I teach grade 10 and 11 creative writing every Wednesday through the Descant Arts and Letters Foundation’s SWAT Program. I won’t be able to go into detail about my students’ specific weirdnesses and wonderfulnesses, because I think if they found out I was posting about them on the internet, they would quite rightly stop coming to class in protest.

Within the bounds of the privacy act of teenhood, I can tell you that I love my classes and that I am exhausted. Teenagers have a lot of energy, and this energy is resulting in some really funny, honest, interesting work. It’s also resulting in a lot things information needing to be repeated, things falling on the floor, papers getting lost, people not writing their names on their work, not being in uniform, not understanding the assignment, not understanding that the assignment was supposed to be handed in, and/or being in the bathroom when the assignment was mentioned.

Much as I love learning, love talking, love a challenge, I am very much not a natural teacher. I am a selective chatterbox: show interest and I’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know; show indifference or distain, I’ll clam up like the proverbial shellfish. One of the many incredible challenges of teaching is to have enough faith in what you are saying to keep saying it to people who…aren’t super into it. I think I’m lucky to have quite engaged, intelligent students, but they have a lot on their minds, and as soon as I see attention waver, I get intensely doubtful about the whole endeavour.

If we were chatting over lunch, this would be the point in the conversation where I’d hunch back in my chair and say, “But of course, what do I know? What do *you* think?” Sometimes I can, in fact, throw the discussion point to the class, but sometimes I’m not at place in the lesson where I can do that (or I throw it open and no one responds) and then I’m stuck pursuing my thesis that I believe, though I am fast losing faith in my ability to explain it.

This is unusual for me, and very hard–I hate trying to convince the unconvinced; I’d rather just allow them to remain unconvinced. Also unusual for me is granting people permission to go to the bathroom, so let’s just say the whole experience is foreign, but I’m learning a lot from trying to stick to my guns, as well as from the questions I get asked.

I’ve listed some of the things we’ve been questioning and discussing below. For sure I have my own opinions on these matters, but since I’m not so sure I can prove’em anymore–or that these are questions on which definitive answers are possible–maybe I’ll throw it open to the blogosphere and see if anyone responds. What do *you* think about:

1) What does bubblegum taste like? What does Red Bull taste like? What does Axe Body Spray smell like? What does Christmas smell like? What does hair smell like? What does the inside of a vacuum cleaner smell like? What does a sour-cream doughnut taste like?
2) How much imagination is too much? When can you make it all up and when do you have to do research? Why is ok to write a fantasy novel about an imaginary kingdom that you made up, and not ok to write a prison novel without knowing anything about prisons? Or is it, in fact, ok to make up an imaginary penal system and set it not Canada but “Canada”? Because it’s *fiction*, after all–people should know that, right?
3) Do all major characters in books have to have flaws? Can you think of a character in a book (or a movie) with no flaws? Do all villains have to have some complexity or good qualities? Can you think of a villain with some good (in a movie or a book)?
4) What can you infer about a man who wears cords with his t-shirt tucked in? What can you infer about a woman who wears a dress with holes in it? What can you infer about someone who is very pale and always wears hats? What can you infer about someone keeps a barfridge in his bedroom? What can you infer about someone who hangs salamis up in her kitchen?

I await your responses eagerly. Cause really, what *do* I know?

Oh I take a look at that picture
RR

March 11th, 2009

Be a friend to books!

I’m going to start doing the occasional guest post over at my publisher’s blog, Thirsty, and to kick things off on the right foot, I’ve done a little photo essay on how to be kind to the books in your life. It’s called Books Are Our Friends!! and I am sure you already know all my hints and tips, but perhaps you would like a little refresher?? I hope you enjoy it!!

We ain’t gonna live forever
RR

March 10th, 2009

On We Struggle

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

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

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

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

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

Now everybody kiss
RR

March 9th, 2009

Money in Japan

(images from here)

There is apparently only one unit of Japanese money: the yen, which is like a penny, but the bills are just giant amounts of yen (see image above).

One Canadian dollar is about 76 yen. Today, anyway.

The doors don’t open at all
RR

Who are you? Where are you going?

Outside of prose, my artistic experiments almost always deserve the fate they almost always receive, which is never to be seen by anyone but me. An exception to this is my “Identity Mural”: because that thing is up on the door of the Rose-coloured Ranch, more people see it than, say, my sonnets and sketches of eyeballs. And because I’m way too excited when I receive people’s business cards (shout-out: note most recent addition to the mural,a Trainspotting-esque card from Vepo Studios at bottom righ)t, some people who have never even been to the RCR have had cause to wonder what exactly it is. So, here ya go:

This is probably not even properly a mural, because it doesn’t form an image out of all the disparate parts. It’s just a bunch of stuff stuck to a door, really–I told you I should stick to prose. But this thing is something I’m partial to, because it combines three things I like especially: other people, public transit, and my own name. Here’s what’s there:
–business cards of people I have met
–expired ID of my own
–expired Metro passes
–three name tags–one that says, “Who are you?” one that says, “Where are you going?” and one that is blank
–in the centre of it all, the peephole to my front door
–a *lot* of scotch tape–I, like Ramona Quimby, think scotch tape is god

A little random, a little fun. I am fond of my mural, unmurallike as it may be. And trust me, it’s way better than the sonnets.

I’ve got my sights on / and I’m ready to go
RR

March 7th, 2009

Yo Homo

Scene: Half a dozen teenaged boys, black and Hispanic, elaborate coats and sneakers, at a bus shelter one icy afternoon.

Boy in heavy duffle coat, open, white cloth cap with strings dangling beside his face, under a baseball cap
says: Yo, most of the stuff you guys say “yo homo” to isn’t even gay.

General muttering

Cloth Cap: Like, two guys hugging. Two guys can hug! That’s not gay. That’s so not gay.

Visor: That’s sorta gay.

CC: Would you hug your dad? That’s not gay, right? You can hug your dad. I hug my dad all the time. Will, would you hug your dad?

Will (skinny, sweatshirt but no coat): Well, I don’t hug my dad that often. On his birthday, maybe. Or on my birthday.

CC: Why can’t you hug your dad? You love him. I love my dad, I go up to him an’ I give him a hug.

Will: But you probably have that sort of relationship, yo. I love my dad, I just don’t hug him.

CC: But there ain’t nothing gay about it. You can hug your dad, you can hug your friends. Like me and Jason, yo. I see him, I go up and I give him a hug. We’re as close as…as close as anything, man, I give him a hug. Like this (he hugs short boy standing in front of him. Short boy is taken by surprise; almost falls over).

Short: Hey, man. I dunno.

Peanut gallery jeers.

CC: No, you gotta just do it with the one arm, the guy hug.

(tries again; short boy backs away)

CC: It’s not a gay thing.

Short: Nobody said it was, yo.

CC: Yeah, well, nobody better say it’s gay for a guy to hug a guy.

Peanut gallery jeers.

Short: Nobody said it. You brought it up.

(CC tackles short boy. General melee. Bus arrives.)

Now his nurse / some local loser / she’s in charge of the cyanide
RR

March 6th, 2009

What I’ve Been Up To

1) Listening with alarming interest to paranoid conspiracy theories (but still not to zombie apocolypse scenarios, rest assured).
2) Getting Disney tunes stuck in my head, apropros of nothing (I haven’t heard that song *outside* of my head in 15 years).
3) Tracing stuff with a pencil so it will scan better.
4) Being asked, yet again, about my ethnicity by strangers. I’m thinking, the next time someone asks me, “What’s your background?” I’m going to glance over my shoulder and try to describe what colour I think the wall is painted.
5) Getting a nice review in Jewish Book World. The online version’s not up yet, and it’s a US mag so you might not be able to find it here, but rest assured, it’s nice.
6) Hugging poets.
7) Glamourous parties.

The last three make up for the first four, natch.

Everybody loves a train in the distance
RR

March 4th, 2009

Incorrection

I don’t talk to myself. Unless startled by a bat or struck by a heavy object, I never feel a need to make any sort of sound when alone. Despite *many* defensive folks who have told me talking to oneself is a normal way to process information, I find it odd. It’s not like I don’t have plenty of commentary on every millisecond that goes by. But I can hear my own commentary just fine from, you know, inside my head. Also, I receive very little new information in this way; surprise surprise. Most of what I think is boring; no need to give it wider broadcast.

Actually, maybe this post is boring interior thoughts too. But slightly less boring than most interior thoughts. Anyway.

What is surprising is a new trend in my interior monologue, one that I really don’t think I thought up for myself. The past few months, screw-ups have been accompanied by the (silent) word “Incorrect” inside my brain. More recently, the word has come to have a visual of red block letters spelling it out: INCORRECT.

Harsh.

Lest you think I am having some sort of self-esteem spiral, the “incorrect” signal mainly flashes for small failures, ones that can be easily identified: opening the wrong software from my desktop, walking into the coat closet instead of the bathroom (not in own home), putting metal in the microwave. Doesn’t appear for major life decisions, wardrobe choices, consumer purchases–nothing with a lot of subjective leeway. A dozen people could have a different opinion on the story’s new ending or my new haircut, but you’re either standing in the coat closet or you aren’t.

Anyway, this post has little point, and probably should have remained interior, but I always find it curious when my brain does something all on it’s own without my bidding, and felt like sharing. Since this is likely *not* internally generated, I’m wondering if I picked it up from a book? A movie? This new mental quirk has no footnote. If you know where I stole it from, please share!

Note: My dislike of talking aloud to oneself should not be confused with the much more congenial concept of the “exterior monologue,” a term coined by the mighty AMT. The exterior monologue occurs when normal censors are turned off inside the brain, usually by nervousness, alcohol, or happy comfort with the audience. Then one just says everything that comes into one’s head. You’ve seen it happen, but it’s fun only in the last two contexts (usually), and even then only if you, like AMT, are thoroughly entertaining, inside and out.

Note 2: I also breathe silently and wear rubber-soled shoes; if it weren’t for clumsiness and cowardice, I would make an excellent stealth agent.

Just believe that I need you
RR

Now in stereophonic sound

I’m pleased to say that two of my short stories, “The Weatherboy” and “Christmas with My Mother,” will be included in the forthcoming audio anthology, Earlit #4 from Rattling Books, coming to a speaker near you this spring. I’m pretty excited to hear my work read by a professional and a stranger, as well as to be included in such a cool cool project.

Please note that I actually don’t know what “stereophonic” means other than Brit musicians, I just like the word. It could actually be that Earlit is not in stereophonic sound, but whatever it is, it sounds pretty good to me.

Please note also that one should not confuse Earlit with Earshot, the paranoiac madcap stageplay by Morris Panych. Both wonderful, and highly recommended by me, but quite different.

I don’t believe in the sun
RR