June 17, 2008
Pea-pods
Spotted today was pea-pods in the garden, which this year is pots up a fire escape more than a garden, but it certainly makes for easy weeding. The pea-pods are a miracle! The lettuce and chard are also ripe for harvest, the herb garden getting bigger every day, and we’re avidly following the progress of the heirloom tomatoes we’ve grown from seed. Inside the house is lots of plants too, which is strange because in our old apartment we didn’t have a single living thing (except the mice). Something about this space just wants green things to be growing.
Also exciting is strawberry season. There was a whole bunch of perfect berries at the market last week. I am sorry that I won’t be able to make it this Wednesday, but hopefully Saturday will make up for it, when I am going strawberry picking. Which means strawberry jam in my near future (though probably just freezer jam, as I’m not sure I’m ready to take on real preserves), as well as a few strawberry pies (frozen, to last throughout the year, once fresh fruit is behind us).
June 13, 2008
Their own body bags
Nathan Whitlock writes that requiring self-addressed stamped envelopes to accompany literary journal submissions is “kind of like making soldiers go into battle carrying their own body bags”.
June 13, 2008
Engleby by Sabastian Faulks
Though it is jarring, the way certain moments in Sabastian Faulks’s novel Engleby kick us right outside of the narration, it is actually more disturbing how often this doesn’t occur. How convincing is the singular voice of Mike Engleby, lifelong loner and the narrator/diarist in whose palm we readers are sitting. And we are convinced by him partly because Engleby is clever– a working class boy winning a place at a prestigious university after all. He comes at us with facts and not nonsense, framing his narrative to show his disdain for others’ ignorance, his superiority over practically everybody. Engleby’s address is broad and general, solidly inclusive, but once in a while it catches us: something is not right here.
But that these “catches” don’t come more often, that our empathy towards Engleby can come so readily, this not only cements his control of the narrative, but also highlights the distance between him and the rest of the world. Because our easy empathy is something of which he is incapable; Engleby is scarcely aware of his own self, let alone that of another. His diary functions as an exercise towards empathy, but usually a failed one: “I wonder if we can ever know what it’s like to be someone else. I doubt whether [his classmates] really know what it’s like to be themselves.” Because, of course, Engleby doesn’t know what it’s like to be himself, and so his diary also acts as a self-by-proxy. An identity pinned down where his actual self can’t be.
So what are the “catches” then? Engleby’s supposed immersion into a group of friends at school that don’t seem to know him, a moment where he approaches two girls in a bar and they “[back] off as though appalled”, his complete lack of impact upon the world around him, and then moments where he lets certain things slip. Like that he was in a mental institution once: “It was like… the centripedal force of Engleby had failed and I began to fly apart, into my atomic pieces.”
It is a particular challenge to create a loner, the mark of a loner being that the world won’t reflect him back. No friends to flesh him out, even family is kept at a distance, no water cooler banter. Moreover Mike Engleby is challenging because while he doesn’t even reflect himself, he is smart enough that this could be quite consciously done, his construction of the narrative altogether deliberate, and so due to his unreliability, what are we meant to believe?
“My memory’s odd like that,” Engleby tells us very early on. “I’m big on detail, but there are holes in the fabric.” Which is some ways is quite convenient for Sabastian Faulks, I suppose, that his character’s gaps come at such moments that propel the narrative right along. And there are some similarly facile points throughout the text. Engleby in the 1980s disagreeing with his one friend about the future: “‘And apartheid,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that’ll soon be all over, too.’ But then these weak points become less so when you consider their veracity, that it is in Engleby’s character to be deliberate about most things (for example the girlfriend he manages to acquire in his thirties, and that he spends long drives rehearsing whatever he will say to her).
This meandering-sounding exploration of lone self-hood has a centre, however– the disappearance of a girl Engleby had had feelings for at university. The terms of their relationship in typically vague Engleby fashion, though there are suggestions something is not right. That he had stolen her diary years ago, his infatuation with her, that we can see him misconstrue her feelings for him, these mysterious “holes” in the fabric of his memory.
There are certain unreliable narrators whose reality seeps into between every other line (I’m thinking The Remains of the Day) and then those unreliability is to deflect reality, to keep something at bay. Engleby being the latter, and so reading becomes an act of decoding, of spotting those “catches” when the world creeps in. The missing girl, discovered murdered years later, and Engleby trying to understand what he may have done, we as his readers faced with the discomforting possibility of our own empathy with someone who’s been a killer all along. There we’ve been all the while, right inside his head.
Engleby’s obsession is with time, with other people’s perception of sequence and causality, which he supposes to be such a limited perspective of time’s dimensionality. And of course he senses that we will try to address his experience with our puerile understanding of cause and effect– that Engleby is this way because he abused as a child, that his father abused him because of his own limitations. That the torture he is forced to endure when he goes away to high school only exacerbates his trauma, culminating in Engleby becoming an abuser himself.
So it is true that Engleby achieves the “heightened” experience of “time as it really is– non linear”, as his experience goes in a circular fashion. Moreover as a victim of trauma, he doesn’t put the past behind him, but rather relives his experiences over and over again, and these holes in his memory are an attempt to deal with this.
Engleby‘s singular perspective is broadened towards the end of the book, as the text begins to include witness statements and psychiatric reports. Which reads as a bit of a cheat, really– I wonder what the novel would have been without these. Though of course they provide a bit of context, resolution for our feelings about and towards this complicated character. It is jarring (but a relief?) to finally read an outsider’s perspective of Engleby, to realize the inaccuracies of his perspective, and then of our own gathered through him.
June 12, 2008
But what if we suppose
“But what if we just suppose for a moment that the author knows what she is doing. That this book exists not just so we can pick it into pieces, but rather because its author wanted it precisely this way. What do you think the author was attempting to accomplish? And then how might you come to understand whatever baffled you about the work, what didn’t sit quite right? How to bridge the gap between the author’s agenda and our own. What can we give to this book in order that we can take away from it everything that we possibly can?”
June 12, 2008
Forgetting to bring a camera
I’ve got a train journey coming up this weekend, and I can’t decide what novels to take. Of course I’ve got a mess of magazines waiting– this week Walrus, London Review of Books, and Canadian Notes and Queries all arrived in the post. I’ll also soon have my mitts upon the New Yorker Summer Fiction Issue. But still, I feel a train trip takes a novel, and that periodicals won’t suffice. Mostly because no journey is complete without a novel irrevocably linked to it.
To and from California in Feb. was Arlington Park and Anagrams. To and from Montreal in Sept. was A Short History of Tractors… and Atonement. The last time I went to Ottawa, I read Sweetness in the Belly. Town House en route to England last June, and Bliss on the way back. Etc. etc. You see what I mean?
It would be like forgetting to bring a camera.
June 12, 2008
Am about to begin
Am about to begin reading Fever by Sharon Butala. Which is terribly exciting– I’ve never read her fiction before. Her writing spun me a spell when I read her latest book (non-fiction) The Girl in Saskatoon. And so I wonder how the spell will translate. Exciting also to be on the cusp of an author new (to me), with whole worlds to discover, and then already to be fairly sure that I’m going to love whatever I find.
June 11, 2008
Links, and Maxime
A Wrinkle in Time revisited. “Geared Up” (from The Walrus, on urban cycling) is a stellar piece of journalism. Rona Maynard remembers a friend. Type Books in Toronto Life (thanks for that, Jennie). Lorrie Moore profiled.
In light of The Bernier Affair, three for thought on femmes fatales. Heather Mallick says that Julie Couillard’s fabulous breasts are not a crime. Though I’m not sure I’d go as far as as to say that Couillard is “involuntarily or just reluctantly in the public eye”. She’s faced harsh criticism, no doubt, but she isn’t a victim. Which is why I love her, why I love Maxime (I call him that), and why I love the whole affair. It’s a capital A Affair, it is, and miraculously, considering the Canadian government and the Conservative Party in particular, involves only fantastic looking people. Like American TV! Except that no wives were betrayed, no children had their very foundations broken, and even though National Security was breached (how exciting!), we all sort of know it wasn’t.
Corruption and intrigue, with everybody behaving as badly as everybody else, no one really gets hurt. Except Maxime, he of the gorgeously tailored suits, but I feel like he’ll recover. That’s what happens when Ladykiller meets the Maneater (and she’s even got a trail of dead behind her [and those still living have joined witness protection programs!]). She’ll recover too, and probably get a talk show. Maxime will find a new companion. The whole story is already beginning to end, but it was a wonderful one. A reprieve from the boring soundbites, soulless leadership, uninspiring, grating, patronizingly mind-numbing excuse we’ve got for governance in this country. Good governance, of course, would be nice, but I will settle for scandal in the meantime. Sadly, scandal is the very best our sorry lot can do towards making Canadian politics as fabulous as Julie Couillard’s breasts are.
June 11, 2008
Rosenblum Reading
It’s not quite fair, as I booked the day off three months ago and you’ll only get a few days notice, but I wanted to let you know about an excellent event this Friday. Rebecca Rosenblum will be reading this Friday at 12:30 pm at Toronto Public Library’s Northern District Branch as part of the Luminato Festival of the Short Story. David Whitton will also be reading, Lynn Coady moderating. I am terribly excited. Rebecca’s book comes out in September.
June 9, 2008
Magic Tricks
Summer has begun to work its magic. For example, on Friday I inadvertently had ice cream three times. Friends materialized in the evening, and fun was had. Saturday was even more miraculous– tea and crumpets in the sunshine, with the paper. We had a picnic that afternoon, returning to our beloved Trinity Bellwoods park, and we welcomed an ant for the occasion, just so convention could be defied.
It was a splendid afternoon, the sunshine sure for the first time this year. Though of course we were sitting under a shady tree, feasting on good bread and cheese, and also blueberries (which were from far away, please don’t tell Barbara Kingsolver). Enjoying the absolute heaven that is that park, and the privilege of such peace in a bustling city.
We partook in a game of Scrabble (our magnetic pocket set), and competition was intense. I am pretty bad at Scrabble, so I was quite pleased to accomplish highlights Bandit and Oasis, with a triple world score for each of them.
Friends came in the evening, mix of new and old, but both much adored. Delicious barbeque miracles, and the fridge stocked with beer, and fine conversation (which, it was pointed out, did tend to be a bit too 1998-centric so we tried to curb that, but failed). It was the first night this year we were not driven inside by cold, and so we could stay out late on the deck, watching tricks performed by bats.
June 9, 2008
Expanding the possibilities
I was very interested to read “Women Behaving Boldly”, Sarah Liss’s argument that Sex and the City‘s female archetypes might have as their origin those of Alcott’s Little Women. I’ve not read Little Women for years and years, and I’m not sure that what I did read wasn’t abridged anyway, nevertheless, I’ll be (re?)reading the novel this summer. Liss writes, “Louisa May Alcott ’s proto-feminist tome has been a rite of passage for generations… [T]he March girls were complex and flawed, and they helped shape my understanding of the many facets of femininity.” As I reread, I’ll keep her ideas in mind.
A reader takes issue with Liss, however: “Have you actually read Little Women?” Claiming that Little Women didn’t celebrate feminist ideals, but rather quashed them. That Jo March was never accepted for her independent spirit, and those around her tried to tame her. Which might be right, I don’t remember now. But I suspect otherwise, for when I look back to impressions of Little Women, Jo’s spirit is all that I really remember. All attempts towards taming aside, Jo is Little Women (except for my impressions where Beth stands out, but they are only because she died).
I’d always associated Little Women with another female archetype-dependent television show, however, which was The Facts of Life. When I was seven and watched too much television, I came across an ad for Little Women in the back of another novel, read its plot synopsis, and figured these two quartets featuring girls named Jo must be intrinsically linked. It was only this chance to discover further adventures of a girl called Jo, I think, that led me to Little Women in the first place.
They were indeed a bit interchangeable, these Jo’s, except that one had sold her hair, and the other cultivated hers into an elaborate mullet. Both of them were everybody’s favourites though, and I can’t help but think I’m not the only one who found both of them integral to an understanding of self during these formative years. That there were alternatives to the kinds of girls we were supposed to be, expanding the possibilities to encompass most anything.
