March 8, 2010
How the Heather Looks by Joan Bodger
I was thinking of AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book when I decided I wanted to read Joan Bodger’s How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the Sources of Children’s Books. Byatt’s novel had stirred my interest in the history of English children’s literature, plus I’ve been reading a lot of it myself lately– we’re currently working on Now We Are Six at bedtime. Bodger’s book was first published in 1965, the story of a journey her American family had taken across Britain in the late ’50s in search of storybook places they all knew by heart. She was a writer herself, her husband John was a reference librarian, and they’d managed to instill a passionate love of literature in their two children, which is no wonder considering they were the type of parents who’d embark upon a journey such as this one.
The book is magical, sparkling. I was familiar with probably only about a third of the works referenced, but I’ve come away wanting to read the rest, and Bodger’s prose is so delightful, the trip itself twisty and turny and marvelous to follow along. Her research is stunning. And how wonderful: the very point is to discover whether maps they keep finding in their books’ end-pages could possibly map onto real places? And the story of what they discover is a wonderful ode to an Britain that was (times two), and a testament to the power of children’s literature.
It is pretty typical, from what I know of England, that this American family on a madcap adventure rarely finds an English person who’s read the work they’ve travelled across an ocean in search of. At the beginning of the book, the family arrives in Whitchurch in search of scenes depicted by illustrator Randalph Caldecott, and they stop at a school to ask for directions. Bodger wonders, “what it would be like to talk to children who walked to school each morning over the very fields and country lanes made famous in the Caldecott illustrations… [T]he experience [of introducing Caldecott’s work to the children] must be akin to holding a child up to the mirror for the first time and letting him recognize what it is that the rest of the world holds dear.”
The children don’t recognize what the world holds dear, however, and even their teacher hadn’t heard of Caldecott. And the Bodgers encounter this time and time again, as they go in search of Narnia, a lost colony of Lilliputians, the Borrowers’ home, of Robin Hood, Pooh’s enchanted wood, Toad Hall and Rat’s house, Camelot, Avalon, The Secret Garden, and Jemima Puddle-Duck’s garden too. Not to say that English aren’t accommodating, however. They meet with AA Milne’s widow, and Bodger stumbles upon an interview with Arthur Ransome. When Bodger has to make an urgent call to the London Library Association, the person who answered her call “did not seem in the least upset that I had asked him to find out where a fictitious water rat had entertained a talking mole.”
The Bodgers rarely find exactly what they’re looking for, but possessing spirit and imagination enough to embark on such a pilgrimage at all, they have enough too to find the magic they’re seeking. Which is partly due Britain itself, its layers of history, its mythical past (and its tea and scones, from which the family frequently takes its sustenance). Due also to the stories, their universal appeal and how they’ve endured. But also to the Bodgers’ particular appreciation of the stories, and of stories in general (and Joan Bodger would go on to found the Story-Tellers School of Toronto). These are parents who take children’s literature very seriously, which has rubbed off on their son who possesses that knowledge of battles, and history, and storybook scenes that only a small boy can. Particularly a small boy who used to rock in his crib to the beat of “Windy Nights” when his mother read the poem to him at bedtime.
In her afterward to the 1999 edition of this book (and Bodger died in 2002), Bodger warns those who might regard How the Heather Looks as a guide to family life, to creating wondrous childhoods. Indeed, however idyllic the family seems, one cannot avoid mention of what would happen to them: Lucy, just two years old in the book (“the only one among us who did not need a guidebook”, young enough to think of nothing walking into the world of storybooks) would die of a brain tumour at age seven, Bodger and her husband would divorce, her husband and son would both suffer from schizophrenia. Whichs idevastating, and terrifying– I have this naive idea that with books, we can steel ourselves against tragedy, that we have any kind of control over that kind of thing at all.
But this unexpected ending doesn’t make the book any less magical, just as the Bodgers’ locating their favourite stories in the real world doesn’t diminish the literature itself. This is the stuff that the world is made of, is all, and a rare, precious thing are writers like Bodger who can see it that way, and then write it down so beautifully too, drawing such illuminating connections. Which is why I look forward to also reading her autobiography The Crack in the Teacup: The Life of an Old Woman Steeped in Stories very soon.
March 7, 2010
Feeding the inward eye
“I suppose that an American’s approach to English literature must always be oblique. We share a language but not a landscape. In order to understand the English classics as adults, we must build up a sort of visual vocabulary from the books we read as children. Children’s literature is, in some ways, more important to us than it is to the English child. I contend that a child brought up on nursery rhymes and Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales can be better understand Shakespeare; that a child who has pored over Beatrix Potter can better respond to Wordsworth. Of course it is best if one can find himself a bank where the wild thyme grows, or discover daffodils growing wild. Failing that, the American child must feed the “inward eye” with the images in the books he reads when young, so that he can enter a larger realm when he is older. I am sure I enjoyed the Bronte novels more for having read The Secret Garden first. As I stood on those moors, looking out over that wind-swept landscape I realized that it was Mrs. Burnett who taught me what “wuthering” meant long before I ever got around to reading Wuthering Heights. Epiphany comes at the moment of recognition.” –Joan Bodger, How the Heather Looks
March 5, 2010
The Book I Bought Today
Today Harriet and I met up with our friends Alex and Baby Leo to scour Value Village for baby-sized treasures, and then afterwards we went to the Holy Oak Cafe. Where they have a book club, which I didn’t join, but I bought the book they had on sale for it anyway. The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman. Why? Because everybody’s talking about it. Because my friend Rebecca Rosenblum swears by All My Friends Are Superheroes. And because the book was absolutely beautiful. So there was no surprise when I opened the cover and found it was designed by Kelly Hill.
March 5, 2010
Canada Reads: Independently. It's the Final Countdown
Okay, it’s not exactly a “countdown”, but “It’s the Final Vote” would bring to mind no song by Europe, and so what’s the point of that? I’ve just posted my final Canada Reads: Independently review, and my rankings are set with Hair Hat in the top spot. But my power only extends so far, of course, and the winner of Canada Reads: Independently isn’t up to me. It’s up to us!
For those of you who’ve taken part, reading all or some of these books, you’ve got a vote. Our little poll will close at midnight on Thursday March 11th. Before then, email me (at klclare AT gmail DOT com) your top pick of the Canada Reads: Independently selections, and the winning book will be announced on Friday March 12 (just in time for CBC Canada Reads champion to be unveiled!)
And my bets are on Century, but anything can happen!
March 5, 2010
Can-Reads Indies #5: Moody Food by Ray Robertson
Until yesterday afternoon, I was dreading having to write this review. I was about half way into Moody Food and I just wasn’t getting it. I did like the references to 1960s’ Toronto and the Yorkville I only know from ancient mythology; I liked Thomas’s back-story; I liked the Making Waves Bookshop; I loved certain ways Thomas’s understanding of music was described (in particular, what he heard in the vaccuum cleaner when he was a child). But I found the prose awkward, with strangely-claused sentences that were hard to follow. And my biggest problem was with Bill Hansen.
For the first half of the book, Bill was a cipher. He was a non-character, and I couldn’t figure out why any of the others, with their vivid personalities– his cool girlfriend, Christine, his old hippie boss at the bookstore, the enigmatic Thomas Graham himself– why were they even hanging out with him? Bill took responsibility for nothing, had no real talents of his own (so they made him the drummer), didn’t follow through with anything, all of this for no real reason except to propel the plot. Let’s face it– in reality, Christine would never have dated him, Kelorn would never have hired him (and would have fired him once he stopped showing up for work), and Thomas wouldn’t ever have given him the time of day. Moody Food would never have happened. It all seemed like a construct, and that bothered me.
Thomas Graham himself I also had a hard time with– I didn’t buy his charisma. Though I started to see that the problem here was that we were seeing him through Bill’s eyes, and Bill describes himself as “the first and last disciple of Thomas Graham”, plus Bill was doing a lot of drugs, so probably nobody else really bought the charisma either.
So this disparate group comes together to form The Duckhead Secret Society, hooks themselves up with a steel guitar player called Slippery Bannister, they eventually catch the interest of a record producer with their “interstellar North American music”, and the rest is music history. Music history in the “Almost Famous” sense, the Behind the Music downward spiral that by now is a familiar narrative. And for me, once the spiral started, I finally found the book’s momentum.
Thomas and Bill get into cocaine, and then Thomas starts doing heroin, and instead of focusing on their tour and the album they were contracted to make, Thomas becomes absorbed by his magnum opus “Moody Food”. At one point, he’s got a cow in the studio, and he’s got a certain affinity for bovines anyway since becoming obsessed with vegetarianism. Robertson is throwing out these amazing sentences like, “When he hit the desert earth the crunch of his carrot was the only sound for miles.” Thomas is falling apart on stage, but he doesn’t care, and he and Bill spend their nights strung out on coke and writing new material (for which Bill is essential, because he hears music in colours and matches it with passages from library books they steal from all over North America). And Thomas starts referring to himself in the third person, and throwing liver off balconies, and uttering lines like, “The heart gets all the songs written about it and it’s what everybody talks about, but the liver is the biggest thing in you. So how come you never hear anybody talking about the liver? Where are all the songs written about it?”
When Thomas slips too far over the edge, suddenly Bill Hansen makes sense. We’re not supposed to like the guy, much like how we felt about Max from How Happy to Be. Unlike Max, however, Bill lacks wit and charm, and his perspective is remarkably limited: later, a character says to him, “I knew you weren’t bright, but I never took you for stupid.” But he is, a little bit, because he’s just a kid from Etobicoke who’s caught up in a story that’s too much for him. When the Duckhead Secret Society returns from their tour, Thomas holes up in his hotel room until the RCMP catch on (because he’s dodging the draft, and wanted for drug possession). The whole Yorkville scene has gotten out of control, and as a riot breaks out between protesters and police, Thomas Graham urges his band up on the rooftops for one last show that would have been an overwhelming cliche, but hilariously and tragically isn’t, and all of the sudden our perspective (and Bill’s) is whipped back to something resembling reality. How we’ve been following him so up close all this time, but Thomas Graham from far away can actually blend into a crowd.
I really enjoyed this book in the end, and I’m not sure if my early reservations were my fault or the book’s, but I didn’t have any by the time I was finished. That it took me so long to get into it, however (and this is a 400 page book), would have me counting against it. And here’s where this ranking think is stupid– every single book I’ve read as part of Canada Reads: Independently would probably be the very best book on most reading lists, but this is a particularly superlative reading list. Which means that although Moody Food is taking the bottom spot, it’s only because of its very good company, and also that my heart is breaking. But that this entire book list has been a really incredible reading experience and I’m so pleased to have had it.
Canada Reads: Independently Rankings:
3) How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad
4) Wild Geese by Martha Ostenso
5) Moody Food by Ray Robertson
March 4, 2010
franny and zooey by colleen heslin
franny and zooey by colleen heslin, as seen in issue 32.3 of Room Magazine. Image used here with permission of the artist. Because I love it.
March 4, 2010
Why I love the Toronto Public Library/ How the internet gets books read
I am an avid buyer, mostly because I can’t quit, but also because any person who loves books really should be. If I bought every book I wanted, however, I’d have to move to a warehouse and I’d be totally broke, so I am pleased to have the best public library system in the world at my disposal so I can eat its book-buying dust. In a good way.
Waiting for me at the library today was The Sixties by Jenny Diski (of the LRB blog, and many elsewheres), When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (which I read about on the The Guardian Books Blog), and Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Matsuki Mockett (because Maud Newton said so).
March 3, 2010
The Association for Research on Mothering, and Me
UPDATE: Ann Douglas speaks with ARM’s Founder and Director Andrea O’Reilly.
I am only one of many people upset at the news that the Association for Research on Mothering at York University is set to close at the end of next month. (This is particularly devastating, coming on the back of more bad news for the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, which played such a big role in my discovery of feminism via the magazines I bought there that I’d never seen anywhere else, ever). Though I’ve only been a mother for nine months, and my relationship with ARM has been peripheral, I can honestly say the two books I’ve read from their Demeter Press (which is also to close) have done more to enhance my understanding of my new life than anything else.
Mother Knows Best: Talking Back to the Experts is the very best book on motherhood I’ve ever read. I’ve been a smarter, more confident, more open-minded and better parent since encountering it in November, and have been much better equipped to deal with the onslaught of other resources constantly undermining my authority. Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlog has played a fundamental role in helping me to address my ambivalence toward mommyblogging (which in some ways is an ambivalence toward motherhood in general), and got me engaging with ideas I don’t think I’ll ever be finished with.
And though these were both scholarly texts, I devoured them. And not just because they were telling me things I needed to hear at a trying time in my life, but because they taught me things I need to know, and they challenged ideas I thought I knew. These two Demeter books were incredible, and to think there will be no more of them is an enormous cultural loss for everyone.
Please read Ann Douglas’ blog on more about the ARM closure, and plans afoot to try to do something to stop it.
March 3, 2010
All winter long you wait for it
“All winter long you wait for it, knowing it’s coming, never really believing that it will.
Sticking your head out the door every morning from the first week of March on– nothing. Just one more scarf and gloves and plenty of Chapstick day. Shut the door tight, pull on an extra pair of socks and resign yourself to a lifetime of wet feet and cough drops.
Then it’s here, it’s really here, only when you’ve given up on it does it finally arrive, everywhere you look fellow spring-stoned zombies with their unzipped jackets flapping wide open in the warm afternoon breeze, sun-kissed perma-smiles on every stranger’s happily stunned face. “– from Moody Food by Ray Robertson
March 3, 2010
Canada Reads: Independently 2010: UPDATE 7
Fun fact I’ve noted is that two out of five Canada Reads: Independently picks reference my alma mater Victoria College. In Moody Food, Ray Robertson has his characters meeting up on the stone steps of Old Vic, and Carrie Snyder goes one better in Hair Hat and has her character in “Flirtations” return three books to the Victoria College Library (though was it the library pre or post renos? I wonder…). Anyway, I will try not to let these references colour my perceptions (and as the post below makes clear, I am always very open-minded when it comes to literary perceptions).
I am just about done Moody Food, which took a while to grow on me, but this afternoon when I was this far into the drug-soaked downward spiral, I found myself hooked. Though it’s pretty clear that things aren’t going to end well. Review to follow in a day or two…
Meanwhile, Julie Forrest (who I met today! She’s lovely) read Century this week, and she puts it on top of the rankings: “Powerful and poetic, Century tackles big issues for such a slim volume. Inadvertent as it was, I’m glad I saved the best for last.” Buried in Print struggled with Century, but found it not without rewards in her post “How many clever readers does it take to make a “great” book?”: “I can see that it’s well-written and carefully constructed, but I think I’ve missed a lot of what I was meant to notice, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling.” August reads Moody Food, and found it “damned near impossible for me to put down because there was so much life in it”, though as a self-confessed music snob, he didn’t buy The Duckhead Secret Society. He also read Hair Hat, hated the hair hat, but was more impressed with the book than he expected to be: “Carrie Snyder writes like she knows.” And my husband Stuart read How Happy to Be, finding its heroine reprehensible but, oddly enough, the book much compelling all the same.
