March 21, 2010
Poetic April Returns
I’m getting ready once again for Poetic April, the Pickle Me This celebration of National Poetry Month. During which I plan to read poetry, buy poetry, write here about poetry, post poems and generally enthuse. I come at my enjoyment of poetry from a very pedestrian perspective, so I am pleased to announce that we’ll be having poets guest-posting here throughout the month to educate us all. I do hope, however, that the one advantage of my limited perspective will be that other ordinary readers will also come to see how poetry can speak to us all*.
*Am I allowed to say that? Does poetry even want to speak to us all? If I suggest that I love a collection of poetry for its narrative, for instance, is that a back-handed poetic compliment? Which is not to say that language isn’t what I pay attention to, for language is what a poem is made of, but if I don’t have the background to appreciate the language as experts would say I should, am I even entitled to appreciate it at all?
March 20, 2010
Dogs in (children's) books update, and other children's lit bits and bobs
In an attempt to overcome my aversion to literary dogs, I went to see the exhibit “The Little Dog Laughed…” this afternoon at The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. Harry the Dirty Dog was featured, and also Alice’s dog Dash, and Farley Mowat’s Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, Snoopy, the Poky Little Puppy, Cracker “The Best Dog in Vietnam” (what a distinction!), Eloise’s dog Weenie, and Maurice Sendak’s dog Jennie from Higglety Pigglety Pop. A lovely display of books old and new, literary dog paraphernalia, and dog art. If I enjoyed it, just imagine what someone who likes dogs might think.
In other Toronto Library children’s book news, I followed everybody’s advice and 
requested The Night Kitchen. I loved the kitchen cityscape, and the story, and I get behind anything to do with cake in the morn. I also got out Brundibar, upon the recommendation of our wonderful librarian. Today when we were at Lillian H. Smith, I got a bunch of other books, including A Day with Nellie, and Miss Nelson is Missing which I probably haven’t thought about in twenty years but upon glimpsing immediately realized that I used to be obsessed with.
If all this wasn’t enough, yesterday we made our second trip to Mabel’s Fables. I bought a gorgeous edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa, whose illustrations are absolutely timeless. As Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems seem to be too, after 125 years (and I was inspired to seek them out after reading How the Heather Looks). The classic nature of this purchase is balanced out by our others, which were (delightfully) Sandra Boynton’s The Belly Button Book, My Little Word Book, and Baby Touch Colours.
March 20, 2010
My shumi blog
We became obsessed with hobbies back when we lived in Japan, mainly because the Japanese have institutionalized hobbying and because we were often bored back then. And so that was why I started my “hobby blog”, Ever Projecting. I’d encourage you to check it out if you want to see a craft blog that will make you feel better about yourself. Unlike most craft blogs, this one is rarely updated, decorated with unflattering photography, and features crafts that are poorly executed (the one exception being the incredible baby blanket I finished last spring). I am terrible at making things, but I go on doing it anyway– wonky cardigans, ugly aghans, pickles that shrivelled up in their jar, unmatching mittens (which I thought was so clever at the time), rainbow socks, reusable baby wipes (my first and probably last foray into sewing, but they’ve turned out to be very useful). I hope my blog will inspire other untalented people either not to let lack of talent get in the way of production, or to continue not bothering to try anything at all. Or you could just take a look at the sweater I just finished knitting for Harriet.
March 18, 2010
Finnie Walsh by Steven Galloway
This seems to be the second in a series of reviews of long-ago first novels reissued when writer strikes it big with a later book. I read Steven Galloway’s acclaimed The Cellist of Serajevo last year, and found it to be the most nuanced, interesting book about war I’ve ever encountered. And since Galloway had me obsessed with a book about a sniper (unlikely, I know), I decided his first novel about hockey Finnie Walsh was even worth a go.
The only real problem with Finnie Walsh is that it’s not A Prayer for Owen Meany. I’m not sure if it wanted to be, if it’s a homage or just an incredibly resonant echo, but the similarities between these two books are overwhelming. Owen has certainly inspired his share of devotees, and the more evangelical among them might struggle to accept Finnie for himself, but if you’re like me and found Irving’s book charming but way too long, you’ll probably manage to do so.
The book is narrated by Paul Woodward, son of a mill-worker who throws a wrench into the social order when he becomes friends with the mill-owner’s son. When the book begins, Paul and Finnie are seven years old, on the cusp of beginning their great hockey adventures and taking turns smashing the puck against Paul’s garage door. This creates a racket that keeps Paul’s father from sleeping properly that afternoon, so that he ends up nodding off on his job at the mill on the night shift, and losing his arm to the blades of a saw.
Finnie Walsh, perceptive beyond his years, feels responsible for the accident, and becomes closely bound with the Woodward family in order to atone for what happened. Over the next fifteen years, his fate and theirs are intertwined, and the narrative follows the cast of characters– among them, the oddly charismatic Finnie, Paul’s father (who spends those fifteen years educating himself by reading every issue of National Geographic from its inception), Paul’s sister strange sister Louise and his even stranger sister Sarah (who wears a lifejacket everywhere, and sees the future reflected by her bedside lamp). The narrative itself is somewhat random, often tangential, but these characters are so lovingly rendered that the story is compelling.
In the background throughout, there is hockey. Both Finnie and Paul follow the sport, and the narrative is punctuated by its zeitgeist– the ascent of Wayne Gretzky and then his trade to the LA Kings in particular, and many other players that I’d never heard of before but Galloway spins the stories so they’re epic heroes. Both boys play hockey as well– Finnie is a goalie, and Paul plays defense, and they move up through the ranks in local hockey until they’re both drafted into the NHL when they finish high school. (Which I think is a bit unlikely, no? Or rather, the remarkable nature of it is not made incredibly evident. It’s as though this is all just part of a natural progression, but maybe for some players it is?)
The novel begins, “Finnie Walsh will forever remain in my daily thoughts, not only because of the shocking circumstances of his absurd demise, but because he managed to misunderstand what was truly important even though he was right about everything else.” Which is a truly great opening sentence, but it also makes clear where the narrative is going to take us. So that the journey is the whole point, but Galloway has created a splendid one. For the hockey-illiterate such as myself, this book was a splendid, uplifting ride, but for the hockey-already-converted, this might be the Canadian novel you’ve always been waiting for.
March 17, 2010
Summer Summer Summer!
There are crocuses up in the garden across the street, and the sun was shining bright today. So bright so that I’ve got summer on the brain, even though it isn’t even spring until next weekend. But we’ve just booked our summer vacation, a cottage week away with a lovely lake almost at our doorstep, and I’m so excited for that.
I’m also excited about my summer rereading project. Every summer (except for last summer, during which a newborn was all the reading restriction I needed) I make a point of spending most of my time rereading all kinds of books, each for varying reasons. I’m already compiling this year’s stack– I want to revisit February by Lisa Moore (because of all the negative reviews I’ve read since, and I’m confused as to where they were coming from), Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner (to ensure it still stands up two years later), Small Ceremonies by Carol Shields (because because because), Anne of Windy Poplers by LM Montgomery (because of Kate), something early by Margaret Drabble (because I love her), Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (because I always do), and Still Life With Woodpecker (as part of the retro reading challenge).
March 16, 2010
Where have all the mass-market paperbacks gone?
All right, wouldn’t you know it? My twenty-five year old mass market paperback copy of The Tiger in the Tiger Pit by Janette Turner Hospital (which had a very unappealing cover and I found in a box on the sidewalk) turned out to be a wonderful novel. So much in common with Orpheus Lost, the other book I’d read by her though– literary allusions (though here they were Shakespearean instead of classical), musical references, bits of it taking place in her native Australia. Are all her books like this? Perhaps I’ll start combing the sidewalks and soon I’ll find out.
I found it interesting also that such a literary book would have come out in mass market paperback– does that still happen (unless you’re Margaret Atwood, whose mass market The Blind Assassin is fantastic)? Did they even have trade paperbacks in 1984? Because I never find those in sidewalk boxes.
Recently, when I read How the Heather Looks (published in the mid-sixties), I noted the passage where Joan Bodger recounts the university town her family had once resided in where they sold books at the supermarket, a necessary staple along with all the others– milk, cheese, etc. And she thought that was so brilliant. A funny perspective, since books in the supermarket are the worst thing that have ever happened to books in most places– because they’re sold at such a knock-down cost, of course, that publishers make no money, booksellers can’t compete, and all the books they sell there are crap anyway. So it’s too bad about that last point, or we could just about put a positive spin on the whole thing, but alas.
So, anyway: whither art thou, literary mass-market paperback? And where is the modern-day Allen Lane when we need him/her most?
March 15, 2010
We aren't born alone
Honestly, don’t google “We’re born alone, we die alone” to find out the various things 686,000 hits think we should do in between. And not just because the suggestions are more than a little saccherine, but because the adage itself is patently untrue. Though some of us may indeed die alone, I’m pretty sure that the second part is wrong: there were at least twelve people in that electric yellow room when Harriet was born, and though I don’t have the stats on my own birth, it’s fair to say that my mother must made it out for the event. So you’d think it would be fair to also say that no one has ever been born alone, ever, ever, ever. Which is why I find it very strange that motherhood is such a niche market.
In her beautiful book A Life’s Work, Rachel Cusk writes “with the gloomy suspicion that a book about motherhood is of no real interest to anyone except other mothers.” Exactly why this is is a depressing tale for another day, but it’s also worth considering why that book on motherhood is of interest to the other mothers in the first place. How come, ever since I had a baby, I’ve been gravitating to books on maternal themes, in poetry, fiction and non-fiction? What is up with my insistance on seeing my own experience reflected in the books I read? Particularly an experience so incredibly banal– everybody has a mother, a lot of people end up being one. What is the big deal?
It has been a mysterious thing, though, becoming a mother. A year ago, I posted this excerpt from A Life’s Work, but I hadn’t understood it at all, and now I see that, and now I do: “Like someone visiting old haunts after an absence I read books that I have read before, books that I love, and when I do I find them changed: they give the impression of having contained all along everything that I have gone away to learn.”
Motherhood has changed my relationship with reading in two absolutely shocking ways: it’s had me running toward the self-help shelf, and actually it’s made me start reading for clues. I only realize the latter point now, that I am attracted to the literature of motherhood to make some sense of the mess I’m in. To find an expression of the feelings and experiences that are soconfusing, awful, lovely and strange that I cannot begin to articulate them. To see this experience as rendered by art– to celebrate it, to put my finger on it, to understand.
(It is also worth noting that I’ve been attracted to stories of motherhood for a long time, that my reading tastes have always leaned toward the domestic. That when Lisa Moore wrote a book one reviewer panned, describing how “The narrative doesn’t progress so much as gestate, roiling around through a series of flashbacks until the hatching and matching at the end”, I’d called it “a rare thing– a perfect book… one of the best books from anywhere.”
It is also worth noting that I might one day write an essay about the unfortunate proliferation of books in Canadian Literature about lonely people walking up and down city sidewalks, numbing their pain with illegal substances, and living in bachelor apartments with cats, all the while Canadian writers could be writing about leaking nipples, umbilical stumps, and croup.)
Now, I’m not sure how to bring all this around to my new favourite blog which is STFU Parents, in which people send in screenshots of parents’ really obnoxious and/or inane Facebook status updates. (STEPHANIE: Why must we loose an hour of sleep?? When your a parent, those hours matter!! TINA: Amen!!) I cannot get enough of this blog. They’ve introduced the notion of “mommyjacking” status updates, which is when someone posts about any arduous experience, and then a mother chimes in with, “Just try [arduous experience] with a two year old” and then Tina adds, “Amen!!” again. It totally kills me.
I must mention mommyblogs again, and how it’s dawned upon me that I do actually like them. Or rather, that some of my favourite bloggers are mothers and write about their mothering experiences, among many other passions: Crooked House, Meli-Mello, All Things Said & Done, Carrie Snyder, and Sam Lamb, for example. Even the ever-erudite Inklings. What unites the blogger/mothers that I do read and enjoy, for the most part, is how they engage with motherhood and with the wider world at the same time, creating a relationship between the two that is not such a binary at all.
This is what I’m looking for in books about motherhood as well, to understand how my experiences fit into a wider context. How I fit into the world now, while I’m toting around twenty pounds of screeching daughter. How motherhood can be addressed in literature so as not to alienate anyone who isn’t a mom. And to understand why mothers are so reviled, in real life, on the internet, in general. Because they are a bit, and that’s a funny thing. How many people might have found being born alone preferable.
March 12, 2010
Nikolski wins Canada Reads!
This is even better than that hockey game everyone was talking about a few weeks back. Because here at Pickle Me This, we love Nikolski. We’ve loved Nikolski for two years now, and we’ve given the book (in French and English) as gifts, and we’ve urged it upon friends and family, and never once has anyone who’s read it been sorry. And yes, perhaps it’s a book you have to work for (though that’s not what I remember about it), but it’s fun work, and altogether worth the trouble.
I would have taken a picture of Harriet posing with Nikolski and Century, but it is difficult enough to keep Harriet (who is totally dressed up as a boy today– check it out!) from ripping apart one book, let alone two. (And speaking of books and Harriet destroying them, she’s totally into “lift the flap” these days.)
Anyway, it’s a good day for Canada’s readers. Congratulations to Nicolas Dickner, whose wonderful book is going to get many more new ones, and to panelist Michel Vézina, who stole the show.
March 12, 2010
Ray Smith's Century tops Canada Reads: Independently!
Taking 35% of the popular vote, Ray Smith’s Century has won top spot in the Canada Reads: Independently picks. Thank you to everybody who took part, to everybody who voted, to Jian Ghomeshi for mentioning our humble little extravaganza on yesterday’s CBC Canada Reads broadcast, to Dan Wells for nominating Century (and for publishing it), and to Ray Smith for writing it.
Thanks also to the rest of our celebrity panel, for donating their time and for the wonderful books they introduced to us. The five Canada Reads: Independently selections made clear that Canadian Literature is multitudinous, rich, and full of surprises. Which makes it much like literature in general, and in particular too.
Now, why don’t you celebrate by buying the book?
March 11, 2010
Year of the tiger
I’m now reading The Tiger in the Tiger Pit by Janette Turner Hospital, which I picked out of cardboard box on the sidewalk about three years ago. (The only other book I’ve read by Hospital was Orpheus Lost in 2007.) This book has been sitting on my shelf for about three years because it’s a manky paperback with a dated cover design, because it’s something I feel I should read but have not really been compelled to do so. And between all the other books I’ve found on sidewalks, and other manky paperbacks I’ve picked up from second-hand booksales, these books are starting to add up. I would like to spend my summer mostly re-reading, and so I’m going to make a point of getting through these books before then. They should yield some surprises– Excellent Women was once one of these novels, and now I am head over heels in love with Barbara Pym.
